This list seems to have been written by the same person who wrote this article:
http://theprolounge.com/the-many-crimes-of-enic-and-daniel-levy
I wrote a long response but it was deleted (for disagreeing with the author, I guess, and pointing out a succession of errors and omissions in his article) - which is more than somewhat ironic given that he begins by (rightly) criticising the effective censorship of Spurs playing loud music and confiscating an ENIC OUT banner after Sunday's game. I had, however, saved my post so I'm going to take the liberty of posting it here rather than it going totally to waste as a consequence of that website's cowardice! Here it is:
I don't doubt the passion that inspired this article but, I'm sorry to say, it is full of holes. Too many inaccuracies, omissions and a failure fully to understand some of the issues discussed.
TRANSFER SPEND:
- Net transfer spend has only limited use as a metric. It has to be balanced against player costs as a whole. Spurs stopped recording big net spends in transfer windows at the very time that wages increased by a whopping 50%.
- Levy isn't interested in selling players in order to make a profit. Every penny earned from player sales has been reinvested in the club (though whether it has always been reinvested wisely is debatable, of course). Levy's strategy is to make Spurs as successful as possible and thereby increase the club's value. To that end, his interests and Spurs' coincide.The legitimate criticism that can be levelled at him is that he errs too far towards being risk averse - not wishing to get the club into financial difficulty.
- You claim, with reference to player purchases, that "In ENIC’s entire 13 years with Tottenham Hotspur they have spent a total of £313million"..............sorry but you've simply got your figures wrong there. The actual figure is nigh on double that. Which kinda makes a difference to the point you were trying to make!
- Let's put Levy's earnings at Spurs in true perspective. Even at £2m per annum, he earns less than two thirds what some of our players now earn. And I dare say that he puts in considerably longer hours than any of them. Don't forget, too, that he is doing two jobs - Chairman and CEO - which explains why he earns more than most other football club chairmen who do only the one job.
TICKET PRICES:
- Yes, our ticket prices are painfully high. But this isn't a problem exclusive to Spurs. It is endemic to the Premier League as a whole.
- Ultimately, so long as the Premier League remains an arms race, so to speak, with every club straining to outspend the others, ticket prices will inevitably be determined by whatever the market will tolerate.
ENIC AS SAVIOURS:
- It's meaningless to say that Spurs have a worse record for winning trophies under ENIC than under previous post war owners. Your claim completely ignores context. Previous owners didn't have to contend with Irving Scholar's and Alan Sugar's legacy, which had left Spurs trailing far behind the top clubs; they didn't have to contend with a nigh on unbreachable cartel of Champions League enriched clubs that were operating on budgets two to three times bigger than Spurs'; they didn't have to contend with two clubs that had won the oil lottery.
- Average league position during ENIC's time at the club is a useless statistic. Needless too. Because any fool can see that routine finishes in the top 6 beats the pants off routine mid table finishes and relegation battles. The problem is that some Spurs fans have astonishingly quickly developed a sense of entitlement.
MANAGERIAL MERRY-GO-ROUND:
- Levy has not "hired 11 permanent managers". In his time at Spurs, he has hired Hoddle; Santini; Jol; Ramos; Redknapp; AVB; Sherwood; and Pochettino. Unless my maths has entirely deserted me, that comes to 8. And to be honest, it wouldn't be a huge shock to learn that Sherwood was only given the veneer of being a permanent appointment in order to afford him some credibility.
- AVB was not "forced to work with" Baldini. He CHOSE Baldini!
- Jol's sacking was indeed very poorly handled. But let's not forget that he too showed Spurs a lack of respect by secretly holding talks with Saudi Sportswashing Machine the year before. It was the discovery of that meeting which set in motion the chain of events leading to his eventual sacking and Ramos' appointment.
- Harry was his own worst enemy. From openly flirting with the FA while taking his eye off the ball at Spurs; to refusing to sign a new contract while the England job was in the offing; to employing Paul Stretford as his new agent and demanding a new contract on his terms as soon as he had missed out on the England job; to constantly undermining Levy in his dealings with the media; to claiming credit for everything good at the club while absolving himself of any blame for anything that went wrong...........
- AVB left by mutual agreement - a fact confirmed by his effective mouthpiece in the British press: Jason Burt of the Telegraph.
- Spurs didn't sign Musacchio because of third party complications which meant that his club, Villareal, would not sell unless his full buyout value of €50m was met. No sane chairman would have sanctioned such a fee. And while Fazio clearly wasn't first choice, he was still most definitely Pochettino's choice, as confirmed by Ossie Ardiles.
- Nevertheless, despite all of the above, there can be no question that the area of managerial appointments is one in which Levy has failed badly. It is the biggest criticism that can be levelled against him.
THE NEW STADIUM:
- The bid to move Spurs to Stratford was possibly Levy's biggest single mistake during his time at the club. And as you say, thank goodness he lost.
- Levy has never claimed that his priority is the regeneration of Tottenham. So to accuse him of having ulterior motives when he made the claim is merely a straw man fallacy. With regard to the NDP, Levy's priority has always been to build a new stadium and to help pay for it with the enabling development. Nothing more. Nothing less. The wider regeneration of north Tottenham is not Levy's priority. It will only be facilitated by the NDP. That is all.
- The NDP has indeed been a long time in the planning. But that's only par for the course. It took Arsenal 11 years and various schemes before they finally moved into the Emirates; Liverpool have been looking at various plans for the past 8 years; Chelsea and Everton too. Why should Spurs be any different? The NDP is an enormously complex and risky undertaking for a company of Spurs' size. They can't afford to get it wrong. It didn't help, of course, that within months of first gaining planning consent for the NDP, the world was plunged into its biggest financial crisis in 80 years.
- Nevertheless, you'd be quite wrong to think that nothing has happened. Spurs has spent the best part of £100 million acquiring the necessary land and progressing plans. Site preparation works are already well under way. All now rests on the result of January's High Court hearing of Archway's appeal. Oh and, by the way, despite the £100m spent on the stadium project thus far (and the £45m on the new training ground), Spurs is now debt free. Yep.........partly helped by the sale of your flippantly dismissed Sainsbury's building.
Y WORD AND MADRID:
- If the club aided the police, it would only be in so far as they had to in order to stay on the right side of the law. I'm pretty sure that Levy et al were as relieved as anyone that common sense eventually prevailed.
- Re Madrid, sorry but you really are desperately scraping the bottom of the barrel here. The partnership was only ever intended to be along the same lines as partnerships we have with some other clubs, in which best practices are shared with regard to both the commercial operations and coaching philosophy of the clubs. If you or other fans made incorrect assumptions about future player exchanges, then that's your lookout.
ACADEMY:
This is a subsection of my making rather than yours because it deserves mention. Quite apart from the universally acclaimed and enviously regarded new training ground in Enfield, Spurs now has one of the very best youth academies in the country. We're already seeing the results with the likes of Kane, Mason, Townsend, Bentaleb and Rose in the first team picture. Others like Carroll, Pritchard, Fredericks and Veljkovic are on loan at good clubs. Others like Jake Livermore and Steven Caulker have earned the club a combined £14m. And there is far better to come. There are some exceptional talents among the younger age groups. All this is a far cry from the youth system that ENIC inherited: neglected; underfunded; a laughing stock within football.
Listen...........I don't mean this incredibly long post to be a defence of all things ENIC. They have made some huge mistakes. And it might well be that they have taken us as far as they can and that we would be better off with new owners.
But if you're going to try to make that case, then you must at least do so with sensible, informed argument rather than the inaccurate and increasingly incoherent and unstructured rant that your article became.