Daniel Levy - Chairman

[Baleforce]

Its a good guide as to where you stand in the overall pecking order.

Most clubs and companies in the same industry should, in theory, have relatively similar cost structures and capital requirements

I agree in theory they should, but most football clubs are run terribly, we are the only PL club I’m aware of with a realistic wages to turnover ratio.

 

[Bedfordspurs]

Its a good guide as to where you stand in the overall pecking order.

Most clubs and companies in the same industry should, in theory, have relatively similar cost structures and capital requirements

Not really
We have many United with a £250m plus wage bill for example compare to ours at £150m
And Barca at £450m for example
So their fixed cost mostly that clubs have to earn before doing anything on the pitch
Add in debt which is different for every club and of course other costs and it’s why all that matters is profit
You can’t commit to money on players that you don’t have or can’t earn otherwise you end up like Barca are right now ...

 

[Bedfordspurs]

I agree in theory they should, but most football clubs are run terribly, we are the only PL club I’m aware of with a realistic wages to turnover ratio.

Burnley are
Villa certainly were
There are a few that are
Interesting that arsenal didn’t get as much press for their government loan recently too...

 

[Baleforce]

Burnley are
Villa certainly were
There are a few that are
Interesting that arsenal didn’t get as much press for their government loan recently too...

I consider them championship clubs, but I take your point.

All owned by (admittedly really bad) sugar daddies too.

We have actual means to live within.

 

[Bedfordspurs]

I consider them championship clubs, but I take your point.

All owned by (admittedly really bad) sugar daddies too.

We have actual means to live within.

Indeed

and it’s no coincidence that our spending increased along with our profits

 

[Danishfurniturelover]

I consider them championship clubs, but I take your point.

All owned by (admittedly really bad) sugar daddies too.

We have actual means to live within.

I like the whole living within your means it is a nice idea. My issue is with the lack of foresight about the squad and what I perceive and the fear to actually buy the players we need.

 

[Baleforce]

I like the whole living within your means it is a nice idea. My issue is with the lack of foresight about the squad and what I perceive and the fear to actually buy the players we need.

We could have done better, but I do believe there is a baseline, you don’t land at Tottenham (or any club of our size) if you don’t have the basis metrics to succeed, you buy athleticism and performance comes from hard work and coaching effort.

There are so many filters in place before PL first teams that the chaff really does get filtered out.

Where the club have failed is by not putting enough effort and opportunity into certain “fringe” players at certain times. Some of the players have failed themselves by not hitting the required work rate too.

 

[DubaiSpur]

We’ve missed 3 years of stadium sponsorship now (so probably £45m at a reasonable guess). We’re also no longer negotiating the sponsorship as a CL regular. Levy overplayed his hand significantly I think.

Very true, but I think he's realized that, what with scrambling to get cinch on our sleeves long after the rest had already sold that space.

I don't think anyone expected how fast it would all go downhill after the CL final, tbh. Within 6 months of the final, we'd sacked the man responible for bringing us there and hired a washed-up Portuguese sour lemon to try and rescue the season - 12 months after it, we were in the middle of a global pandemic with no fans in the stands and the game on a knife-edge. 18 months on, the pandemic has reached its nadir, as has this useless basket case of a manager and our team united in being utterly useless.

That combination of incompetence, bad luck, global catastrophe and spiralling on-pitch uselessness is hard to predict for anyone. Levy being left forlornly holding his rooster in his hand when the great football revenue party bubble burst is just really bad luck.

 

[Baleforce]

Thought experiment.

Jose goes on to be a massive success, we win multiple domestic and continental titles. Levy rode though this period of utter despair because there were not fans in the stadium tearing up season ticket books and demanding Jose's removal. The courage of his conviction was not tested at a "normal" level, he could Seymour Skinner it.

In normal times, that opportunity isn't there.

Should the chairman of a football club always give the fans what they want?

 

[DubaiSpur]

We could have done better, but I do believe there is a baseline, you don’t land at Tottenham (or any club of our size) if you don’t have the basis metrics to succeed, you buy athleticism and performance comes from hard work and coaching effort.

There are so many filters in place before PL first teams that the chaff really does get filtered out.

Where the club have failed is by not putting enough effort and opportunity into certain “fringe” players at certain times. Some of the players have failed themselves by not hitting the required work rate too.

I really don't think we care about metrics much at Spurs. At least, not since Paul Mitchell, and Comolli before him.

When I look at Steve Hitchen and the rest of our miserable scouting team, I see the same types of traditional, 'eye-for-a-player' type scouts that Billy Beane ran out of town when he took over the Oakland As in the late 90s. We used to be ahead of the game in terms of the statistical revolution in football with Comolli, Michael Edwards and Paul Mitchell, but they have all gone, and we seem to have regressed into a mid-2000s set up, miles and miles behind everyone else.

Same with our physio team. Where is the innovation? You hear of all these weird new methods to keep player fitness going over the years, from blood spinning to horse placenta, but we are routinely one of the worst teams in the league for injuries every season for 20 years, or so it seems. We don't have a club psychologist, which would do wonders not only for our myriad of players with apparent mental health problems and challenges (from Rose to Dele) but for the losers' mentality this sorry bunch have in general.

