Firing Poch was not the wrong decision, numbers and his future has proven that
Jose/Conte, yes, wrong decision
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ENIC
- Thread starter mattls
- Start date
Firing Poch was not the wrong decision, numbers and his future has proven that
Jose/Conte, yes, wrong decision
Finney Is Back
Luka Modric
I think firing Pochettino was wrong.
Hiring Jose was also wrong.
Sacking Jose at the time he was sacked was also wrong (I'd have binned him a lot earlier and then when not doing that he had to at least remain for the league cup final).
Hiring Nuno was wrong.
Sacking Nuno was right.
Hiring Conte at that point was probably right (I can't think of any other manager who would've taken us to a top 4 finish from that point).
ricky2tricky4city
Steffen Freund
Silly boy.....borrow the hindsight goggles...you'll then call every decision perfectly.
parklane1
Tony Galvin
Agree, you could see he seemed to have lost the plot in the season and i thought he was ready to move on.
Muttley
Ben Thatcher
The big contradiction was Levy's 2 statements.
The first was saying that the stadium build and football operations were mutually exclusive. He said the stadium build wouldn't impact what was happening on the pitch. He lied. The second is saying that he aspired to have CL revenues by the time the stadium opened. We had it 2-3 years earlier but none of the CL revenues came back to Poch as transfer kitty. Once again, Levy lied. Levy even put words in Poch's mouth in a public statement to the supporters trust when his own team failed to deliver our manager the quality of new players required in 2018.
The mad thing is that if Levy had just given us fans some credit for our intelligence and dedication to our club he would have know we would back him to put us through some short term pain whilst we put the infrastructure in place. He patronised us, in line with his terrible comms over the years. He is a die hard Spurs fan at heart but his comms really do suck at times. That doesn't help his cause.
I've always tried to back Levy but sometimes he doesn't help himself. You certainly don't put a comm out on the stadium delay and talk about the NFL in the first paragraph and your own fans in the 5th paragraph. That was one of Levy's low points as a chairman and he got lambasted for it at the time.
Comms are improving recently at Spurs though. I think someone has sat Levy down and coached him on his communication style. It is a massive part of being a leader.
If the club had openly stated that it was heading in to a prolonged period of frugality then I think it would have been open season for any talent in our squad and made it more difficult to attract new signings and renew contracts of the players already here.
I'm no business expert but I'd have thought letting the world know you're strapped for cash would put you at a serious disadvantage in any sort of financial negotiation as well (sponsorship and the like)
Lemonade Money
Les Medley
Not only that, the financial environment changed along the way, materials went up, that steel company refused to budge, etc. It's a miracle Levy got the cheap loans he did, and managed to not only get a football stadium built, but the best in the world. But yeah, fudge all that , let's gamble on a few players that Hitchen and Poch have picked out. Who knows, the success Poch had in qualifying for the CL may have got us out of a financial situation, but to suggest Levy wouldn't have bought players for Poch if he could (i.e. wouldn't put the finances at risk) has been proved wrong by the money he's spending now.
I don't think he sees it as lying. He comes across as he thinks we should be grateful for what he chooses. He has a very thin skin too. We should do well not to forget that. He had in Poch a genuinely promising young coach, loved by the fans who needed to be backed. At the right time. Instead he went 3? Transfer windows without buying a single player. That set us back years and ruined Poch's relationship with some fans. We still haven't caught up yet. Kane papered over a lot of cracks. Here is an old article from last April Lest we forget the mess he made since we got to the CL final.
Every mistake Tottenham & Daniel Levy have made since 2019
For much of Daniel Levy's tenure as Tottenham chairman, he oversaw a lot of undeniable and tangible progress.
Most of these are own goals. Hence why he is inept. I could go back further and include the sacking of Martin Jol at half time etc but I'm happy enough to look at his decisions in the last 5 years or so. It's pretty damning. Time is up.
Grays_1890
Chris Jones
And TBF when you look as an overall set of data, the idea that the ground would help us self survive whilst football became a tougher financial environment has come true. We have become in the last few windows one of the only major movers of players in the market, that includes a winter market when I think that we were the only PL club to make a move. So the stadium for all the pains to get sorted is doing what it was set out to do. The days of full state ownership and doping are clearly coming to an end and the prophesy of self sustainable football is being realised.
