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Levy's Plan

Muttley said:
So in the THFC business model there is clearly an annual P&L and Balance Sheet. There is also a mid and long term plan. Within that there would be revenue and expenses that are very predictable and easily modelled. Above that there are some more difficult variables like whether we're in UEFA comps on the football side and whether we're about to upgrade sponsorship. Levy made a massive statement when he told us that the stadium build was mutually exclusive to the football operational side. He also said that the intention was to have CL revenues by the time we opened the stadium. We had that for 2 or 3 years prior to the stadium.

Spurs set a worldwide record in 2018 of £113m and followed that up with £69m, the year later. So £182m of profit over 2 years and something like £35m kindly donated to HMRC as tax. We then go into crazy spend mode and record a loss of way over £50m the year after. Fans just assumed it was just the CL monies. Absolutely not.

My strong belief is that if we had been able to smooth this graph, history could have been way less painful. That would have meant a better forecasting model obviously recalibrated each year. We needed player investment (transfers and salaries) as Poch's squad started to peak in 2017. That's when we had squad burnout. That's when we had injury build-up, especially soft tissue. That's when we had prime players needing fair salaries for their disposition as PL players. Instead, in COVID we were spending where other clubs were tightening their belts. We still couldn't buy quality though.

Best example is Toby
2015 - 5 year contract where he could earn up to £80k per week with bonuses. Became one of truly eite defenders in Europe.
Spurs leave him on £80k per week for 4 years of that contract
Dec 2019 - offers him a contract renewal until 2023, where he can earn up to £180k per week.
Toby gone in 2021.

So for all of our peak Toby years he was disenfranchised watching guys in the league at his level getting 2 or 3 times more salary than him. We were giving £35m to HMRC instead.

Perhaps real answer here is that there was no tangible MY forecast. Perhaps we were just being reactive and not proactive in the way the club was being financially modelled. The multi-year parameters when loaded together look very questionable. They look really sub-optimal. They needed smoothing out.
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Super interesting. I guess my question is why Levy, supposed best football operator in the game, didn’t realise this? As you say it might be an example of being reactive rather than proactive, or more in line with his general reputation around prioritising ‘the business’ and not ‘the football’. Where it takes a real sense of what the team needs to understand that Toby is being underpaid relative to his peers and that this would impact performances.
 
SissokoWasGood (BoL) said:
Super interesting. I guess my question is why Levy, supposed best football operator in the game, didn’t realise this? As you say it might be an example of being reactive rather than proactive, or more in line with his general reputation around prioritising ‘the business’ and not ‘the football’. Where it takes a real sense of what the team needs to understand that Toby is being underpaid relative to his peers and that this would impact performances.
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I think in reality Lewis kept Levy in place for as long as he did because he was maximising the profits, I don't think for one second he was running with no guidance or restraints from the top, he clearly didn't have full control on finances. He made alot of mistakes but lets get it right, he also was a massive commercial success for the family that ultimately threw their power in the ring by removing him in the summer. I am not here to defend Levy by any stretch but we all know now who had the power and who the majority owners were, my question now is what is there plan because the winter transfer window showed absolutely nothing other than much of the same
 
thfcsteff said:
He did an incredible job business-wise. No-one could've done any better (or indeed has). He was the perfect face of the Lewis Family investment in that regard.

He repeatedly got the football side of things wrong, and I think that is where the questions lie. How much of it was him versus his remit? How much of it was ego versus doing the right thing? How much of it was applying business brain to football matters, a translation which requires several bridges and parts to have any chance of success as the connection is not binary?

I get the impression he tried to find a bridge several times. Arnesen was big, so wasw Commoli, Baldini was another...I think the single biggest factor in our demise has been the inability to find the humanity and special sauce of Tottenham as a soul -as a football ethos- since we moved to the stadium, and I think sacking Pochettino and replacing him with Mourinho without giving Mourinho the tools HE needed was an enormous error (despite Mourinho saying he didn't need any - a 'football' person would've known that was BS)...I also wonder how big covid was in derailing us for a while. In one sense our timing was superb because we opened the stadium months before, in another, we needed it to be open a few years without interruption.

