Bedfordspurs
Martin Peters
As I said it what a few ex pros said to me who work at the club
And it’s certainly something that could be spun many ways
Poch loves to throw in random comments in his press conferences
-
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Daniel Levy - Chairman
- Thread starter Howard Webb
- Start date
As I said it what a few ex pros said to me who work at the club
And it’s certainly something that could be spun many ways
Poch loves to throw in random comments in his press conferences
nayimfromthehalfwayline
Luka Modric
Its annoying a lot of the time, sends half the board into a tailspin for no reason!
Bedfordspurs
Martin Peters
Keeps the focus off the players though
nayimfromthehalfwayline
Luka Modric
Would be nicer if people didnt lose their brick at the drop of a hat and show a little faith.
But yes, also good those are a day off for bashing any particular player.
But yes, also good those are a day off for bashing any particular player.
milo
Jack L. Jones
I agree. The character of a club is formed by the fans as much as the management or players. When we talk about mental strength, we should take a look at how we react to set backs and adversity.
Sandman
Dean Austin
With the way that Poch uses players, in that its not a constant turnaround for nothing in his squad, and the fact that he will bring through young players if they have the ability and not just rely on veterans or big money purchases. With all that said, this has to be the summer that Daniel backs him full tilt. He has brought a lot of money into the club ( Poch ) with our Champions league position finishes and now are champions league run to the final That coupled with the increase in revenue from owning our own stadium, not paying rent and all the profit from it coming in. This is the moment of truth. Do we just want to sit here in 3rd and 4th constantly or do we want to push for the number 1 position. Its possible. Its within our grasp as a club. One good summer and we could have a squad that only needs minor adjustments each summer. Its not just investing in the players though, its also investing wage wise in the players we already have. To make sure they stay.
3 Top players this summer. And the sky is the limit in my mind. We have proven we can win a lot of games, but we need a slightly bigger squad in terms over quality replacements. And we need one or two dominating players now to come in and make the change. The spine is important.
Having been a fan of Spurs since the Early 80's, Daniel Levy is by far the best thing that has happened to this club in my time supporting them. He has at every turn done what is needed to help this team on and upwards. He did the training facilities and now we have one of the best youth setups around. Now the stadium. Which will in turn increase our revenue from lots of streams, not just premier league, but food and drink on match day, the NFL, Rugby finals, maybe boxing and could also be Cup finals etc.
Keeping Poch is paramount. The next 5 year plan has to be investment in the playing staff now. To keep us on an upward curve. I believe in Levy. I hope he believes in Poch enough to take a slight risk. We have saved money in the last transfer windows. We should have the money to invest towards 150m or more.
Now is the time to push to the highest level.
3 Top players this summer. And the sky is the limit in my mind. We have proven we can win a lot of games, but we need a slightly bigger squad in terms over quality replacements. And we need one or two dominating players now to come in and make the change. The spine is important.
Having been a fan of Spurs since the Early 80's, Daniel Levy is by far the best thing that has happened to this club in my time supporting them. He has at every turn done what is needed to help this team on and upwards. He did the training facilities and now we have one of the best youth setups around. Now the stadium. Which will in turn increase our revenue from lots of streams, not just premier league, but food and drink on match day, the NFL, Rugby finals, maybe boxing and could also be Cup finals etc.
Keeping Poch is paramount. The next 5 year plan has to be investment in the playing staff now. To keep us on an upward curve. I believe in Levy. I hope he believes in Poch enough to take a slight risk. We have saved money in the last transfer windows. We should have the money to invest towards 150m or more.
Now is the time to push to the highest level.
JerusalemMan
Johnny Morrison
Hmm. Not bitter at having got to the final. You can't claim in any way to be a SPurs fan and have that much of a negative reaction to such a joyous seminal occurrence.
I think, perhaps, that there are people who have allowed the distrust and suspicion of ENIC/Levy to mutate and metastasize to a point where they struggle to see beyond that first, even when great things are happening. Maybe there's a bit of a thrill, but it is soured and devalued because a nemesis of their creation is integral to it.
inkpenspur
Allan Nielsen
One of the best posts I have read, Levy has been one of the most important elements in the re-emergence of our club. Yes he has roostered up, but on the whole the guy has driven us forward towards a goal ( that if not obviously common) has been a better place for the club as a whole.
