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Daniel Levy - Chairman

DeanoAustin said:
My point with the revenue streams is that sometimes you have to take a risk in business and spend against them before you have the money in the bank. The stadium was always going to deliver revenue. We're always going to get the money for naming rights and we have an unused £50m facility with ENIC. It may have been delayed a few months but I've no doubt that Levy had a good idea of when the stadium would open and what that meant financially. The margin for unknowns was relatively low I'd imagine.

Your logic earlier, if I understood correctly, was that we shouldn't heap transfer fees on top of poor financial results to ensure we can refinance our debt at the best terms. We made a profit of £113m in 2018. So what happens in the summer 2019?

Does Levy say "Well the financial results are going to be terrible this year so we're not spending. Or at least, we're not spending until after the fiscal year is done and the numbers are in (which will probably be mid July)." Why would we go and spend money this year and not last year? If the answer is, "There was too much uncertainty last year" then I reckon that a) Levy had a pretty good idea in 2018 how the stadium would play out and b) the stadium delay was pretty much as long as it was ever going to be so we're now probably in what was the worst case scenario back in summer 2018 anyway.

In terms of players leaving, I find it hard to believe we couldn't have shifted some of the dead wood. The problem is, and it's well known, Levy hates taking a loss on players and will milk everything he can out of a deal. That's great most of the time but sometimes you just have to suck it up and let the player go for a lower price than you'd like. Other clubs shift the players they don't want and it's not like we pay silly wages that'd entice them to sit on their arses and see out a contract.

We could have bought and we should have bought last summer. Now the squad needs even more surgery so all we're doing is loading the entire spend into one window rather than two. And we did it by increasing the risk of us not having CL revenue. We really got away with one (assuming we don't have the mother of all collapses next week) this season.
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I think you have to give Levy some benefit of the doubt when it comes to managing money.

- Yes, the stadium was always going to deliver additional revenue streams
- The unknowns were = when? (delays) and what were final costs going to be (10% overrun on a project this size is a lot of money)

Truth is, and fans hate this answer, Levy is/was not prioritizing the "now" he's prioritizing the future ability of this club to compete at highest level

- At the end of this season, we will be very clear on the final cost of project
- We will have the buffer of last year's revenue +CL revenue coming in, +next years CL participation
- We will likely have a naming deal over summer (think Levy was waiting on CL to be guaranteed as well as stadium to be seen working)

I think you also misunderstand how contracts work, to shift players they need to want to leave (other clubs aren't that successful - see Sanchez at United, Bale at Madrid, etc.), players like Janssen have very little book value left for Spurs, so we won't be "taking a loss"

The test and measure of Levy comes this summer (somewhat to your point), we are out of that stadium phase (yes we will have debt to manage), the squad obviously needs an overhaul and we have a couple of key players with their futures to be decided.

I'd really like to see some early action (re-sign players, get at least 1 or 2 in) to show intent, but we will see.
 
Raziel said:
I think you have to give Levy some benefit of the doubt when it comes to managing money.

- Yes, the stadium was always going to deliver additional revenue streams
- The unknowns were = when? (delays) and what were final costs going to be (10% overrun on a project this size is a lot of money)

Truth is, and fans hate this answer, Levy is/was not prioritizing the "now" he's prioritizing the future ability of this club to compete at highest level

- At the end of this season, we will be very clear on the final cost of project
- We will have the buffer of last year's revenue +CL revenue coming in, +next years CL participation
- We will likely have a naming deal over summer (think Levy was waiting on CL to be guaranteed as well as stadium to be seen working)

I think you also misunderstand how contracts work, to shift players they need to want to leave (other clubs aren't that successful - see Sanchez at United, Bale at Madrid, etc.), players like Janssen have very little book value left for Spurs, so we won't be "taking a loss"

The test and measure of Levy comes this summer (somewhat to your point), we are out of that stadium phase (yes we will have debt to manage), the squad obviously needs an overhaul and we have a couple of key players with their futures to be decided.

I'd really like to see some early action (re-sign players, get at least 1 or 2 in) to show intent, but we will see.
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I give Levy a massive amount of credit for how he manages money. He's been brilliant for the club and he's had us on an upward trajectory for 15 years. I don't think there is another big club that has improved organically in the way we have. He's the best chairman in the league and I've consistently said that over the years. I just think he got last summer wrong and almost put too much emphasis on the long term.

