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Daniel Levy - Chairman

StephenH said:
Can’t you cut and past the Text?
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Daniel Levy critics should look at what he has achieved at Spurs
Matt Law

The former Egypt striker Mido tells a story of how super-agent Mino Raiola instructed him to “run” after agreeing to sign permanently for Tottenham Hotspur in August 2006.

Mido thought he was required to race for a private plane to fly him from Rome to London, but Raiola was actually telling him to run for a good seat on the easyJet flight into Stanstead that Spurs chairman Daniel Levy had booked his £4.5 million signing on to.

Levy had himself, according to Mido, arrived in Italy on the budget airline and virtually all of the players and managers to have worked under the 56 year-old will have their own stories of his money saving, or money making, schemes.

The debate over Levy’s stewardship is back on the agenda, following the latest delays to the new stadium and the fear that manager Mauricio Pochettino may be tempted by an offer from Manchester United or Real Madrid at the end of the season.

There are those who will tell you that Levy’s Tottenham legacy is at stake over the stadium and whether or not the club can financially compete with their richer rivals when they eventually get into their new home, despite the club making their best-ever Premier League start.

And yet, for every amusing tale of penny-pinching, there are also plenty of illustrations of how Levy has been a driving force for good during almost 18 years as chairman.

Just ask Ledley King, who was allowed to swim in the pool at Levy’s house near Potters Bar in Hertfordshire to ease his chronically-injured knee into life because the facilities at the club’s old Chigwell training ground were so outdated.

When King signed his last Tottenham contract in 2010, everybody knew the ex-central defender would never be able to pass a medical to move anywhere else. But there was no hard bargaining from Levy, who rewarded him with the security of a two-year deal.

Or talk to Gareth Bale, who will tell you that Levy continued to believe in him when the Welshman started his Tottenham career without a single win in his first 24 appearances.

Harry Redknapp vehemently denies it, but there are still plenty of people around Spurs who insist Levy had to intervene to stop the club’s former manager selling Bale. Birmingham City had shown an interest, while Wigan sources have claimed Redknapp was willing to send him to the DW Stadium.

Levy was slated for effectively sacking Redknapp, but the change was part of an effort to modernise Tottenham which started promisingly under Andre Villas-Boas and has taken off since the appointment of Pochettino four years ago.

Levy’s biggest mistake over the new stadium, which had been due to open in September at a cost of £850m, may have been to insist on such a hands-on role, which is said to go as far as having a say on the design of the toilets.

He thinks nothing of rattling off emails to close aides at 3am, but that approach has also dragged Tottenham up to where they are today. How King would have loved to undergo his rehabilitation work surrounded by his team-mates and club colleagues at the state-of-the-art training complex in Enfield, which Levy opened in 2012 – the year of the 38 year-old’s retirement.

The old training ground is now a school and respite home for children with autism, which is part funded by Tottenham, and the surrounding area of the new stadium, one of the poorest in London, is benefitting from the Spurs regeneration.

Elimination from the Champions League at the group stage, with a key game against PSV Eindhoven to come on Tuesday night, would give Levy’s critics more ammunition.

But waiting for a stadium project that will eventually cost over £1billion, and seat more than 60,000 people, and worrying about Champions League participation are relatively first-world problems for a club that finished 10th, 14th, 11th, 10th and 12th ahead of Levy’s first full season at the helm. They currently sit fourth, ahead of Arsenal.

His first managerial appointment was Glenn Hoddle, back in March 2001, and Levy sent a hamper to the hospital where the Tottenham legend is recovering from a heart attack.

Older supporters still remember the real glory years, during the 1960s and early 1970s, when Tottenham won trophies with some regularity and it was during that period that Levy attended his first game with his uncle, against Queens Park Rangers, at White Hart Lane.

He recalls that he wore a huge rosette for the occasion, but Levy and most Spurs fans are now more focussed on the future than the past and that, at least, is to his credit.
 
Levy has done well for us.
My caveat to that is the new stadium, which has left me with ‘all our eggs in the one basket’ feeling.
But I find it hard to believe he would not have as much covered as possible
 
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