The other major errors IMO, were Munn and Lange, two men who do not seem to know emotion in the football sense. Sometimes the beautiful game requires more than a set of metrics. Sometimes it requires gut-level action, something Lange in particular has been unable to achieve at the right time.

The final one? Removing Levy when they did. It was absurd. Make that move at the end of a season, not at the end of a window into a new season with a new manager. Pathetically poor timing which obviously destabilized the entire club...
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I’d argue the only good hire that Levy ever made was Arsenson. Everyone else was always reactionary or 2nd/3rd choices that turned out to work.
 
robp135 said:
I’d argue the only good hire that Levy ever made was Arsenson. Everyone else was always reactionary or 2nd/3rd choices that turned out to work.
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It was his dream. I met Arnesen at the time, spent some time chatting with him. Infectious energy, a real 'dazzler'...when he jumped ship for CFC I believe it hurt Levy deeply, to the extent he never really recovered...
 
MartyFunkhouser said:
I think in reality Lewis kept Levy in place for as long as he did because he was maximising the profits, I don't think for one second he was running with no guidance or restraints from the top, he clearly didn't have full control on finances. He made alot of mistakes but lets get it right, he also was a massive commercial success for the family that ultimately threw their power in the ring by removing him in the summer. I am not here to defend Levy by any stretch but we all know now who had the power and who the majority owners were, my question now is what is there plan because the winter transfer window showed absolutely nothing other than much of the same
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The general belief is that the kids are now running the show right? So it wasn’t a Joe Lewis decision to sack Levy.
 
thfcsteff said:
It was his dream. I met Arnesen at the time, spent some time chatting with him. Infectious energy, a real 'dazzler'...when he jumped ship for CFC I believe it hurt Levy deeply, to the extent he never really recovered...
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He was trully given free reign on the football side. I think the only decision Levy over ruled him on was Santini over Jol.

Funny thing is Arsesen became a highly paid academy director at Chelsea and has never been close to anything as good as what he should have had at Spurs. I think Levy even agreed to match the Chelsea salary offer as well.
 
robp135 said:
He was trully given free reign on the football side. I think the only decision Levy over ruled him on was Santini over Jol.

Funny thing is Arsesen became a highly paid academy director at Chelsea and has never been close to anything as good as what he should have had at Spurs. I think Levy even agreed to match the Chelsea salary offer as well.
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If Levy agreed to match the offer why on earth did Arnesen leave? I always assumed it was smaller role, but bigger money so he took it.
 
MartyFunkhouser said:
I think in reality Lewis kept Levy in place for as long as he did because he was maximising the profits, I don't think for one second he was running with no guidance or restraints from the top, he clearly didn't have full control on finances. He made alot of mistakes but lets get it right, he also was a massive commercial success for the family that ultimately threw their power in the ring by removing him in the summer. I am not here to defend Levy by any stretch but we all know now who had the power and who the majority owners were, my question now is what is there plan because the winter transfer window showed absolutely nothing other than much of the same
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So again do you think it’s a case of the family / Joe being happy with profits and not realising they would be better invested back into the team? Was it true when Levy would say that all profits are always invested back into the team? It sure does feel like everything has been geared towards investing to boost the valuation, rather than on pitch success.

Which is why a part of me will laugh at the families’ misfortune if we get relegated. Because literally everything they’ve done to boost the valuation and not charge forward with on field success despite being billionaires will be undone.
 
SissokoWasGood (BoL) said:
So again do you think it’s a case of the family / Joe being happy with profits and not realising they would be better invested back into the team? Was it true when Levy would say that all profits are always invested back into the team? It sure does feel like everything has been geared towards investing to boost the valuation, rather than on pitch success.

