Oh right, cos what it looks like is that you're choosing to believe what suits your agenda and ignoring anything that contradicts it. I'm sure you can see that.
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Daniel Levy - Chairman
- Thread starter Howard Webb
- Start date
Oh right, cos what it looks like is that you're choosing to believe what suits your agenda and ignoring anything that contradicts it. I'm sure you can see that.
DubaiSpur
Ian Walker
'What it looks like' is in the eye of the beholder mate. Can't help that, but I don't worry about it, either.
DubaiSpur
Ian Walker
Very possibly - as I recall, my initial point on this stuff was that his guff about being a 'lifetime fan' was a lie, not that he couldn't have become one in the 20 long, grinding years he and his boss have been here.
But again, it's a strange sort of fan who does some of the things he's done down the years. One would think his role as an 'investor' (an investor who's done comparatively little 'investing', but still) sometimes overrides his sensibilities as a 'fan'.
90291Spur
Paul Walsh
The actors Rob and Ryan! But I don’t doubt they have become fans and fans of how successful their wrexham show is too.
ricky2tricky4city
Steffen Freund
As he explains in the video...be careful that your "sensibilities' as a fan don't overide your role as an investor.
You were a boyhood Spurs fan, when was your first match?
I think I was probably seven or eight-years-old. It was at the stage when you used to go to a game, get a rosette and a hot dog, and rattles, it was very different to what it is today.
Has working in football and the club you support always been a dream of yours?
It wasn't a dream. I got into football purely by accident. When I left university it wasn't something I went into, football, I actually went into investment banking. It was through that that I got into football.
Talk us through how you worked at the highest levels of business and then thought about purchasing Tottenham Hotspur...
It's a bit of a long story really. When I left university I went into investment banking and I was very interested in investing in private equity, which was investing in private companies, and I helped raise quite a lot of money for different business. Then from there I got involved in actually running quite a lot of different companies.
Then from there I got an opportunity to be involved in buying an interest in a small public company, which was called ENIC. It was an investment trust, worth about £5m at the time. It had nothing in it apart from a portfolio of shares. I became managing director of that company. I came up with the idea at the time of trying to create a sports and media company. So we bought a portfolio of soccer clubs around Europe.
We had six different clubs and one of them happened to be a minority share holding in Tottenham. Then we had a problem with UEFA as they decided all these clubs weren't able to compete in the same European competition. Our share price collapsed and a number of years later we took ENIC private and from that we got rid of all the other clubs, sold them all off, and we had this interest in Tottenham.
We decided to increase our shareholding. I had no intention at that time to become involved in the day to day running of the club. It was purely at the time an investment opportunity. Then I realised that to really maximise the opportunity and have an influence over the success of the club I really had to get involved and this is what happened.
The Guardian did a piece at the time saying you were publicity shy and had no intention of becoming chairman, today you are the longest-serving chairman in the Premier League, what changed?
Firstly, as you know I don't do interviews very often. It's only because I'm coming back to Cambridge that I agreed to do this, particularly when I got an email from Oxford University I thought I'd better come and do this.
The answer is it's been an incredible journey. In the 22 years Tottenham has progressed enormously in that time period. Not as much as a fan (points to himself) we would hope. Hopefully the journey is not over and we're still hoping that we will get that trophy which we need.
In that 22 years, what has been your proudest achievement on the pitch?
We had a meeting a couple of weeks ago with all our, we have about 750 staff in Tottenham, we got everyone together and we put up a big picture with lots of trophies in it. It is about winning, but winning dependent on the moment in time you asked that question to various people means different things.
So when we first came in to Tottenham, winning was making sure we stayed in the Premier League. Then as time goes on and we got more successful it was about getting into the Europa League and then the Champions League. Obviously the ultimate is to win the trophies.
So that is clearly what we are trying to do. It’s easier said than done. Am I happy that we haven't won more than one trophy in the last 15 years? Absolutely not. But I also think we've had some fantastic times, being in the Champions League a number of times. Despite the fact I feel sick that there’s a club in north London that’s a bit higher than us at this moment in time, if I look back in the last five years we've also been higher than them. So that's what happens.
Gazza
Frederic Kanoute
See I don't hate levy but I really think he has peaked. He's done his best, got us the best stadium in the land, training facilities to the point we make more money than arsenal etc ... but thank you ... football is cut throat and the decisions he has made over the last 1/4 of his tenure have seen us go backwards
tommysvr
Vedran Corluka
I can understand some of the discontent based on the struggles since 2019, but you’re now claiming that his whole 20 year reign as been poor? Or is that just more hyperbole?
Goatleaf
Steven Pienaar
The big picture is that Levy must take a lot of credit for moving Tottenham from regular mid table to regular top six AND he has done it with negligible outside investment. To keep hitting top six when spending only the money that the club generates, particularly given the free pass for the financially doped Emirates Marketing Project and Chelsea, makes THFC a success by any objective standard. Its going to get even harder to pull off now Saudi Sportswashing Machine have joined the free money set and Manchester United will also join if Qatar buy them. On what basis do fans expect us to out compete those clubs?
