Daniel Levy - Chairman

[Bishop]

We spend what we generate as a club - I'm happy with that - it's how the other clubs operate it'show you evaluate your standing. You can spend your time wishing we were run like City or how Chelsea used to be but the liklihood of that being how a new owner operates are slim to none.

Leicester a 5000/1 shot coming in proves nothing - it's an aberration. Let's see where they are and where we are on 5 years

I'm not advocating for spending like City or Chelsea. I'm fine with spending what we generate, yet even within those confines we set ourselves a lower limit than everyone else. Our wages to turnover ratio is lower than every other clubs that's a decision that was made out of choice. Our choice, so again please let's not plead poverty when we are the ones deciding to our ceiling lower than others.

My issue with Levy though is not the amount spent on transfers or the wage level restrictions. My complaints are of a practical nature, his inability to understand the bigger picture. His inability to prioritise the squads development over feeling like he got one over in a negotiation. The man is the opposite of decisive, one day he might realise prolonging negotiations until the very last day of the transfer window to save a million here or there actually costs us more in the long term. Or selling a player for a fee he deems unacceptable is better than keeping that player for an additional year and paying them more in wages than the difference between the fees he was offered and what he thinks is right.

The man needs to be moved as far away from the football side as possible.

 

[billyiddo]

I'm not advocating for spending like City or Chelsea. I'm fine with spending what we generate, yet even within those confines we set ourselves a lower limit than everyone else. Our wages to turnover ratio is lower than every other clubs that's a decision that was made out of choice. Our choice, so again please let's not plead poverty when we are the ones deciding to our ceiling lower than others.

My issue with Levy though is not the amount spent on transfers or the wage level restrictions. My complaints are of a practical nature, his inability to understand the bigger picture. His inability to prioritise the squads development over feeling like he got one over in a negotiation. The man is the opposite of decisive, one day he might realise prolonging negotiations until the very last day of the transfer window to save a million here or there actually costs us more in the long term. Or selling a player for a fee he deems unacceptable is better than keeping that player for an additional year and paying them more in wages than the difference between the fees he was offered and what he thinks is right.

The man needs to be moved as far away from the football side as possible.

Based on what do we set a lower limit? I thought our financials show we general run within our means. Since the stadium move we spend competitively in the market.

My issue is, we can all produce a list of things that can be done better and i don't disagree with a lot of what people complain about with Levy and things that you list above - but you cannot escape the fact that we have out-performed our level as a club (which is what 6th?) consistently stretching back many years now - you don't get everything right, if you did you'd be no.1, but we must be getting enough things right over the long term to be where we are - is a different owner going to improve on what you think Levy is doing wrong whilst also doing all the things he is doing right that don't get any thought? Why aren't other clubs of our standing smashing the closed shop at the top of the league on a regular basis if it's that easy?

 

[billyiddo]

Edit : kinda reminds me of the Pochettino criticism- had he done things a bit differently we may have won the league or CL, but people forget all the things we were excelling at that meant we were even in that position in the first place - we've gone for the manager who'd supposedly be the difference maker in those situations but as we have found out, he can't do what's required to get us there in the first place...

 

[Bishop]

Edit : kinda reminds me of the Pochettino criticism- had he done things a bit differently we may have won the league or CL, but people forget all the things we were excelling at that meant we were even in that position in the first place - we've gone for the manager who'd supposedly be the difference maker in those situations but as we have found out, he can't do what's required to get us there in the first place...

It's pointless going back and forth. You believe in Levy, I don't and I haven't done for a long time. [emoji2379]

 

[billyiddo]

It's pointless going back and forth. You believe in Levy, I don't and I haven't done for a long time. [emoji2379]

Fair enough - I always like to hear some reasoning as to why people think a different owner could improve further on our over performance

 

[Finney Is Back]

You think Daniel Levy is solely responsible for a 400m over spend on the stadium? You don't have anywhere near the required knowledge or information to be making those sorts of claims mate - there's armchair/fag packet accounting and then there's a layman trying to make sense and apportion blame for the costs of a major construction project of world leading stadium.

