Levy - End Of Season Letter

[BrainOfLevy]

When there are no examples of clubs doing better with the same constraints as us and we've shown ourselves capable of building sides good enough to be where we want how can you say that is 'average'

Where are the examples of clubs surpassing us that show we should be asking for more?

I'm not saying we should be asking for more (except from an ambition, this is where we should want to be heading' kind of perspective) I'm simply saying that Levy for some is behind reproach because he's doing a 'fantastic, excellent, brilliant' job. I'm saying he's doing averagely. To be where we are is entirely realistic and if we finished top 6 for the next 20 years all things being equal no-one could complain too much.

 

[Jurgen the German]

You don't think it was a realistic possibility that we could have finished 3rd or 2nd in a season where we were 3rd in February a couple of points off top and 10 points off 4th??

Id like to know what you think is inconsistant about holding that view btw

Because I as far as I can remember, our rivals budget also dwarfed us back then too so why does the rule apply that we have to be realistic now but didn't extend to 2011/12? I believe we spent a grand total of £5m on players that season.

 

[Jurgen the German]

so why not stick with Redknapp....yes he flirted with England, but just like with players if a manager if successful he is going to be courted by bigger fish. Why take the decision to remove Redknapp, when things were going very well on the pitch, we finished 4th, we were playing lovely football, and instead we ended up with AVB, then Sherwood, and now GHod knows who. Weve gone fro 4th in 2012, to 5th in 2013, and now 6th in 2014, plus the football and entertainment has gotten worse and worse. Levys decision to remove Redknapp has taken us backwards

+1

 

[BrainOfLevy]

By that argument, Liverpool's achievements this season don't count because Chelsea and United underachieved. By definition, if we are to finish in the top four, one of the better funded sides need to under perform.

Well obviously Man United opened up a top 4 space. Doesn't mean it didn't count, just means that Man United certainly made it easier for them. Chelsea didn't under perform to the extent they bumped a club up another level - Liverpool rose to their level.

There's a difference between 'by definition a club needing to underperform' which is true to an extent, but you have to look at it realistically. If we take Liverpool and Chelsea this season, it's not a case of Chelsea spectacularly imploding and letting Liverpool jump ahead. It's Liverpool raising their game and getting themselves to Chelsea's level. If we take Man United and Liverpool, Man United spectacularly imploded and it bumped Liverpool and the rest of the top 6 up a level by default.

In our seasons of finishing above our station, we've had Liverpool dropping from 2nd to 7th to let us into the top 4, and we had Emirates Marketing Project spending a bomb but not quite being the team they are now. The second time we finish 4th, we have Chelsea implode which bumps us up a level. They imploded so much to the extent that Saudi Sportswashing Machine finished 5th. For it to have been a really great season in 11/12, we should have finished 3rd.

It's not about achievements not counting, but you can see for yourself without being facetious whether or not one club has raised their game or whether one club has spectacularly under performed.

 

[BrainOfLevy]

And sometimes teams with less financial power than us will over perform. Why is that ignored in your argumentation, but richer teams under performing is considered?

I don't see that it is? Liverpool raised their game this year. We nearly raised our game in 11/12. Chelsea failed badly in 11/12. Man United failed badly this season. Chelsea this year did not fail badly, they didn't bump Liverpool a level up by default, Liverpool just pipped them.

 

[Jurgen the German]

It's all opinions and mine is that Redknapps decision to court the England job and then publicly demand a new contract at the end of the season is what set us back - finish 3rd+ that season like he should have and we're likely to still be there now. Act with a bit of humility at the end of the season and he likely would have still had a job with us ...

No arguement from me that he took his eye of the ball and it cost not only us but himself, but realistically what was he meant to have said? How should he have handled it? If he says I don't want the job then leaves then the fans hate him, as far as I recall he said I wouldn't turn it down if offered but I'm currently the Spurs manager, what's wrong with saying that? It just so happens that managerial positions tend to become available in the middle of the season so they really can't wait for the fear of the club/country looking for alternatives. Players demand new contracts all the time and no one bats an eyelid. What annoys me is people still idolise players like Bale and Modric who couldn't even be bothered to show up to work despite being handsomely paid BY SPURS at the time that Real Madrid were chasing them, but Redknapp still showed up to work every day and is vilified. Now it can't be argued that he might as well have not bothered showing up for work as we played lousy anyway but that's another debate? :lol:

Just out of interest, what would your reaction had been had Redknapp quit Spurs the day Capello got fired? Would you have been upset with him or do you believe it would have been in the best interests of all parties as we could have found someone who was 100% focused on Spurs?

