DubaiSpur
Ian Walker
@SpurMeUp - see here.
1. You've failed to acknowledge that Levy has closed the gap on the elite clubs. You've not answered that question and ended up on a tangent.
I have, you just don't like the answer. It isn't all down to him, it's down to the explosion in value of the Premier League taking us with it as passengers. Some of it is down to him. Not all. Growth in commercial revenue by contrast, for example, has lagged compared to our rivals.
2. You’d prefer to support Leicester, even with them relegated now? One short moment in the sun but long term a Championship yo-yo club. You’d prefer that honestly? The league title would have sated your incessant desire, changed your life and made you a more happy go lucky chap? For all the supposed woes we ‘suffer’, I'll take trophyless Spurs and our long term trajectory which started upwards under Enic.
Like I said, why worry about the 'doing a Leeds' trope we've been worrying about irrationally for 20 years? Couldn't we be bought by FSG and won leagues and Champions Leagues without it?
3. What you are saying is that to own a PL club you have to subsidize it? That is an unsustainable position and means you can only win stuff if you are the elite of the elite of the elite wealth wise. And you'd be right. We have that setup now but there are greater controls coming becuase its unsustainable as a specticle. Outside of the oil funded clubs – we can see that cash investment into players are always finite. Owners like Randy Learner or Srivaddhanaprabha may invest 100s of millions, but look what happened to their clubs when the cash stopped! So you are either in with the dirty oil money or prone to crash and burn.
That is how football was. It is how it is. It is how it will be. A PL club, or any club, is almost always a loss-making endeavour. You *have to* subsidize it, comes with the territory.
We aren't doing something the 'right' way, we are just conducting a masochistic experiment of crippling ourselves for zero reason other than to enrich our owners who don't want to spend more than the bare minimum on us. Almost no one else operates this way.
4. You build a club with genuine revenue to challenge the hegemony. Which is what Levy has started to do. Something you have trouble admitting. Which marks you as somewhat irrational, whether you can admit it or not. Spurs could elevate towards the United model in 5-20 years. Far far from certain, but we’re in with a shot, we have a platform. We need to build incrementally and win trophies.
>Spurs could elevate towards the United model
...and you call me the irrational one? Come on, mate. It took 22 grinding years to go from roughly the 7th or 8th most revenue to between the 5th and 6th.
Catching United will take a century at this rate.
5. How do you know whether Levy values the club like you do? Spurs support was passed down to him via his family, and he has a local connection to the area. Of course he's a business man, but there is more going on than just money. He could have raised cash for land in his own name and built 100 x 1 bed flats and retired. A cinch (xcuse the commercial pun) compared to the work he does do. Like a lot of people Levy is interested in his legacy, interested in history. He is at every game. He put everything he had into the stadium and training complex development.
It's interesting you're going with this tack, considering Levy infamously admitted he had no interest in football in an interview in 2002, describing ENIC's move into football as 'purely financial'. Surprising for such a life long fan.
It isn't me, it's from BBC journo and award-winning writer Tom Bower's book 'Broken Dreams'. I quote -
"There is no passion here,' said Levy, admitting that neither Lewis nor himself was particularly keen on football. 'This is purely financial.'"
I'm willing to grant that maybe he developed an attachment in the 20 years he's hung around like a bad smell. But I highly doubt that backstory of him being a lifelong fan, yada yada yada.
6. Arguably, Levys failing is actually not being more involved in the football side. You mentioned Bloom at Brighton he is far more involved in the player trading setup, recruitment and sales. Yet you are desperate that this highly successful Cambridge graduate should not use their brain to help with the playing side. Again it is not really rational.
I don't care about Bloom's decision making. I care that he invested in his team, which makes him better than Levy by a country mile.
