ENIC

[billyiddo]

Selling big players then improving the team after means people would have quickly forgot about it.

Going by our transfers at the time and our lack of functioning transfer department means we'd have likely not improved either way, so even with hindsight I think we were always going to suffer. The issue was we didn't have the set up off the field to kick on

 

[glasgowspur]

And that is the issue. He was (IMO) too concerned with that. it's well known that Poch wanted to cash in on Eriksen once he knew Eriksen would not sign a new deal; Levy refused to sell for anything remotely reasonable. It's also known that he wanted to move Toby on, again, Levy wouldn't do it. Those are just two. We did not trust the manager. He made the point that the Liverpool we played in Madrid was pretty different to the Liverpool Klopp first inherited.

I honestly don't think that with Eriksen levy was thinking in terms of the money.
Levy could not understand why Eriksen would won't to leave and also that if we sold him levy was going to get all the flak.
Eriksen wanted out, that was his plan, he never hid it, from day one he always said he wanted to experience new cultures and would move on.
Levy did not understand it, but I also think he could see the cracks beginning to open up and keeping Eriksen would be key to it not all being landed at levys door.
Turns out to be the opposite, keeping Eriksen hurried it along.

 

[thfcsteff]

I honestly don't think that with Eriksen levy was thinking in terms of the money.
Levy could not understand why Eriksen would won't to leave and also that if we sold him levy was going to get all the flak.
Eriksen wanted out, that was his plan, he never hid it, from day one he always said he wanted to experience new cultures and would move on.
Levy did not understand it, but I also think he could see the cracks beginning to open up and keeping Eriksen would be key to it not all being landed at levys door.
Turns out to be the opposite, keeping Eriksen hurried it along.

There's a story about Levy and Eriksen which went around at the time (who knows if it is apocryphal).
The story goes that Eriksen wanted a much-improved contract.
Levy said he couldn't afford the terms Eriksen wanted.
Eriksen then heard about Levy's finances (in 2016 he got around 2.8 mill, in 2017 he got around 6 mill) getting (I believe?) a 3 mill bonus in 2017/18. The word is that when Eriksen heard about the bonus, he decided he would not negotiate. Poch apparently went and saw Eriksen in Copenhagen in summer 2018 over dinner, and came back knowing he was done with us. At which point we could've sold to Barca, but Levy wanted massive money. We then had a chance to tell to RM, again, Levy wanted massive money.

I think you're absolutely right re: why Levy did it, fused with his desire to squeeze the most out of any deal. Which is madness. Eriksen cost us what, 12 million? We'd have made huge money even selling him for 60-70 mill!!!!

I think Levy's sense of self has got in the way at a few very critical moments. Bad with the good. The greatest business chairman in football, however fatally flawed with on pitch matters (albeit I do think he cared).

 

[Baleforce]

Eriksen was arguably the best player in the world at that time, selling for anything less a world record fee would have been unacceptable.

 

[SissokoWasGood (BoL)]

There's a story about Levy and Eriksen which went around at the time (who knows if it is apocryphal).
The story goes that Eriksen wanted a much-improved contract.
Levy said he couldn't afford the terms Eriksen wanted.
Eriksen then heard about Levy's finances (in 2016 he got around 2.8 mill, in 2017 he got around 6 mill) getting (I believe?) a 3 mill bonus in 2017/18. The word is that when Eriksen heard about the bonus, he decided he would not negotiate. Poch apparently went and saw Eriksen in Copenhagen in summer 2018 over dinner, and came back knowing he was done with us. At which point we could've sold to Barca, but Levy wanted massive money. We then had a chance to tell to RM, again, Levy wanted massive money.

I think you're absolutely right re: why Levy did it, fused with his desire to squeeze the most out of any deal. Which is madness. Eriksen cost us what, 12 million? We'd have made huge money even selling him for 60-70 mill!!!!

I think Levy's sense of self has got in the way at a few very critical moments. Bad with the good. The greatest business chairman in football, however fatally flawed with on pitch matters (albeit I do think he cared).

This is actually incredible looking back. Because it’s all so needless. And it’s so obvious that if the player wants to go, and the manager wants him to go / is happy for him to go, and the profit on the deal is more than enough, then the club should be able to withstand it and be better for it.

That Levy got in the way is just dumbfounding. So much realisation about the actual ability of people in power is becoming clear to me with this season, as looking back I can see all of these justifications I remember thinking for why Levy was doing it, I assumed there was some financial mechanics at play that meant we benefitted from keeping these players. But it really was just a prideful misjudgement wasn’t it? Sell Modric, and he’s the best player on the team, and we stay stuck as the best of the rest club, and yeah that’s bad. But sell Eriksen, replace him with a player that wants to be here, that compounds the cultural impact that our foundations allow, that will run hard, that will fit in with the team, and we’d continue to press home our strategic advantage. He just couldn’t see it that way and willingly blew up the best times a lot of us had watching Spurs.