Part of Levy's job is to manage the club through these projects and situations. By all accounts, he managed or was involved in every bloody detail of this one. So I have no doubt he had his "what if" analysis done for every eventuality. His job in this situations is not just to stop spending money because of the uncertainty. Any idiot could do that. It's to make judgement calls on what we could spend despite the uncertainty.

As it happens, we ended up close to a worst case scenario with the stadium (i.e. delayed 6 months). Does that mean we won't spend money this summer?

In terms of contracts, my understanding of how players are accounted for is if they are bought for 50m over a 5 year contract, their fee is amortised at 10m a year. So Janssen has a year left on his contract and won't be worth much in our accounts. So too does Eriksen - so he's probably not worth much on our balance sheet either.

Take Janssen. He clearly wanted to leave and pretty much said as much in the press IIRC. We signed him for £17m on a 4 year deal so his book value was around £8.5m last summer. Do you think we couldn't have gotten £8.5m for him? The player wanted away, I can't imagine his wages are astronomical and the fee, at book value, was relative pennies. Or did Levy think "we signed this fella for £17m, I'm not letting him go for half that." If we sell Eriksen, do you think Levy will just try to cover his book value or will he try and extract a massive fee above what we paid for him?

The two examples you cite are Bale and Sanchez. Both are on stratospheric wages that they won't get anywhere else. You could put Ozil into that mix. That's very different to our situation. There is no way our fringe players are on the sorts of wages that would make them sit out a contract. If it's clear they aren't going to play and their wages aren't huge, most players would leave.

Last summer, had we spent, say £100m, it wouldn't have even been that big a hit to the accounts. Firstly, Levy is famed for not paying transfer fees up front so our cash flow may not have been that heavily impacted. He stages fees with all sorts of clauses. Secondly, from an accounting point of view, if we bought two players on 4 year deals for a combined £100m, that'd be a hit in the accounts of £25m for four years. If we got our business done early last summer, that'd mean that instead of a £113m profit, we'd have made £88m profit.

I'll state again. I love Dr Evil. What he's delivered for the club and the area is mind bogglingly brilliant. I've had the pleasure of seeing it first hand and I was blown away. He's has us doing brilliantly on the pitch too. I have no doubt that in 10 years we will be a level above where we are now because I've seldom seen a man who has such brilliant long term vision. But you can't just neglect the short term. Football is a short-term business in lots of ways and we have a special group of players and manager. We've got to look after them too or we'll have a big dip somewhere before Levy's long term plan is achieved. This season, Levy took a massive risk. Thankfully, it just about paid off. I hope he doesn't make the same mistakes this summer.
 
ricky2tricky4city said:
Of course it's hindsight.

Look at the appearance s Dembele, Wanyama, Dier have made over the last 2 seasons. Dembele even gave us 13 this season and Wanyama 17 so far.
30 games is not hard to contribute and the past records show that was likely. If you're not using information it becomes wishful thinking.

CM has been decimated by injury this season and we are lucky Sissoko has stepped up. Poch could play Skipp more in the easier games and I'm sure Onomah could have not gone to Wednesday if we knew the injuries we'd get.

The Grealish interest shows Poch knows there is need for forward planning in the CM area..and I think he'd happily of got rid of Sissoko Dembele and Wanyama but I wouldn't poo poo the bunch too much, theyd achieved the CL qualification we wanted in the previous 2/3 seasons.
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Dembele made 10 league appearances this season, 3 of which were off the bench before he went. He made 3 cup appearances. It was well known he was struggling with his fitness in the summer and there was talk of him going to China then. From memory, he publicly stated himself that he was unsure if he could play a full season in England.

Winks made 9 league starts for us last season and came off the bench 7 times. He made 9 other starts in cup competitions.

Wanyama started 8 games last year and came off the bench 10 times in the league. He made 6 further appearances in various cups.

These are not the sorts of lads you were ever going to get playing week in and week out in a top team. Furthermore, it was obvious last season that Big Vic wasn't the same player (and so it's proved) while Dembele's powers were also diminshing. That's not hindsight - people were saying it last summer and the stats back it up.
 
DeanoAustin said:
Dembele made 10 league appearances this season, 3 of which were off the bench before he went. He made 3 cup appearances. It was well known he was struggling with his fitness in the summer and there was talk of him going to China then. From memory, he publicly stated himself that he was unsure if he could play a full season in England.

Winks made 9 league starts for us last season and came off the bench 7 times. He made 9 other starts in cup competitions.

