Daniel Levy - Chairman

[Modric THFC]

I’m amazed at how our supporters have turned so quickly. Sure Mourinho was a bad appointment, and the squad needs direction, a good manager, and a clear out. But why all of a sudden the Lucknow faith in Levy. I just don’t get it. It’s like fans what to lynch and blame someone. Can’t be the manager anymore, and so they brick on him. Teams go through cycles. Spurs need direction a fresh positive manager and a clear out of the deadwood. I don’t think I’d have more faith in any other chairman to do that. And levy will do it without costing the earth, giving Spurs more money for transfers. No one is ever perfect, but give El Capitan a break, he’s a highly effective live chairman. Let him get on with it.


Sitting on my porcelain throne using glory-glory.co.uk mobile app

I thought after watching Tottenham for so long that Levy knew something about football.
But the documentary changed that.
He is cluelesss about football.
The 2 world class managers in the world Mourinho line.
Him marveling repeating at Son's goal like an 8 year old while sat next to him shaking his head that no Burnley player took him down.

He should have no input into the football side of the club. Including appointing the manager and selling players. Stick to getting sponsors and pricing out fans.

 

[parklane1]

Some were worn into the ground for sure. I have no doubt the uncertainty at the club did not help either. This season, we simply have not been as physically fit. There were cuts to some of the programs that have been well documented.
It has c.ertainly been a horrendous season, and time, that much is for sure. And true enough, it is not all down to one -or even two- people..

I do agree with that mate 100%. Lets hope we get the clear out we really need and push on from there.

 

[SpurMeUp]

I thought after watching Tottenham for so long that Levy knew something about football.
But the documentary changed that.
He is cluelesss about football.
The 2 world class managers in the world Mourinho line.
Him marveling repeating at Son's goal like an 8 year old while sat next to him shaking his head that no Burnley player took him down.

He should have no input into the football side of the club. Including appointing the manager and selling players. Stick to getting sponsors and pricing out fans.

Obviously, the Amazon doc pieces were staged, and DL is a brick actor. You don't have a degree from Cambridge, prove yourself running multiple companies, watch every Spurs game, and make Spurs your business, only to be "clueless about football". The truth is we don't know what Levy's ideas about football are. But there is no doubt he is more clued up than you think. He doesn't run the football side of the club, and actually, if I had a criticism, it may be that he is too hands-off with the footballing side.

Levy could actually develop the coaching side of Spurs more. He has done a lot and we are highly successful with our youth players, but there is more that could be done, investing, and developing the culture of the coaching side.

 

[StephenH]

Levy is an excellent chairman and once Covid becomes successfully overcome we will be fine.

 

[DubSpur]

I thought after watching Tottenham for so long that Levy knew something about football.
But the documentary changed that.
He is cluelesss about football.
The 2 world class managers in the world Mourinho line.
Him marveling repeating at Son's goal like an 8 year old while sat next to him shaking his head that no Burnley player took him down.

He should have no input into the football side of the club. Including appointing the manager and selling players. Stick to getting sponsors and pricing out fans.

What did you expect him to say about Mourinho while he is employed by Spurs? That he is crap and undermine him?
Most of it was staged to make us look good, Poch barely features because of that.

 

[Glenda's Legs]

Rodgers is happy where he is, according to his comments on the radio this morning. Ten Hag has signed a new contract at Ajax. Nagelsmann has gone to Bayern. All candidates who apparently couldn’t wait for us to approach them if you read back through the New Manager thread on here.

Rodgers comments are particularly loaded, with their emphasis on how Leicester is run as a club.

I learn a lot of things reading this forum, but I don't take anything I read here as gospel and I doubt you do either. There was very little (probably zero) chance that Nagelsmann would turn Bayern down; we don't know what the sequence of events was with Ten Hag (some reports say it was us who stepped back from conversations); and Rogers is still employed by Leicester and facing a crucial few games to secure CL, I wouldn't expect him to make anything other than fully supportive noises for his current club.
You may be right and we (Levy) are seen as too much of a challenge for some managers but we've all seen how management works and not succeeding at one club is rarely the death knell of a managerial career. Things don't work out, you take your pay-off, do a bit of media work to fill the time, and move onto the next job when you're ready.
I think it's a bit of a stretch based on nothing particularly concrete to say that plenty of our managerial targets are thinking coming to us isn’t worth the risk.

 

[BrainOfLevy2]

I must say, I am pretty stunned that this forum still has a hefty pro-Levy flavour to it. I have historically been all in on his plan, and thought he was a genius, and the job he has done to get us in the position where we have fantastic infrastructure and we’re considered for an invite to the ESL, I can agree those are fantastic things. I even defended him and the club’s plan generally through the season of no signings.

