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Daniel Levy - Chairman

Do you think we have been in an indefinite period of moving in the wrong direction for 20 years or something?

IMV the set backs have generally been short lived and are bookended by periods of improvement, that's why patience/leeway/whatever you want to call it, for the owners is there.

No I don’t. But I think 20+ years is enough and feel it is time for a change.
 
But he’s the minority owner. You’d still have Joe Lewis’ family trust owning the lion’s share. And that’s where the lack of additional investment sits, not with Levy.
Levy has 30% and is chairman so sets financial targets, which has kept Lewis hanging on. In a reverse way Levy could also make THFC spend more on football, be less profitable overall and Lewis would carry a heavier burden into the future.
I would believe in Levy more if we have less ffp headroom.
 
It has been documented in both Modric and now Lloris autobiographies that it is Levy's stupid games that has procrastinated deals. We probably should have never had Lloris in a Spurs shirt based on the way Levy messed the deal up. He ultimately had to pay the transfer fee anyway after losing the negotiation, he stopped the player from having a pre-season with AVB, and he created a scenario where Aulas had to save the day. Hugo admitted himself that Aulas told him it was completely up to him if he didn't want to head to Spurs. Aulas had schooled Levy and told the player he would happily keep him, implying that he'd find other ways to cover the money he was expecting, and needed.

I personally don't think that there is anything special about Levy's negotiation skills. In fact, guys like Modric and Lloris have been clear that Levy goes back on his word. He breaks promises, which breaks relationships. That is a big no, no in sales.

I think we do have to realise that the pattern of late deals in our club did unfortunately come from the top. It was a choice, and not necessarily to do with other parties or admin processes.

I will state again, in Levy's head he was and is always working in our best interests.
I think that has changed somewhat at least as our spending power has increased. There probably was a time when he felt he had to try everything to get a deal somewhat cheaper. That no longer seems the case, at least not to the same extent.

I agree that it would have been good if Solanke for example came in earlier, but it wasn't left until deadline day or really late in the window. Our deadline day dealing in general has seemingly lessened somewhat.

That's just my impression, may be wrong. No doubts there have been negatives with that. But I also think there have been positives in that some money has been saved that could then go to other deals.
 
I think that has changed somewhat at least as our spending power has increased. There probably was a time when he felt he had to try everything to get a deal somewhat cheaper. That no longer seems the case, at least not to the same extent.

I agree that it would have been good if Solanke for example came in earlier, but it wasn't left until deadline day or really late in the window. Our deadline day dealing in general has seemingly lessened somewhat.

That's just my impression, may be wrong. No doubts there have been negatives with that. But I also think there have been positives in that some money has been saved that could then go to other deals.

The mad thing is that Levy didn't need to do everything in his power to get cheaper deals. He was penny wise, pound foolish with nobody alongside him explaining to him that bad purchases have a much bigger negative impact on the P&L in the long term. He just kept finding out the hard way. We just needed to buy quality over quantity and use the available budget better.

I do agree that the model has improved though. Is it perhaps the case that we are a much more attractive proposition to players and their agents nowadays. We're moving from the cruiserweight to heavyweight divisions.
 
The mad thing is that Levy didn't need to do everything in his power to get cheaper deals. He was penny wise, pound foolish with nobody alongside him explaining to him that bad purchases have a much bigger negative impact on the P&L in the long term. He just kept finding out the hard way. We just needed to buy quality over quantity and use the available budget better.

I do agree that the model has improved though. Is it perhaps the case that we are a much more attractive proposition to players and their agents nowadays. We're moving from the cruiserweight to heavyweight divisions.

What evidence is there that we are a much more attractive proposition nowadays?
 
