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Daniel Levy - Chairman

At the time I was apopleptic. Poch was totally ignored/not consulted. I knew it winter of 2018 into early 19 when the whole thing was quietly being planned. I believe it was a major, major contributor to the issues which built. Remember, Eriksen was tinkled off not to get a pay rise when Daniel trousered a fat bonus in 2018. I think Hugo's framing here is just an example of a long-running problem the players feel they saw.
Don't think Poch has much of a leg to stand on after releasing that book. That done just as much damage.
 
I've found the Lloris comments really interesting. I think the stuff on the watch is being blown out of proportion. Lloris doesn't appear to be blaming the watch for losing, he places far more blame on the penalty decision, but he's mentioned it to illustrate how tone deaf Levy is when it comes to some things. Most posters on here, even his supporters, have said similar about him over the years. Great businessman, not so great when it comes to football.

The Amazon stuff is shocking to be honest. To not consult the manager or players...you could see how that'd create unrest even if it grows the club's brand. The Mourinho decision...again Lloris is only saying what most of us have said. Conte...very interesting that the players seemed to tune him out because of his intensity. He's also said both were a bad fit for the club...fine as long as we were winning but once results nosedived, it was always going to unravel quickly.

For me, nothing Lloris has said here is particularly out of order or surprising. It's just a bit of a reality check to hear a player actually say that the players were feeling what many of us thought they were feeling. And he has a book to sell so obviously these things will be blown up to grab the headlines.

Hugo will always be a club legend for me.

The watch thing he says he wasn't alone in feeling like that and name checks harry as being the same.
I totally gets why he feels like that, I question the wisdom of putting it out there but it doesn't change how I feel about him, he will always be one us to me.
 
The watch thing he says he wasn't alone in feeling like that and name checks harry as being the same.
I totally gets why he feels like that, I question the wisdom of putting it out there but it doesn't change how I feel about him, he will always be one us to me.
It's indicative of what a lot of players and managers have said about us rather than being the cause of anything. Levy's actually trying to do something nice but he's just completely misjudged top level sports people and misunderstood the message he was sending.

Mourinho, Conte, Poch, AVB - they've all hinted at the same thing. In Conte and Mourinho's case, they actually said it explicitly. Carrick, Kane, Berbatov, Walker, Lloris the same. Top 4 is acceptable at Tottenham. We want to win things but it's not what drives the club. That's the culture at Tottenham under Levy. It's pretty undeniable - everything points to it. I'm not damning Levy - I think he's done amazing things for Tottenham and we could have much, much worse owners (in fact, a few of Levy's predecessors fit that bill).

I can understand Hugo putting it out there if he's doing a book. Too many sports books are bland reads that say nothing. He's offered a bit of insight into what makes Tottenham tick. Would be interested to read the rest as I'm sure he'll have been very complimentary in other ways - he spent 10 years here afterall. Those bits just don't sell books.
 
Don't think Poch has much of a leg to stand on after releasing that book. That done just as much damage.
Agree with the point that he shouldn't have done the book but at least he consulted people on it. The manager and players had this thrust upon them and they were the main ones impacted. Sounds like the fact that none of the money from it went to the players also didn't help.
 
Just got the book on Audible. Gonna read this book the lazy way !!!

The actor, Simon Darwin, is the narrator.

It's a great start to the book, when he compares the feeling of defeat against Argentina as a 36 year old.
"If only you could lose a world cup final without realising what you've actually lost.............the pain is indescribable"

He talks about Poch and Jose sending him condolence messages, but not hearing from his then current manager Conte.
 
so many players at the same time say that we have the world's best stadium and levy has done well.

so levy is a paradox - he is a great businessman and has done well for the club (much better for himself); but he isn't a footballing man and prioritizes his wealth above the club winning trophies.
 
so many players at the same time say that we have the world's best stadium and levy has done well.

so levy is a paradox - he is a great businessman and has done well for the club (much better for himself); but he isn't a footballing man and prioritizes his wealth above the club winning trophies.

We have a world class stadium. Not the world's best stadium.

I just don't get the narrative that Levy is some business genius. He really isn't. He has wasted nearly a hundred million just by paying off managers he incorrectly employed. The stadium was nearly twice the budget he projected and 2 years late. We had a watertight contract with Mace that any over run would end up in massive punitive damages awarded to us. But no, Levy the genius business man was also a massive genius architect too and 'tinkered' so much with the original blueprint that the contract with Mace was null and void and thus there were no late fees. Some genius there.

I've lost count of the many transfers he has botched with his pathetic 'Levy time' business acumen. It worked once. Over 20 years ago. He's not a fraud. He is who he is. An inept football chairman. Yet ironically the highest paid one. But he still has his fans who refuse to see he has overseen the worst run of any chairman in our clubs history.

Our failures have one common denominator.
 
We have a world class stadium. Not the world's best stadium.

I just don't get the narrative that Levy is some business genius. He really isn't. He has wasted nearly a hundred million just by paying off managers he incorrectly employed. The stadium was nearly twice the budget he projected and 2 years late. We had a watertight contract with Mace that any over run would end up in massive punitive damages awarded to us. But no, Levy the genius business man was also a massive genius architect too and 'tinkered' so much with the original blueprint that the contract with Mace was null and void and thus there were no late fees. Some genius there.

I've lost count of the many transfers he has botched with his pathetic 'Levy time' business acumen. It worked once. Over 20 years ago. He's not a fraud. He is who he is. An inept football chairman. Yet ironically the highest paid one. But he still has his fans who refuse to see he has overseen the worst run of any chairman in our clubs history.

