thfcsteff
George Hunt
It was another moment where I realized t'internet is not full of football geniuses.
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Daniel Levy - Chairman
- Thread starter Howard Webb
- Start date
It was another moment where I realized t'internet is not full of football geniuses.
parklane1
Tony Galvin
Baleforce
Arthur Rowe
But they win on FIFA
that's the first sign, us real experts play PES
K.D.D.D.D.Soc
Ian Walker
Put your tin hat on if we don't win league, there will be only one person for some to blame!
milo
Jack L. Jones
Tom Carroll?
StephenH
David Ginola
Their t shirts will say it all "Levy Out! and Donald Trump for PM!"
parklane1
Tony Galvin
Without a doubt ( as sure as night follows day), there will be a foaming and nashing of teeth from the usual suspects. ( insert whatever gripe you like).
DubaiSpur
Ian Walker
Let's not go overboard, here. Good, certainly. Great? Somewhat debatable, but some people do take that position, fair play to 'em.
Best? In the entire world? Probably not.
He does very consistently get opposition fans gurning in anger, though. Which is a fantastic thing, since it means he's telling them and their bags of money to go f*ck themselves and they tend not be able to stand it.
I try my hardest to ignore this stuff, but, hey, might as well try again: Christ, let it go, man. The narrative this entire second half of the season has been a build-up between the optimists who think the title is there for the taking and the pessimists who are thankful that we're looking like a good bet for CL football next season (me included), which is a good achievement in itself as far as I'm concerned.
This stuff is just knocking down strawmen with what I suspect is practiced ease. You're actually less rabid about it than some other obvious local *luminaries* (which is why I'm even bothering in the first place), but it's still just setting up targets that don't exist so you can wave your 'I'm a better supporter than everyone here' board again. You don't need to do it.
nayenezgani
Jimmy Neighbour
So who the fudge is better then Dubai? Riddle me that.
nayenezgani
Jimmy Neighbour
Randy Lerner perhaps?
DubaiSpur
Ian Walker
Hans Joachim Watzke? Andrea Agnelli? Jorge Nuno Pinto De Costa? Jean-Michel Aulas?
All these men took over underperforming, historically significant clubs at their lowest ebb, restructured their finances and turned them into serial title and trophy winning sides: in Agnelli's case, he did it while also balancing a new stadium to boot.
If your vision is restricted to just the Lerners and Sugars of the world, then obviously you'll see Levy as the best thing since sliced bread. Alternately, if your vision is set *only* at the likes of Watzke, Agnelli, Aulas and co., then you'll underrate him.
Levy's a good chairman, I've come around to that. With perhaps the most stubborn negotiation stance of any chairman in English football. But to claim that he's the *best* when our record under him stands at one League Cup and one CL campaign (to date) in fifteen years is a bit much, especially when you consider that some of those men listed above (Watzke, for example) literally saved their clubs from bankruptcy and turned them into title-winning machines in roughly the same time (with Watzke and Agnelli also managing managerial transitions from Klopp and Conte, their respective clubs' icons, to Tuchel and Allegri without a single misstep).
Of course, you could just cite...
...and content yourself with the knowledge that Levy is the bestest chairman in the world when compared to him.
@DubaiSpur
I think that you've had to compare him to the chairmen of Dortmund and Juventus to show him in a (slight) negative light says it all really mate.
There's no way to accurately compare chairmen across different countries and I'm certainly not claiming Levy is the best in the game (unquantifiable afaic) but if you're gonna go down that route you need to factor in the wider picture - I don't think any of Lyon/Dortmund/Juventus have to compete in a league which has the financial ceiling that the EPL has - there's only ever been one dominant club in Germany and Juventus ARE the dominant club in Italy regardless of the low starting point when Agnelli took charge there, Lyon rose at a time when the CL money first started coming in so rode that wave to good effect but since the emergence of PSG and Monaco they seem to have fallen away quite dramatically.
They've all done well, no question, but you can't really compare like for like as each have their own individual restrictions on what is realistic for them to achieve
I think that you've had to compare him to the chairmen of Dortmund and Juventus to show him in a (slight) negative light says it all really mate.
There's no way to accurately compare chairmen across different countries and I'm certainly not claiming Levy is the best in the game (unquantifiable afaic) but if you're gonna go down that route you need to factor in the wider picture - I don't think any of Lyon/Dortmund/Juventus have to compete in a league which has the financial ceiling that the EPL has - there's only ever been one dominant club in Germany and Juventus ARE the dominant club in Italy regardless of the low starting point when Agnelli took charge there, Lyon rose at a time when the CL money first started coming in so rode that wave to good effect but since the emergence of PSG and Monaco they seem to have fallen away quite dramatically.
They've all done well, no question, but you can't really compare like for like as each have their own individual restrictions on what is realistic for them to achieve
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nayenezgani
Jimmy Neighbour
Thank you for conveying my sentiments before I had the chance billy.
I believe Dubai's points are all good ones and well made, however I don't think clubs like Lyon and Juventus can necessarily be compared to Tottenham in terms of resources available, sponsors, wage bills, fan bases etc.
I think Levy is as good if not better than all of those Chairmen mentioned, especially given the position our club was in when he took over.