But with all of that said, while I can appreciate he was the right man for us for a great many years - or at least we can say his plan delivered well in certain respects - I think he is absolutely now the wrong person for us going forward. The last two years of decision making from Levy have been an utter disaster. On the business side, he is fantastic. On the football side, I have lost all trust that he has any clue at all.

I completely agree with what some folks were saying a few pages back. It is about savvy in the right moments, making the right decisions when the pressure is on, that could have helped us go further, and he has been found wanting. @billyiddo ’s point that he achieved a lot while building a stadium is a fair one, but I think @Finney Is Back ’s is more so - Sugar was a boon for Levy in dampening the expectations of the club and everything we do now is compared to the 90s. Ultimately while I think he’s done a good job to now, I don’t think he is the right person to take us forward. He can’t be trusted on football matters and the idea that if we don’t have Levy going forward, we’ll do a Saudi Sportswashing Machine, Villa or Leeds is just a bit too much of a stretch now. We may be worse off, but I think going forward we could be a lot better.

His football decision making has been terrible, with the chickens of his decision to not back Poch and do everything in his power to keep the guy happy at our club really coming home to roost now. How can anyone read the stories of Levy wanting a ‘progressive, attack minded coach who can develop young players’ and not utterly laugh their ass off at Levy’s incompetence? He had the perfect person for it, and let him go. All of that is to say; the point that Poch had a bigger vision, and thought we could be even better, had to give way to Levy and ENIC being happy with top 4.

Levy said it himself, time will tell whether sacking Poch was the right decision. It’s been proven out to be fundamentally the wrong one. And more than anything it shows that Levy never really understood why Poch was successful in the first place. He will always be a GHod in my eyes but Poch was successful because for the first time in years Levy allowed a proper clear out, he backed a manager ahead of the players and allowed us to create a culture and a spirit that helped us overachieve. 5 years in, we needed to do the same thing. It didn’t mean spending 200m, it just meant being decisive around moving players out and bringing some new ones in, backing the guy who made it all possible and deserved that shot. Instead we go with Levy’s plan, and it was to squeeze more out of a squad that didn’t want to go the extra mile with us anymore. He failed with that decision and set us back years. In my opinion, he needs to go. At a minimum he needs to hand over football control to a sporting director, and be genuinely hands off. But he’s had at least 4 of those too, and lost them all. It’s on him, and he’s not the person to help us push forward.

 

[ShipOfTheseus]

I thought after watching Tottenham for so long that Levy knew something about football.
But the documentary changed that.
He is cluelesss about football.
The 2 world class managers in the world Mourinho line.
Him marveling repeating at Son's goal like an 8 year old while sat next to him shaking his head that no Burnley player took him down.

He should have no input into the football side of the club. Including appointing the manager and selling players. Stick to getting sponsors and pricing out fans.

The Mourinho appointment supports your point. A DoF is probably a very good idea.

But contempt at Levy for marvelling at Son’s goal at Burnley is common here and it confuses me. Anyone who wasn’t turned into an awestruck eight year old by that piece of brilliance has something missing from their soul. Presumably Levy invested in Spurs rather than rolling out mrbyrite.com globally because he’s a football fan. Why shouldn’t he be allowed to take pleasure in it, even in a dodgy piece of “reality” TV?

 

[SpurMeUp]

I must say, I am pretty stunned that this forum still has a hefty pro-Levy flavour to it. I have historically been all in on his plan, and thought he was a genius, and the job he has done to get us in the position where we have fantastic infrastructure and we’re considered for an invite to the ESL, I can agree those are fantastic things. I even defended him and the club’s plan generally through the season of no signings.

But with all of that said, while I can appreciate he was the right man for us for a great many years - or at least we can say his plan delivered well in certain respects - I think he is absolutely now the wrong person for us going forward. The last two years of decision making from Levy have been an utter disaster. On the business side, he is fantastic. On the football side, I have lost all trust that he has any clue at all.

I completely agree with what some folks were saying a few pages back. It is about savvy in the right moments, making the right decisions when the pressure is on, that could have helped us go further, and he has been found wanting. @billyiddo ’s point that he achieved a lot while building a stadium is a fair one, but I think @Finney Is Back ’s is more so - Sugar was a boon for Levy in dampening the expectations of the club and everything we do now is compared to the 90s. Ultimately while I think he’s done a good job to now, I don’t think he is the right person to take us forward. He can’t be trusted on football matters and the idea that if we don’t have Levy going forward, we’ll do a Saudi Sportswashing Machine, Villa or Leeds is just a bit too much of a stretch now. We may be worse off, but I think going forward we could be a lot better.