Muttley
Ben Thatcher
No, no, no
Good comms is sometimes saying nothing. Levy chose to make these stupid statements where there was no need. He left himself open.
Muttley
Ben Thatcher
I don't think he sees it as lying. He comes across as he thinks we should be grateful for what he chooses. He has a very thin skin too. We should do well not to forget that. He had in Poch a genuinely promising young coach, loved by the fans who needed to be backed. At the right time. Instead he went 3? Transfer windows without buying a single player. That set us back years and ruined Poch's relationship with some fans. We still haven't caught up yet. Kane papered over a lot of cracks. Here is an old article from last April Lest we forget the mess he made since we got to the CL final.
Every mistake Tottenham & Daniel Levy have made since 2019
For much of Daniel Levy's tenure as Tottenham chairman, he oversaw a lot of undeniable and tangible progress.www.90min.com
Most of these are own goals. Hence why he is inept. I could go back further and include the sacking of Martin Jol at half time etc but I'm happy enough to look at his decisions in the last 5 years or so. It's pretty damning. Time is up.
Levy must know deep down the full supply chain that props him up. It is the fans that buy the Sky packages, the season tickets, the merchandise and ultimately it is the fans that have turned him from a millionaire into a billionaires. In life there needs to be a quid-pro-quo. For me, I have no problem if he becomes a billionaire off the back of me paying out my hard earned money. The system only doesn't work if he doesn't bring me trophies. After all, I'm the customer.
What you say is scarily true. In his comms over the years, he's often forgotten who the actual customer is that buys his product. Some of the things he's said at the Trust meeting would have got me to throw him out of the nearest window.
It is also one of the big reasons why he needed to move out of football operations. He was just not that good at it. He's always lacked pure football DNA, but became quite dangerous because he didn't realise it wasn't in his blood. The signs were always there and he made POOR football decisions year after year.
I'd still have him though. I think the other stuff he has done for the club is fantastic. He has us well set for a great future. I just don't want him anywhere near football operations. Despite his failings as a leader, I do want him to get the trophies he's worked a lifetime for.
Finney Is Back
Luka Modric
I think the stadium went significantly over its intended budget (not unusual for a big capital project). The unanticipated CL revenue then helped cover the overspend.
I'm a realist and knew the stadium was likely to go overbudget and knew that the transfer budget would be constrained. I didn't think the youth, scouting, analysis and recruitment departments would have their budgets cut to the bone though. I think that was a bad move that cost us pretty dear. If you're not going to have much money to spend then do everything you can to ensure any money you do spend will provide value.
Finney Is Back
Luka Modric
Still sends shivers down my spine that a club as big as THFC could have Hitchen heading up recruitment. How on earth did that happen?
Bishop
John Lacy
This is so annoying when people said these things at the time it's not bloody hindsight.
ricky2tricky4city
Steffen Freund
We had a much smaller and flatter company structure during Act 1 and Act 2 of Levy's reign as Chairman, and I believe that was because DL was so set and singleminded on his long term vision that he didn't want to jeopardise it or even be questioned on any of it. The infrastructure development really was his baby, and will be his legacy. I'm sure some trophies will be the cherry on the top for him.
Supporters have to take into account the timeline and issues we faced in the last 18 months of the build, up until we finalised our refinance schedule. Decisions during this period would have been heavily weighted by our financial position, eg ongoing, unknown and unforeseen costs....plus record breaking profits in 2018 are an ace card to carry into refinancing.(The long-term low interest rates don't just save us money year on year, they're sustainable in as much as I they're miles from crippling, because hey we might not always be good?
).Its quite possible DL got too wrapped up in the project and took his eye off the ball regarding the academy and scouting (teams like Brighton and Brentford show what can be done probably on small budgets) ...that said, we probably thought that method wouldn't support, a now, regular CL team and DL probably thought Poch would keep pulling rabbits out of hats? Yeah he was busy, but it was poor from him.
