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Daniel Levy - Chairman

Bullet said:
Yeah, interesting. Some really good buys too.

Seeing N'Jie for £8m makes me shudder... but then seeing Pritchard out for £8m makes me realise that the market nowadays is VERY different to the past.
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I've given up paying attention to transfer fees now. No footballer is worth millions of pounds.
 
Earz said:
I've given up paying attention to transfer fees now. No footballer is worth millions of pounds.
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But they are though....if we got in Messi for millions of pounds and he helped us win lots and we played amazing football ... he was "worth" it
 
RAWKite said:
Highly successful at what?
Spurs have had no consistent structure since Levy's had control, they've gone from having manager after manager and been muddled about who how they want to recruit. To sum it up their head of recruitment walked out on them on the eve of the season, to claim Levy is highly successful, just to back up your point, is fanciful.
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Another RAWKite said:
Their income is two thirds of ours but they continually outperform us.
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First RAWKite again said:
Again..... I repeat highly successful at what?
They've had no consistent strategy since Levy's been there, yet you claim he's been "highly successful"
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I always find it hilarious, fans of other clubs talking down our achievements. To me, it's absolutely unarguable, to achieve what we have and will achieve with our constraints, is simply brilliant. I don't think there is another story like it.

I'll sometimes read the comments pages on the football sites and see other fans saying 'but yeah, what have they won recently?' as if winning a trophy with an unlimited transfer budget should be anything other than par for the course. That's literally the only real argument I see back at us, as if it's some absolute game changer. So cringe. Let's not pretend United and City languishing about in the Europa places isn't absolutely laughable considering that they thought 'it will be different this year, never again Leicester!' and that is was worth spending all their money to buy success. Let's not pretend Chelsea slumping to an honourable 10th place finish as defending champions wasn't just hilariously bad.

Fundamentally, getting more and competing with clubs that think transfer budgets are the be all and end all is simply a much better achievement. It takes more work, careful planning, better coaching, more trust in youth, and the entire club moving in one direction and being behind one plan. I don't see how that can be argued.

But what's this? Levy isn't impressive because we've had no clear strategy since he joined? No doubt he's been learning from his mistakes, but that's kind of the point, he has learnt. Has Mike Ashley learnt from his mistakes yet? Has Randy Lerner? Has Ellis Short? What makes Tottenham so special? We have someone that learnt. And as if that takes away from the fact that as the one RAWKite says, we continually out perform them. How does a lack of a 15 year running strategy take away from that? Bizarre, nonsensical line of argument.

I really think clubs don't have anything they can say against us, and are really reaching. It's quite funny. Would love to read that entire thread.
 
The no clear strategy is a complete overreach, Levy has always had a clear strategy (or at least for last decade), and its something like this

- Ensure a sound financial model around player buying/selling, i.e. buy young/potential, don't let contracts run down, make buying clubs that try to poach our players paying maximum fee.
- Drive a progressive view to a football club, i.e. DOF model, top tier training/rehab facilities, building stadium with view to other income models (NFL, events, corporate), complete stadium as part of that vision to be able to compete on closer fiscal parity to other clubs
- Develop youth, buy English when possible
- Be a strong contributor to local area
- Go for progressive managers that will help the club create a sum that is greater than the parts
- Drive on field results progressively year over year, first it was qualify for Europe, then establish ourselves as best of rest, qualify for CL, now its make CL a regular and begin to challenge

If you think Levy doesn't have a strategy or hasn't achieved anything, you just need to look at the numbers

- Spurs finishing positions over last 7-9 years (more consistent, and finished above everyone else bar 1 team)
- Comparative total/net spend on players and wages
- Spurs finances over same period
- Names of clubs that were our peer rivals when Levy came in and where are they now

When you add in the sugar daddy, money doping that has occurred in that period, its even more impressive. I have no doubt, minus Cheat$ki & City, Spurs would have been a CL regular and probably have a couple of cups and maybe even a title at this point.
 