 

[NWND]

Remains to be seen what happens when they return to European competition, but Everton.

Wait until they do it consistently over a few seasons and when they don't have 3 of their key players on loan.

 

[Raziel]

I'm not saying we should be asking for more (except from an ambition, this is where we should want to be heading' kind of perspective) I'm simply saying that Levy for some is behind reproach because he's doing a 'fantastic, excellent, brilliant' job. I'm saying he's doing averagely. To be where we are is entirely realistic and if we finished top 6 for the next 20 years all things being equal no-one could complain too much.

Average would indicate middle of the pack, that they would be 5 or 6 clubs at least in the PL that the chairman are doing better, which is clearly not happening.

Fact is Levy is due some criticism, that said, I keep coming back to "name 2 clubs that are better managed, have better financials, and do better wage/position wise than Spurs in the PL" The fact that it's that difficult a question to answer shows how good a job Levy is doing.

I'm not sure I understand what people mean by lack of ambition or direction, Spurs has a very clear policy (in my opinion)

- Buy/develop younger players to continuously improve squad quality while ensuring best value of assets (resale value) = exceeded mark
- Improve clubs global brand and merchandizing and sponsorship = again exceeded, the supporters clubs, us campaigns, sponsorship deals all show good progress
- Keep club in upper echelon of PL and Europe while not risking fiscal viability over long term = exceeded, our financials are only really matched by the Scum in the PL
- Minimum bar of on field performance being qualify for Europe, challenge for a top 4 place and occasional cup = here I would say on par over last 5 years, cup challenge piece probably needs a bit more focus
- Improve club training ground and stadium to allow club to be more competitive against peers and bigger clubs = behind here, training ground obviously great, stadium has had numerous challenges
- Build a DoF/Manager strategy that allows for a non disruptive change of personnel while producing a style/ethos consistent with club vision = this has failed so far.

I think people really don't understand how difficult success is at the top of the table, look at Cheat$ki, does RA have a lack of ambition? how much money spent, agreeably one of the top 3 managers in the world = nothing this season and 3rd.

 

[Jurgen the German]

By that argument, Liverpool's achievements this season don't count because Chelsea and United underachieved. By definition, if we are to finish in the top four, one of the better funded sides need to under perform.

I have to agree with this. People use it as a stick to beat Redknapp with too, " we only finished 4th cos Chelsea were crap etc". Having said that, I'd say Everton are doing better than us pound for pound considering their financial constraints.

 

[braineclipse]

I don't see that it is? Liverpool raised their game this year. We nearly raised our game in 11/12. Chelsea failed badly in 11/12. Man United failed badly this season. Chelsea this year did not fail badly, they didn't bump Liverpool a level up by default, Liverpool just pipped them.

You're still ignoring teams that "should" be behind us based on financial power.

I think it can be said that Everton over performed significantly this season. You're not using that to argue that actually we've done better than the table indicates. But you will use United under performing as a reason why we've actually done worse than the table indicates.

I think it can be said about Saudi Sportswashing Machine that they over performed massively in 11/12, but you don't mention that we still managed to stay ahead of them as a positive. Yet you do mention Chelsea under performing.

Moyes did well enough with Everton to get a crack at the United job, many have also mentioned him as a potential candidate for us in the past because of him over performing with Everton. Yet we fairly consistently stayed ahead of them. This is completely ignored in your interpretation of the data.

Of course some teams of those 5 ahead of us financially will under perform some seasons. This is to be expected. But it's also expected that some of the teams behind us will over perform. This is the expected variance.

To me it seems one sided, if not outright biased, to look only at those teams ahead of us financially and that we've actually only performed as expected based on them rather predictably sometimes under performing. Just looking at the positions we've finished in compared to the financial data seems more balanced and objective to me.

 

[Nezza]

Wait until they do it consistently over a few seasons and when they don't have 3 of their key players on loan.

Wait until they do it consistently over a few seasons and when they don't have 3 of their key players on loan.

As far as I know they have been consistently overachieving for the last few years. For example, in 2012-13 their wages bill was about 10th in the league but they finished 6th.

 

[NWND]

Maybe more than 50%? It's just another statistic that makes him look very average to be honest. You want great? Look at Jenkins at Swansea? Lost a lot of managers but got every appointment right to not hinder their progress. You may say it's easier to achieve what they did rather than what we are trying to do (although it isn't really, they just made it so) but they could have easily slipped back into League 1 or mid table championship had they made a seriously bad hire.

