I wouldn't trust our fans run a table at a boot sale
Well, that holds true for most football fans - but the German ones manage just fine being owners of their own clubs. The administration of a club is different to its ownership in most respects - the only link in the case of fan ownership is that the club *has* to be run on its own money because there is no other option and it is the chosen way of the fans (who chose that manner of operation by helping to buy the club in the first place).
German clubs are run by professional CEOs very much in the Levy mould in many cases, and stolidly dependable ones in others. The fans own the club and thus the club can't price tickets out of their reach or conduct other 'fan-side' business without getting their approval, but the 'football' side of it is run much like we run our own football operations. And like I said, you could keep Levy if you wished in this ideal scenario of mine, because he could still be a part-owner like he is now (he owns about 20% of the club's shares, iirc). He could still be chairman in that scenario if people so wished.
I doubt I need to tell you but the fan ownership scenario is something that can't happen in the PL. The monies in play now are too vast and we have gone too far down the current road to change that. For me the next best thing is having our club run by a fan who has our best interests at heart, and I believe Levy is that. In fact I could see him bouncing around at Spurs until he retires and who would begrudge him. He will ultimately be remembered as the chairman who brought Spurs back to dine at the top table.
Although we still sit here trophy less (which is annoying to say the least) the last two seasons could easily have gone down as two of the most memorable in the clubs history if things had gone our way at crucial times in the season. If the wind had blown a different way, if the ball had spun this way rather than that, if someone didn't get injured, or someone did, we could be all sitting here tossing with joy for the last two summers. It was that close really. And how sweet that would have been to know we did it off the back of hard work and organic growth rather than just buying the bloody thing. I'll take another season like last rather than Joe shooting his load over the transfer market in a last vain attempt to win the thing.
I agree that it's impossible in the PL as it stands - any steps towards fan ownership across the board will need to be political (Labour, for example, talk a good game about fan representation on club boards, and that's a start - even if I doubt they'd ever actually pursue such a policy were they to be elected). More promising possibilities can only really happen if the inflationary bubble the Prem is in pops - maybe once the TV deals stop appreciating in value.
But yes, I agree that it's impossible at present, which is why it's the *ideal* scenario for me.
The next best thing to fan ownership is having our club run by a fan who has our best interests at heart - again, I have no problem agreeing with you there. Only difference is, my vision of that 'next-best' owner is one that also spends money to pursue his ambitions for the club, as opposed to just running it well on the club's own dime. It is, after all, also an ideal scenario, so you can pretty much wish for as close to perfection as you can get *short* of fan ownership - that's a generous fan owner, in my mind.
Levy is a fan, and he will no doubt keep coming to games even after he makes a killing selling us on to someone else - I also have full confidence that he won't sell us to just anyone, but only to someone who will steward the club as he has through the years. That's commendable, and it speaks to how well he's juggled his multiple competing responsibilities as a fan of the club and as a chairman representing both ENIC and the club's own long-term security.
But the path he's put us on in terms of self-funding our own ambitions isn't one that's morally more significant than Mansour or Abramovich spunking a billion to pole vault their teams ahead of us in terms of honours won, is my point. It would have been morally significant if it's something we could point to and say 'we chose that route', or 'that was our only option, and we did it well'. As it stands, we have a billionaire owner like any other club - as much a plaything as any other club is. Only difference is, their owners are generous and ours are stingy, so while their owners funded their teams and won things, our owners built us up over one and a half mostly barren decades. It isn't our choice, any more than being sold on to another set of billionaires will be our choice when it happens - so where's the moral triumph in that? Might as well hope our billionaire owners are generous as opposed to stingy - might actually cross the line that way, instead of groaning at the ball 'spinning this way instead of that', or about somebody getting injured, or about the wind.
The little things like seeing players come through the academy, showing a responsibility to our youth players and the local community we are indelibly a part of, making our games more accessible to fans of all backgrounds - these are things that are tangibly morally satisfying, and in a sense they are choices that can be made independent of our ownership status (we as a club have chosen to give a damn about our youth team players and the Spurs Foundation - many previous managers haven't cared about the youth team and many more loaded clubs haven't engaged as much with their charity arms, so we know it's a conscious choice we can make irrespective of our ownership status and investing strategies). But ultimately, in terms of the big question of spending versus not-spending, I just don't think there's any moral superiority in one over the other when circumstances have left us with the same billionaire owner as other clubs have - only one that chooses not to invest too much in his asset. He's not some murderer with the rape of a country or the abuse of its most vulnerable on his hands, thank GHod - but beyond that, his stinginess doesn't count as a moral victory any more than Chelsea/City's obscene spending does.