Raziel said:
The no clear strategy is a complete overreach, Levy has always had a clear strategy (or at least for last decade), and its something like this

- Ensure a sound financial model around player buying/selling, i.e. buy young/potential, don't let contracts run down, make buying clubs that try to poach our players paying maximum fee.
- Drive a progressive view to a football club, i.e. DOF model, top tier training/rehab facilities, building stadium with view to other income models (NFL, events, corporate), complete stadium as part of that vision to be able to compete on closer fiscal parity to other clubs
- Develop youth, buy English when possible
- Be a strong contributor to local area
- Go for progressive managers that will help the club create a sum that is greater than the parts
- Drive on field results progressively year over year, first it was qualify for Europe, then establish ourselves as best of rest, qualify for CL, now its make CL a regular and begin to challenge

If you think Levy doesn't have a strategy or hasn't achieved anything, you just need to look at the numbers

- Spurs finishing positions over last 7-9 years (more consistent, and finished above everyone else bar 1 team)
- Comparative total/net spend on players and wages
- Spurs finances over same period
- Names of clubs that were our peer rivals when Levy came in and where are they now

When you add in the sugar daddy, money doping that has occurred in that period, its even more impressive. I have no doubt, minus Cheat$ki & City, Spurs would have been a CL regular and probably have a couple of cups and maybe even a title at this point.
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You're completely right. Just remember this is a Liverpool fan saying we have no strategy. Give a brick what they think! For all the reasons you outline, we know we have the best (or at the very least one of) chairman in the world.

Liverpool have done f-all except for that title run under Brendon and a few cup runs. It's been almost 5 years since they've won anything and we have outperformed them in the league more often than not in recent memory. That's what they cannot handle, and I couldn't give a monkeys. The amount of money they have spunked on players is incredible and the amount they pay in wages. We are a completely different beast which is what they don't understand.

One of my Liverpool supporting acquaintances, said that we should be ashamed of ourselves for copying their Kop (!!). I politely told him that they don't have the patent on a single tiered stand. And besides, whilst the Kop is impressive, they have some of the most overrated fans on the planet. They used to be an appreciative bunch, and I remember them applauding us off the pitch a number of years ago when we outplayed them. But those days are long gone. You only have to listen to the implosion of their fans on talkbrick at their recent form to realise that.

But, I am hoping they beat Chelsea and injure Costa, Hazard and Kante.
 
Gazzasrightboot said:
You're completely right. Just remember this is a Liverpool fan saying we have no strategy. Give a brick what they think! For all the reasons you outline, we know we have the best (or at the very least one of) chairman in the world.

Liverpool have done f-all except for that title run under Brendon and a few cup runs. It's been almost 5 years since they've won anything and we have outperformed them in the league more often than not in recent memory. That's what they cannot handle, and I couldn't give a monkeys. The amount of money they have spunked on players is incredible and the amount they pay in wages. We are a completely different beast which is what they don't understand.

One of my Liverpool supporting acquaintances, said that we should be ashamed of ourselves for copying their Kop (!!). I politely told him that they don't have the patent on a single tiered stand. And besides, whilst the Kop is impressive, they have some of the most overrated fans on the planet. They used to be an appreciative bunch, and I remember them applauding us off the pitch a number of years ago when we outplayed them. But those days are long gone. You only have to listen to the implosion of their fans on talkbricke at their recent form to realise that.

But, I am hoping they beat Chelsea and injure Costa, Hazard and Kante.
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Deluded fans with deluded media support, we have finished above them 6 out of last 7 seasons, yet each season they are competing for title, while we are "hoping" for top 4.

I actually want Chelsea to spank them (I'll take the injuries in result), I think they are on the edge of a tailspin, 3 losses on the bounce at home, a bad loss now could derail their season. First priority for me would be securing top 4, then if Chelsea does fall off form, see what we can do.
 
The bloke who makes the Away Days videos summed up my past experiences with Liverpool fans when he summarized them (in 2011) as fans who once knew how to win without being ar*eholes about it, and who understood that football was about far more than just 90 minutes on a match-day.

It is a damn shame how quickly and how far they've fallen over the last five years.
 
http://www.101greatgoals.com/news/j...bout-signing-tottenham-arsenals-best-players/

So, Mourinho resumed sniping at Guardiola as he regularly does - most of the above linked article is him just snidely deriding Guardiola's time at Bayern and chuckling about how difficult the Premier League is. However....there were some pertinent bits that related to us in this diatribe, which I've transcribed below.

"In Germany, Bayern Munich start winning the league in the summer. They go to Borussia Dortmund every year and buy their best player. One day they go there and buy Robert Lewandowski. The next year, they go there, Mario Gotze."

"Do you think I can go to Tottenham and bring two Tottenham players to kill Tottenham? I can’t. I cannot go to Arsenal and bring the best Arsenal players. I cannot go to Chelsea and bring two of the players who I love very much. That time is over."

"That time is over. The situation of starting to be champions by attacking your direct opponents in this country is over. If you get a player from these clubs, you get one that the club doesn't want to keep. You can't hurt any more your direct opponents."

Now, as the article, the 101 Great Goals summary of the article and common sense make clear, this is down in major part to the explosion of TV money and the simultaneous Premier League/European FFP rules making clubs solvent and rich enough to laugh off offers for their best players.