Levy's made 3 good hires and 3 bad ones. Average, not great and not terrible. Certainly not 'all hail the unquestionable king Levy'. I actually think this next hire will be a good one. First time a manager is taking over a quality squad that is poised in the top 6, and doesn't have to be in a fire fighting situation.

You can't just say 3 good hires, 3 bad hires. That's with hindsight.

Hoddle was a good appointment at the time, as he was having success with Southampton, played good football and was a club legend, it was a way of attempting to appease the fans while ENIC got to work restructuring the club and improving revenue streams. Unfortunately, the squad at the time was poor and with ENIC not yet able to improve the revenue/income or make serious playing staff investments of their own due to buying the club, Hoddle had to make do with older players on free transfers or bargain basement signings. He did well for a while, but it appeared he lost the dressing room in his last season and the results took a big nose-dive so he had to go.

I'd say the only real bad hire was Santini as 2bf it looked pretty ropey straight away, but at least the 'structure' put in place around him with Arnesen and Jol meant it wasn't too damaging. Jol was chugging along nicely, but his record against the top clubs was pathetic and he'd started to slide in terms of performance (the second season of 5th place finish was not nearly as convincing or close to getting 4th as the first and from memory we kind of limped into 5th place rather than the previous season when we were 4th for most of the season and got knocked down into 5th due to lasagne gate on the last day).

So Ramos, who was probably the hottest property in Europe management wise becomes available, who'd blame Levy for taking the chance on upgrading?

Ramos then obviously had to go after the infamous 2 points from 4 games.

Redknapp was clearly the right appointment at the time to avoid relegation, and he probably was brought in as a fire-fighter. He did perform way beyond expectations in his second and subsequent seasons however, but clearly had working relationship issues with Levy and I think Levy always wanted to reintroduce the contintental DOF structure to bring greater stability and quality control to signings and squad development. Don't think Redknapp would have stood for this and with his off the field stuff becoming a distraction, whether it was court cases, interviews with the window down or his flirting with England, i think it was probably time to part.

Think AVB was the 2nd ropey appointment by Levy. He got done by his presentation and enthusiasm when i think there were better candidates at the time, more compatible with the clubs ethos.

However, at the end of the day, the ropey appointments haven't really prevented the upward trend in the club's performance and more importantly status. Players and managers now see us as a big club with a lot of potential. The perception of us from the 1990s is remarkable particularly.

Levy has structured the club to maximise performance and stablility regardless of who is "head coach" which shows in that in this 'disaster' of a season we've finished 6th. The individual quality throughout the squad is greater than at any time i can remember.

Every club makes dud appointments, but looking back, there were clear reasons why we went for who we did at the time and there are no guarantees in life, let alone football. All you can do as chairman is seek the maximum amount of advice, put measures in place to maximise the chance of success, but you will never be able to guarantee a successful coaching appointment.

 

[NWND]

As far as I know they have been consistently overachieving for the last few years. For example, in 2012-13 their wages bill was about 10th in the league but they finished 6th.

My point was made in relation to a point made by another, to another ... where they asked the person to name clubs performing better than Spurs with equivalent resources. Everton have consistently finished comfortably below us for the last few seasons and it will take more than one season finishing above us with a load of spectacular loan signings for me to think their chairman has done a better job than Levy.

 

[NWND]

I'm not saying we should be asking for more (except from an ambition, this is where we should want to be heading' kind of perspective) I'm simply saying that Levy for some is behind reproach because he's doing a 'fantastic, excellent, brilliant' job. I'm saying he's doing averagely. To be where we are is entirely realistic and if we finished top 6 for the next 20 years all things being equal no-one could complain too much.

No, i'd say Sugar was an average chairman. He had us plodding along, financially sound, no debt, reasonable investment in the transfer market, by end of his tenure, probably little chance of relegation. We weren't really going anywhere, but we probably weren't in danger of folding or having to sell off our squad to fund debts.

I'd say someone like Randy Lerner is a poor chairman, selling off the club's best players, leaving Lambert to work with kids and low value signings, taking the club from top 6 challengers to just above relegation with almost zero chance financially of arresting the slide.

I'd say someone like Peter Ridsdale is a terrible chairman, who endangers the very existance of the club in his hands. Mandaric at Portsmouth also. Numerous clubs that are just f****ed because of their owners/chairmen.

