This week, US citizens breathed a collective sigh of relief as George W. Bush finally took his finger off the button and relinquished his grasp on the White House front door key. Bush came into office in 2001, the same year that Spurs Chairman Daniel Levy took over at White Hart Lane and, for some supporters, his departure would be met by a similar level of rapture.
Levy’s reign has seen more than it’s fair share of turmoil with no less than 7 Managers, 2 Directors Of Football (DoF) and more than 200 million spent on players in that time. Players to have joined (and since left) the club in that time include Dimitar Berbatov, Robbie Keane, Michael Carrick, Fredi Kanoute and others, including Luka Modric, Jonathan Woodgate and Jermain Defoe remain at the club. This revolving door policy of staff and players is common in top flight football nowadays but Tottenham’s treatment of personnel has left them in a situation where stability is lacking and the side find themselves in real trouble in the Premier League.
Certainly, Levy must shoulder a large part of the responsibility for this debacle. His introduction of the Director of Football system to Spurs (recently dispensed with) has led the club to build a group of players current manager Harry Redknapp brandished a ‘mish-mash’. Furthermore, the fractured lines of communication between board, managers and players has been evident at the club for many years now, beginning with Glenn Hoddle’s frequent and notorious spats with David Pleat, continuing with Jacques Santini’s clashes with Frank Arnesen and culminating with Martin Jol and Juande Ramos’ incongruent working relationship with Damien Comolli.
The sheer amount of employees mentioned in those two roles gives an indication of the scale of the failure of Levy’s ‘continental’ system. Upon introducing the method to the club, the chairman announced that it would lead to greater stability and continuity for the club, the idea being that when a manager leaves, there would still be a senior member of the management staff remaining to keep the club’s objectives on track. This clearly hasn’t happened and the benefits of the system, at least to an outsider, seem very few and far between.
Despite these errors, Levy should not be held totally responsible. Three of the managers he has employed (Hoddle, Santini, and Ramos) have all been managers with extremely good track records who have clearly struggled with the DoF system. However, they have also all struggled to find consistent results and performances despite having large transfer budgets and talented players to work with. Of the three he has sacked, Hoddle is the most baffling, his firing coming only 6 games into the season after having spent £25 million the previous summer.
Dutchman Jol had 2 very strong seasons at Spurs, including two 5th place finishes, but towards the end of his reign his Spurs side rarely turned in good performances and the capitulation to Getafe in his last game epitomised the regression that the team had suffered. Spurs fans were split on the sacking, but all were united at their disgust in the treatment of a manager who had brought them a level of relative success. Levy certainly appears to be better at hiring than firing.
In contrast to the sacking of Jol, very few fans complained at the acquisition of Juande Ramos; a manager with a superb track record of both winning and playing attractive football. Levy trusted the Spaniard with footballing decisions including his advice to sell Berbatov and coaching of the team. However, it is clear now that Ramos did not repay that faith, a poor run of results after the initial success of a Carling Cup win sealing his fate.
With the appointment of Harry Redknapp, Levy has attempted to steady a sinking ship. Initial results were very promising but the recent league form shown by Spurs and their near-capitulation in the Carling Cup semi-final against Championship side Burnley have brought the jitters back and the club know that they are in a relegation battle till the end of the season should things not improve drastically.
Levy has made some mistakes. His persistence with a misfiring DoF system has hampered the club for years, exacerbated by underperforming players and a profligate transfer system. Despite that, he appears to have learnt from his errors and has not been too proud to rectify them; just not always in the most tactful way.
Levy has had success. He has presided over the best two league finishes in the past 20 years, 2 Carling Cup finals (soon to be 3 and including one victory), a return to European football, the signings of some world class footballers which the club have made a huge profit on and also put the club on a fantastic financial footing. Indeed, Levy’s fine running of the White Hart Lane club’s finances has often been used as a stick with which to beat him, accused of being overly obsessed with money rather than success. Fans would do well to remember that it is virtually impossible to compete at the top end of English football without this stability and considering Spurs have never played in the UEFA Champions League, his proficiency in this area has been nothing short of brilliant.
Redknapp’s regime appears to be Levy’s last throw of the dice. Providing the club stay in the Premier League, should Levy leave then he will have left the club in a good position to be able to progress, despite the disappointment of the last year. His biggest crime, as evinced by his sacking of Jol, would appear to be over-ambition. In his eagerness to take the club into the upper echelons of British and European football Levy has over-reached, sacking managers too soon and signing players (on the advice of his staff) who were perhaps more fashionable than right for the club at the time. Despite those good intentions, it seems very unlikely that that will be enough for fans to remember his regime with any affection at all.
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