Which is why a part of me will laugh at the families’ misfortune if we get relegated. Because literally everything they’ve done to boost the valuation and not charge forward with on field success despite being billionaires will be undone.
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100% I think they want to maximise the sale value and get out with as much as they can, all roads have led to that point. They family decided to take a highly contentious (IMO) loan on future revenue to put money in.

The kids have been here a short time but they have already proven that talk is cheap, the Jan we had was criminal in terms of negligence, especially with injuries, that showed all you need to know in the short term about ambition, bravery and flair for the job.

I never and still don't buy the Spurs not being for sale line, I think we are very much so.

Like or loathe him, Levy was a good day to day operator and I think him leaving should have come at the time of sale rather than the king and queen of c0ck ups taking over. We shall see if they turn the ship
 
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MartyFunkhouser said:
100% I think they want to maximise the sale value and get out with as much as they can, all roads have led to that point. They family decided to take a highly contentious (IMO) loan on future revenue to put money in.

The kids have been here a short time but they have already proven that talk is cheap, the Jan we had was criminal in terms of negligence, especially with injuries, that showed all you need to know in the short term about ambition, bravery and flair for the job.

I never and still don't buy the Spurs not being for sale line, I think we are very much so.

Like or loathe him, Levy was a good day to day operator and I think him leaving should have come at the time of sale rather than the king and queen of c0ck ups taking over. We shall see if they turn the ship
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Yeah, I think the ‘the club is not for sale’ is one of the most transparent bluffs in the history of business. ‘We want to win more things, more often’ only to proceed to operate largely the same way in January just looks absolutely laughable now. And I think everyone knows it. The squad knows it. Prospective buyers know it.

The thing is, I can’t quite work out whether it is just naivety on the part of the kids or a deliberate attempt to just get to the money outcome as quickly as possible at the risk of on field success. Because I feel like the summer transfer window was ok. Eve the loan of RKM was a recognition of like…we cannot leave a manager short again. But the failure in January and the trumpeting of ‘trying’, and the selling of Brennan, it’s all just very incompetent.

Danny Kelly said something interesting on TVFTL. These kids inherited their positions. Even Jim Ratcliffe like him or loathe him has run businesses. Obviously Levy had. Everything we have seen this season smacks of making decisions that sound good in theory, because even kids that were put through private school and then worked in their dad’s investment company can understand theory. But having judgement, a feel, a flair for this is something that takes a long time to acquire. And as good as Levy was in all sorts of ways he never truly figured it out on the football side.
 
SissokoWasGood (BoL) said:
Yeah, I think the ‘the club is not for sale’ is one of the most transparent bluffs in the history of business. ‘We want to win more things, more often’ only to proceed to operate largely the same way in January just looks absolutely laughable now. And I think everyone knows it. The squad knows it. Prospective buyers know it.

The thing is, I can’t quite work out whether it is just naivety on the part of the kids or a deliberate attempt to just get to the money outcome as quickly as possible at the risk of on field success. Because I feel like the summer transfer window was ok. Eve the loan of RKM was a recognition of like…we cannot leave a manager short again. But the failure in January and the trumpeting of ‘trying’, and the selling of Brennan, it’s all just very incompetent.

Danny Kelly said something interesting on TVFTL. These kids inherited their positions. Even Jim Ratcliffe like him or loathe him has run businesses. Obviously Levy had. Everything we have seen this season smacks of making decisions that sound good in theory, because even kids that were put through private school and then worked in their dad’s investment company can understand theory. But having judgement, a feel, a flair for this is something that takes a long time to acquire. And as good as Levy was in all sorts of ways he never truly figured it out on the football side.
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What jobs have Johnston and Lewis Jn ever had? Even within Tavistock? Genuine question.

I thought she lunched and regattaed in Bahamas, whilst he casino and golfed In Argentina?
 
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