As far as I am concerned we are lucky to have him, and I have complete faith in his pong term vision.
As far as I am concerned we are lucky to have him, and I have complete faith in his pong term vision.
DubaiSpur
Ian Walker
I understand, but that's the thing - the people who distrust/suspect ENIC and Levy want them to provide the best manager in our lifetimes with what he wants and needs. It's wanting things to be done better, wanting more, wanting us to reach out and be 'brave', if it means keeping the man who can change our very being.
Yes, maybe you think that's unrealistic. But that doesn't translate to those folks (me included) being unhappy at what we've just done, or it being soured by Levy being a part of it. After all, isn't it wanting the club to be better? Getting to a CL final is the definition of 'better' than we've ever, ever done.
I feel that's the heart of this schism - I don't think that people think of 'nemeses' in moments like these. Just as no one thought of 'nemeses' when the stadium finished. These are moments where we all feel the same thing - magical, and on top of the damn world. But their ways of processing it differ.
Likewise, when we lose, I don't think anyone really means what they say in the heat of the moment. Everyone's invested their heart and soul into following this team, and people take setbacks differently. Everyone feels the same thing in those moments - disappointment, pain. But their way of reacting is different.
At least, I hope that's the case.
Fair, mate. Personally, I also accept that we all want to go further, but we want things at a different pace. Some are happy with gradual (but assured) progress, some see opportunities and are frustrated we don't take them.
As long as you don't think less of your fellow supporters for their moments of anger or despair, you're completely fine by me.
As for negativity, it's a different discussion to have, but it's certainly one we should also have as a fanbase - Poch's comments on belief were aptly-timed in that regard, and I've certainly been thinking about them very closely over the last couple of days.
DubaiSpur
Ian Walker
What you feel is not what others feel in the moment. Everyone reacted differently. And I'm sure loads of folks shared your opinion by the 93rd minute - we'd heroically fought back from 2-0 down to tie the game, how could we not be proud?
My own point of view was laid out in the Poch thread - I was proud of the lads after the quarter-final itself, and said so. That would not change, no matter how the semi-final went.
But I wasn't annoyed by people having different views, or despairing, or getting angry as we went 2-0 down. We all care, and we react to being hurt in different ways, is all.
And that's all I ask, from you and everyone else who turns on their fellow supporter in moments of despair - we all care. We hurt, because we care. Please recognize that, instead of turning on people and calling them lesser fans because they react differently.
As for negativity, as I mentioned above, it's a discussion we maybe need to have now, and it's something I've been thinking about a lot in the wake of Poch's comments on belief. But if you think I'm less negative now, it's only because I'm in a happier place in my life, and because, for the first time in all my time supporting Spurs, I utterly trust and believe in the man leading us, whom I would love with all my heart if we finish 1st or 20th. Poch won me over, and if I'm reluctant to trust, I'm equally stubborn when it comes to continued trust.
But others may be in different places, and have different views. That doesn't mean they don't care - they will be here, victory or defeat. They might be angry, they might be depressed, but they never leave - and never will.
We're in this together. Please recognize that, because we aren't going anywhere, and neither are you.
Roland Beurre
Peter Taylor
Yeah, yeah, yeah. All good points.
I'm still having £30 on Arsenal at 100-1 to finish in the top four, though ... and if I win that (hope to Ghod I don't), I'll put the £3,000 on Liverpool to win the final. If I win that, I'll slit my own throat and leave the money to my kids, all of whom I have infected with the Spurs virus
MKSpur
Christian Ziege
I emptied my betting account and put about 150 on Ajax at 3 nil to ensure our qualification for the final. I have had a tenner on Goons at 130 on top of the 150 I put against us qualifying for it at various points of the season. My betting account exists solely for the purpose of confusing the football match gods!Yeah, yeah, yeah. All good points.
I'm still having £30 on Arsenal at 100-1 to finish in the top four, though ... and if I win that (hope to Ghod I don't), I'll put the £3,000 on Liverpool to win the final. If I win that, I'll slit my own throat and leave the money to my kids, all of whom I have infected with the Spurs virus
spursfan1976
Willem Korsten
I came here to post this, quite interesting, especially if the last line of the video is true!
