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Daniel Levy - Chairman

Re Ambition: there is ambition in getting into the top 4 and staying there year in, year out without looking to push much higher. That's actually very lucrative. The Arsene Wenger 'Top4 is a trophy' model.

Then there's ambition to actually go for a league title and/or champions league by actually buying players who are more than likely able to sustain such things. That's also ambitious, but involves spending a bit more AND taking more risks. Arsenal have shown that if you don't try and reach higher you fall backwards. Actually we have also showed that...
 
glorygloryeze said:
Re Ambition: there is ambition in getting into the top 4 and staying there year in, year out without looking to push much higher. That's actually very lucrative. The Arsene Wenger 'Top4 is a trophy' model.

Then there's ambition to actually go for a league title and/or champions league by actually buying players who are more than likely able to sustain such things. That's also ambitious, but involves spending a bit more AND taking more risks. Arsenal have shown that if you don't try and reach higher you fall backwards. Actually we have also showed that...
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We were building a stadium!!!!!


Edit:
The fact we came 2nd in the league and runners up in the CL isn't good enough, we should have been winning the league and CL whilst building a stadium - that's what i get reading your posts

I mean honestly take a step back and look at what you are asking, build a stadium and win the league and/or CL - you don't think that's entitled?
 
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billyiddo said:
We were building a stadium!!!!!


Edit:
The fact we came 2nd in the league and runners up in the CL isn't good enough, we should have been winning the league and CL whilst building a stadium - that's what i get reading your posts

I mean honestly take a step back and look at your entitlement
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I think Poch got so frustrated because he felt we could've done even better.... It didn't necessarily even mean spending more either. It just meant being decisive (i.e. paying the £24m for Wjinaldum at the start of the window instead of not agreeing a fee with Saudi Sportswashing Machine and then ending up panicking and paying £31m for Sissoko in the last hour of the window). Our board didn't help our (brilliant) manager at all. Fingers crossed we'll have another point in the not too distant future where we have a genuine chance of glory in one of the two big competitions and this time the board will have learnt from their mistakes. Though I do wonder about this after that January window when Redknapp had us in with a shout, wanted reinforcements and the board got him two freebies.

Anyway time will tell (hopefully, as we may not even get in that position again). I would love nothing more than our owners to prove me wrong. I even wanted Jose Mourinho to prove me wrong and I couldn't stand him managing our club.
 
billyiddo said:
I appreciate it's frustrating that despite coming so close we always seem to come up short and often because of what appears to be a lack of investment at crucial times but i think what i have shown in the previous post and what the reality of the situation is, is that other owners running us within our means wouldn't have had us faring any better and in all likelihood wouldn't even have had us in the position to come up short in the first place (no club not part of that group has won more than 1 trophy, for us to expect different owners to have done better then we need to have seen other clubs winning multiple trophies, despite the financial handicap)

What's important is how we move forward now we have the stadium completed and should benefit from the revenue it brings - this puts us on a level with that group at the top, so gives us reason to have similar expectations to them. If in 5 years time we don't have trophies under our belt I'd be amazed.
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I have to disagree re the investment at key times. I think it is where Levy has most failed. If you are disadvantaged in one area of business then you succeed by being decisive in other areas.

Letting key players go before replacing them with suitable equivalent ones and it would appear being too slow at times in the market.

Take Leicester, they lost Kante but replaced him immediately with Ndidi. Southampton lost Lovren, replaced him with Van dyke and so on. We lost Carrick, replaced him with Huddlestone, Berbatov and Keane replaced with Frazier and Pav. Modric failed to replace with Moutinho. These are mistakes that have held us back even with the resource limits. Take recent events. Chelsea ruthlessly sacked Lampard who was doing better than Jose to bring in Tuchel to stop their slide. We persisted with Jose continued the decline before sacking him a week before a cup final and installing a novice. So instead of having a decent coached team to play city, we had a team lacking confidence with a coach that was totally not prepared for the challenge he faced. What astonished me is that the same people that derided the last manager for failing to win the Champions League final with a far weaker squad are now saying "well it's city what did we expect?" There were reasons for us losing the final and it was more than it just being City. That squad is better than the account that it gave itself in the final and over much of this season. But we were not decisive about the direction of travel with Jose until too late.