What's frustrating is that Levy once had an eye for talent in the backroom team. But now it seems we've hired chancers top to bottom - the good guys have been routinely poached off us (Comolli, Edwards, Mitchell, Inglethorpe and McDermott from the academy, even Trevor Birch after just six months). Not even by top sides - okay, Edwards and Inglethorpe went to Liverpool, but McDermott went to the fudging FA, as I recall, and Birch to the EFL. Surely we can do better in keeping our staff? The ones that others want, anyway - not Steve Hitchen, since no one can yet figure out what he's good at.

It's why I want Mourinho to be replaced by someone like Ralf Rangnick - that man was a major, major part of the explosion in value of the RB franchises as a whole, acting almost as a simultaneous coach, DoF and executuve director at times. We need that sort of root-and-branch revamp, it seems, because the beautiful facilities we have now deserve a higher standard of staff.

 

[Trixster]

Thought experiment.

Jose goes on to be a massive success, we win multiple domestic and continental titles. Levy rode though this period of utter despair because there were not fans in the stadium tearing up season ticket books and demanding Jose's removal. The courage of his conviction was not tested at a "normal" level, he could Seymour Skinner it.

In normal times, that opportunity isn't there.

Should the chairman of a football club always give the fans what they want?

The age old cliché of Fergy at Utd would say no.
But times have changed and the disgruntled masses are listened to more and more often.

 

[Baleforce]

I really don't think we care about metrics much at Spurs. At least, not since Paul Mitchell, and Comolli before him.

When I look at Steve Hitchen and the rest of our miserable scouting team, I see the same types of traditional, 'eye-for-a-player' type scouts that Billy Beane ran out of town when he took over the Oakland As in the late 90s. We used to be ahead of the game in terms of the statistical revolution in football with Comolli, Michael Edwards and Paul Mitchell, but they have all gone, and we weem to have regressed into a mid-2000s set up, miles and miles behind everyone else.

Same with our physio team. Where is the innovation? You hear of all these weird new methods to keep player fitness going over the years, from blood spinning to horse placenta, but we are routinely one of the worst teams in the league for injuries every season for 20 years, or so it seems. We don't have a club psychologist, which would do wonders not only for our myriad of players with apparent mental health problems and challenges (from Rose to Dele) but for the losers' meteorology this sorry bunch have in general.

What's frustrating is that Levy once had an eye for talent in the backroom team. But now it seems we've hired chancers top to bottom - the good guys have been routinely poached off us (Comolli, Edwards, Mitchell, Inglethorpe and McDermott from the academy, even Trevor Birch after just six months). Not even by top sides - okay, Edwards and Inglethorpe went to Liverpool, but McDermott went to the fudging FA, as I recall, and Birch to the EFL. Surely we can do better in keeping our staff?

However, that nobody wants to poach Steve Hitchen off of us is to our detriment, tbh.

By metrics I mean build/strength/pace/height/weight, fixed numbers.

I agree "eye for a player" is flimflam, everything is measurable and predictable if you put the work in.

I don't agree on the physio's though, medicine is a mature science, I don't want innovation here, we know what works, do it. I genuinely believe other PL clubs are doping, to dangerous levels, we are either doing it really badly, or way too conservatively, hopefully we are not doing it at all, but we'd get relegated if that was the case, so...

I can't believe we don't have a team of psychologists, let alone one (well, I can, it would explain so much) the game is played in players heads now, it would be absolutely criminal for our players not to be spending as much time in mental preparation as they do on the physical.

 

[Baleforce]

The age old cliché of Fergy at Utd would say no.
But times have changed and the disgruntled masses are listened to more and more often.

Sir Alex is the best example of a chairman spending a long time over a decision and then backing himself that I can think of.

How I wish Scholar had not given up so easily.

 

[DubaiSpur]

By metrics I mean build/strength/pace/height/weight, fixed numbers.

I agree "eye for a player" is flimflam, everything is measurable and predictable if you put the work in.

I don't agree on the physio's though, medicine is a mature science, I don't want innovation here, we know what works, do it. I genuinely believe other PL clubs are doping, to dangerous levels, we are either doing it really badly, or way too conservatively, hopefully we are not doing it at all, but we'd get relegated if that was the case, so...

I can't believe we don't have a team of psychologists, let alone one (well, I can, it would explain so much) the game is played in players heads now, it would be absolutely criminal for our players not to be spending as much time in mental preparation as they do on the physical.

I don't know if doping is the word for it, but there's a theory going around that Liverpool overcaffeinated their players to ridiculous levels these past two seasons, and are suffering a drop off now because they've had to ease off lest they cause serious heart problems long-term.

They don't seem to need it to beat Mourinho and his pathetic cowardice every time, mind. But I'm sure prsctices like that are common across the league - *except* for us, because our fitness is routinely atrocious these days, and Arsenal during Wenger's era, when they would routinely get dozens of injuries more than every other team, every season.