That was (educated) guesswork on their part going by the what was said in the video - so I wouldn't take it as fact
spasm
Didier Zokora
Daniel Levy: is he Tottenham Hotspur’s star man? May 26 2019, 12:01am, CHAMPIONS LEAGUE | JONATHAN NORTHCROFT
Look beyond pitch and dugout — the man who made Spurs a force is in the boardroom
A few days before the first Christmas of the millennium, Daniel Levy bought control of Spurs. Not everybody reacted with festive cheer. Cornelius Sierhuis, chairman of AEK Athens, warned: “I hate to say this, but the deal does not bode well for Tottenham.” The Daily Mirror carried his quotes in a story headlined: “Wreckers! AEK Athens boss warns: ENIC will ruin Tottenham.”
Fast forward 18-and-a-half years. If you were setting up a football club from scratch and could pluck one person from the Tottenham Hotspur stadium, the smart choice would not be Harry Kane, Christian Eriksen or even Mauricio Pochettino. It would be Levy, the biggest star of Tottenham’s journey from a club so comic it coined its own word for fecklessness (“sexy”) to Champions League finalists and envy of every rational football investor. As the Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish wrote in these pages, under Levy and his backer Joe Lewis, Tottenham have been transformed to a club with “the smartest transfer policy in football, the best youth system, probably the best training ground and now the world’s best stadium”.
ENIC originally stood for English National Investment Company. In fairness to Sierhuis back in December 2000, when ENIC bought 29.9% of Spurs from Alan Sugar for £22m, it was reasonable to have doubts. Lewis, a billionaire currency speculator domiciled tax-free in the Bahamas, was no football nut. He founded ENIC initially to buy into textiles. Levy was the thirtysomething Cambridge economist and family friend whose dad founded the budget menswear store, Mister Byrite, and whose own background was in clothes retail. Levy was brought in to run ENIC in the UK and quickly made Lewis £144m by making a brilliant investment in an internet start-up, but his acumen for the football business seemed flawed — initially.
Using Lewis’ funding, he acquired stakes in six clubs around Europe — Rangers, AEK, Vicenza, Slavia Prague, FC Basel and Spurs. Take Rangers: Levy paid £18.9m for 20% and injected a further £21m but found his ideas for moulding the then Scottish champions mostly ignored. His holding gave him no control and the stories in Scottish media circles — whether exaggerated or not — were of him making earnest pitches to the Rangers board only for the majority stakeholder, David Murray, and his circle to dismiss them. Rangers spent and spent but dipped on the pitch, and when Levy sold his stake back to Murray in 2004 it was for just £8.7m.
Vicenza had just won the Coppa Italia when ENIC bought in but were toiling in Serie B by the time it sold up. Slavia went into debt. AEK won three successive titles before ENIC but just one trophy, the Greek Cup, in four years after its arrival, and ENIC’s exit was acrimonious. Sierhuis’ complaint was, “ENIC’s investments in clubs have largely failed because of an inability or unwillingness to fund in accordance with its stakes.”
Seen from 2019, though, things look different. Levy was ahead of his time. The vision of building an international family of clubs has been adopted by Emirates Marketing Project, Red Bull and the Pozzo family who own Watford. Levy was right, too, about the need to move away from the old “benefactor model” of club ownership. Unless you have sovereign or oligarch wealth, or a golden brand such as Real Madrid or Manchester United, structured, strategic and careful spending is the only sustainable way to navigate the inflationary riptides of modern football.
It is also clear, now, that Levy spent those early years investing in the game with open eyes and ears, learning lessons he would subsequently implement. Football acumen? How’s this: while ENIC’s buyout was going through Spurs were finalising the £180,000 purchase of an East Fife striker, Stevie Ferguson, who never played for them. The first post-Levy recruit was somewhat better — Teddy Sheringham on a free — and transfers have gone on from there. The overall net spend on players in Levy’s 18-plus years of stewardship is around £240m and over the past 10 seasons it stands at a sensational £15m. In 2016-17 he raised £45m from selling squad offcuts Ryan Mason, Nacer Chadli, Alex Pritchard and Tom Carroll; in 2017-18 £43m from Kevin Wimmer, Nabil Bentaleb, Clinton N’Jie and Federico Fazio. Sir Alex Ferguson, after being taken right down to the final hours of deadline day and made to fork out £30.75m for Dimitar Berbatov, commented that negotiating with Levy “was more painful than my hip operation”.
