I think yesterday was the day our dream died, if it hadn't already.
There are now three mega rich clubs who have huge resources behind them in their attempt to win trophies before you look at Man Utd. In addition to that this club is heading towards civil war. Whilst the THST are taken as seriously as a fart in lift, they have valid concerns. We have a team that has so little creativity that, in the words of Xpressions, 'they can't even create a new document in Microsoft Word' and owners 'investing' in the club in a way that is more akin to the likes of the British East India Company and Apple, than what they allude to, success on the pitch.
Whilst some believe that this quagmire is simply another example of ENIC's boom and bust model and that Levy is doing the best he can, I am left wishing I could be as positive. We had a great opportunity to end the trophy drought and we blew it. Then, to add insult to injury, when in the words of the man who got them there 'the nice new house needs nice furniture' they were left bemused and went for the quick fix, which has now blown up in their faces with each PR stunt looking like the Hindenburg crashing into the Titanic. Yes, there has been external factors such as clubs with far nore money, the UK leaving the EU and the COVID-19 pandemic but this rut the started within. Poor decisions such as not signing the players Poch wsmted in 2016, selling Mousa Dembele without an immediate replacement of or near the same impact lined up - nothing new given the Carrick, Berbatov, Modric and Bale sales - whilst our creative spark was stalling on a new deal. Hindsight is a beautiful thing and the sad and recently shocking physical state of both players who left either side of Poch's departure could be seen as a blessing in disguise but they still haven't been replaced with their departures helping explain the fall off the cliff from February 2019 onwards.
Those who support ENIC, usually do so more in response to their moral compass when viewing clubs with money throwing owners who raise human rights concerns (which I do understand and lean towards) and or simply because they are better than Sugar. Yet, the irony is that I'd be surprised if Joe Lewis was found in his billionaire ways to be morally sound and if they could ENIC would happily sell us to human rights abusers so long as the price is met whilst being the same thing but a different facade to Sugar, frugality, the only difference being one was an individual and other is not.
There's no doubt that Levy and ENIC have grown this club, from being starved of European football and living in the past to Europe being the norm and even challenging for the biggest prizes. But the time has come for them to go. I know theose who support ENIC will try find any angle to undermine, dismiss or even mock us who long for new owners but the reality is they are now in the minority. The majority note the investment in infrastructure coinciding with impressive commercial growth but also note the most expensive season tickets going and one League Cup in twenty years. To put it simply ENIC are a half way house and for this to not be one anymore and push on to the next level (trophies), they need to be treated the same way as they have the managers and be replaced by owners whose sole focus is success on the pitch.
The death of our dream has been pronounced a lot of times. I'll wait and see.
This is in part a response to your post, but also a wider point here and there. Not saying you're saying all I'm complaining about.
If we assume this was always coming at some point the only sensible thing to do was to invest in infrastructure to increase our cash flow. I'm glad we did. Imagine the Saudi Sportswashing Machine news, but without us having our new stadium, what would that mean for our dreams.
I'm not really in the habit of defending ENIC, but I do defend Levy quite a bit. Very rarely by pointing to a moral high ground iirc. Because it's a question of values and priorities between different values. Unsurprisingly different people don't do that in the same way and there aren't a lot of clear cut right or wrong answers.
Those that are critical of our ownership usually end up pointing to a lack of investment of their own money into players. I don't think arguing against that by saying, no, I don't want that for my club is a poor point to make. To me it's a bit of a dead argument for reasons above.
Mistakes have certainly been made, by Levy, Hitchen, Pochettino and others.
The quote from Pochettino about a painful rebuild keeps being brought up, and rightly so. But sometimes it seems like the argument is being made that Levy should have made it so that it wasn't a painful rebuild. These things are painful, they are difficult, mistakes will be made. A painful rebuild is by definition not painless.
Fewer mistakes and it would have been less painful. That would have been good, but I think Levy is held to an extremely high standard. Whereas Pochettino for example more rarely is. And the counterfactual that gets made or implied, "if he had only done X, Y, and Z then..." seems to me sometimes to be made too strongly. We simply have no way of knowing how things would have panned out. A lot of the later year Pochettino signings failed to live up to expectations, for various reasons. But it's seemingly assumed that the signings that could have been made would have worked out? And that money spent for them would have impacted other signings that Pochettino wanted.
Then of course we're back at "invest more". But as I said, that's where that conversation ends up at a dead end.
I also think it gets understated how new ownership is a massive gamble. Yes, there's potential for a new owner to transform the club on the pitch, and if you accept the downsides of a City or Chelsea style owner that's fine to want. But if you want ENIC out the reality is that you don't know who will replace them. What's more likely, a City/Chelsea type success, or something much less successful. I could list examples of poor ownership and club management, but I don't think that's necessay.
