Daniel Levy - Chairman

[BrainOfLevy]

I think ENIC have calculated the risks, and decided that keeping us top 6 with the occasional CL run maintains the value of the asset and ensures we never fall too far. And while there are times we could extend ourselves a bit to really push for a trophy, the risk is if it doesn’t work we get on a bit of a negative spiral and that could affect the value of the asset.

I think Poch tried to apply the pressure to get as much opportunity as he could to drive us forward, but saw it wasn’t gonna happen. Hence his mood and comments in 2019. I just don’t think ENIC are willing to do what it takes to have us really make the leap. They’d love it if it happens, but they’ll always say they are custodians, it’s about the long term, it’s about keeping us in a good spot. Don’t wanna do a Leeds.

I’m just saying it we really want to start winning trophies, I don’t think they are the people to bring it. If the choice is a little more risk, it isn’t worth it to them.

 

[DubSpur]

I think ENIC have calculated the risks, and decided that keeping us top 6 with the occasional CL run maintains the value of the asset and ensures we never fall too far. And while there are times we could extend ourselves a bit to really push for a trophy, the risk is if it doesn’t work we get on a bit of a negative spiral and that could affect the value of the asset.

I think Poch tried to apply the pressure to get as much opportunity as he could to drive us forward, but saw it wasn’t gonna happen. Hence his mood and comments in 2019. I just don’t think ENIC are willing to do what it takes to have us really make the leap. They’d love it if it happens, but they’ll always say they are custodians, it’s about the long term, it’s about keeping us in a good spot. Don’t wanna do a Leeds.

I’m just saying it we really want to start winning trophies, I don’t think they are the people to bring it. If the choice is a little more risk, it isn’t worth it to them.

You're judging ENIC on what happened before and during the stadium build when they had to be cautious with finances. They have loosened the purse strings since and we've had our biggest net spend ever post stadium opening. In my book they've earned the right to see the next phase through. If they do tighten the purse strings again (will allow this year due to covid) then fair enough there's questions to be answered, but not until we see how the next few years pan out.

 

[parklane1]

You're judging ENIC on what happened before and during the stadium build when they had to be cautious with finances. They have loosened the purse strings since and we've had our biggest net spend ever post stadium opening. In my book they've earned the right to see the next phase through. If they do tighten the purse strings again (will allow this year due to covid) then fair enough there's questions to be answered, but not until we see how the next few years pan out.

I don't know how to use the like button, until the fans can get back into the stadium and also bringing money in from other events its impossible for anyone to know what we will spend. Some will try/guess though i have no doubt.

 

[Finney Is Back]

@DubaiSpur here you go. Here is an owner who spent his own money on his team, would you have preferred Lerner to Levy? https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobbym...-more-than-100000-a-day-over-the-last-decade/

Which English club would you point to as being a model for what Spurs should have been? As Levy has done so badly according to you, there should be oodles of examples of better run clubs

Of the present owners in the PL I think that the owners of Emirates Marketing Project, Chelsea, Liverpool, Everton, Leeds, Aston Villa, Leicester, Wolves, Crystal Palace, Sheffield United, Fulham and Brighton are all better. All are/have injected capital into their clubs in an attempt to improve them.

I think our owners are better than Man Utd's and Burnley's (leveraged buy outs) and also West Ham's (owner loans at high interest).

I'd say our owners are on a par with the current owners of Arsenal and Saudi Sportswashing Machine (thank GHod Saudi Sportswashing Machine's Saudi takeover didn't happen as that would've been us locked out of the CL places for (at least) the short to medium term.

 

[Finney Is Back]

Not sure what you getting at there? You said Levy has made us into a top 4 team. That is not true. Harry and Poch achieved top 4 no one else has . Our default position seems to be 5th or 6th therefore it is fair to conclude that's what Levy has made us. The comparison with Chelsea is that whoever is in charge they mostly go on to win some form of trophy even if their league form drops. Abramovich has instilled a winning culture at the club.

Btw under Lampard they finished top 4 and reached a cup final. So not sure how you concluded mid table was the best he was offering.

Indeed..... The difference here is that Abramovich provides top 3 PL level backing every single year for wages and transfers.... If a Chelsea manager has them outside the top 3 then they are underachieving.