But, that aside, I still think our physios are sub-par. Look at the management of injuries we've had in the last five years - Dembele broke down and had to be flogged to China, Wanyama's knees collapsed (after no prior problems with fitness whatsoever), Verts declined after a head injury none of our physios could diagnose for a *year*, and we've had loads of those mystery injuries with start with 'one to two weeks' and end up producing useless, perpetual sicknotes like Lamela and (sadly) Lo Celso. Both of which were regarded as very fit, injury-resistant players before they came to Spurs.

 

[Baleforce]

I don't know if doping is the word for it, but there's a theory going around that Liverpool overcaffeinated their players to ridiculous levels these past two seasons, and are suffering a drop off now because they've had to ease off lest they cause serious heart problems long-term.

They don't seem to need it to beat Mourinho and his pathetic cowardice every time, mind. But I'm sure prsctices like that are common across the league - *except* for us, because our fitness is routinely atrocious these days, and Arsenal during Wenger's era, when they would routinely get dozens of injuries more than every other team, every season.

If you look at the history of doping in LITERALLY EVER OTHER SPORT, it follows the money, it's being hidden in football, we have a reckoning coming.

Sadly its so pervasive and accepted that it's now borderline unprofessional to not be doing it, I honestly don't know whether we are or not, unprofessional is kinda our thing.

As for Liverpool, they have openly admitted to routinely abusing painkillers, you can extrapolate from that as to what they are hiding.

 

[Bedfordspurs]

If you look at the history of doping in non-figuratively EVER OTHER SPORT, it follows the money, it's being hidden in football, we have a reckoning coming.

Sadly its so pervasive and accepted that it's now borderline unprofessional to not be doing it, I honestly don't know whether we are or not, unprofessional is kinda our thing.

As for Liverpool, they have openly admitted to routinely abusing painkillers, you can extrapolate from that as to what they are hiding.

They do have an asthma problem

 

[Baleforce]

They do have an asthma problem

I've always loved professional road cycle racing, I've read more books by ex dopers than any other genre. I got sucked in by the flimflam too, Big Mig was my hero when I was a kid, I went to bat for Armstrong for a long long time.

Generally speaking, having bad lung performance is going to stop you from getting anywhere near a professional cycling contract, inhaler's can be used to great effect in tandem with many banned performance enhancing substances though.

As for football, well, what do I know, I've not read the books of any disgraced doping footballers.

 

[Bedfordspurs]

I've always loved professional road cycle racing, I've read more books by ex dopers than any other genre. I got sucked in by the flimflam too, Big Mig was my hero when I was a kid, I went to bat for Armstrong for a long long time.

Generally speaking, having bad lung performance is going to stop you from getting anywhere near a professional cycling contract, inhaler's can be used to great effect in tandem with many banned performance enhancing substances though.

As for football, well, what do I know, I've not read the books of any disgraced doping footballers.

What’s odd of course in football is players moving clubs and then getting asthma ... I mean 1 in 5 have it but some clubs 1 in 5 don’t have it...

 

[DubSpur]

I don't know if doping is the word for it, but there's a theory going around that Liverpool overcaffeinated their players to ridiculous levels these past two seasons, and are suffering a drop off now because they've had to ease off lest they cause serious heart problems long-term.

They don't seem to need it to beat Mourinho and his pathetic cowardice every time, mind. But I'm sure prsctices like that are common across the league - *except* for us, because our fitness is routinely atrocious these days, and Arsenal during Wenger's era, when they would routinely get dozens of injuries more than every other team, every season.

But, that aside, I still think our physios are sub-par. Look at the management of injuries we've had in the last five years - Dembele broke down and had to be flogged to China, Wanyama's knees collapsed (after no prior problems with fitness whatsoever), Verts declined after a head injury none of our physios could diagnose for a *year*, and we've had loads of those mystery injuries with start with 'one to two weeks' and end up producing useless, perpetual sicknotes like Lamela and (sadly) Lo Celso. Both of which were regarded as very fit, injury-resistant players before they came to Spurs.

Do you really think that it is because our physios are sub-par? Do you not think that players at times get serious injuries?
Do you really think that our physios are our last line when it comes to injuries? Have you not heard of the dozens of times that our players have gone to the specialist in the field of that particular injury? Do you really think that Levy is going to pump 100s of millions into infrastructure and yet let the likes of Kane get treated by some hack?
Physios in every single top club are now seriously qualified, with every club employing doctors. You are more aware of injuries with our team, but ask a fan of just about any other team and they will bitch and moan about injuries just as much as you do about ours.

 

[Danishfurniturelover]

I've always loved professional road cycle racing, I've read more books by ex dopers than any other genre. I got sucked in by the flimflam too, Big Mig was my hero when I was a kid, I went to bat for Armstrong for a long long time.

Generally speaking, having bad lung performance is going to stop you from getting anywhere near a professional cycling contract, inhaler's can be used to great effect in tandem with many banned performance enhancing substances though.

As for football, well, what do I know, I've not read the books of any disgraced doping footballers.

Ferra the guy who did all the doping, the doctor was involved with Barcelona wasn't he. I remember reading he was over there and he also had links to Nadal in the tennis.