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Levy's Plan

glorygloryeze said:
Some of the posters key posts in order on SC:

"That’s really odd, when I posted it there was a section at the end of Sam Wallace’s article saying Lewis was bored with Spurs and wanted to sell for £2bn, that the club was being touted around the City. That part of the article now seems to have been removed.

The article is correct thought, the club is on the block and the price is 2bn, I heard that over a month ago from someone very close to the most likely buyer."

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"The most likely buyer is US based and came very close to buying us a few years ago "

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[In response to a point raised that our competitors have a higher turnover than Spurs]:

"No they don't, they used to but they don't anymore, not since the beginning of last season where we had 60-80k at Wembley every week. It is clear as day that ENIC have used the fans as a cash cow to build a property empire that they can flog to the highest bidder. Staggering to me that most of our fanbase still refuse to see this."
[Reply comes in that City, United, Chelsea and Liverpool having higher turnovers]:

United are in a different league and likely always will be, City and Chelsea yes but our turnover is now pretty similar to Liverpool, our spending on players and wages clearly isn’t.

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[In response to a poster saying that ENIC HAD invested money into club since purcahse, e.g. clearing debt, buying land, building training complex etc]:

"It is a fact, ENIC haven’t put in any money after they bought the club other than a highly dubious share issue where they totally screwed the minority shareholders, some of whom were willing to buy out ENIC. There is ample “evidence” you know things like accounts filed with Companies House to show all the capital investments have been funded by cash flow from operations I.e. payments by the fans - whether in person or armchair - and latterly a large amount of debt."

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[Further posts in replies and back-and-forth with various posters]:

"ENIC’s intention since day one has been to sell once they built a new stadium and that is what they are actively trying to do now. The club has been on the block at £2bn all summer, they just aren’t finding any takers at that price and quite frankly as fans we should be petrified if they do because any owner paying that is going to have to sweat the asset in a massive way and that means wringing out more money from us not putting assets on the pitch."

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[This one in reference to training ground and stadium]:
"All paid for with operating cash flow and debt. All capital assets that fatten up the club for sale.

Everyone points to the training centre. It has been up and running for several years now. Do Spurs have the best youth players ? No. Which clubs do ? Chelsea and Emirates Marketing Project. Why ? Because even at youth level money - wages, signing on fees - talks and spending on bricks and mortar doesn’t.

I continue to be amazed at just how many fans are taken in by the ENIC con trick, spending our money on property to enable them to sell the club while spending none of our money on improving the team/squad. Lots of promises of jam tomorrow to offset the pain today when in fact the jam won’t be for us the fans it will be for them as shareholders.

Wake up Spurs fans we are being totally ripped off by ENIC and told to thank them for it. If you can’t see that after the last transfer window then I despair.

For anyone questioning how this post belongs in this thread just consider whether anyone seriously thinks ENIC will release any funds for transfers in January."

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"Put simply I’m in a horrible dilemma. I think ENIC are terrible owners who are taking our cash - either at the stadium or our army of armchair fans - and using it to build a property portfolio while starving the football squad of the investment it needs. This should lead me to want them to sell but given the price they are demanding - £2bn - the only type of owner we get will be even more focussed on getting a return on their asset which again will only come from monetising us the fans.

To rub salt in the wound ENIC are selling us a lie by suggesting that once the stadium is built we will compete in the transfer market. We won’t compete with them as owners. Just look at the training ground, a big capital investment, wotld class, but what have we done to populate it with world class youth ? Nothing, we are constantly surpassed in the race for the best youth by Emirates Marketing Project and Chelsea because at youth level fees and wages dominate.

I don’t know about others but I’d rather see a Bale on the pitch than a cheese room in the stadium."

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[In reply to a post saying stadium ussues/delays have effected our summer transfer dealings]:

"I’m sorry but I disagree. Leaving to the side for one second that over half the capital outlay has nothing to do with the stadium itself, any capital asset should be financed over the useable life of the asset. To use a simple analogy if I buy a house I take out a 25 year mortgage I don’t say I can’t afford food for the next 3-5 years because I need to pay off all the money I owe on the house. Of course in the case of stadium financing long term sponsorship deals are a key part of the equation. As Chairman of the club Levy really only had 2 key tasks this summer, ensure the stadium was delivered and put in place long term finance and sponsorship to fund it, he flunked both."