For some strange reason our chairman sacks our managers who actually manage to consistently overachieve compared to their resources. To be fair to him he doesn't discriminate as he also sacks the managers who perform in line with their resources as well as those that under achieve compared to resources. In business I have often found that when senior execs keeps on changing the team beneath them the problem tends not to lie with the team beneath them.

 

[Baleforce]

Of the present owners in the PL I think that the owners of Emirates Marketing Project, Chelsea, Liverpool, Everton, Leeds, Aston Villa, Leicester, Wolves, Crystal Palace, Sheffield United, Fulham and Brighton are all better. All are/have injected capital into their clubs in an attempt to improve them.

I think our owners are better than Man Utd's and Burnley's (leveraged buy outs) and also West Ham's (owner loans at high interest).

I'd say our owners are on a par with the current owners of Arsenal and Saudi Sportswashing Machine (thank GHod Saudi Sportswashing Machine's Saudi takeover didn't happen as that would've been us locked out of the CL places for (at least) the short to medium term.

spending money that wasn’t generated by the club is what makes a good owner then?

 

[DubSpur]

Of the present owners in the PL I think that the owners of Emirates Marketing Project, Chelsea, Liverpool, Everton, Leeds, Aston Villa, Leicester, Wolves, Crystal Palace, Sheffield United, Fulham and Brighton are all better. All are/have injected capital into their clubs in an attempt to improve them.

I think our owners are better than Man Utd's and Burnley's (leveraged buy outs) and also West Ham's (owner loans at high interest).

I'd say our owners are on a par with the current owners of Arsenal and Saudi Sportswashing Machine (thank GHod Saudi Sportswashing Machine's Saudi takeover didn't happen as that would've been us locked out of the CL places for (at least) the short to medium term.

Very narrow criteria for a good chairman. Sounds like someone that wants a sugar daddy tbh

 

[BrainOfLevy]

You're judging ENIC on what happened before and during the stadium build when they had to be cautious with finances. They have loosened the purse strings since and we've had our biggest net spend ever post stadium opening. In my book they've earned the right to see the next phase through. If they do tighten the purse strings again (will allow this year due to covid) then fair enough there's questions to be answered, but not until we see how the next few years pan out.

And this is where it comes back to sacking Poch for me. Everything we knew about him suggested he knew exactly where Spurs stood in comparison to rivals financially, and that he didn’t want to suddenly become a chequebook manager. What he did want was for us to be decisive and maintain a culture.

I’m sure if there was going to be meaningful change post stadium, Levy could have said ‘I trust you, give us the next year or so to get in the stadium, see the revenues coming through, then we are really going to go for it’ and in that instance, I don’t think Poch goes. Instead what happened is that he got Tanguay unfit (although well done to Levy for making sure he signed) and an injured GLC and Sess. And then was sacked.

I just don’t back Levy on the football side. I don’t believe he’d know what to do to compete against the City’s and Chelsea’s. I think he was the perfect person for the job he was doing, threading the needle between staying competitive and building the infrastructure. But I just don’t trust him on football. He struck gold, he let that gold go, and now we are back to where we were under Sherwood.

In fairness, we are now seemingly paying proper wages for top players. A consequence of having good infrastructure finally. But I just don’t buy that Levy knows how to get us to the top, or really actually wants to do what it takes to get us there. Why not back Poch, get us through a tricky period, and then get on with the rebuild? Why pay money sacking his staff, and hiring Jose, and sacking him too? It has been a disaster on the football side, when we were so close. What gives you the confidence he has any idea what he is doing on the football side?

I think we will always be top 6 with the occasional top 4 run under him. But I think the reason Poch was so tinkled off, and why ETH isn’t jumping at the chance of our job, is because they know Levy isn’t prepared to do what it takes to really make the leap. He will always go for the Rodon’s ahead of Skriniar’s, the GKN’s instead of the Mane’s. When it really comes down to it, when it really comes to backing a manager and doing what needs to be done, I think we default to Levy’s plan rather than backing someone to take us further. I think he tries, I think he gets close, but when push comes to shove it goes back to his plan.

 

[Finney Is Back]

Investing in the team when there are 5 clubs far richer than you won't lead to any meaningful success and it is entirey right to say that it would be unsustainable to do so that's basic econimics.

