Daniel Levy - Chairman

[glasgowspur]

I actually think people are looking in the wrong place on this one. It's easy to look at the end of Poch's tenure. The root cause comes 2 years before.

It's a much bigger challenge on your chairman when you call out his poor multi-year financial modelling. Levy told us all 2 things:

1) The stadium and football operations financial models were mutually exclusive.
2) The plan was to achieve CL revenues by the time the stadium opened.

Bold statements, completely contradicted when he didn't release any net spending to Poch until after 3rd April 2019 when the stadium opened and after 1st June 2019 when we played in a CL final. Our team was done when we exited the 2016/17 season and needed investment at that point.

Interesting that Spurs played in the CL in the 16/17, 17/18 and 18/19 seasons. That is 3 lots of CL revenues before the stadium opened. Poch was quite right to ask where that £100m of INCREMENTAL revenue went that him and his players made this club wasn't in Levy's original financial model. It's obvious it went on the stadium overspend. We also posted world record profits of £113m in the 17/18 season and followed that up with £69m. We literally gave HMRC £35m of Poch's potential transfer kitty.

I've said this before but Levy and Collecott got their multi-year financial modelling messaging so wrong in the years from 2015-2020. They played the fans with 2 patronising narratives that we all know just weren't true. They were just massaging the club to make it attractive to financial institutions that would be managing our current debt. It was all about the interest rate.

When you're not honest in business it has a very long lasting impact on relationships. Levy should have just told us the truth. How it was going to. It would have been OK, but he chose to talk to us in a condescending, patronising way and reading between the fuzzy lines, Poch was in the same boat as us. He didn't know either that all this incremental money he made our club wasn't coming back to him.

Think there is some fair comments in there.

 

[mudshark]

I always suspected that, after the new stadium was built, all we'd get would be new excuses why we can't compete at the top table for the best players.

 

[Yiddo]

I don't really understand this logic, essentially you're saying Levy is easily swayed by some fans (none of those sackings even had universal support) in terms of who manages the club. He couldn't possibly cope with the pressure is essentially what you're claiming.

Yet when those same fans en masse demanded that we do not sell Carrick, Berbatov, Keane, Bale etc that pressure didn't stop him and he still sold them.

So which one is it? Is Levy someone easily swayed by fan opinion or is he strong willed and will do what he thinks is best for the club? You can't have it both ways.

Having to sell players that want to leave / pushing to leave is completely different to the pressures of the fans wanting to push a manager out of the door. The fact its difficult to understand just shows shallow mindedness.

 

[Jurgen the German]

Having to sell players that want to leave / pushing to leave is completely different to the pressures of the fans wanting to push a manager out of the door. The fact its difficult to understand just shows shallow mindedness.

What managers have we pushed out other than Graham? Every other manager was pushed out by Levy himself.

 

[Jurgen the German]

I'm not saying he's 10/10. For me a 2/10 would be taking us backwards, towards relegation and not to our highest average finish in the league. Looks to me that you are ignoring all positives and just considering the negatives.

Personally I think we’ve done on the pitch largely in spite of the way we’ve been run off the pitch. Not to say there haven’t been good decisions made (hiring Poch for example) but the timings of sackings, replacing world class coaches with novices, not backing managers and the low wages to revenue ratio show a basic lack of understanding of the game.

 

[SpurMeUp]

This would not have been a considerstion at the time of his sacking as there was absolutely no way of knowing how the transfers would have panned out after a handful of games in to their time at the club.

There were high expectations and it looked like we had fallen apart. A bit like now, it was unfair as Poch was grappling with getting these (substandard) players to perform.

To say our performance wasn’t a consideration in his sacking is obviously wrong.

 

[Yiddo]

What managers have we pushed out other than Graham? Every other manager was pushed out by Levy himself.

Oh give it a rest, if you go back to all the threads and go to the games under managers that have been sacked the majority of the fan base wanted them gone. You can feel and hear it but i suppose people forgot that when it doesn't match their argument.

 

[Jurgen the German]

I'm not saying he's 10/10. For me a 2/10 would be taking us backwards, towards relegation and not to our highest average finish in the league. Looks to me that you are ignoring all positives and just considering the negatives.

Personally I think we’ve done on the pitch largely in spite of the way we’ve been run off the pitch. Not to say there haven’t been good decisions made (hiring Poch for example) but the timings of sackings, replacing world class coaches with novices, not backing managers and the low wages to revenue ratio show a basic lack of understanding of the game.

 

[SpurMeUp]

I have no idea what you’re on about. Ndombele played a few (good) games for Pochettino and then got injured. Lo Celso barely played for Pochettino. Sessegnon arrived injured. Poch was mainly still having to play the players he told the chairman he needed to replace.

As I said before, we had no idea whether the 3 first team players Poch had brought in were terrible, average or great at the point he was sacked as we barely got to see them. We then swapped the manager out for an ultra defensive narcissistic has-been.

Yet many fans and the THFC board thought he should go. I didn’t think he should. But there has to be a reason for those thinking a change was needed. If it wasn’t our poor performances and results - which was due to not strengthening our team - what was it!?