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[In reply to a poster who has a long-back-and-forth defending ENIC; i've picked out one key post:]

"Again you are referring to the past, evident in your reference to the period since they took over. It is quite simplistic and a little insulting to suggest that the volume of comments on this thread which express concern about ENIC’s ownership solely relate to the last transfer window. There is a litany of failed moves in the transfer market that reflect a general risk aversion on ENIC’s part. I think many, including myself, gave them the benefit of the doubt while our revenues lagged those of our major rivals. However, as that gap has clearly narrowed materially in the last year the excuses that can be offered for their risk aversion simply fall away.

There are many strategies that can be employed in improving the squad but we really don’t seem to employ many of them, possibly being solely reliant on the “Poch will wave his magic wand” strategy. Sell high and buy low is a great business strategy but it no longer works in football or certainly not at the echelons we are not competing at where I think sell a little cheaply and buy a little expensively might better reflect what you need to do. As I said previously I’d really like to see us establish ourselves as the buyer of the best young talent in the world, yes some will fail but if our scouting is good we should expect more successes than failures. All of a life is a balance of risk taking and I just feel ENIC have the risk dial turned way down and that is holding us back. I could dissect all of our transfer windows since the calamity of 2016 but I don’t think that would be productive."

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Sorry for the long posts. Would love to hear people's views both in agreement and also debunking some of the above. Fascinating either way to me as i say...
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In the financial thread this was just released

This level of investment by the Club has been made possible by record revenues of £381m(2018)

That's about the same as Liverpool pre cl so the assertion we have similar revenues is bs, they will be towards 500m
 
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That SC post honestly just sounds like someone with an axe to grind, type of stuff that Harry Hotspur donut would come out with. People close to that sort of info aren't posting it on message boards at the end of the day
 
StephenH said:
Would you want them to or not?
As a fan what would you prefer?
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Depends who they sell it to. Some murderous Saudi or Russian, then no. Literally any other billionaire, fine by me.

We are currently owned by the single most useless type of billionaire - the ultra-cheap one only interested in flipping us for a profit, who hired a somewhat proficient chairman to increase our value to the point where he can make a 100-fold profit on his initial purchase price.

He's not the *worst* possible owner - that would be one which actively strips the club, which ENIC aren't openly doing. Or some murderer.

But he is entirely useless to us as a club - he might as well not exist, for all he does.

Could we get worse owners? Yes. But could we get better ones? Also yes.

Ultimately, until the club is owned by the fans, it's little but a plaything for whichever obscenely rich sheikh/businessman/consortium interested enough to buy it. And, if we are destined to be in that situation (along with 99.99% of English football clubs), I'd rather we have an owner that's actually interested in us winning things.

And if it's this rumoured American, then great. He/she/they might asset strip us, but them's the risks. They might also be like FSG, and actually put their money where their mouth is to an extent.
 
DubaiSpur said:
Depends who they sell it to. Some murderous Saudi or Russian, then no. Literally any other billionaire, fine by me.

We are currently owned by the single most useless type of billionaire - the ultra-cheap one only interested in flipping us for a profit, who hired a somewhat proficient chairman to increase our value to the point where he can make a 100-fold profit on his initial purchase price.

He's not the *worst* possible owner - that would be one which actively strips the club, which ENIC aren't openly doing. Or some murderer.

But he is entirely useless to us as a club - he might as well not exist, for all he does.

Could we get worse owners? Yes. But could we get better ones? Also yes.

Ultimately, until the club is owned by the fans, it's little but a plaything for whichever obscenely rich sheikh/businessman/consortium interested enough to buy it. And, if we are destined to be in that situation (along with 99.99% of English football clubs), I'd rather we have an owner that's actually interested in us winning things.

And if it's this rumoured American, then great. He/she/they might asset strip us, but them's the risks. They might also be like FSG, and actually put their money where their mouth is to an extent.
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This isn’t necessarily a reply to you, more generally to the SC post...but I agree with a lot of it. I completely believe we are on the market for £2bn. It’s not the first time we’ve heard that figure and it completely fits the Levy/ENIC MO - buy low, and charge ridiculously high prices for the assets under our control. We only need a few Wimmers at £18M for that strategy to pay off.

What I don’t agree with is the idea that we are screwed because the next owner will strip us. The next owner will need serious cash to be able to buy us, and then to take us on the next step of the journey they will have to have serious money to invest to be able to do that. ENIC could have run us into the ground like Villa or Saudi Sportswashing Machine, but because of their prudence they’ve made us a seriously attractive target for any future buyer. I completely agree they want to sell us, and everything - the prudence, the investment in the training ground and stadium - has been geared towards doing that.