But I think ol' Daniel can have a chuckle to himself at this admission regardless. Because I think he had a part to play in this emerging trend - right from the time we made signing Berbatov so difficult for Ferguson that he complained about it in his autobiography, to the time we told Chelsea to f*ck off with their offers for Modric and sold him to Madrid for less a year later, to the alleged refusal of United's more lucrative offers for Bale in favour of Madrid's ultimate bid the following season...and now finally down to the seemingly unofficial policy of avoiding any transfers (either incoming or outgoing) with the big clubs we consider rivals.

He preempted the stance that Arsenal, Chelsea and others have now adopted - fuelled as they now are by the TV money that enables them to laugh off domestic offers for their stars. And he had a *far harder* ask doing it than clubs have now, because he didn't (then) have the TV money to fall back on as a reason to turn down bids. We lost quite a bit of potential money by refusing to sell, and risked our best players getting majorly upset (as was the case with Modric)...but we did it anyway, and I think we set the standard the rest of the league's now adopted in easier times.

So, y'know, congrats, Daniel. You are partly to blame for Mourinho's seeming bitterness at not being able to cheaply adopt the rival-hobbling tactics that Guardiola and Ferguson used at Bayern and the United of old. ;)

(As an aside, yuck. This feels a bit weird, repeatedly having to praise Levy in the space of a couple of months for different matters. :p )
 
I don't think all that much has changed, if United really wanted one of our players they could get it done, all that's changed is the numbers, they can still afford to pay them twice what we can.
 
galeforce said:
I don't think all that much has changed, if United really wanted one of our players they could get it done, all that's changed is the numbers, they can still afford to pay them twice what we can.
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What has changed is that the cost for United would be truly, staggeringly prohibitive relative to what they'd get, *and* possessed of a 'Premier League markup' that would take an already steep price even higher just by dint of them being a domestic team.

Sure, if they wanted, they could throw 100-120,000,000 pounds at us and ask for Alli or Kane...but *just* one of them. They could afford to pay either much more than we could, but at that price *plus* the presumable necessity of offering them mega wages to get them to actually push for a move down to United, the cost of the deal as a whole becomes insane for what you're getting. You're looking at an investment of 175-200,000,000 pounds on *one* player, including the transfer fee, wages, bonuses, solidarity fees and agent payments. Then, on top of that attempt comes the subsequent rush of existing United players clamoring for renegotiated contracts and signing-on bonuses given that they've seen someone like Alli or Kane take up 175-200m of United's cash, all told.

Still think they could go for more than one or two of our top players before their megamoney Javanese condom sponsorships start running dry relative to the cost of raiding us?

That's what Jose's grumbling about, I think. Of the European leagues, I think every single one in the top ten would offer mind-bogglingly better value for money than what United would get by attempting to a hobble a rival like us - and, worst of all, that obscene price paid may not even achieve the objective of hobbling us anymore. Prising one player from a team like ours won't kill us off, it would take Bayern-esque pillaging similar to what they do to their rivals *every* season for a few years.

And that will assuredly take several hundreds of millions to achieve. To say nothing of trying to hobble anyone else in the top six - it's almost completely out of the question with Liverpool and City given the rivalry, and out of the question with Chelsea given Abramovich's continued funding of that hole. All of those clubs are 99.95% impossible for United to breach. The only other rival they could try to 'hobble' like us would be Arsenal, and they have a massive cash reserve and no reason to particularly need United's money (although they do have the habit of letting their top players run down their contracts, which isn't the case with us - so maybe they're more susceptible to that sort of thing).

Long story short, United could *maybe*, if they lost all sense and reason, try their hardest to blow hundreds of millions on *temporarily* hobbling us by taking one or two of our players...but that is now exceedingly hard to do. And they absolutely can't do it with *all* their rivals, or even anyone else bar Arsenal. So there's really next to no point spending untold millions temporarily hobbling one if the rest are all impenetrable. All that's down to the TV money..but also down to Levy, I think.
 
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I don't think those numbers are prohibitive to United, that's not really that different from the Pogba deal or the numbers being talked about for Griezman, and yes there is a PL tax, but the flip side of that is adjustment won't be an issue, you are getting a plug in guy.