Levy has 30% and is chairman so sets financial targets, which has kept Lewis hanging on. In a reverse way Levy could also make THFC spend more on football, be less profitable overall and Lewis would carry a heavier burden into the future.
I would believe in Levy more if we have less ffp headroom.
What profit do we make?
How do you find that extra spend?
It’s not as if we are t seeming everything we earn now
We don’t make a profit and lose money now (good for tax)
And no money has been taken out of the club despite the constant comment that we’re the cash cow for ENIC
But, that’s not to say they won’t make an obscene profit when they sell
 
What evidence is there that we are a much more attractive proposition nowadays?

Yeah, it's a great question. I think if you're a profile of player that we try to attract you see a few key areas. One is the amazing facilities that we have at The Lodge and our amazing stadium. I also think we are sending out the message that younger players will get a chance in our setup, which definitely wasn't the case before. A new player would also have the belief that we're always going to add more good players into the squad, which was clearly not the case in the past. We shouldn't forget the commercials as well. We're paying the signing on fees including those greedy agents and our salaries are growing over time.

There are obviously downsides, but I think we've made huge leaps in the last 5 years to attract players. I can see why a Frenckie de Jong may not have wanted to join us when he was 21/22. I think the equivalent player might now though.

I still look at Jose, Nuno and Conte's squads and compare to Ange's current one. Players have joined us in all areas of the team and will continue to do so.
 
I've thought about this one a lot. I've made this quite easy for myself.

Firstly, I just want to get back to 2016/17 levels and....secondly, I want to stay there and.....thirdly, go beyond in the next phase.

Right now, how would you feel if I said that Spurs could finish 2nd in the league with 86 points, only conceding 26 goals and scoring 86 goals? Putting the game of chance that is cup competitions to one side, if I said that we now had that as our PL baseline. However, this time it won't start to immediately fall apart with a summer of zero net spending and gradual decline down to 60 points over 2-3 years.

For me, 16/17 was my favourite season under Poch and I genuinely believed we had arrived. Then I watched in disbelief at the next set of transfer activities and knew that it was going to be our pinnacle for a long time. By the way, that includes the CL final season where the players only turned up for their manager on midweeks and collected their CL bonuses. The only agenda through those next few years was the stadium and unfortunately COVID. Tough years, and bad decisions by Levy on the footbal ops side.

It's also because I believe that if we can get to 16/167 levels again, this time we can sustain them based on the financial model we now operate under. I also know that if we sustain those levels, we will win cups as a consequence of being at that level. We won't be in the lap of the footballing gods (and dodgy referees) as much as we've been recently in the semi-finals and finals.

My big question is whether Ange has the managerial smarts to get us back to 86 points? Poch did with way less resources. Poch's 16/17 would be Ange's 25/26 season so we just have to be patient. However, if this time next season we can see that we're not going to have the 16/17 season again I'm not against making the manager switch in the new year of 2026. Ange has had the most expensively assembled squad of my lifetime. It started in before his tenure in 21/22 and has just continued now for 3 years. He's a luckier man than any manager before him.
Tbf Poch inherited a great squad. Ange inherited a mess, which was always going to take a lot of investment to fix.

As has already been mentioned, a lot of the fixes have been young players.

I'd hope we will be in a position to add fewer high quality additions come the summer.
 
I'm not quite sure that stands up to close scrutiny mate.
Agreed. Think he inherited a squad with some really good players, some players with quite a lot of potential and of course a (in hindsight) really special talent in Kane. But also a squad with a lot of problems. He did great work with a lot of those players already here, but they did also have that potential in them.

Some similarities with what Ange inherited imo.
 
I'm not quite sure that stands up to close scrutiny mate.
They talk about it on the athletic this week
He inherited Hugo, Walker, Verts, rose, Dembele, eriksen, Kane, who were al part of his peak side
We added Toby, Dier, Wanyama, Son and Dele to the group
And we had players like Lamela, Chadli and winks here all rest
Wimmer came and went
Trippier and Davies joined under his watch too
The key is he did inherit the core of his team. They were here. Others were added as Shiism be the case in backing him
The issue was that when we frank backed him in the summer before he left, he was given no time with those players
 
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