At the end of the day, I think Levy was a Spurs fan and do did right by us in the long term but also needed to build a club to sell for a very meaty profit. And the club should benefit from that. Certainly more than if we still had a 36k seat stadium and bang average training facilities. We could have got an owner in to give us those new things anyway, but I’m thinking this just means ENIC take the profit rather than the new owners.

So I believe they are going to sell. And are shopping us around at a really high price. And I believe everything they have done has been to pump our value to that end. But does that mean we are buggered because any new owner will have no option but to strip everything that has made us attractive? No. We will have an amazing stadium in a fantastic city, facilities that should attract any player we want, and a club that is playing regularly in the top tier of continental competition.

Were ENIC the owners to get us competing with City on a long term basis? No. But have we benefited from their strategy? I believe we have. They were the right owners for a time, and new owners will be right for a diffeeent time, to take us on the next step and get us into being truly part of the elite. And that will be a damn site easier with that infrastructure we have in place. New owners will have to be less risk averse, they will have to need to operate like a top club, with the commercial nous, the weight in the transfer market, and with the vision to help us maintain our position and improve upon it.

I agree, if we are sold to Saudis or Russians it will be a big let down. And IF, we are sold to asset strippers who will tear it all down, that will also be clearly a catastrophe. But I trust that we will get new owners that will take us on the next step. It will be in their financial best interests to do so, and in return they get a seat at the top table of the most ludicrously money spinning sports league in the world. It’s an attractive proposition for a select few groups, and I hope we get one of them. If we don’t, I will be right there with the rest of the mob complaining to the high heavens. ENIC did not operate like a Roman or a Sheikh, but they never said they would. If we end up in bad hands following their sale, I will be furious. The likelihood - purely because anyone who buys us will be financially incentivised to keep us progressing - is that we should end up in the hands of a group that will enable us to do exactly that.
 
BrainOfLevy said:
This isn’t necessarily a reply to you, more generally to the SC post...but I agree with a lot of it. I completely believe we are on the market for £2bn. It’s not the first time we’ve heard that figure and it completely fits the Levy/ENIC MO - buy low, and charge ridiculously high prices for the assets under our control. We only need a few Wimmers at £18M for that strategy to pay off.

What I don’t agree with is the idea that we are screwed because the next owner will strip us. The next owner will need serious cash to be able to buy us, and then to take us on the next step of the journey they will have to have serious money to invest to be able to do that. ENIC could have run us into the ground like Villa or Saudi Sportswashing Machine, but because of their prudence they’ve made us a seriously attractive target for any future buyer. I completely agree they want to sell us, and everything - the prudence, the investment in the training ground and stadium - has been geared towards doing that.

At the end of the day, I think Levy was a Spurs fan and do did right by us in the long term but also needed to build a club to sell for a very meaty profit. And the club should benefit from that. Certainly more than if we still had a 36k seat stadium and bang average training facilities. We could have got an owner in to give us those new things anyway, but I’m thinking this just means ENIC take the profit rather than the new owners.

So I believe they are going to sell. And are shopping us around at a really high price. And I believe everything they have done has been to pump our value to that end. But does that mean we are buggered because any new owner will have no option but to strip everything that has made us attractive? No. We will have an amazing stadium in a fantastic city, facilities that should attract any player we want, and a club that is playing regularly in the top tier of continental competition.

Were ENIC the owners to get us competing with City on a long term basis? No. But have we benefited from their strategy? I believe we have. They were the right owners for a time, and new owners will be right for a diffeeent time, to take us on the next step and get us into being truly part of the elite. And that will be a damn site easier with that infrastructure we have in place. New owners will have to be less risk averse, they will have to need to operate like a top club, with the commercial nous, the weight in the transfer market, and with the vision to help us maintain our position and improve upon it.

I agree, if we are sold to Saudis or Russians it will be a big let down. And IF, we are sold to asset strippers who will tear it all down, that will also be clearly a catastrophe. But I trust that we will get new owners that will take us on the next step. It will be in their financial best interests to do so, and in return they get a seat at the top table of the most ludicrously money spinning sports league in the world. It’s an attractive proposition for a select few groups, and I hope we get one of them. If we don’t, I will be right there with the rest of the mob complaining to the high heavens. ENIC did not operate like a Roman or a Sheikh, but they never said they would. If we end up in bad hands following their sale, I will be furious. The likelihood - purely because anyone who buys us will be financially incentivised to keep us progressing - is that we should end up in the hands of a group that will enable us to do exactly that.
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I actually agree with you on almost everything. :)

The only thing I'd take issue with is the idea that ENIC were the right owners for a time - I'd cautiously agree, but I'd add that the question here is 'for how long?'.