Investing in the team now we have the stadium behind us and 3 of those 5 clubs are now much of a muchness in terms of revenue means we can actually achieve something meaningful, which looking at the money spent since moving in suggests we are prepared to do.

The two things are not mutually exclusive. Investing in the team in the interim from a position of strength would likely have:

a) Got us one or more trophies.... you know, the very thing that football is actually all about (despite the view of a few on here).
b) Meant that we still actually had our brilliant manager instead of getting rejected by the managers out there with something of a reputation and now seemingly scrambling around for managers of the calibre of Scott Parker.
c) Ensured that we didn't have two years (and counting) of transition.
d) Not had to waste about £30 million sacking managers.
e) Resulted in us actually having higher revenue anyway due to maintaining our CL status.

And that is before you consider the fact that in many cases we ended up spending (sometimes more) money on worse players after not backing the manager with his actual targets.

We are now in a position where we probably need to spend £150m - £200m on transfers just to get to a place where we can build a challenge again. Some sensible investment in the team during the stadium build would've reduced this number drastically.

 

[DubSpur]

Indeed..... The difference here is that Abramovich provides top 3 PL level backing every single year for wages and transfers.... If a Chelsea manager has them outside the top 3 then they are underachieving.

For some strange reason our chairman sacks our managers who actually manage to consistently overachieve compared to their resources. To be fair to him he doesn't discriminate as he also sacks the managers who perform in line with their resources as well as those that under achieve compared to resources. In business I have often found that when senior execs keeps on changing the team beneath them the problem tends not to lie elsewhere.

Football is a lot different to most other businesses and if that is the case every club has an issue as they all sack managers

 

[Finney Is Back]

I think we need to appreciate what Levy has to work with.

If a manager (and fans) wanted to keep Rose, Dele and others Levy has to act right? He has negotiate and sign them up to contracts to keep them. He can’t ignore his manager and punt them on while their wages are low.

Levy will probably work with say Hitchen or whoever on this, but it is the manager who has to craft the team and signal their intent with each player. Levy is mostly subservient to the manager.

We couldn’t sell Rose because he didn’t want to half his wages. Similar with Dele. Is that Levy’s fault or just the reality of modern football?


Sitting on my porcelain throne using glory-glory.co.uk mobile app

Not true. Rose was at Watford and had agreed a deal there only for the chairman to try to up the price. We've since paid a pretty much unused player about £7 million quid in wages.

 

[Finney Is Back]

I don't know how to use the like button, until the fans can get back into the stadium and also bringing money in from other events its impossible for anyone to know what we will spend. Some will try/guess though i have no doubt.

You click the word 'like' that appears on the right hand side just below the post.

 

[BrainOfLevy]

I also think ENIC have reasoned that the value of the club now, is probably really where they can get it to without an order of magnitude more investment. How many league titles do we need to win to see our value markedly improve? How many CL semis do we need to be in?

I think that’s a leap they don’t want to make. They’d love it, but I think they reason that Spurs as it is, given new stadium and training ground and increased broadcast rights is a great ROI from where they bought it. I don’t think going the next step is worth it to them.

I think their plan is to keep us steady in the top 6, and hope that various managers work miracles to keep squeezing more out of the squad for the occasional top 4 run. Which just flies in the face of why we got so close under Poch - clear alignment around strategy, culture, spirit, a plan. Which means being decisive around certain players. Which means backing a manager when that spirit is at risk. Otherwise Levy is just the DOF, and we’re hoping his plan wins us a trophy. I just don’t trust him.

 

[Finney Is Back]

spending money that wasn’t generated by the club is what makes a good owner then?

I'm simply comparing the existing owners in the PL with our own. A large majority (70%?) have owners who are prepared to put in their own money to try to improve the club. A small amount (15%) neither invest or take out money (us, Saudi Sportswashing Machine and Arsenal). Another 15% of clubs have owners that take money out of the club either via leveraged buy-outs or high interest owner loans. If ENIC were to sell up we effectively have a 15% chance of getting worse owners, 15% chance of getting equally good/bad (depending on your viewpoint) owners and a 70% chance of getting better owners. Seems like a gamble with reasonable odds really.

 

[Finney Is Back]

Very narrow criteria for a good chairman. Sounds like someone that wants a sugar daddy tbh

I said owners not chairman. Two very different things.