Our failures have one common denominator.
Dislike Levy all you like but that sentence is an incredible take on him.
 
Can we try not to fall for clickbait brick/titles? can we leave that brick for twitter/whatever else hellhole social media

Here's another quote from Lloris in same book

"I have a lot of respect for Daniel. I think he has done amazing work for the club. When I look at the position of Spurs when I arrived, [in 2012] and when I left [this January], it’s a different club."

"Daniel always tried to make the right decision for the club and we were also a bit unlucky. At our best with Mauricio, we had to compete with the Chelsea of Abramovich, the Emirates Marketing Project of Guardiola, the Liverpool of Jürgen Klopp. It was really tough because if the club was ready to invest £50m, the others will invest £100m."

"I really like what I see and I believe that they are going in the right direction. They have a proper football style, a mentality, and I think [Postecoglou] brought exactly what the club needed at this moment – freshness and a new fan expectation. That’s probably why I felt really heavy when we were with José or Antonio. It was a different football style."
 
Can we try not to fall for clickbait brick/titles? can we leave that brick for twitter/whatever else hellhole social media

Here's another quote from Lloris in same book

"I have a lot of respect for Daniel. I think he has done amazing work for the club. When I look at the position of Spurs when I arrived, [in 2012] and when I left [this January], it’s a different club."

"Daniel always tried to make the right decision for the club and we were also a bit unlucky. At our best with Mauricio, we had to compete with the Chelsea of Abramovich, the Emirates Marketing Project of Guardiola, the Liverpool of Jürgen Klopp. It was really tough because if the club was ready to invest £50m, the others will invest £100m."

"I really like what I see and I believe that they are going in the right direction. They have a proper football style, a mentality, and I think [Postecoglou] brought exactly what the club needed at this moment – freshness and a new fan expectation. That’s probably why I felt really heavy when we were with José or Antonio. It was a different football style."
You're doing the same thing but just looking at only the positives. The book is the book and it will have positive and negative things to say. Read it as a whole and don't selective whichever side of the fence you fall upon.
 
Can we try not to fall for clickbait brick/titles? can we leave that brick for twitter/whatever else hellhole social media

Here's another quote from Lloris in same book

"I have a lot of respect for Daniel. I think he has done amazing work for the club. When I look at the position of Spurs when I arrived, [in 2012] and when I left [this January], it’s a different club."

"Daniel always tried to make the right decision for the club and we were also a bit unlucky. At our best with Mauricio, we had to compete with the Chelsea of Abramovich, the Emirates Marketing Project of Guardiola, the Liverpool of Jürgen Klopp. It was really tough because if the club was ready to invest £50m, the others will invest £100m."

"I really like what I see and I believe that they are going in the right direction. They have a proper football style, a mentality, and I think [Postecoglou] brought exactly what the club needed at this moment – freshness and a new fan expectation. That’s probably why I felt really heavy when we were with José or Antonio. It was a different football style."

I listened to the chapter on Hugo leaving the club today. Hugo talked about Levy telling him to go out with a bang in the last home game of the season in front of the fans. Hugo had to remind him he still had a season left on his contract, he didn't have a new club, and that nobody had actually told him he wasn't allowed to fight for his place (or something like that) with Vicario coming in. Hugo was massively complimentary about our new keeper in that passage of his book as well.

Reading between the fuzzy lines of what Hugo is saying, it supports the fan narrative about Daniel. Lack of people skills, abundance of logical thinking with the club's interest at heart but isn't a people person or isn't so great at lateral thinking in key moments. He treated Hugo like a commodity rather than someone that had given over a decade of his best years to our club as one of our key personalities and leaders. It wasn't a conversation you'd have with a husband, father and loyal servant, and neither was the next year by the sounds of it.

It did make me laugh when Hugo talked about transfer deadline day when he was linked with clubs like Saudi Sportswashing Machine and Lazio to sit on their bench, but was sitting in an Argentinian restaurant having dinner with his family. As a man that thinks for 4 people, he wasn't just going to roll over for the sake of a Spurs P&L. That is especially when the club didn't even tell him about the arrival of Vicario, and the book strongly implies that the information was withheld deliberately.

The book also talks a little about Paratici. Hugo didn't say as much, but Fabio knew that our veteran keeper wasn't up to it 2 years earlier when he signed Gollini. It was implied that Fabio knew we needed a keeper upgrade, and it was Conte who quashed that and re-empowered Hugo including the contract extension.

It really sounds like Spurs should have been more honest with themselves over the keeper situation, and especially Hugo. We could see his superpowers were waining. So could Fabio. Spurs just did the rest in the clumsiest way ever.

Obviously, this football stuff in the book isn't as interesting as expensive watches :)
 
At the time I was apopleptic. Poch was totally ignored/not consulted. I knew it winter of 2018 into early 19 when the whole thing was quietly being planned. I believe it was a major, major contributor to the issues which built. Remember, Eriksen was tinkled off not to get a pay rise when Daniel trousered a fat bonus in 2018. I think Hugo's framing here is just an example of a long-running problem the players feel they saw.

I don't know the details but wasn't it a part of the tv rights deal they also did documentaries?
 
I don't know the details but wasn't it a part of the tv rights deal they also did documentaries?

Hmmm, good question. I do not remember that being the case in a mandatory sense. I remember hearing that the decision had been made in the winter of 2018, and that Poch and the playing staff were not consulted, but told it was happening in Jan 2019. It did not go down well. As has now been revealed by Lloris...
 
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