I like Levy very much btw. I am grateful for the infrastructure improvements. He has done very well at keeping us the 5th wealthiest team in the PL. This is where I disagree slightly with @Finney Is Back, as I don't think keeping us where we were prior to ENIC given the huge revenue differentials should be dismissed. It is clearly where Levy has excelled.

However, I think commonly on here, the resource gap becomes a convenient shield for ENIC. That is not meant disrespectfully to you Bill as I often find myself agreeing with your posts. It is certainly important but also acts masks errors and indecisiveness. The football side is not where Levy really excels whether that be in the transfer market or appointing managers (unless backed into a corner). He needs to appoint a trusted DOF to run the football side.
 
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billyiddo said:
We were building a stadium!!!!!


Edit:
The fact we came 2nd in the league and runners up in the CL isn't good enough, we should have been winning the league and CL whilst building a stadium - that's what i get reading your posts

I mean honestly take a step back and look at what you are asking, build a stadium and win the league and/or CL - you don't think that's entitled?
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We were building a stadium, yet as @Finney Is Back has put it we ended up breaking our transfer record on the last day of the window to buy Sissoko when a lower fee would have got either one of Mane or Wijnldum. So trying to skimp and save ended up costing us more when we in a panic at the minute bought the lesser player. I wont even mention the NKoudou 'peek-a-boo, where is he now' saga.
Again buying one of quality instead of two who were less proven (or at least one had proven to be a lesser player) would have shown real ambition even with the stadium build going on in the background. It's that kind of football-focused 'savvy' that people often find is lacking in the hierarchy.
I could mention the Grealish saga or the Berahino years before that.

I could also talk about the January 2020 window AFTER the stadium build had been completed and when Kane was injured and our manager said he needed a number 9, we instead bought Bergwijn, which by all accounts was an opportunistic buy (a good one, i might add btw), meanwhile the number 9 our manger publicly craved wasn't bought.

As i say, build or no build there's often a pattern in how we operate with regards to what our manager needs. The actions are consistent, whilst the excuses are ever-changing imo
 
I think there is an element of selective hindsight on transfers made and missed. Just because players worked out elsewhere doesn't mean they would have done so here, similarly players that did work out here are maybe ignored because we got a good deal rather than paying a big fee.
 
The excuses aren't ever changing though, its consistently been that money is the over riding factor.

When you get close and miss out you can always point to things that could have been done differently that could have been the difference - Pochettino had his hands tied behind his back because of x,y and z but even still he could have won the league or the CL if he'd done something differently, do we blame him for that or recognise that he done well to get us there in the first place? It's the same with the owners - we could have done things differently and seen a better outcome but should we not recognise that until we are on an even footing with the clubs that do win that the odds are stacked against us?

I think it's bloody weird that anyone is looking at the last ten years and even thinking we need to look for a figure to blame rather than to appreciate the progress we made
 
Robspur12 said:
Take Leicester, they lost Kante but replaced him immediately with Ndidi. Southampton lost Lovren, replaced him with Van dyke and so on. We lost Carrick, replaced him with Huddlestone, Berbatov and Keane replaced with Frazier and Pav. Modric failed to replace with Moutinho. These are mistakes that have held us back even with the resource limits. Take recent events. Chelsea ruthlessly sacked Lampard who was doing better than Jose to bring in Tuchel to stop their slide. We persisted with Jose continued the decline before sacking him a week before a cup final and installing a novice. So instead of having a decent coached team to play city, we had a team lacking confidence with a coach that was totally not prepared for the challenge he faced. What astonished me is that the same people that derided the last manager for failing to win the Champions League final with a far weaker squad are now saying "well it's city what did we expect?" There were reasons for us losing the final and it was more than it just being City. That squad is better than the account that it gave itself in the final and over much of this season. But we were not decisive about the direction of travel with Jose until too late.
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This is a great paragraph..... (However I think we replaced Carrick with Zokora... though admittedly that is like replacing a Porsche with a Subaru)
 
billyiddo said:
The excuses aren't ever changing though, its consistently been that money is the over riding factor.