As an added bonus Levy has bravely borrowed to build the new stadium/training ground so that if/when we go the same way, the new owners can spend all the free money on players whereas the doped clubs, apart from Emirates Marketing Project, are going to have to spend a lot on their stadiums.
Levy is far from perfect and has made a lot of mistakes in managerial appointments but I reckon, barring a doping owner, we have been lucky to have him.
As an added bonus Levy has bravely borrowed to build the new stadium/training ground so that if/when we go the same way, the new owners can spend all the free money on players whereas the doped clubs, apart from Emirates Marketing Project, are going to have to spend a lot on their stadiums.
Levy is far from perfect and has made a lot of mistakes in managerial appointments but I reckon, barring a doping owner, we have been lucky to have him.
johnola
Dean Austin
He has been incredibly busy and the club is a different proposition now than it was.
But I’m a little confused. What do you mean that new owners will have free money? Surely they will be paying out of their nose for a lot of fine new infrastructure that provides income - but much that is ringfenced outside of the finances that can be applied to the football business.
If you are saying new owners will benefit from the headroom that there is scope within ffp to increase spending on the football business then is that not a call to enic to sell it?
And why is having enic as 100% owners rather than in a partnership so great for anyone but them?
DubaiSpur
Ian Walker
Yep. I joined this place in January 2012 too, and I can remember the optimism with which I argued then that Levy would help Redknapp with a couple of the top-class players he was asking for in January (Tevez, Samba, Cahill, Llorente/Aguero) to push us over the line in the title race. At the time, we were top of the table and playing the best football in England.
We signed nobody until deadline day. Then we signed two worthless veterans on frees - Louis Saha, and Ryan Nelsen.
The rest was history - we finished out of the CL, Redknapp was sacked.
Eleven years ago. Looking back, the constant, consistent failure to grasp the opportunity to win things when it presented itself is very 'ENIC', tbh. And it's been around from Day 1 to Day 7300 - while on my end, I guess mourn the opportunity cost of not having had owners that actually gave a damn, for the entirety of that time, as opposed to this lot of deadweights.
tommysvr
Vedran Corluka
I guess you’ve never made a mistake when running a billion pound business then. Well done.
Jurgen the German
Erik Thorstvedt
Similarly none of us to my knowledge have ever managed a premier league club or have played in the premier league as a player and yet that doesn’t stop posters critiquing the manager or certain players.
We see all the moving parts when it comes to on the field matters though so can make fair assessments, whilst we have very limited info as to what is going on with off the field matters
Jurgen the German
Erik Thorstvedt
Yeah but we can all see when they take an age to appoint a manager, or when they appoint the wrong man, or when they sack managers just before a cup final or any other public faux pas they have made within the last 4-5 years. We also don’t see what goes on behind closed doors with managers and Levy and the constraints the managers are under whether it be financially or when it comes to on field matters.
Spur of the moment
Frederic Kanoute
Spot on.
To illustrate your point further, historically we have won 15 out of 21 major cup finals contested, as follows.
9 FA cup finals contested, 8 won, 1 lost
7 League cup finals contested: 4 won, 3 lost
5 European finals contested (1 CL, 3 UEFA, 1 CWC), 3 won, 2 lost
7 League cup finals contested: 4 won, 3 lost
5 European finals contested (1 CL, 3 UEFA, 1 CWC), 3 won, 2 lost
Forgive me for saying, but it might even be argued that our recent turn of luck in major finals
is just Lady Luck attempting to return us to the norm.
Robspur12
Nick Barmby
You need to turn the lady luck narrative on its head. No team other than the richest 5 have managed to win a trophy and finish in a Champions League position (except for Leicester whose trophy qualified them for the CL). We are effectively trying to upset the odds. So while we are prioritizing a Champs league position (understandably) we are unlikely to win a trophy. I mean there is an interesting stat saying that over the last 20 years the managers we have appointed have won 61 trophies before and after managing Spurs but only 1 has been won at Spurs. It shows how difficult it is to do when you don't have a big squad.
Yes but the point is that the off the field stuff is a lot more hard to judge without seeing the things we are not privy to than it is with the players and managers. We all watch football week in week out, we know whether players are playing well and are good enough or whether or not the managers are doing well with what they have, the same cannot be said for off the field matters. You for example recently said it's shambles that we don't have a sponsor for the stadium yet, despite having absoloutely no clue about anything relating to why, how can you call something a shambles without knowing the ins and outs? We can call managers or players out for not being good enough because we see their work played out in front of us. It's jist not the same.
Bullet
Andy Thompson
Interesting pod. Brentford DoF. Statto behind a lot of their decisions and metrics. Mentions that luck is 80% of outcome. Says they might win or lose a game but what matters is how well they played, xG etc.
https://www.thehighperformancepodcast.com/podcast/philgiles
https://www.thehighperformancepodcast.com/podcast/philgiles
Bedfordspurs
Vinnie Samways
Yep
I’ve read about their model before
They believe that playing their way will give them more pluses than negatives so they don’t change and recruit that way
It’s money ball for football