On the other side of the table Levy can be cold. The Club by Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg contains the story of Levy antagonising smaller clubs at a Premier League meeting when he pitched to get the Big Six a greater share of TV revenue. Levy announced: “We only want what’s fair,” and repeated those five words to every objection raised.
But read Pochettino’s memoir, Brave New World, and a different chairman emerges. To Poch he is always “Daniel”. There are tales of wine-tasting mini-breaks together, dressed-down work retreats at Levy’s home in the French Alps and a bonding trip to Argentina for chairman and coaching staff with quad-biking, horse-riding, paintballing and a river trip. The boat capsized and Pochettino pulled Levy to safety. “The chairman’s wife says I’m the third member of their marriage,” Pochettino writes.
It would have been impossible for Levy to build Tottenham without there being soul and warmth at the heart of the project. He is a Spurs supporter who was always working towards owning the club when ENIC began in football. He forged personal connections with managers. One of them, Martin Jol, said in 2007 that it was tough getting his way on transfers, but Levy had a far-reaching strategy, to one day have a new stadium, be a Champions League club and for Spurs to be worth half a billion pounds. It was unlikely then but has all been realised now except the valuation. Forbes valued Tottenham at $1.237bn last summer — and the club will be worth a lot more now.
Pochettino’s bond with Levy has been important in keeping him at the club and is one of Spurs’ main hopes for retaining him further. He needs personal connection. With extraordinary candour last week he said, “Football is a context of emotion and emotional state. The emotional level you arrive at [for the final] is going to be decisive and you’re going to have the capacity to win or lose. It’s not tactics, it’s not physical. It’s about how the emotion triggers your talent and quality.” That he cried in Amsterdam when Spurs reached the final was nothing unexpected. “My mother said to me you are a llorona, a person who cries often and a lot. I am strong but I cry. Maybe I take my car to my house, 20 minutes to Barnet, and listen to some music and it translates to some moment in my life. I start [to cry] and when I arrive home my wife says ‘what happened?!’”
Should Spurs win in Madrid Pochettino says he will “cry one week.”. Don’t be surprised if Levy also sheds a tear.
ON TV SATURDAY Spurs v Liverpool BT Sport 2, 8pm
Tottenham Hotspur Football Club Football
Sent from my SM-J600G using glory-glory.co.uk mobile app
Look beyond pitch and dugout — the man who made Spurs a force is in the boardroom
A few days before the first Christmas of the millennium, Daniel Levy bought control of Spurs. Not everybody reacted with festive cheer. Cornelius Sierhuis, chairman of AEK Athens, warned: “I hate to say this, but the deal does not bode well for Tottenham.” The Daily Mirror carried his quotes in a story headlined: “Wreckers! AEK Athens boss warns: ENIC will ruin Tottenham.”
Fast forward 18-and-a-half years. If you were setting up a football club from scratch and could pluck one person from the Tottenham Hotspur stadium, the smart choice would not be Harry Kane, Christian Eriksen or even Mauricio Pochettino. It would be Levy, the biggest star of Tottenham’s journey from a club so comic it coined its own word for fecklessness (“sexy”) to Champions League finalists and envy of every rational football investor. As the Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish wrote in these pages, under Levy and his backer Joe Lewis, Tottenham have been transformed to a club with “the smartest transfer policy in football, the best youth system, probably the best training ground and now the world’s best stadium”.
ENIC originally stood for English National Investment Company. In fairness to Sierhuis back in December 2000, when ENIC bought 29.9% of Spurs from Alan Sugar for £22m, it was reasonable to have doubts. Lewis, a billionaire currency speculator domiciled tax-free in the Bahamas, was no football nut. He founded ENIC initially to buy into textiles. Levy was the thirtysomething Cambridge economist and family friend whose dad founded the budget menswear store, Mister Byrite, and whose own background was in clothes retail. Levy was brought in to run ENIC in the UK and quickly made Lewis £144m by making a brilliant investment in an internet start-up, but his acumen for the football business seemed flawed — initially.
Using Lewis’ funding, he acquired stakes in six clubs around Europe — Rangers, AEK, Vicenza, Slavia Prague, FC Basel and Spurs. Take Rangers: Levy paid £18.9m for 20% and injected a further £21m but found his ideas for moulding the then Scottish champions mostly ignored. His holding gave him no control and the stories in Scottish media circles — whether exaggerated or not — were of him making earnest pitches to the Rangers board only for the majority stakeholder, David Murray, and his circle to dismiss them. Rangers spent and spent but dipped on the pitch, and when Levy sold his stake back to Murray in 2004 it was for just £8.7m.