I'd rather have a sugar daddy than the owners we have now but no in actual fact I don't want a sugar daddy.... What I would like is for ENIC to inject just a tiny portion of the huge capital gain they have made from owning our club back into the club. An injection/dilution of £200m would still mean that they would probably be sitting on a paper profit of about £1.2 billion on Spurs, and that sort of investment would probably make us hugely competitive in being able to properly challenge for the big trophies again.

 

[Robspur12]

spending money that wasn’t generated by the club is what makes a good owner then?

That's a narrow way to look at it. Another way is to invest some of your money to give back a greater return.

 

[Finney Is Back]

Football is a lot different to most other businesses and if that is the case every club has an issue as they all sack managers

I don't know of a single other club that has sacked multiple managers who have consistently overachieved compared to resources. If I got rid of traders who had consistently outperformed the market every time they had a bad quarter, I would very quickly end up in a position where there wasn't a single decent trader out there who would want to work for me (and I'd expect to get the chop myself from the CEO as well).

 

[Finney Is Back]

I also think ENIC have reasoned that the value of the club now, is probably really where they can get it to without an order of magnitude more investment. How many league titles do we need to win to see our value markedly improve? How many CL semis do we need to be in?

I think that’s a leap they don’t want to make. They’d love it, but I think they reason that Spurs as it is, given new stadium and training ground and increased broadcast rights is a great ROI from where they bought it. I don’t think going the next step is worth it to them.

I think their plan is to keep us steady in the top 6, and hope that various managers work miracles to keep squeezing more out of the squad for the occasional top 4 run. Which just flies in the face of why we got so close under Poch - clear alignment around strategy, culture, spirit, a plan. Which means being decisive around certain players. Which means backing a manager when that spirit is at risk. Otherwise Levy is just the DOF, and we’re hoping his plan wins us a trophy. I just don’t trust him.

I do wonder (hope) that the death of the ESL will see the owners sell up. That was the immediate golden ticket for them to increase their investment profit from a mere 33 times in 20 years to 70 times in 20 years. My worry is that ENIC still feel that football as an entertainment vehicle is undervalued due to the still largely untapped streaming market. If so then I fear we'll have them around for another decade.

 

[BrainOfLevy]

I don't know of a single other club that has sacked multiple managers who have consistently overachieved compared to resources. If I got rid of traders who had consistently outperformed the market every time they had a bad quarter, I would very quickly end up in a position where there wasn't a single decent trader out there who would want to work for me (and I'd expect to get the chop myself from the CEO as well).

And I think we are now coming to that point given ETH. I can accept Nagelsmann going to Bayern. I think what ETH signing a new contract at Ajax says about our plan going forward is really telling. If the story he is pitched is ‘new stadium, SOTA training ground, squad including Kane and Son and ready to invest in a top manager with a plan to take us forward back into the CL’ I think he jumps all over it. He’s likely double or treble his salary, he’d be working in the top league, testing himself against the best on a weekly basis. I’m absolutely convinced ETH set a bar of what he would want to come and work for us (having seen what happened with Poch), and Levy said no. Which is very curious, given he is a modern, progressive, attack minded coach who can develop young players and had European experience. Why do people think it isn’t a perfect match made in heaven?

This is before we even talk about Rodgers feeling that Leicester is a better place for him than Spurs. As well as they have done, we *should* be a better destination for him, if our progress up to 2019 meant anything at all for our standing, and where we were looking to go.

 

[BrainOfLevy]

I do wonder (hope) that the death of the ESL will see the owners sell up. That was the immediate golden ticket for them to increase their investment profit from a mere 33 times in 20 years to 70 times in 20 years. My worry is that ENIC still feel that football as an entertainment vehicle is undervalued due to the still largely untapped streaming market. If so then I fear we'll have them around for another decade.

I fear your last sentence is right and I hope your first is. Was thinking the same, partly why I am now hugely engaged in this discussion again is because I think with the ESL being canned, the club is at a huge inflection point and there is a chance ENIC decide they’ve come as far as they can. I don’t blame Levy for one second for doing what he thought was right and going for it (as much as I hated the general idea of a SL) but now it’s not happening, I’m hopeful they’re losing the motivation to stay the course, and feel they’ve gotten every gain they can.