I think Walker out and Trippier in is a really good example. I remember when Walker made clear he wanted out, and the next game I think was an NLD. He played Trippier without a second thought, and we were bloody brilliant in that game. It wasn’t because Trippier was like for like, or at that time as good. But he was good, and the trust in him made him perform. But it also reinforced the cultural foundations. It was a message to every player that saw Walker wanting to leave that said ‘it doesn’t matter if he goes, it’s next man up and what we have is bigger than any one player’ and the team just went out there and proved it.

It is insane to me that this is what is happening with the players and coaching stuff, but this idea doesn’t seem be understood by the ultimate decision makers. And the ultimate manifestation of that is this season.

 

[ricky2tricky4city]

He’s not a finance expert.

Well he does call himself the Bookkeeper?

 

[Lemonade Money]

Eriksen was arguably the best player in the world at that time

Ronaldo and Messi say hi.
Eriksen wasn't even the best player at Tottenham.

 

[MartyFunkhouser]

Ronaldo and Messi say hi.
Eriksen wasn't even the best player at Tottenham.

He was up there.

His assists record was utterly world class.

 

[Finney Is Back]

Clicky headline. Roll eyes.

The impressive rise in profits upto the completion of the stadium were a tactical move as we went into the final reconciliation of refinancing the stadium debt. It paid off in the low long term rates we secured.

COVID then took it's toll (as it did on everything and everyone) on income and profits.

As noted above the circa £70m depreciation charge on the stadium makes it appear we are trading at a bad loss. Remove that, we are not.

Two things to worry about in the accounts.
Player trading and transfer fees owed. (Hence our shift back to young recruits)
Increased operational costs. (Yep inflation is a killer)

Our debt is not a worry (remember that £250m of our long term debt isn't the stadium but the refinanced COVID loan that bridged that particular event)...to service this debt pile isn't an issue as a yearly cost (as long as the current mob don't carry on as they started with Macquarie loan nonsense)

If we go down....we are certainly going to have to trim any fat and hope we bounce straight back......you could say what we need is an astute safe pair of hands. The irony.

I find it strange when people say 'our debt is not a worry' when our debt is the highest in the PL and has been increasing year on year. Our debt is a considerable worry. I'm hoping we see ENIC sell at some point in the near future and the new owners pay down a considerable portion of the debt (of course what I was really hoping for was that the owners would pay down the debt themselves, either via liquidity injection due to the huge appreciation in asset value they have been lucky enough to enjoy or via selling a minority stake to an outside investor to do the same thing).

 

[Finney Is Back]

You’re right but I imagine the reaction from fans if he’d sold Toby, Dele or Eriksen in 2018/19. I’d have hated it and accused the club of lacking ambition. I think very few fans would have understood the vision at that time unless results were instant.

Hindsight tells us it would have been the right decision though.

So what? A great CEO does what is right for the business (or in this case football club) not what will give him the least flak from the fans.

 

[ricky2tricky4city]

I find it strange when people say 'our debt is not a worry' when our debt is the highest in the PL and has been increasing year on year. Our debt is a considerable worry. I'm hoping we see ENIC sell at some point in the near future and the new owners pay down a considerable portion of the debt (of course what I was really hoping for was that the owners would pay down the debt themselves, either via liquidity injection due to the huge appreciation in asset value they have been lucky enough to enjoy or via selling a minority stake to an outside investor to do the same thing).

Equally I find it strange that people say 'our debt is the largest in the PL'....as if every team has built themselves a stadium from scratch. Perhaps we could have avoided that by paying out of cash flow?. I'm sure we've all sensibly done that with our own houses. Roll eyes.

Now if I was the owner of the club and given £800m, I wouldn't pay a penny off our debt for obvious reasons. (Beyond anything that sticks out as expensive debt). The debt will be considered in any sale price, so it's a moot point from the owners pov. And a cheap debt pile is actually a positive for any buyer/takeover..

 

[DeanoAustin]

So what? A great CEO does what is right for the business (or in this case football club) not what will give him the least flak from the fans.

It was far from clear at that time that it was the right decision though. When Toby was frozen out, a lot of fans weren’t happy with the decision. And, let’s be fair, Sanchez wasn’t as good despite costing a fortune.

Selling Eriksen, the lad “who made us tick”, would have been incredibly risky because where do you find a player near that level? And Levy is risk averse. You can see that in how he ran the club.

Hindsight strongly suggests it would probably have been the right thing to do but it wasn’t anywhere near obvious at the time. You also have to say, much as I love the guy, Poch’s record in the transfer market was patchy too.

 

[Finney Is Back]

Equally I find it strange that people say 'our debt is the largest in the PL'....as if every team has built themselves a stadium from scratch. Perhaps we could have avoided that by paying out of cash flow?. I'm sure we've all sensibly done that with our own houses. Roll eyes.

Now if I was the owner of the club and given £800m, I wouldn't pay a penny off our debt for obvious reasons. (Beyond anything that sticks out as expensive debt). The debt will be considered in any sale price, so it's a moot point from the owners pov. And a cheap debt pile is actually a positive for any buyer/takeover..