Wanyama started 8 games last year and came off the bench 10 times in the league. He made 6 further appearances in various cups.

These are not the sorts of lads you were ever going to get playing week in and week out in a top team. Furthermore, it was obvious last season that Big Vic wasn't the same player (and so it's proved) while Dembele's powers were also diminshing. That's not hindsight - people were saying it last summer and the stats back it up.
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What stats are backing you up. We're talking about availablity..ie were they selectable to help the team.

I'm not saying it didn't need some forward planning, I'm saying when nothing comes off and you're left with the same players that out of Dier, Wanyama, Dembele, Winks, Skipp and Sissoko, you're likely (as the data shows) to be able to cover 60 games of football.
 
DeanoAustin said:
I give Levy a massive amount of credit for how he manages money. He's been brilliant for the club and he's had us on an upward trajectory for 15 years. I don't think there is another big club that has improved organically in the way we have. He's the best chairman in the league and I've consistently said that over the years. I just think he got last summer wrong and almost put too much emphasis on the long term.

Part of Levy's job is to manage the club through these projects and situations. By all accounts, he managed or was involved in every bloody detail of this one. So I have no doubt he had his "what if" analysis done for every eventuality. His job in this situations is not just to stop spending money because of the uncertainty. Any idiot could do that. It's to make judgement calls on what we could spend despite the uncertainty.

As it happens, we ended up close to a worst case scenario with the stadium (i.e. delayed 6 months). Does that mean we won't spend money this summer?

In terms of contracts, my understanding of how players are accounted for is if they are bought for 50m over a 5 year contract, their fee is amortised at 10m a year. So Janssen has a year left on his contract and won't be worth much in our accounts. So too does Eriksen - so he's probably not worth much on our balance sheet either.

Take Janssen. He clearly wanted to leave and pretty much said as much in the press IIRC. We signed him for £17m on a 4 year deal so his book value was around £8.5m last summer. Do you think we couldn't have gotten £8.5m for him? The player wanted away, I can't imagine his wages are astronomical and the fee, at book value, was relative pennies. Or did Levy think "we signed this fella for £17m, I'm not letting him go for half that." If we sell Eriksen, do you think Levy will just try to cover his book value or will he try and extract a massive fee above what we paid for him?

The two examples you cite are Bale and Sanchez. Both are on stratospheric wages that they won't get anywhere else. You could put Ozil into that mix. That's very different to our situation. There is no way our fringe players are on the sorts of wages that would make them sit out a contract. If it's clear they aren't going to play and their wages aren't huge, most players would leave.

Last summer, had we spent, say £100m, it wouldn't have even been that big a hit to the accounts. Firstly, Levy is famed for not paying transfer fees up front so our cash flow may not have been that heavily impacted. He stages fees with all sorts of clauses. Secondly, from an accounting point of view, if we bought two players on 4 year deals for a combined £100m, that'd be a hit in the accounts of £25m for four years. If we got our business done early last summer, that'd mean that instead of a £113m profit, we'd have made £88m profit.

I'll state again. I love Dr Evil. What he's delivered for the club and the area is mind bogglingly brilliant. I've had the pleasure of seeing it first hand and I was blown away. He's has us doing brilliantly on the pitch too. I have no doubt that in 10 years we will be a level above where we are now because I've seldom seen a man who has such brilliant long term vision. But you can't just neglect the short term. Football is a short-term business in lots of ways and we have a special group of players and manager. We've got to look after them too or we'll have a big dip somewhere before Levy's long term plan is achieved. This season, Levy took a massive risk. Thankfully, it just about paid off. I hope he doesn't make the same mistakes this summer.
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We will sign players this summer. You don’t need to worry on that score.

You’re also assuming that not signing players was entirely Levy and not something that Poch, when faced with all the variables and all the context, decided to go all in on too. Levy is the Chairman that thrust Jenas on his Manager when we already had like 6 other central midfielders. He’s the guy trying to sign Charlie Adam for Harry because he saw a good deal, even though we again had a brick load of central midfielders. The aspect of not signing players, of thinking ‘diffferently’, screams Poch to me. It’s why he’s special.

If Janssen wasn’t injured he would have at least been loaned out. N’Koudou was probably kept to see if he could prove himself at all after the stint he had at Burnley. Other than that, who else should we have been really keen to get rid of? The problem was we were coming to the end of cycle with a number of players in this squad, and so decided there was more upside in keeping them rather than moving them on. For instance:

Toby: his contract situation meant there was little point sellling him for a low bid last summer, as we may as well keep him for a year and lose him then anyway. And most clubs knowing that, didn’t fancy paying over the odds. Therefore he stayed and we didn’t need to make a signing to replace him. A lot of fan nervousness last summer was that he was out the door already, and so we absolutely needed a signing, but it didn’t materialise.