When you get close and miss out you can always point to things that could have been done differently that could have been the difference - Pochettino had his hands tied behind his back because of x,y and z but even still he could have won the league or the CL if he'd done something differently, do we blame him for that or recognise that he done well to get us there in the first place? It's the same with the owners - we could have done things differently and seen a better outcome but should we not recognise that until we are on an even footing with the clubs that do win that the odds are stacked against us?

I think it's bloody weird that anyone is looking at the last ten years and even thinking we need to look for a figure to blame rather than to appreciate the progress we made
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I think, with respect Bill, you are looking at it wrongly. It is not looking for someone to blame but more looking at the club and analysing dispassionately the possible reasons for our failure to win trophies. That is important given talk of break away leagues. Trophy success tends to be proportional to revenue increase. Which is why I get exasperated with the "let's celebrate organic growth" mob.
 
Baleforce said:
I think there is an element of selective hindsight on transfers made and missed. Just because players worked out elsewhere doesn't mean they would have done so here, similarly players that did work out here are maybe ignored because we got a good deal rather than paying a big fee.
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I agree here. Some players work out, some don't. Players that work out elsewhere might not have worked out here and vice versa. The questionable act though is to fail to a agree a (lower) fee for the manager's first choice target early in the window, but then eventually agree a higher fee for a player further down the list of the manager's targets in the last hour of the window?
 
Finney Is Back said:
Point 3 is a key one here..... Almost every club was indeed working tirelessly to get the best players and win silverware.... Every club except us that is, we sat on our hands
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Spurs management team did nothing to get us into the top 4, challenging for the title etc. That all just happened without any work on Spurs part?

Not entitled you say? :)
 
glorygloryeze said:
No, it's about the hierarchy actually 'going for it' when the time and conditions are right and in our favour. Consistently over the years they have 'bottled it' (using different excuses) in that regard and that ultimately has set the tone for the club. It's why we've had the Sissokos bought instead of the Wijnaldums/Manes that were intended etc
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There is a logical come back to this. Could you guarantee that spending £xm would have led to success? Would you have put your house on it? Plenty of clubs have failed miserably with this approach. Leeds springs to mind. Its all opinions, but I'll take Levy's consistency and incremental improvement over betting the house on one last shot. It is the difference between a gambler and a businessman.
 
Robspur12 said:
I don't think a single poster has failed to acknowledge the good things Levy has accomplished. Why does the discussion have to become so polarised?
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It's what we do ..

We deal in absolutes .. it's like the old Keane/JD arguments, for one to be good, the other has to be brick (or vice versa)
 
SpurMeUp said:
There is a logical come back to Derp Could you guarantee that spending £xm would have led to success? Would you have put your house on it? Plenty of clubs have failed miserably with this approach. Leeds springs to mind. Its all opinions, but I'll take Levy's consistency and incremental improvement over betting the house on one last shot. It is the difference between a gambler and a businessman.
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You mean dilly-dallying and ending up spending more on lesser players?
Yeah, how did that go actually? :D
 
Robspur12 said:
I think, with respect Bill, you are looking at it wrongly. It is not looking for someone to blame but more looking at the club and analysing dispassionately the possible reasons for our failure to win trophies. That is important given talk of break away leagues. Trophy success tends to be proportional to revenue increase. Which is why I get exasperated with the "let's celebrate organic growth" mob.
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I think looking at it with as much neutrality as possible should bring about the conclusion that the financial disparity between the group of clubs that win all the trophies and those that do not is the biggest single factor. The simple way to shut this argument down is show me all the clubs outside of that group of 5 that are regularly winning trophies and outperforming us in the league....

Show a random person the money each club has available to build and strengthen squads over the medium to long term and tell me who's going to have backed the poorest of them to do better than we did?
 
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