His football decision making has been terrible, with the chickens of his decision to not back Poch and do everything in his power to keep the guy happy at our club really coming home to roost now. How can anyone read the stories of Levy wanting a ‘progressive, attack minded coach who can develop young players’ and not utterly laugh their ass off at Levy’s incompetence? He had the perfect person for it, and let him go. All of that is to say; the point that Poch had a bigger vision, and thought we could be even better, had to give way to Levy and ENIC being happy with top 4.

Levy said it himself, time will tell whether sacking Poch was the right decision. It’s been proven out to be fundamentally the wrong one. And more than anything it shows that Levy never really understood why Poch was successful in the first place. He will always be a GHod in my eyes but Poch was successful because for the first time in years Levy allowed a proper clear out, he backed a manager ahead of the players and allowed us to create a culture and a spirit that helped us overachieve. 5 years in, we needed to do the same thing. It didn’t mean spending 200m, it just meant being decisive around moving players out and bringing some new ones in, backing the guy who made it all possible and deserved that shot. Instead we go with Levy’s plan, and it was to squeeze more out of a squad that didn’t want to go the extra mile with us anymore. He failed with that decision and set us back years. In my opinion, he needs to go. At a minimum he needs to hand over football control to a sporting director, and be genuinely hands off. But he’s had at least 4 of those too, and lost them all. It’s on him, and he’s not the person to help us push forward.

This diatribe really comes down to one simple complaint: Levy shouldn't have sacked Pochettinho. And I'd agree. So very easy to say now. However, there were many many who thought Poch should go, and some of his comments and behaviors suggested he needed a break at the least. My idea at the time was Poch should take a sabbatical - have a break - and come back refreshed, maybe even keeping on the interim manager who can add fresh ideas, and perspectives. See Ferguson who did this so successfully.

Other than sacking Poch, what are the much-maligned "poor footballing decisions" that you know Levy took?

One clear question mark over Poch was his transfers. I don't think you can separate him from our transfer performance. If one person had more power over transfers than Levy, it was Poch. Prior to Poch, you'd have to say that Levy-Spurs had an exceptional transfer record. Would you not?

 

[Mikey10]

Other than sacking Poch, what are the much-maligned "poor footballing decisions" that you know Levy took?

Prior to Poch, you'd have to say that Levy-Spurs had an exceptional transfer record. Would you not?

Id say his continual haggling over transfers in the hope of saving the odd million here and there is a pretty constant poor footballing decision. In the very recent past it seems to have seen us lose out on both Jack Grealish and Bruno Fernandes.

One trophy in 13 years for one of the ten richest clubs in the world hardly suggests good footballing decisions or an exceptional transfer record.

 

[billyiddo]

Id say his continual haggling over transfers in the hope of saving the odd million here and there is a pretty constant poor footballing decision. In the very recent past it seems to have seen us lose out on both Jack Grealish and Bruno Fernandes.

One trophy in 13 years for one of the ten richest clubs in the world hardly suggests good footballing decisions or an exceptional transfer record.

That's a very disingenuous way of framing out financial strength of the last 13 years

 

[Gazza Dazzla]

Id say his continual haggling over transfers in the hope of saving the odd million here and there is a pretty constant poor footballing decision. In the very recent past it seems to have seen us lose out on both Jack Grealish and Bruno Fernandes.

One trophy in 13 years for one of the ten richest clubs in the world hardly suggests good footballing decisions or an exceptional transfer record.

Sounds like Levy is a victim of his own success there doesn’t it?

 

[Baleforce]

I can’t believe nobody has done the maths yet, I’m too lazy, but if you look at all of the trophies we have been eligible for since ENIC took over, then remove all of the trophies won by clubs with greater resources, then remove all of the trophies from which we were eliminated by a club with greater resources, I bet you could count what’s left on one hand.

The year Portsmouth beat us in the FA Cup semi maybe, but I can’t remember if that’s the year they won it or if they made more finals?

 

[SpurMeUp]

Id say his continual haggling over transfers in the hope of saving the odd million here and there is a pretty constant poor footballing decision. In the very recent past it seems to have seen us lose out on both Jack Grealish and Bruno Fernandes.

One trophy in 13 years for one of the ten richest clubs in the world hardly suggests good footballing decisions or an exceptional transfer record.

Let's get the technicality out the way first: haggling isn't a "footballing decision" its paying what we can afford. We don't know if Fernandes wanted to go to United, or how much we were prepared to pay - less than them that is for sure. At the time most fans were into Ndombele and LeCelco. It is funny how hindsight turns everyone into a frigging expert.