The only facts of the matter are that (apparently) the stadium would not affect our transfer budget (Levy's words). We then had massive unexpected uptick in income due to the manager before this one seriously overachieving, yet our transfer budget sat at virtually zero. Despite that we still entered the stadium in a huge amount of debt. That can only mean a huge overspend on the stadium. Or do you have an alternative explanation? Do you think that we instead actually planned to enter the stadium with £1 billion of debt and comparatively much lower income due to the financials not growing hugely due to the CL exposure?

Of course I don't hold Daniel Levy solely responsible for that overspend. However in any company the buck stops with the CEO. One thing I do seriously wonder is how the CEO can receive a a £3 million bonus after that huge overspend. How much overbudget and over time did that stadium have to go before he wasn't worthy of a bonus? What is it that he does for us over and above what other club's CEO's do that makes Levy worth his 1st/2nd position in terms of financial compensation for the job he does?

 

[Finney Is Back]

Show me a club that has broken the top 4 and consistently performed at that level despite not having the financials that the OG top 4 clubs and oligarch clubs have? You won't find one because we're the only ones to do that, people say Levy is a problem as though there's evidence that we have not been over achieving this past decade+

Achieved through two excellent managers that some on this board wanted to see the back of....

 

[DubSpur]

Achieved through two excellent managers that some on this board wanted to see the back of....

Who recruited those two managers?

 

[billyiddo]

Achieved through two excellent managers that some on this board wanted to see the back of....

It's usually a one on one off

Jol > Ramos > Redknapp > AVB > Pochettino > Mourinho

A 50 % hit rate for managers aint bad for a club, is it?

What's funny is the good managers are getting better but the bad managers are getting worse

 

[Finney Is Back]

In 2006 (the earliest I could find quickly) we had the 6th highest income in England (Saudi Sportswashing Machine in there instead of City). At that point, we had less than 1/2 the income of Utd.
We were also a mid-table team, rarely qualifying for Europe let alone the CL.

In 2020 we had the 4th highest income, with the gap to Liverpool quickly closing, 5/7ths the income of Utd, and only the dodgy sponsorship deals of City keeping us from already being third. We're also now regulars in the CL and at the very least qualify for Europe.

The only way we could've closed that gap quicker is with a sugar daddy and no other club has done what Levy has with us.

Here are the numbers from the season before ENIC took over:

1. Man Utd - £117m
2. Chelsea - £76.6m.
3. Arsenal - £61.3m
4. Leeds - £51.7m
5. Tottenham - £48m
6. Liverpool - £46.4m
6. Saudi Sportswashing Machine - £45.1m

Here are the 2021 numbers:

1. Man Utd - £509m
2. Liverpool - £489.9m
3. Emirates Marketing Project - £481.6m
4. Chelsea - 411.9m
5. Tottenham £390.9m

So yes Emirates Marketing Project have suddenly appeared out of nowhere but to counter that Leeds imploded.

As I said. 5th when they took over and 5th now (perhaps even dropping to 6th with us likely having no European football next year depending on which clubs do make it).

Of course that just looks at turnover and not debt. Our debt levels now are scarily high and leave us little room to manoeuvre.

Something else quite interesting is that prior to Enic taking over at Spurs we were already one of the most profitable clubs in England:

This from the Deloitte football finances report in 2002:

"The top ten operating profits all came from Premiership clubs. Manchester United (£34 million) again topped the table with profits double those of Saudi Sportswashing Machine (£15 million) in second place. Indeed over the ten years of the Premiership, Manchester United’s cumulative operating profits of £229 million are over three times greater than their nearest rival - Tottenham Hotspur (£74 million)."

So in the decade before Enic we were already the second most profitable club in the country. We've basically gone from where we were to where we were in 20 years, only winning less trophies than we did in each of the 20 year periods that came before.