@nayenezgani - totally rewrote my post after you quoted me
DubaiSpur
Ian Walker
Well, that's the point: I purposefully chose those four because their tenures roughly started with clubs that were on the down and out, bleeding revenue and tumbling into mid-table obscurity (or worse). Hans Joachim-Watzke took over Dortmund when they were on the verge of bankruptcy: forget competing with Bayern (who were in a league of their own), Dortmund were struggling to keep the lights on, and were perilously close to being folded up as Schalke, Stuttgart, Leverkusen et al moved ahead of them in terms of finances and squad quality. They spent a fairly long period cutting costs and treading mid-table water just to gain some sense of financial security again, before Klopp arrived and (with a few smart transfers) took them booming back into the big time, winning title after title.
Agnelli arrived when Juve had just finished 7th in the league, after bobbing around mid-table following their promotion after Calciopoli (which threw them down a division and took away a lot of their world-class players and international appeal by doing so): with a period of financial insecurity coming up because of the new stadium, he needed to be smart with how he spent money and who he hired. He got it superbly right on both counts, and Antonio Conte took Juve back to the top, again, winning title after title.
When Jean-Michel Aulas took over Lyon, they weren't even in the top division of French football: forget being the 6th biggest in their respective league, they were a division below Ligue 1, yet Aulas took over, and, after a period spent establishing them as a top three-top four team in France, took them on a run of seven successive Ligue 1 titles between 2002 and 2009.
Porto had suffered the longest trophy drought in their history when Jorge Nuno Pinto Da Costa took over, and were fast becoming irrelevant to the Portuguese championship calculations. Within five years, he had them winning European Cups and titles against more expensive squads in Europe, and today he runs an even meaner operation than Levy in terms of selling to buy while still winning trophies regularly and finding managerial gems like AVB and Mourinho.
Trust me, mate, I'm not comparing Levy to the sugar daddies around, or to people like Karl-Heinz Rummenigge or Joan Laporta (who generally oversaw the absolute giants, for whom financial concerns are a joke not worth taking seriously and for whom a disaster is finishing second). I'm comparing him to chairmen who took clubs of similar stature to us in terms of their league positions and financial status (and, in the case of Lyon, to a chairman who took a middling no-name second-division French team to the top while running it like a business).
Levy's good, like I said: difficult to deny that in any way. But he's not as good as those fellas, who achieved things that shocked and amazed the football world in about the same time span that Levy's spent running this club. We started from a better position than Dortmund did, and definitely started in a better position that Lyon did. In fifteen years, we've achieved some things, and solidifed our status as a club challenging for the top four: but in that same time span, some of those men above worked miracles. The reason why we now look at Juve, Lyon and Dortmund as having more resources, exposure and stature than ourselves is because of the success brought to those clubs by those men after their periods spent in the doldrums: remember, in 2009 we were seriously chasing Juve's Vincenzo Iaquinta, and I remember then dismissing Juve as a club we could blow out of the water in terms of wages and fees if we wanted to, since they were really that dire.That was the situation Agnelli inherited, for example.
Understandably, a lot of people see the progress we've made over the last fifteen years and think it an incomparable achievement. But, while it may be good (and better than the likes of Kenwright and Lerner, also erstwhile challengers to our present status), it isn't *so* world-class as to make Levy the *best* chairman in the world. There are better chairman out there. There are a lot of far worse chairmen out there, no doubt: but there are better ones too.
You mention Lyon: like I said, Aulas took over them when they were a no-name second division side, and in fifteen years he had built a machine that roared to seven successive Ligue 1 titles. Watzke turned around a near-bankrupt club and made it a powerhouse again, while scrimping and saving and building a budget side prior to their storming run to the first title under Klopp. Agnelli pulled off a similar feat while balancing the demands of a new stadium (which is an absolute rarity in Italy, and must have been a nightmare to simultaneously manage while restoring Juve's on-pitch successes).
Like I said, it's important not to go overboard. We had advantages those clubs didn't have: we compete in the world's richest league, and 6th best team in the league is still a damn good jump-off point when compared to mid-table in the second division (Lyon) or on the verge of bankruptcy (Dortmund).
Levy's a good chairman, with a delightful mean streak when it comes to negotiation. But he's not the *best*, in my opinion. Truthfully speaking, one League Cup and one CL campaign (to date) in fifteen years isn't as good a record as those men possess. Is it a good record by itself? Absolutely, especially when compared to the trainwreck at Villa and the sundering dissipation over at Everton, both once of similar means and status as ourselves. But is it world-beatingly spectacular? Not really.
Let me put it this way: if we win the league this season, he will likely have overseen the most delightfully unlikely feat in our modern history (after 1961, at least). He'll rightly be a legend at the club, and he can always look forward to beers on the house at any Tottenham joint for the rest of his life.
But those men have done the same thing, from roughly similar (or sometimes worse) positions, multiple times, often in shorter time spans. So what does that make them?
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dubai - good ponts but I'm talking more about glass ceilings than I am where they started from - a lot more room to grow to a position to compete at the top in Germany/Italy/France where there are no/few dominant clubs than in the PL where even the smallest of the top four clubs have almost double our resources...