We did have some good debates. Not just on randomination, across the length and breadth of the forum, and I've enjoyed sparring with you during the periods when I have enough free time to devote to intensive usage of this forum
. But I feel you're mistaken about my motives somewhat: when plentiful evidence is available for a position, I generally make it a point to try to use it. But there is almost no such evidence available for anything that goes on within our club: almost none.
Levy is one of the most silent, stony chairmen out there, notoriously averse to publicity. Joe Lewis is worse in terms of transparency. And the Trust doesn't ask the questions I'd like answered when they meet the club officials during their annual jaunt. In short, we as fans have very little information about what goes on within the club. Now, that's the club's prerogative (not that I agree with it), but when it comes to guessing what happened behind the scenes during clearly acrimonious periods like AVB's tenure, the only things we can reliably turn to for a bit of insight are AVB's words themselves and the papers (who, despite the hate they get, occasionally have genuine connections inside the club: see Jason Burt or Greg Stobart for details).
Ergo, a lot of discussion around the events surrounding our football club centres on inferences: inferring what we can, based on the extremely limited evidence available to us. That's part and parcel of football discussion, but when it comes to Spurs, it is particularly pertinent. Now, our club has consistently maintained in public statements that it has 'ambition', and that it would 'seek to strengthen the squad in key areas', summer after summer. Yet, AVB (the ultimate insider) has now come out and snarled that said 'ambition' was a blatant lie, that he had his best players sold out from under him (the exaggeration around VdV excepted) and replaced with second-class replacements he didn't want or ask for, that he was sold (in his words) 'false promises'. Further back in our past, Harry himself moaned that Saha and Nelsen were not players he asked for, and were not players any manager would ask for when challenging for the title (or words along those lines). Ramos bemoaned his best players being sold out from under him and being replaced with inferior signings (I believe he put the blame for his terrible start squarely on Levy's shoulders for selling Berbatov and Keane in the same summer without signing adequate replacements).
There is a cumulative trend of managers coming out and blasting our extremely risk-averse, scrimp-and-save signing philosophy, and here lies the essential dichotomy: I don't believe managers of the calibre of Ramos and AVB (who were both UEFA Cup/Europa League winners: Ramos won it twice, AVB once, and AVB even went unbeaten while doing it) would have accepted the job at Spurs if we were totally honest about our 'ambition' and the extent of control and backing we were actually prepared to give them over their transfers. You might say that they both had points to prove and thus came out with these complaints after their sacking, but even Brendan Rodgers (who had almost no stake in this fight, having been comfortably ensconced at Liverpool at the time) blasted the way our club was run. All of it points to something being amiss at Tottenham, with the suspicion resting on deception by our chairman and board as opposed to stunningly differing demands made by the managers post-signing.
Now, how to prove it? How to prove that AVB was deceived? Or, alternatively, how to prove that AVB wasn't deceived and that he was fooled? In the first instance, we have the papers to look to: paper after paper after paper (many of them reputable publications, like the Guardian and the Telegraph) saying that Levy would 'back' his man with significant funds in the summer. Now, perhaps they were all bull****, even the reputable ones: perhaps we never intended to hand AVB a transfer budget big enough to complete a deal for Moutinho. But we handed him
no transfer budget at all. We made a profit that window, same as every other bloody f*cking window since then. He had literally no funds to spend that weren't generated by a player sale. Now, again, looking at that, do you believe that we could get a manager like him (smarting, looking to win trophies and rebuild his reputation as the best young manager in the game, with interest from clubs across Europe and even Brazil) if we'd told him up-front that he'd have to make do with just 'sell-to-buy' and using youth players to fill in the gaps? He gave up some sort of employment clause Chelsea offered him that guaranteed him 11 million quid if he didn't take up a job in England again to come to Spurs: do you honestly believe he'd do that if we told him we'd give him no money to buy the players he wanted, and that he'd have to sell to buy and use youth players to forge a team that could qualify for the CL and do better than even Harry's supremely talented side?
Logically, it can easily be inferred that there is something deceptive about the way our club hires its managers and sells our 'ambition' to them, based just on that chain of reasoning above, which was in turn based on both paper articles beforehand that were proved wrong, obvious inferences based on our transfer activity that summer and later on, and ultimately the words of the manager himself. The alternative is inferring the opposite based on available information which indicates a contrary standpoint.
And here's the point: there is almost no information available that indicates that we were upfront with him that is any more reliable than the information which indicates that he was lied to. One or two articles from the Telegraph carrying the club line, the now infamous angry outburst from the club spokesman, and nothing else. Our club's secretiveness prevents any great disclosures that show that AVB wasn't lied to, and all that remains is to pick one side or the other based on the evidence available.
But again, inferences can be made to determine the viability of the club line. Based mainly on the parping on about 'ambition' and 'strengthening in key areas', which continued even as we registered profit after profit in transfer windows, even after we gave Harry Nelsen and Saha when we were in with a shot of the title, when we sold Bale but didn't up our wage budget to bring in players AVB wanted, and hell, again, didn't even spend more than we earned.
That isn't 'ambition'. That's lying to the fans, and to the world. Not a big lie (there are always justifications saying that we're ambitious because we built a training ground and might get the NDP done 20 years after first admitting its necessity), but a lie nonetheless given the definition of pursuing 'ambition', which plainly doesn't include selling your best players and then spending less than you get in sales on replacing them. And that doesn't bode well when it comes to the possibility of the club being entirely up-front when recruiting its managers.
Look, there is little evidence that comes out about back-room dealings within our club either way. The only real 'official' sources we get are managers routinely angry about the lack of support they received and the club blandly (or angrily) denying their statements while continuously registering transfer profits and claiming 'ambition' while doing so. There's papers, but evidently you don't hold them to a high standard (and you may well be justified).
All we can make on impossibly thin evidence like this are inferences. And that's what I've done. And I have to say, judging by the way transfers under Poch have been handled so far, I don't think my inferences about the way our club is run are inherently flawed.
Is that illogical, to take sides so vehemently when the evidence either way is thin? Perhaps, but I'd like to think being a fan of this club Figbirds me from
total logic when pleading my case, when it comes to Tottenham Hotspur at least.