So easy to say should have snagged Grealish now. We don't really know why an accepted offer didn't go through, but a change in ownership makes sense. At the time, not all fans were into Grealish. Far from it! Imagine he'd become the next David Bently, you would be cursing Levy for having spent all the money on him, and there being nothing left to spend on others. What do I take from it? That we were in for the right players, and despite still not being as wealthy as United and others we are in the mix and we going after the right players.

The fact that we aspire to sign these players and are in a position to now, is thanks to Levy.

 

[DubaiSpur]

The Mourinho appointment supports your point. A DoF is probably a very good idea.

But contempt at Levy for marvelling at Son’s goal at Burnley is common here and it confuses me. Anyone who wasn’t turned into an awestruck eight year old by that piece of brilliance has something missing from their soul. Presumably Levy invested in Spurs rather than rolling out mrbyrite.com globally because he’s a football fan. Why shouldn’t he be allowed to take pleasure in it, even in a dodgy piece of “reality” TV?

Whether he was a football fan or not is open to debate. There's a screenshot floating around of a passage in a book that directly quotes him saying ENIC only bought Spurs, Rangers, Slavia Prague et al because they saw it as an undervalued market - there was, and I quote, 'no emotional connection there'. I'll see if I can find it.

t the time, not all fans were into Grealish. Far from it! Imagine he'd become the next David Bently, you would be cursing Levy for having spent all the money on him, and there being nothing left to spend on others.

Hahaha- what others, mate? We bought N.O.One that summer, and in January- becoming the first British club in the modern age to undergo that particular dereliction of duty by our glorious leader. Stagnation we're still paying for now.

What others would have been blocked off by spending that money on Grealish? Levy's PL-leading executive bonus that year?

Think I can live with the guilt of him not getting that if we spent the money on the team instead.

 

[Bishop]

This diatribe really comes down to one simple complaint: Levy shouldn't have sacked Pochettinho. And I'd agree. So very easy to say now. However, there were many many who thought Poch should go, and some of his comments and behaviors suggested he needed a break at the least. My idea at the time was Poch should take a sabbatical - have a break - and come back refreshed, maybe even keeping on the interim manager who can add fresh ideas, and perspectives. See Ferguson who did this so successfully.

Other than sacking Poch, what are the much-maligned "poor footballing decisions" that you know Levy took?

One clear question mark over Poch was his transfers. I don't think you can separate him from our transfer performance. If one person had more power over transfers than Levy, it was Poch. Prior to Poch, you'd have to say that Levy-Spurs had an exceptional transfer record. Would you not?

I certainly would not. I'm really not sure if you're serious there. Am I missing the sarcasm? [emoji28]

 

[DubSpur]

Whether he was a football fan or not is open to debate. There's a screenshot floating around of a passage in a book that directly quotes him saying ENIC only bought Spurs, Rangers, Slavia Prague et al because they saw it as an undervalued market - there was, and I quote, 'no emotional connection there'. I'll see if I can find it.



Hahaha- what others, mate? We bought N.O.One that summer, and in January- becoming the first British club in the modern age to undergo that particular dereliction of duty by our glorious leader. Stagnation we're still paying for now.

What others would have been blocked off by spending that money on Grealish? Levy's PL-leading executive bonus that year?

Think I can live with the guilt of him not getting that if we spent the money on the team instead.

As usual you lay all the blame on Levy and absolve Poch of any, no surprise really

 

[parklane1]

As usual you lay all the blame on Levy and absolve Poch of any, no surprise really

The needle is stuck on his record player

 

[SpurMeUp]

I certainly would not. I'm really not sure if you're serious there. Am I missing the sarcasm? [emoji28]

You were not a fan of Modric, Bale, Eriksen, Dembele, Walker, Loris, VDV etc?

So we got regular CL, reached the final too, and vied for the top spots in the league, all while Levy didn’t sign good players? [emoji23][emoji23][emoji23]Okay then!


Sitting on my porcelain throne using glory-glory.co.uk mobile app

 

[DubaiSpur]

As usual you lay all the blame on Levy and absolve Poch of any, no surprise really

Yeah. Poch, for his faults, cared about Spurs, understood our ethos and the quotes we put up on the hoardings, and wanted to win things with us.

He'll have my eternal loyalty and admiration for that.

Mediocre, gutless deadweights like ENIC, on the other hand...sooner they're gone, the better.

None of the above is a surprise to you, and for that I apologize. Neither to @parklane1, who is and always will be ENIC's #1 fan and most ardent cheerleader.