Luckily in Act 3, the final act, DL has beefed up the structure and layers, as largely, his work is done...things are far less complex and the business just supplies the budget from what's coming in the door. Let football people maximise that.
Finally, Someone posted earlier that DL has 'thin skin'.....Rofl...do you think the club would be where it is now if that was true.
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ricky2tricky4city
Steffen Freund
Some people will make calls at the time that will be correct. Good call.
When someone lists out a series of events from the past and says DL (or whoever) should have done this, because we know the outcome was this...it smells of hindsight analysis.
I don't think he sees it as lying. He comes across as he thinks we should be grateful for what he chooses. He has a very thin skin too. We should do well not to forget that. He had in Poch a genuinely promising young coach, loved by the fans who needed to be backed. At the right time. Instead he went 3? Transfer windows without buying a single player. That set us back years and ruined Poch's relationship with some fans. We still haven't caught up yet. Kane papered over a lot of cracks. Here is an old article from last April Lest we forget the mess he made since we got to the CL final.
Every mistake Tottenham & Daniel Levy have made since 2019
For much of Daniel Levy's tenure as Tottenham chairman, he oversaw a lot of undeniable and tangible progress.
Most of these are own goals. Hence why he is inept. I could go back further and include the sacking of Martin Jol at half time etc but I'm happy enough to look at his decisions in the last 5 years or so. It's pretty damning. Time is up.
Poch hit his peak with us, that's the biggest issue with any argument that moving on from Poch was a poor decision (the fudging guy is managing the US national team now)
Jol -> Harry -> Poch are all steps up, so again, even in hindsight, right decisions
To your top 5 fudgeups, really that is the best someone could come up with
1. Too little too late in transfer market? as discussed widely in the last page on this thread alone, we were struggling through a massive capital investment in the stadium build, again, post fact the stadium build is the best thing to happen to this club and United/Chelsea/Pool would all want to be in our position now
2. Replacing Poch with Jose? probably but the context there was Covid, the expectation was Jose would have had more investment, in that context it looks different
3. Furlough, fudge, tell me someone is a fudging child without telling me someone is a child. A government program designed to do exactly what the club (one of the biggest tax payers in the league) used it for. Where were you/everyone else in protesting the banks/other businesses from using it? (this is a absolute failure to understand it's actually Levy's duty to the club to use these mechanisms)
4. Super League, like #4, this is typical English stupidity, Spurs had no choice, if a super league happened and we weren't part of it, it would have doomed us from ever participating at an elite level. And outside of the concerns re qualification Super league is superior to the flimflam the FA/UEFA put on the table in many ways (wage caps, infrastructure investment support, etc.), but hey Sky/BT/FA wound you up to protect their investment under some flimflam pretense of "for the betterment of the game"
5. Firing Jose a week before? sure, timing was off
And lets end with the flimflam "time is up" help me understand?
- Are you going to fire him, someone else on this forum/reddit/twitter?
- Is the media going to fire him?
- Help me understand who has the power and genuinely believes Levy's time is up?
By the way, I could make a list of mistakes for Levy/ENIC but none of it matters, this is about as useful as me disliking the pumpkin latte at Starbucks and saying the CEO's time is up .. it's utter delusion. Take a look at the Glazer at United, absolutely destroying the club milking it for money, creating a huge debt burden, having huge organized protests against them for years ... nothing, fans have very little power ..
Lemonade Money
Les Medley
To be fair, a pumpkin latte should be a sackable offence.
Muttley
Ben Thatcher
That is awful leadership though. It's so counter intuitive to carry on running football operations yourself because someone might challenge you on the non-football operations stuff. It's also really arrogant to think you know enough about football to make massive football decisions when you clearly need more football DNA around you. At least he got there in the end, and as you say, will get those trophies.
To be clear though, what I was discussing above was really only about 2 key areas. The first is his running of football operations. The second is his communication weaknesses as a leader. If I had a third it would probably be his ability to build leadership teams. The way he set up the board was not good. It was too many like minded, safe, bean counters rather than leaders who would sit across the table and challenge him in a constructive way.
He is absolutely fantastic at most of his job though, and it would be a great thing for football if his approach to running a football club yielded trophies in a world of corruption. THFC are still the good guys.