Rose: Fulham went up through the play offs and I think had they lost that match, we would have signed Sessegnon and could well have sold Rose. As it was, we couldn’t get Sessegnon so the thought was, Rose was coming back from a season of regular injuries and had upside, he would have been motivated to prove himself as back to his best. If we sell him this summer we get more for him, and probably still get Sessegnon.

The central midfield: In much a similar vein to Rose, I think we decided to take the route of ‘they’ve been injured, and so will be fully focused on getting back to their best’ rather than considering them broken forever. I actually think Wanyama has looked better than for a couple of years when he has played (Ajax aside), we’ve got a lot of games out of Winks. Sissoko has been brilliant and we’ve beeb really unlucky with Dier. Dembele was sold simply because I think we don’t want anyone at the club who would rather be somewhere else, because it lessens the intensity. We could have signed Grealish or ANother, but on the Grealish thing I think Poch probably thought with the options that he had, he should be ok and he wouldn’t want to add a path blocker for Skipp.

Who else were obvious sales? I will grant you Wanyama, but I would imagine very tough to find a buyer and therefore we bank on the fact that he will be fully focused on proving he is back to form.

I also maintain, if we had 2 less injuries, we would have third wrapped up no problem, and this debate doesn’t happen. The debate would be how do we challenge for the title, because I absolutely agree that this squad wasn’t equipped to do it. But last summer was never about making the title push, with everything else going on. The question was, how do we most easily get back into the top 4, and the answer from Poch and Levy was trust the players that know this club, know the system and are all fully motivated to be here. Sales for the sake of it and signings for the sake of it, particularly when we didn’t have the resources to go up a gear and build a real title challenging squad, wouldn’t have been as helpful.

We will make signings this summer. I believe we will push on. But last summer was a moment in time that we needed to get through, and I believe that we did it well.
 
ricky2tricky4city said:
What stats are backing you up. We're talking about availablity..ie were they selectable to help the team.

I'm not saying it didn't need some forward planning, I'm saying when nothing comes off and you're left with the same players that out of Dier, Wanyama, Dembele, Winks, Skipp and Sissoko, you're likely (as the data shows) to be able to cover 60 games of football.
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You've got one lad who is admitting he's struggling for fitness and wants out. Another who started 9 league games the previous season. Another who started 8. Both of the latter have had a series of injury problems. If what you're left with is a converted centre back, a lad who has been poor in the two seasons since he signed for the club and some unproven kids, you're light in midfield.

Midfield is the most critical area on the pitch. You need lads in there who will give you 20-30 games starting minimum in the league. Otherwise what you end up with is a left back in midfield (Danny Rose), putting in players who aren't sharp (Dier), playing unproven kids (Skipp) or taking one of your biggest attacking threats and putting him in to cover a gap (Alli).
 
thfcsteff said:
Seriously, are people STILL questioning Levy? Good grief...:-(
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It's okay to question him. I still think he's great, and gets most things spectacularly right. Just think he gets some things wrong. Over 20 years, you surely aren't suggesting that he's never made a mistake and is infallible?
 
DeanoAustin said:
I give Levy a massive amount of credit for how he manages money. He's been brilliant for the club and he's had us on an upward trajectory for 15 years. I don't think there is another big club that has improved organically in the way we have. He's the best chairman in the league and I've consistently said that over the years. I just think he got last summer wrong and almost put too much emphasis on the long term.

Part of Levy's job is to manage the club through these projects and situations. By all accounts, he managed or was involved in every bloody detail of this one. So I have no doubt he had his "what if" analysis done for every eventuality. His job in this situations is not just to stop spending money because of the uncertainty. Any idiot could do that. It's to make judgement calls on what we could spend despite the uncertainty.

.
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That's the most patronising sentence I've read about Levy.

He made a call (it wasn't even to stop spending, still gave Poch all the money from sales), it was to reign it in while uncertainty surrounded off field activities. Originally we were meant to be in at the start of this season, ended up being April. That will be a big (unplanned) cost for us. It was an unknown cost at that time as well.

