Some of these arguments against Levy and ENIC are rubbish, but I think plenty of people have had a legitimate grievance with them and tried to come to the debate earnestly.
I'm genuinely interested in your view on this, because I like the way you bring the other side of it so well: If Levy brings back Pochettino, do you acknowledge that he made a massive mistake in 2019, or do you think it is a decision that absolutely had to be made?
I personally am genuinely interested in whether or not there was something about the financial situation of the club at the time that meant we couldn't sell players. Was it the stadium running over? Was it some other reason to do with our finances? Or did Levy genuinely believe that Poch lost the magic, that Jose would bring it back, and those players needed a new voice? Because I think it was such a huge, huge decision, with huge ramifications, that has led to the last two years, and honestly after being one of the biggest Levy defenders on here, it was the decision that shook my confidence in him completely.
Was it a mistake? Or do you think there was some reason why, at the time, it was the right thing to do, and there was no other route he could have taken? Because if we acknowledge the mistake, it leads me to wonder about the other mistakes Levy makes on the football side. I thought he really had it with Poch. He recognised he needed a man to build a culture, because we couldn't compete financially. He then seemingly let everything that made us great in those first 3-4 years drain away. It showed (unless there was some genuine financial reason, which I would love to understand and if there was, it would give me a lot of faith back in ENIC) that he didn't really 'get' why Poch worked. That he still viewed managers as miracle workers, rather than strategic appointments to leverage specific competitive advantages.
So, if we accept it was a bad mistake, it then leads me to believe he may have made other football mistakes, and that might be a reason why we have lacked trophies. I understand a lot of the good ENIC have done; his negotiation stance, the ability to run the club sustainably, the £60 ticket prices...it all means that we can probably secure really attractive loans from the banks which other clubs can't, and that means we will always be able to spend our way back to a top 6 position if we find ourselves slipping. I get that. I get why he does it. But do you accept there is anything else he could have done to maybe have us be slightly more successful on the football side?
If I think of it as a dial, and on one side we have 'doing a Leeds', spending with reckless abandon in the home of instant success from borrowed money. And on the other side we have ENIC's financial conservatism, is there any way we could have gotten that dial in the middle? Is there any way we could have made the right move here or there, in order to increase our chances of having a handful of trophies over their reign more than we have? Because if sacking Poch was a mistake (leading to pay offs for Poch, Jose wages, Poch comp etc etc), maybe there were other mistakes? Maybe we could have not signed Nelsen and Saha, but got a proven player in to fight for the title? Maybe we could have got Moutinho? Maybe we could have got Dybala? Maybe we could have made a 1000 other decisions about players or strategy differently, in order to still be sustainable as a club, but increase the chances of success.
Do you accept that my last sentence may be possible? Because if you do, I think that's all a bunch of people are saying. There is a strand of people that want new owners because a group with a bigger balance sheet and the stomach for the level of investment it will take to make us a global tier 1 club would help us get there quicker would be nice. And there is a strand of people that want Levy / ENIC to make better decisions that lead to footballing success. Personally, if we get Poch back, I will take it as a sign lessons have been learnt, the club is strategically aligned again and we know what we are doing, and I'll be happy to support ENIC in their efforts to build the club sustainably. But the last two years really threw me - it looked like people who didn't understand football making wild decisions that weren't likely to succeed, and I think given that, it is fair to wonder what other football decisions that have been taken that lowered our chances of trophies.
I think people have legitimate grievance with them (and those are justified), I would argue either they are not debating the points well or are too easily pulled into media narratives (which frustrates me more, go after Levy/ENIC, but don't take a flimflam narrative against our club and keep repeating it). e.g. The club has no ambition, clearly not true, you don't build the infrastructure we have due to no ambition, you don't hire Jose (even if it's a bad decision) due to no ambition, you don't fire managers who don't get you CL due to no ambition (may be unrealistic expectations but not lack of ambition)
The stadium was an unbelievably complicated project that I think very few people will ever really appreciate, the decade of planning/approval then the changes of scope (include NFL), the work done (I know they did site visits of stadiums all over the world to compare, got ideas). The timing is a good & bad, the bad was the best team in recent memory pretty much peaking when we had to be away in Wembley, Brexit with cost implications, delays leading to it not being one season out but almost two. The good, it's funded on the lowest interest rates ever and most importantly it's done, with Covid and the financial implications, if it wasn't started/finished, it probably would be pushed off for years.
I could go through you list and debate point by point but to make it simple as
@billyiddo said -> yes they have been mistakes, many, I don't think anyone believes otherwise (and this is the crux of this whole thread, a few people see this as
@Junior19, i.e. a balance of those mistakes (and no club is without them), as you have said with your dial reference, does the current ownership do/have done more to benefit or not, and a few lean towards the positive a few lean towards the negative.
What is massively frustrating is not that, it's the people (here, Reddit, twitter, all social media) who will literally take anything, a player leaving/staying, us getting a player, us not getting a player, the manager situation, any random internet rumour and translating that somehow into = see, bald man bad, fudge Levy, especially when it's something that has been addressed previously.
The player conversation is always more nuanced than people would admit, yes we could have spent more, arguably we should have spent more but for every Bruno Fernandes & Dias there are a dozen like Hazard (to Madrid), Fred, Sanchez (to United), take your pick at Chelsea, we have spent a lot of money on Sanchez, we spent money on Soldado, we have spent a lot of money on Ndombele (that may work out)
Poch like the player conversation is nuanced, the timing/stadium delays hurt him directly (probably fund availability, and the points/games being at home would have pushed us that little further), he also didn't help himself (the book, the stupid pre CL final comments, what looked like frustration/burnout being publicly visible, his apparent hesitancy with taking players), and I believe Levy was distracted by the stadium and that impacted the refresh (easy example of allowing Eriksen to run down contract, I believe without stadium it would never have happened), do I believe in the end it was a mistake to fire him = no. The things that led to the situation were mistakes, but with players no longer giving a fudge (something that has continued), results not improving, Poch seeming to not be "all up for the fight", historical evidence that shows these slumps don't fix themselves, it was the logical thing to do.
And again, for those who want to have a real discussion, let's assume Poch is at least considering returning?
- Your response and others have been = see, Levy is a fudge up, should never have fired Poch in the first place
- Do you not see how well Spurs must actually be run for a manger at PSG to even consider leaving them for fudging Spurs? this is Poch's moment, he's made the step into the elite clubs, won two trophies, his next step should be Madrid/United, if he's even considering Spurs, then a lot of the assumptions made re Levy/ENIC simply cannot be true.
