I must say, I am pretty stunned that this forum still has a hefty pro-Levy flavour to it. I have historically been all in on his plan, and thought he was a genius, and the job he has done to get us in the position where we have fantastic infrastructure and we’re considered for an invite to the ESL, I can agree those are fantastic things. I even defended him and the club’s plan generally through the season of no signings.
But with all of that said, while I can appreciate he was the right man for us for a great many years - or at least we can say his plan delivered well in certain respects - I think he is absolutely now the wrong person for us going forward. The last two years of decision making from Levy have been an utter disaster. On the business side, he is fantastic. On the football side, I have lost all trust that he has any clue at all.
I completely agree with what some folks were saying a few pages back. It is about savvy in the right moments, making the right decisions when the pressure is on, that could have helped us go further, and he has been found wanting.
@billyiddo ’s point that he achieved a lot while building a stadium is a fair one, but I think
@Finney Is Back ’s is more so - Sugar was a boon for Levy in dampening the expectations of the club and everything we do now is compared to the 90s. Ultimately while I think he’s done a good job to now, I don’t think he is the right person to take us forward. He can’t be trusted on football matters and the idea that if we don’t have Levy going forward, we’ll do a Saudi Sportswashing Machine, Villa or Leeds is just a bit too much of a stretch now. We may be worse off, but I think going forward we could be a lot better.
His football decision making has been terrible, with the chickens of his decision to not back Poch and do everything in his power to keep the guy happy at our club really coming home to roost now. How can anyone read the stories of Levy wanting a ‘progressive, attack minded coach who can develop young players’ and not utterly laugh their ass off at Levy’s incompetence? He had the perfect person for it, and let him go. All of that is to say; the point that Poch had a bigger vision, and thought we could be even better, had to give way to Levy and ENIC being happy with top 4.
Levy said it himself, time will tell whether sacking Poch was the right decision. It’s been proven out to be fundamentally the wrong one. And more than anything it shows that Levy never really understood why Poch was successful in the first place. He will always be a GHod in my eyes but Poch was successful because for the first time in years Levy allowed a proper clear out, he backed a manager ahead of the players and allowed us to create a culture and a spirit that helped us overachieve. 5 years in, we needed to do the same thing. It didn’t mean spending 200m, it just meant being decisive around moving players out and bringing some new ones in, backing the guy who made it all possible and deserved that shot. Instead we go with Levy’s plan, and it was to squeeze more out of a squad that didn’t want to go the extra mile with us anymore. He failed with that decision and set us back years. In my opinion, he needs to go. At a minimum he needs to hand over football control to a sporting director, and be genuinely hands off. But he’s had at least 4 of those too, and lost them all. It’s on him, and he’s not the person to help us push forward.