Agree they can't do it to everyone, but we have a clear top 5 at the minute, they only need to nobble one to guarantee CL.
 
galeforce said:
I don't think those numbers are prohibitive to United, that's not really that different from the Pogba deal or the numbers being talked about for Griezman, and yes there is a PL tax, but the flip side of that is adjustment won't be an issue, you are getting a plug in guy.
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Manchester United's operating revenue for 2016 was 515.3 million pounds. Those numbers are definitely *extremely* prohibitive to United, given that, unlike the Pogba deal, they can't even rely on (significantly) enhanced marketing revenues to soften the blow of spending that much on one player given the relatively limited marketability of individual players in the PL relative to the teams they play for - I don't think there's a genuine *superstar* in the league, for example.

They make a lot of money slapping the United logo on toilet brushes in Asia, but not *that* much that they'd view the prospect of sidling up to Levy and splashing out 120+ million pounds for someone like Kane/Alli as anything other than insanely risky for a distinctly shaky benefit that may or may not materialize. And the same applies to every other top club in the league - no one needs the other's money anymore, and I think the age of guaranteed dominance via rival suppression is (as Mou put it) definitively over, barring a chance in the league's financial circumstances or some other black swan event.

Edit: interestingly enough, United fans are also arriving at the same conclusion themselves. ;)

http://www.redcafe.net/threads/what...he-best-players-in-the-premier-league.426179/
 
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I think his point was more a dig at Pep than lamenting how the PL used to be, I don't think there has ever been complete rival suppression in the PL as there has always been at least 2 big spenders, my point is that's it's still a tool that can be used against disrupters like ourselves.

Chelsea did it to Leicester with Kante, City did it to liverpool with Sterling, it doesn't have to be removal of superstar to return an overachiever to the pack, just somebody they are overly reliant on.

I don't think it will happen to us, not because of money, but because losing any one player wouldn't hurt us that much. Something Levy should be lauded for.

The next player we sell on won't have been targeted to weaken us, it will be to fill a void in the buying club.

I could certainly see Chelsea/City/United going after Sanchez from arsenal though.
 
galeforce said:
I think his point was more a dig at Pep than lamenting how the PL used to be, I don't think there has ever been complete rival suppression in the PL as there has always been at least 2 big spenders, my point is that's it's still a tool that can be used against disrupters like ourselves.

Chelsea did it to Leicester with Kante, City did it to liverpool with Sterling, it doesn't have to be removal of superstar to return an overachiever to the pack, just somebody they are overly reliant on.

I don't think it will happen to us, not because of money, but because losing any one player wouldn't hurt us that much. Something Levy should be lauded for.

The next player we sell on won't have been targeted to weaken us, it will be to fill a void in the buying club.

I could certainly see Chelsea/City/United going after Sanchez from arsenal though.
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Oh, yeah, the PL has at its worst been more akin to La Liga than it has to the Bundesliga in that respect (with two heavy-spending clubs and then the rest - Arsenal-United in the late 1990s-early 2000s, then United-Chelsea in the mid-2000s, and so on). However, there has been rival suppression between those two and the rest, as well as between the second-tier big clubs (Liverpool et al) and the rest. And the key difference that I think exists now is that said phenomenon just won't be viable anymore unless the selling club is badly run, somehow financially struggling, unable to manage its contract situations (as Arsenal are evidently having problems with) or in a similar sort of fix.

Kante had a buyout clause, and wasn't at what is considered a 'top' club, anyway - him moving wasn't surprising in that regard. Even allowing for that fact, however, Leicester batted off approaches for Vardy and Mahrez - doesn't that tell you something about the ability of the league to repel those sorts of attempts? Sterling moved to City, true, but that sort of transfer is impossible for United when it comes to disrupters like City and/or Liverpool given historical rivalries.

Overall, I think he's right when he says that they can't really pull that trick off anymore with anything like the effectiveness that accompanied such attempts in the past. They may be able to take Alli or Kane for a truly, eye-wateringly *insane* amount of money if we're so inclined, but they, along with their other top competitors, cannot asset strip us as they did in the late noughties - when they took Carrick and then Berba and Keane over the course of a few seasons.

With regard to Sanchez, I agree, him or Ozil could be targets for the big boys come the summer. But that's down to Arsenal snoozing on renewing their contracts, not because of their financial situation or need for United's money in any way, shape or form. And it would *still* cost a lot more than buying a player of equivalent talent from elsewhere.
 
That's my point, you can't suppress an equal footing club anyway, that never really happened, for all of their success dortmund are still a poor relation to bayern, you can only punch down with such tactics, and I don't think the increased tv money in the game changes that, it's still a viable tactic to stop a limited club building something.

Levy's win was in realising that you couldn't stop it so you had to make sure you maximised the opportunity, many of the fans (myself included at times) were aghast to lose certain players, unable to see the bigger picture, look at all the talent that we've sold, yet we unquestionably have the strongest squad we've ever had under ENIC.
 
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