I'd say Levy is a fantastic chairman.

You keep pointing to mistakes he's made. Yes, he's not perfect. Deal with it. The fact that he wants to have a group of advisors and a DOF around him shows he's well aware of where his weaknesses lie also!

 

[braineclipse]

Maybe more than 50%? It's just another statistic that makes him look very average to be honest. You want great? Look at Jenkins at Swansea? Lost a lot of managers but got every appointment right to not hinder their progress. You may say it's easier to achieve what they did rather than what we are trying to do (although it isn't really, they just made it so) but they could have easily slipped back into League 1 or mid table championship had they made a seriously bad hire.

Levy's made 3 good hires and 3 bad ones. Average, not great and not terrible. Certainly not 'all hail the unquestionable king Levy'. I actually think this next hire will be a good one. First time a manager is taking over a quality squad that is poised in the top 6, and doesn't have to be in a fire fighting situation.

To get back to variance and statistics though, there are 19 other PL clubs and 24 Championship clubs. Would we not expect just by pure variance that some of them would go on a good run of appointments? Is it really fair to compare us to those that in hindsight have done the absolute best of a rather large sample size? If he was in fact "very average" should you not be able to name a dozen chairmen like Jenkins that have done better?

Seems to me that with Laudrup they've shown that they too sometimes get things wrong. I have been impressed both with Swansea and Southampton by the way, a lot of good work being done. But I do actually think that it's easier to do what they've done than to do what we're trying to do. Illustrated by the fact that several teams have done what they've done whilst there's not a single example of a club doing what we want to do since money polarized the league.

I think if you compare us to other top teams, in England and abroad, a hit rate of 50% when appointing managers is about what can be expected.

 

[BrainOfLevy]

You can't just say 3 good hires, 3 bad hires. That's with hindsight.

Hoddle was a good appointment at the time, as he was having success with Southampton, played good football and was a club legend, it was a way of attempting to appease the fans while ENIC got to work restructuring the club and improving revenue streams. Unfortunately, the squad at the time was poor and with ENIC not yet able to improve the revenue/income or make serious playing staff investments of their own due to buying the club, Hoddle had to make do with older players on free transfers or bargain basement signings. He did well for a while, but it appeared he lost the dressing room in his last season and the results took a big nose-dive so he had to go.

I'd say the only real bad hire was Santini as 2bf it looked pretty ropey straight away, but at least the 'structure' put in place around him with Arnesen and Jol meant it wasn't too damaging. Jol was chugging along nicely, but his record against the top clubs was pathetic and he'd started to slide in terms of performance (the second season of 5th place finish was not nearly as convincing or close to getting 4th as the first and from memory we kind of limped into 5th place rather than the previous season when we were 4th for most of the season and got knocked down into 5th due to lasagne gate on the last day).

So Ramos, who was probably the hottest property in Europe management wise becomes available, who'd blame Levy for taking the chance on upgrading?

Ramos then obviously had to go after the infamous 2 points from 4 games.

Redknapp was clearly the right appointment at the time to avoid relegation, and he probably was brought in as a fire-fighter. He did perform way beyond expectations in his second and subsequent seasons however, but clearly had working relationship issues with Levy and I think Levy always wanted to reintroduce the contintental DOF structure to bring greater stability and quality control to signings and squad development. Don't think Redknapp would have stood for this and with his off the field stuff becoming a distraction, whether it was court cases, interviews with the window down or his flirting with England, i think it was probably time to part.

Think AVB was the 2nd ropey appointment by Levy. He got done by his presentation and enthusiasm when i think there were better candidates at the time, more compatible with the clubs ethos.

However, at the end of the day, the ropey appointments haven't really prevented the upward trend in the club's performance and more importantly status. Players and managers now see us as a big club with a lot of potential. The perception of us from the 1990s is remarkable particularly.

Levy has structured the club to maximise performance and stablility regardless of who is "head coach" which shows in that in this 'disaster' of a season we've finished 6th. The individual quality throughout the squad is greater than at any time i can remember.

Every club makes dud appointments, but looking back, there were clear reasons why we went for who we did at the time and there are no guarantees in life, let alone football. All you can do as chairman is seek the maximum amount of advice, put measures in place to maximise the chance of success, but you will never be able to guarantee a successful coaching appointment.