 

[Jurgen the German]

Oh give it a rest, if you go back to all the threads and go to the games under managers that have been sacked the majority of the fan base wanted them gone. You can feel and hear it but i suppose people forgot that when it doesn't match their argument.

I don’t need to go back through the threads as I actually go to most of the games and I can tell you there wasn’t anyone calling for Jol, Poch, Conte or Jose to go. This forum isn’t always a reflection of what’s going on inside the ground, take the hatred of Liverpool for example, almost no spurs fan I know hates them more than Arsenal or Chelsea but on here more than one poster does.

 

[harr1984]

I disagree 100%.
What lost Poch his job was -
a) Levy's obsession with Mourinho
b) Mourinho's incessant flirting with Levy post-CL Final
c) Levy's inability to stick with decisions he'd made

He gave the manager two players he wanted. Poch had been trying to refresh the side for two seasons. Suddenly gets two at once (albeit Lo Celso was initially a loan signing on deadline as I remember meaning he missed pre-season). He then sacked him three months later. It shows that either he was so obsessed with getting Mourinho that he sacked Poch for that, or he suffered transactional 'business' mentality in so much as 'I got you two players, they are not working yet, fans are complaining, out you go.'

Either way, I personally think blaming those signings is erroneous. Poch always said Ndombele would need time...

I don't doubt those were factors, but you've completely failed to mention Poch himself. In his press conferences he was coming out with more and more ridiculous things, and physically he looked a shadow of himself.

He was cooked, and whoever you want to blame for him reaching that state is up to you (I personally have no idea) but he himself looked like he had reached the end of the road, and so did the team who were serving up some worse performances than we've seen lately and not the same level of injuries to provide at least some form of excuse.....

 

[Yiddo]

I don’t need to go back through the threads as I actually go to most of the games and I can tell you there wasn’t anyone calling for Jol, Poch, Conte or Jose to go. This forum isn’t always a reflection of what’s going on inside the ground, take the hatred of Liverpool for example, almost no spurs fan I know hates them more than Arsenal or Chelsea but on here more than one poster does.

I go to games and the toxic atmosphere under Conte, Jose and the end of Poch was there for all too see, not just at the games, on the TV in the pubs, most people have had enough by then, not 1 person was asking for Jose and Conte to stay.

 

[Baleforce]

I go to games and the toxic atmosphere under Conte, Jose and the end of Poch was there for all too see, not just at the games, on the TV in the pubs, most people have had enough by then, not 1 person was asking for Jose and Conte to stay.

I was.

But I might have been the only one.

 

[SpurMeUp]

I don't doubt those were factors, but you've completely failed to mention Poch himself. In his press conferences he was coming out with more and more ridiculous things, and physically he looked a shadow of himself.

He was cooked, and whoever you want to blame for him reaching that state is up to you (I personally have no idea) but he himself looked like he had reached the end of the road, and so did the team who were serving up some worse performances than we've seen lately and not the same level of injuries to provide at least some form of excuse.....

What Poch himself, fans and the THFC board didn’t understand then was that we had signed a pile of shyte. We thought Poch hadn’t reset post CL final. All those brining back his flippant comment about what to do next and resigning after the CL - as evidence of his head not being in it. All the speculation he didn’t look or sound himself. Poch himself was chopping and changing his team selection and players - trying to find a better setup. When the team he started the season with was indeed the best side and he probably needed to stick with it.

Why was there this crisis? Because we didn’t really strengthen. As we knew 2-3 years later. We’d spent a kings ransom with Poch taking charge, and had a worse squad. You spend 60m on a player you expect improvement or at least consistency. To get worse, of course there will be a crisis.

Someone had to pay. Yes it is in hindsight but it makes sense it was Poch as he’d spent this money.

 

[Jurgen the German]

I go to games and the toxic atmosphere under Conte, Jose and the end of Poch was there for all too see, not just at the games, on the TV in the pubs, most people have had enough by then, not 1 person was asking for Jose and Conte to stay.

We must have gone to different games because I didn’t experience any of that under those managers. Do you think levy was right to sack Jose a week before a final and replace him with Mason? I’d say ire was aimed mainly at Levy more than the manager.

 

[ricky2tricky4city]

Only 20mins to KO guys......you can commence going round and round at 5ish.

 

[billyiddo]

There were high expectations and it looked like we had fallen apart. A bit like now, it was unfair as Poch was grappling with getting these (substandard) players to perform.

To say our performance wasn’t a consideration in his sacking is obviously wrong.

I was responding to your point that the main 'core' reason for sacking him was because the signings that summer didn't work out.

 

[SpurMeUp]

I was responding to your point that the main 'core' reason for sacking him was because the signings that summer didn't work out.

Yes, because if they had our performances wouldn’t have been so bad. We’d got worse - due to those signings. Yet people expected improvement.

 

[harr1984]

Only 20mins to KO guys......you can commence going round and round at 5ish.

I've done so well in recent years not to get too involved with this one - it is incredible how the Poch debate sneaks it way into most threads still ....

 

[billyiddo]

Yes, because if they had our performances wouldn’t have been so bad. We’d got worse - due to those signings. Yet people expected improvement.

But as has already been pointed out Ndombele was actually playing well and the other two arrived injured and barely got a run to show what they could do. Any way you skin it using the transfers as justification has no sense.