Businesses will mitigate risk the best they can. Levy is thinking
'if I don't invest in the team we could miss top 4'
' I don't invest in the team and we could get top 4'
'i could invest £100m in the team and we'd get top 4'
'i could invest £100m in the team and not get top 4'

He's chosen option 2 (but as I've said it's not a complete ban on spending, Poch can raise his own funds, why that didn't happen is another conversation)
Option 4 is worst case scenario and he probably wants to avoid at that moment in time due to what's been discussed.

He knows there is no correlation between buying players and ending up top 4.

What he luckily has is a manager that reliably has got him top4 season after season. Remember we've not really bought anyone that has contributed much for a good while anyway maybe Sanchez maybe Moura?

Put simply. I can see why he has taken that approach THIS season. Off course there was risk attached but he concluded this was the least risky approach. You think otherwise. We move on.
 
DeanoAustin said:
You've got one lad who is admitting he's struggling for fitness and wants out. Another who started 9 league games the previous season. Another who started 8. Both of the latter have had a series of injury problems. If what you're left with is a converted centre back, a lad who has been poor in the two seasons since he signed for the club and some unproven kids, you're light in midfield.

Midfield is the most critical area on the pitch. You need lads in there who will give you 20-30 games starting minimum in the league. Otherwise what you end up with is a left back in midfield (Danny Rose), putting in players who aren't sharp (Dier), playing unproven kids (Skipp) or taking one of your biggest attacking threats and putting him in to cover a gap (Alli).
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Jeez the starting stats are irrelevant it's whether they were available for selection.

The final paragraph is managing by hindsight.

And, I'm not sure if you've missed some of the good games Dier has played for us. (And England) He struggling this season (had a few medical issues to deal with, if only we'd known :)),
 
ricky2tricky4city said:
That's the most patronising sentence I've read about Levy.

He made a call (it wasn't even to stop spending, still gave Poch all the money from sales), it was to reign it in while uncertainty surrounded off field activities. Originally we were meant to be in at the start of this season, ended up being April. That will be a big (unplanned) cost for us. It was an unknown cost at that time as well.

Businesses will mitigate risk the best they can. Levy is thinking
'if I don't invest in the team we could miss top 4'
' I don't invest in the team and we could get top 4'
'i could invest £100m in the team and we'd get top 4'
'i could invest £100m in the team and not get top 4'

He's chosen option 2 (but as I've said it's not a complete ban on spending, Poch can raise his own funds, why that didn't happen is another conversation)
Option 4 is worst case scenario and he probably wants to avoid at that moment in time due to what's been discussed.

He knows there is no correlation between buying players and ending up top 4.

What he luckily has is a manager that reliably has got him top4 season after season. Remember we've not really bought anyone that has contributed much for a good while anyway maybe Sanchez maybe Moura?

Put simply. I can see why he has taken that approach THIS season. Off course there was risk attached but he concluded this was the least risky approach. You think otherwise. We move on.
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Yeah fair enough mate. You're not going to convince me and I've no doubt I'm not going to convince you.

We got there. By hook or by crook and that's the important thing and what we all wanted. Let's enjoy that and, hopefully, the beating we give Ajax on Wednesday night.
 
DeanoAustin said:
Yeah fair enough mate. You're not going to convince me and I've no doubt I'm not going to convince you.

We got there. By hook or by crook and that's the important thing and what we all wanted. Let's enjoy that and, hopefully, the beating we give Ajax on Wednesday night.
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Agreed mate. I was bouncing after those Sunday results....if we've sneaked in all good. And if the Goons have sneaked out even better.

I'm sure they'll be more to your liking this summer, as the lack of signings has stacked up a lot of work to be done in a shorter time.
 
DeanoAustin said:
It's okay to question him. I still think he's great, and gets most things spectacularly right. Just think he gets some things wrong. Over 20 years, you surely aren't suggesting that he's never made a mistake and is infallible?
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I am a glass half full person, so I tend to see the positive balances (especially when there is so much to be positive about) and pass over the negative. You know the answer to that last question mate.
 
thfcsteff said:
I am a glass half full person, so I tend to see the positive balances (especially when there is so much to be positive about) and pass over the negative. You know the answer to that last question mate.
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I love your optimism Steff. Helped keep me going at certain points in the season.

I genuinely am a massive fan of Levy. Just thought he got last summer wrong but we got away with it so happy days.
 
Rorschach said:
Levy has got this
images
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I nosferatu he has.
 
Spent money on all the infrastructure needed ... now to invest in the team. Jobs a goodun
 
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