Why do you find it strange when people say something that is an absolute fact?

Of course there are reasons why we have such a large debt, but unfortunately that is what we have. The debt is also considerable larger than it needed to be.... Did we really need the massive additional expense of building a stadium in the hope of getting an NFL franchise for example? Also should we have turned down that £150 million plus HSBC, 10 year stadium sponsorship deal?

If we end up going down, the level of debt we are carrying could prove pretty catastrophic. To say it is 'not a worry' is an opinion I don't share, especially when we consider that our net debt position is increasing quite considerably with each year that passes.

 

[Finney Is Back]

It was far from clear at that time that it was the right decision though. When Toby was frozen out, a lot of fans weren’t happy with the decision. And, let’s be fair, Sanchez wasn’t as good despite costing a fortune.

Selling Eriksen, the lad “who made us tick”, would have been incredibly risky because where do you find a player near that level? And Levy is risk averse. You can see that in how he ran the club.

Hindsight strongly suggests it would probably have been the right thing to do but it wasn’t anywhere near obvious at the time. You also have to say, much as I love the guy, Poch’s record in the transfer market was patchy too.

Again. So what?

Pochettino had done a fantastic job but wasn't trusted appropriately by the CEO. The CEO had also presided over our scouting, data and recruitment structure going to brick. He basically created the perfect storm for us to fail.

 

[DeanoAustin]

Again. So what?

Pochettino had done a fantastic job but wasn't trusted appropriately by the CEO. The CEO had also presided over our scouting, data and recruitment structure going to brick. He basically created the perfect storm for us to fail.

What seems obvious in hindsight wasn’t so obvious at the time. It’s easy to hammer Levy for not selling Toby and Eriksen in 2018 but they were two players arguably at their peak. It would have been incredibly risky to do it and would have fed into the narrative that we were a selling club with very limited ambition.

Levy is risk averse and erred on the side of caution. Hindsight has proven that his decision making, on the whole, since 2019 has been poor but I find it hard to hammer him if I judge him for not selling Toby and Eriksen based on what he knew at the time as opposed to what we know now.

Poch has been proven right in that we needed changes at that time. Whether he could have made those changes successfully is also open to debate.

I think we can also conclusively say now that when Poch talked about being brave, he wasn’t saying “sticking with what we have is being brave”.

 

[Yiddo]

If we manage to stay up, they have a lot to prove in the summer. It should be nothing less than backing the manager and spending a boat load to get us back towards the top of the table.

I know it won’t happen and we will be shopping in the bargain bins but you always live in hope.

 

[MartyFunkhouser]

If we manage to stay up, they have a lot to prove in the summer. It should be nothing less than backing the manager and spending a boat load to get us back towards the top of the table.

I know it won’t happen and we will be shopping in the bargain bins but you always live in hope.

I would 100% take a cull of some of the so called leaders, keep a core, bring in one or two experienced and start to look at the youth set up and introduce them.

 

[Finney Is Back]

If we manage to stay up, they have a lot to prove in the summer. It should be nothing less than backing the manager and spending a boat load to get us back towards the top of the table.

I know it won’t happen and we will be shopping in the bargain bins but you always live in hope.

We can’t afford to spend a boat load. Instead we need Vinai to improve the structure so that the decent amount of money that we can afford to spend is spent far better and there is a coherent plan when we change manager.

 

[Finney Is Back]

What seems obvious in hindsight wasn’t so obvious at the time. It’s easy to hammer Levy for not selling Toby and Eriksen in 2018 but they were two players arguably at their peak. It would have been incredibly risky to do it and would have fed into the narrative that we were a selling club with very limited ambition.

Levy is risk averse and erred on the side of caution. Hindsight has proven that his decision making, on the whole, since 2019 has been poor but I find it hard to hammer him if I judge him for not selling Toby and Eriksen based on what he knew at the time as opposed to what we know now.

Poch has been proven right in that we needed changes at that time. Whether he could have made those changes successfully is also open to debate.

I think we can also conclusively say now that when Poch talked about being brave, he wasn’t saying “sticking with what we have is being brave”.

Not obvious to all no. There were a few of us on here though that were very critical of our recruitment department consisting of Steve Hitchen as well as being critical of how Poch was treated despite him doing brilliantly.

 

[DeanoAustin]

Not obvious to all no. There were a few of us on here though that were very critical of our recruitment department consisting of Steve Hitchens as well as being critical of how Poch was treated despite him doing brilliantly.

Most were critical of recruitment, me included. I was very critical of the club for not bringing players in. Only the few who subscribed to the “by being brave, Poch means sticking with what we have” school of thought weren’t critical of recruitment.

But how many were saying “we should sell Toby, Eriksen and Dele”? Because we aren’t talking about who we were bringing in here, we’re talking about who should have gone. I’d have happily had Grealish, Wijnaldum and Mane but over N’jie, Nkoudou, Janssen and Sissoko. Not over our first 11/13 players.