Vicenza had just won the Coppa Italia when ENIC bought in but were toiling in Serie B by the time it sold up. Slavia went into debt. AEK won three successive titles before ENIC but just one trophy, the Greek Cup, in four years after its arrival, and ENIC’s exit was acrimonious. Sierhuis’ complaint was, “ENIC’s investments in clubs have largely failed because of an inability or unwillingness to fund in accordance with its stakes.”
Seen from 2019, though, things look different. Levy was ahead of his time. The vision of building an international family of clubs has been adopted by Emirates Marketing Project, Red Bull and the Pozzo family who own Watford. Levy was right, too, about the need to move away from the old “benefactor model” of club ownership. Unless you have sovereign or oligarch wealth, or a golden brand such as Real Madrid or Manchester United, structured, strategic and careful spending is the only sustainable way to navigate the inflationary riptides of modern football.
It is also clear, now, that Levy spent those early years investing in the game with open eyes and ears, learning lessons he would subsequently implement. Football acumen? How’s this: while ENIC’s buyout was going through Spurs were finalising the £180,000 purchase of an East Fife striker, Stevie Ferguson, who never played for them. The first post-Levy recruit was somewhat better — Teddy Sheringham on a free — and transfers have gone on from there. The overall net spend on players in Levy’s 18-plus years of stewardship is around £240m and over the past 10 seasons it stands at a sensational £15m. In 2016-17 he raised £45m from selling squad offcuts Ryan Mason, Nacer Chadli, Alex Pritchard and Tom Carroll; in 2017-18 £43m from Kevin Wimmer, Nabil Bentaleb, Clinton N’Jie and Federico Fazio. Sir Alex Ferguson, after being taken right down to the final hours of deadline day and made to fork out £30.75m for Dimitar Berbatov, commented that negotiating with Levy “was more painful than my hip operation”.
On the other side of the table Levy can be cold. The Club by Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg contains the story of Levy antagonising smaller clubs at a Premier League meeting when he pitched to get the Big Six a greater share of TV revenue. Levy announced: “We only want what’s fair,” and repeated those five words to every objection raised.
But read Pochettino’s memoir, Brave New World, and a different chairman emerges. To Poch he is always “Daniel”. There are tales of wine-tasting mini-breaks together, dressed-down work retreats at Levy’s home in the French Alps and a bonding trip to Argentina for chairman and coaching staff with quad-biking, horse-riding, paintballing and a river trip. The boat capsized and Pochettino pulled Levy to safety. “The chairman’s wife says I’m the third member of their marriage,” Pochettino writes.
It would have been impossible for Levy to build Tottenham without there being soul and warmth at the heart of the project. He is a Spurs supporter who was always working towards owning the club when ENIC began in football. He forged personal connections with managers. One of them, Martin Jol, said in 2007 that it was tough getting his way on transfers, but Levy had a far-reaching strategy, to one day have a new stadium, be a Champions League club and for Spurs to be worth half a billion pounds. It was unlikely then but has all been realised now except the valuation. Forbes valued Tottenham at $1.237bn last summer — and the club will be worth a lot more now.
Pochettino’s bond with Levy has been important in keeping him at the club and is one of Spurs’ main hopes for retaining him further. He needs personal connection. With extraordinary candour last week he said, “Football is a context of emotion and emotional state. The emotional level you arrive at [for the final] is going to be decisive and you’re going to have the capacity to win or lose. It’s not tactics, it’s not physical. It’s about how the emotion triggers your talent and quality.” That he cried in Amsterdam when Spurs reached the final was nothing unexpected. “My mother said to me you are a llorona, a person who cries often and a lot. I am strong but I cry. Maybe I take my car to my house, 20 minutes to Barnet, and listen to some music and it translates to some moment in my life. I start [to cry] and when I arrive home my wife says ‘what happened?!’”
Should Spurs win in Madrid Pochettino says he will “cry one week.”. Don’t be surprised if Levy also sheds a tear.
ON TV SATURDAY Spurs v Liverpool BT Sport 2, 8pm
Tottenham Hotspur Football Club Football
Sent from my SM-J600G using glory-glory.co.uk mobile app