My general feeling is that they've overstayed their welcome. Certainly not to the extent that they're now actively and maliciously detrimental to the club (i.e, asset-stripping et al), but only that they have nothing at all to add to us in any way. Not money (although they never did), not expertise, and certainly not exposure.

Which is why them selling would be just fine by me. Not to just anyone, but if they can sell to someone who passes the bare minimum in terms of morality (i.e, isn't an active murderer or dictator) and is willing to actually spend some money on us, then that would be a fitting end to their long reign.

I'd give them a 6/10 in terms of ownership, shake Levy's hand on a job somewhat well done, and see them off. And then I'd actually be optimistic about us having the ambition to actually break that last glass ceiling and win things.

Or we end up with an asset-stripper who sends into League Two with a 62,000-seater stadium - but hey, that's the name of the game. :p
 
Ultimately most fans are onside with Levy because he is delivering, step by step.

We’ve seen that spending limited millions (say 100m) doesn’t really get you anywhere. City needed 1bn+ spent. Villa had an owner willing to invest millions, it failed spectacularly.

Levy’s model is far better. Invest 10s of millions to steadily grow. What is good for ENIC in this sense is good for fans too. Buying up property for half a sissoko just makes sense and gives Spurs possibilities.

The Jo Lewis is “bored” itk is patently gonads. He’s 80 or whatever! What would he spend the money on that he doesn’t have? Spurs is a link to his past and probably his future - his son, grandchildren etc.

I’ve always thought Levy is more likely to be the party looking to cash in. He’s wealthy, but doesn’t have hundreds of millions - as he would if Spurs was sold. It’s also an exit strategy for him. But, it’s personal to him too. Again something linked to family, and he would like to see nothing more than Spurs winning the league. In a way his work remains unfinished until he delivers that. Which I think he can. It must be frustrating for him because progress is always twice as slow as you’d like. But progress is clear and steady. Sometimes you have to take one step back to move forward again. Levy has always been open to investment, but will only sell at the top of the clubs valuation. Probably in his heart he doesn’t want to sell, so it would need sheik like money to change the guard.


Sitting on my porcelain throne using glory-glory.co.uk mobile app
 
The idea of someone Paying £2B is the bit I don’t get....

The club isn’t worth half that to anyone with a brain

If we owned the ground outright I’d understand a higher valuation

Our current squad is worth a packet but players depreciate we quickly as they appreciate

We own the training ground but that’s worth what £100m...

We’re gonna have a £500m debt on the stadium

So how does anyone get near to £2b a value
 
Sadly I doubt the majority of fans today share our ethics as to owners!
Was there not some controversy with Nike’s manufacturing practices recently?
 
StephenH said:
Sadly I doubt the majority of fans today share our ethics as to owners!
Was there not some controversy with Nike’s manufacturing practices recently?
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I agree most modern fans couldn't care less who owns the club as long as they win things, I didn't support Spurs because they won things I supported them because my dad did and have my kids and grandkids.
 
K.D.D.D.D.Soc said:
I agree most modern fans couldn't care less who owns the club as long as they win things, I didn't support Spurs because they won things I supported them because my dad did and have my kids and grandkids.
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Fan back in the day didn't even think about who owned a club.
I doubt if the City fans really care who owns them, why should they lose sleep, they can't control it. Which makes me think, are we being a little 'holier-than-thou' as it suits our current situation, I'm not sure?
If Roman had bought us instead of Chelsea and we had the trophies in the cabinet would we really care, I doubt it.
 
I think it’s more the fact that they have quite clearly bought any success they have. That’s what I couldn’t handle, the fact that any success we had wasn’t earnt and meant nothing.
 
StephenH said:
Fan back in the day didn't even think about who owned a club.
I doubt if the City fans really care who owns them, why should they lose sleep, they can't control it. Which makes me think, are we being a little 'holier-than-thou' as it suits our current situation, I'm not sure?
If Roman had bought us instead of Chelsea and we had the trophies in the cabinet would we really care, I doubt it.
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Exactly right. You’d probably get some fans who would care like the lads who set up FC United but the majority, me included, would be revelling in winning leagues and cups.

I’m happy with Levy and Enic though. What they’ve done over 17 years is incredible and no other top club has made that much progress organically.
 
If we are sold in the coming years it would seem that Cain Hoy group are most likely.

Does anyone know who the major players were in that consortium, combined wealth etc?

The stadium should generate huge sums, so there shouldn't really be a need for a Roman/Sheikh like behaviour anyway and certainly not to their degree, where they are personally investing billions on players.
 
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