I know it's with hindsight. I agree with both his decision to hire Redknapp and his decision to sack him for example. But it doesn't matter that we are saying this with hindsight. The point is that there's been 3 really good appointments and 3 really bad ones. It's an average record. It's not bad. But to really laud Levy's managerial hiring record and say 'they were all right at the time' is unfair. His job is to be ahead of the curve and not get things wrong. With more due dilligence he could have really questioned whether AVB was the right person to work with considering he's a coach that wanted money to be spent on a smaller group of big name players. That it didn't work out is not necessarily all Levy's fault but for the purposes of our club, the buck does stop with him. He had the power to make a different decision but he chose that one.

If he made bang on appointment after bang on appointment then we can call him excellent and fantastic and never question him. But he's had some disasters that have resulted in wasted seasons. You can make an argument for why any mistaken appointment was made at the time, but his job is to not get things wrong. That's just the problem with the seat he is sitting in. He needs to get it right, otherwise he can't be called excellent. He's average.

 

[BrainOfLevy]

No, i'd say Sugar was an average chairman. He had us plodding along, financially sound, no debt, reasonable investment in the transfer market, by end of his tenure, probably little chance of relegation. We weren't really going anywhere, but we probably weren't in danger of folding or having to sell off our squad to fund debts.

I'd say someone like Randy Lerner is a poor chairman, selling off the club's best players, leaving Lambert to work with kids and low value signings, taking the club from top 6 challengers to just above relegation with almost zero chance financially of arresting the slide.

I'd say someone like Peter Ridsdale is a terrible chairman, who endangers the very existance of the club in his hands. Mandaric at Portsmouth also. Numerous clubs that are just f****ed because of their owners/chairmen.

I'd say Levy is a fantastic chairman.

You keep pointing to mistakes he's made. Yes, he's not perfect. Deal with it. The fact that he wants to have a group of advisors and a DOF around him shows he's well aware of where his weaknesses lie also!

Dude this isn't a personal attack on Levy. I'm simply not saying he's fantastic. I've dealt with his mistakes fine. Which is why I don't consider him to be a bad chairman.

 

[BrainOfLevy]

To get back to variance and statistics though, there are 19 other PL clubs and 24 Championship clubs. Would we not expect just by pure variance that some of them would go on a good run of appointments? Is it really fair to compare us to those that in hindsight have done the absolute best of a rather large sample size? If he was in fact "very average" should you not be able to name a dozen chairmen like Jenkins that have done better?

Seems to me that with Laudrup they've shown that they too sometimes get things wrong. I have been impressed both with Swansea and Southampton by the way, a lot of good work being done. But I do actually think that it's easier to do what they've done than to do what we're trying to do. Illustrated by the fact that several teams have done what they've done whilst there's not a single example of a club doing what we want to do since money polarized the league.

I think if you compare us to other top teams, in England and abroad, a hit rate of 50% when appointing managers is about what can be expected.

Laudrup won them a trophy and left them in a position which wasn't exactly terrible.

Look I'm not saying we should be expecting anything more than 50%. If that is indeed the global average, then it's the average. But people are talking about Levy like he's a bit above the parapet here. He isn't fantastic. He's average if going by global standards. For someone to truly be fantastic they need to rise above that average.

 

[Nezza]

I know it's with hindsight. I agree with both his decision to hire Redknapp and his decision to sack him for example. But it doesn't matter that we are saying this with hindsight. The point is that there's been 3 really good appointments and 3 really bad ones. It's an average record. It's not bad. But to really laud Levy's managerial hiring record and say 'they were all right at the time' is unfair. His job is to be ahead of the curve and not get things wrong. With more due dilligence he could have really questioned whether AVB was the right person to work with considering he's a coach that wanted money to be spent on a smaller group of big name players. That it didn't work out is not necessarily all Levy's fault but for the purposes of our club, the buck does stop with him. He had the power to make a different decision but he chose that one.

If he made bang on appointment after bang on appointment then we can call him excellent and fantastic and never question him. But he's had some disasters that have resulted in wasted seasons. You can make an argument for why any mistaken appointment was made at the time, but his job is to not get things wrong. That's just the problem with the seat he is sitting in. He needs to get it right, otherwise he can't be called excellent. He's average.

This ignores all the other things that a chairman has to do, such as building a new training facility or persuading regional/national government to invest in local infrastructure, or negotiating world-record transfer fees for star players.

 

[indianspur]

This ignores all the other things that a chairman has to do, such as building a new training facility or persuading regional/national government to invest in local infrastructure, or negotiating world-record transfer fees for star players.

or waiting till the final day of transfer windows before doing any vital deals