 

[billyiddo]

It's like you didn't watch the evolution of the PL during the Sky TV & CL boom

 

[Finney Is Back]

Show me a club that has broken the top 4 and consistently performed at that level despite not having the financials that the OG top 4 clubs and oligarch clubs have? You won't find one because we're the only ones to do that, people say Levy is a problem as though there's evidence that we have not been over achieving this past decade+

I used this exact same argument to counter points that some on here had about Pochettino not being good enough..... 'Show me a manager that has broken the top 4 and consistently performed at that level despite not having the financial backing that his rivals had'? Remember that it is only one single manager that we've had that consistently performed at that level. Was it the chairman or the manager?

 

[Finney Is Back]

It's like you didn't watch the evolution of the PL during the Sky TV & CL boom

It's like you didn't read my post above.....

 

[Finney Is Back]

Based on what do we set a lower limit? I thought our financials show we general run within our means. Since the stadium move we spend competitively in the market.

My issue is, we can all produce a list of things that can be done better and i don't disagree with a lot of what people complain about with Levy and things that you list above - but you cannot escape the fact that we have out-performed our level as a club (which is what 6th?) consistently stretching back many years now - you don't get everything right, if you did you'd be no.1, but we must be getting enough things right over the long term to be where we are - is a different owner going to improve on what you think Levy is doing wrong whilst also doing all the things he is doing right that don't get any thought? Why aren't other clubs of our standing smashing the closed shop at the top of the league on a regular basis if it's that easy?

Our wage to turnover ratio has consistently been the lowest in the PL

 

[billyiddo]

It's like you didn't read my post above.....

No i read it, but it doesn't take in to account the football landscape at the time and the following years that saw the gap between us and the teams in the CL develop and grow.

 

[Finney Is Back]

It's usually a one on one off

Jol > Ramos > Redknapp > AVB > Pochettino > Mourinho

A 50 % hit rate for managers aint bad for a club, is it?

What's funny is the good managers are getting better but the bad managers are getting worse

Hoddle, Santini & Sherwood missing from that....

 

[billyiddo]

Hoddle, Santini & Sherwood missing from that....

Sherwood was a caretaker, might as well include Pleat while you're at it.

I don't see the value in harking back to the very early years, we were getting over the Sugar period. For me Arnesen + Santini is a fair starting point imo as it's the when it seemed like the modern set up was put in place and everything since then has followed a trend. So yeah chuck Santini in i suppose.

Over a 20+ year period how do you think other clubs success rates with managers would fair?

 

[Bishop]

Fair enough - I always like to hear some reasoning as to why people think a different owner could improve further on our over performance

I'm not running away from the convo it's just dubaispurs and Modric THFC articulated my thoughts exactly so rather than repeating what they've already said it's easier for you to read their comments.

 

[Finney Is Back]

Sherwood was a caretaker, might as well include Pleat while you're at it.

I don't see the value in harking back to the very early years, we were getting over the Sugar period. For me Arnesen + Santini is a fair starting point imo as it's the when it seemed like the modern set up was put in place and everything since then has followed a trend. So yeah chuck Santini in i suppose.

Over a 20+ year period how do you think other clubs success rates with managers would fair?

Sherwood was given an 18 month contract and named as manager, not caretaker like Pleat.

Let's just stick with the facts and go from start to finish for all non caretaker managers...

Hoddle - miss
Santini - miss
Jol - hit
Ramos - miss
Redknapp - hit
AVB - miss
Sherwood - neutral
Pochettino - hit
Mourinho - miss

3 out of 9 hits and 5 misses. Looks a bit scattergun to me?

 

[billyiddo]

If you're looking to be as critical as possible rather than being fair, sure. But like i said Sherwood was a caretaker in all but name, fwiw he already had that length of contract in place in his previous role and the job title was changed - he wasn't given an 18 month contract as manager.

No use harking back to pre Arnesen days either, they're not relevant to where we are now as a club.

I think most would agree Arnesen to present day is what Levy & ENIC are all about - most of that time we were a relative financial minnow to the sides we were trying to dislodge and were then building/planning for a stadium at the same time and yet despite that we progressed over the long term, on and off the field.