Daniel Levy - Chairman

[parklane1]

The stadium gave us extra funds to buy players. Which we did. Covid might hamper that.

No doubt Covid HAS hampered that and we would be in a far better position now if it had not. I get it that there are a few fans who want to see Levy out ( there always has been). However IF we are still in this position once we have had a chance to make the extra money that we KNOW the new stadium will bring in and we are still watching the pennies then will be the time to say Levy is not doing what he promised.

 

[parklane1]

I should say, I get people defending Lewis / ENIC because they like the fact we are comfortably 6th and won't drop too far. That's your prerogative. But I think there is an lengthening list of evidence that suggests they don't want to push on - Kane's news being the latest. I'm just saying, as a fan, I think it is blindingly obvious the next step of investment isn't worth it to them, and after 20 years I'm surprised people aren't more angry about how things have gotten, especially since we came so close to it all.

A hell of a lot of assumptions on your part in that post mate.

 

[parklane1]

Because he's 28 and doesn't have time to wait around to see how the rebuild goes that will take 2-3 years to properly compete with City. If he wants to win trophies he has to go now or next season at the very latest.

I don't know how to use the like button, he knows his injurys to his ankles may cut his long time playing days short and accepts that its now or never.

 

[BrainOfLevy]

Because he's 28 and doesn't have time to wait around to see how the rebuild goes that will take 2-3 years to properly compete with City. If he wants to win trophies he has to go now or next season at the very latest.

2-3 year rebuild...plus the 2 year decline he has already waded through...so 5 years before we can seriously compete again. No wonder he would want to leave! From our position of strength, whichever way you look at it this has been a disaster.

 

[Bedfordspurs]

he could be leaving at the worst possible time, especially if Potter comes in and is as good as you say he is

TBF Potter knows how to beat city now too

 

[BrainOfLevy]

No doubt Covid HAS hampered that and we would be in a far better position now if it had not. I get it that there are a few fans who want to see Levy out ( there always has been). However IF we are still in this position once we have had a chance to make the extra money that we KNOW the new stadium will bring in and we are still watching the pennies then will be the time to say Levy is not doing what he promised.

The thing is, even if we do have to wait for the 'taps to be turned on' (I'm not convinced a club with serious ambition would need to wait for this BTW - why wouldn't JL loan us the money and we can pay him back once the taps are running if we wanted to maintain our position?) then it still calls into question whether ENIC will ever actually back a manager and get behind a plan, rather than quite clearly bricking themselves every time someone gets them dangerously close to the success all the fans would want. Will they ever just sign a quality player the manager wants, or will they spread the risk across 3 players in the hope that maybe we get one extra one out of it, 3 years down the line?

 

[DubSpur]

2-3 year rebuild...plus the 2 year decline he has already waded through...so 5 years before we can seriously compete again. No wonder he would want to leave! From our position of strength, whichever way you look at it this has been a disaster.

You don't add on two years that are already over. 2-3 year rebuild to compete not 5

 

[BrainOfLevy]

I don't know how to use the like button, he knows his injurys to his ankles may cut his long time playing days short and accepts that its now or never.

The sad thing is, he genuinely thought he wouldn't need to leave us 2 years ago. There was no 'now or never' question in his mind. Now could have quite easily been at Spurs. What changed?

 

[BrainOfLevy]

You don't add on two years that are already over. 2-3 year rebuild to compete not 5

5 years from Kane supposedly being able to realistically hold a trophy though. So the other 2 years would definitely factor into his thinking.

 

[parklane1]

The sad thing is, he genuinely thought he wouldn't need to leave us 2 years ago. There was no 'now or never' question in his mind. Now could have quite easily been at Spurs. What changed?

Neither you or i know what he was thinking 2 years ago. you are guessing at best and muck spreading at worse. Look i know you have every right to slag whoever you want to but you can not expect many to agree with you. Lot of assumptions with a lot of your posts recently about Levy.

 

[glasgowspur]

That to me shows we were making up for lost time after 18 months of no signings at all.

Time will tell on that one i guess - not sure that evidence would suggest there was a transfer budget to carry over from those 18 months as during that period we were sell to buy essentially (so no outgoings meant no budget to carry over) if that's what you meant by making up for lost time.

Honestly I think it really comes down to: if we were going to consistently be the 3/4th highest spenders in the league, I don’t think Poch gets so frustrated, and I don’t think Kane would want to leave.

Who knows, 5+ years is a long time in football and there's more to being happy at a club than just having money to spend - we had a very tight unit at the club between the managers & players and then that seemed to collapse sometime between the 2 seasons at Wembley - there's more to that than what meets the eye imo. Wrt to backing we spent a considerable amount between Poch & Jose the past 2 years, enough of a figure that Poch could have got a rebuild close to what he would have wanted had he wanted to see it through, so i find it hard to believe, with that in mind available budget post stadium is what led to his exit.
Kane has sat through a 3 year decline of performance, taking us from top 3 looking to challenge the title to hoping to qualify for the EL, he's 28 - the last 2 years were ours to convince him to stay, not the next two.

What is pretty clear is everything that is happening is the result of a strategy to not want to push on beyond our ‘rightful place’ of 6th, so good people want out. People that have said they are happy to stay at the club as long as it feels like we are progressing.

This is your negative spin on things and not 'clear' to me at all - what's clear to me is if you don't want to push past 6 then you don't sack managers for finishing 5th-6th, which we do, regularly(?)

Effectively people are arguing for ENIC’s right to keep us 6th on average. They don’t take money out, they don’t put money in, and so we have to be ok that this is the best we can do. I think it’s rubbish. We don’t have to wait for the ‘taps to be turned on’ from the stadium to start competing. If we were actually about to, Kane would not want out. Simple as that.

This isn't what people are arguing, at least not from what i have seen apart from Glasgowspur earlier - and kinda contradicts that our 2010s decade average was 4th, why now that we have more money to spend on the squad are we going to expect to see our average level decrease? Not only that but be happy for it to happen? It's a strange opinion you have dreamed that other people hold

Just to clarify, I think Levy is keeping us competing at where we should be. As our revenue increases because so will levys ambition.
He will not let us run before we can walk.
Said it many times, poch biggest problem was getting us and our expectations so far ahead of the plan.

 

[BrainOfLevy]

A hell of a lot of assumptions on your part in that post mate.

I don't think there is mate. It's 20 years of evidence. Every time they've had a chance to compete, they've shat themselves because they know their financial plan doesn't involve investing more than they absolutely have to, to stay 6th at least.

Nelsen/Saha, Moutinho, Grealish, Berahino, 18 months with no signings after the 3rd straight season finishing top 3. Every time we've gotten close, we've been spun a tale of how image rights were just too difficult, about how there wasn't any value (ha...I even parroted this line on here at the time!), about how Moutinho's ownership situation was just too complicated. It's gonad*s. If we wanted to compete, we would have gotten it done. And we wouldn't have done a Leeds. Donna Cullen has really earned her money, I swear.

If I may, I'd suggest that there is just as much 'assumption' that the new stadium is going to be the game changer for us under ENIC, as there is me assuming it won't be. But I'm just going by 20 years of decisions, so we have a pretty good guide of how ENIC makes them. Yes the stadium will allow us to spend more. Cool. Are we ever actually still going to back a manager under a unified plan that works? Why did Poch get so frustrated if he had just done the hardest yards and was so close to being able to reap the rewards? Why has Kane decided this isn't likely to be the right place to win trophies? Why is Brighton's manager the most realistic manager candidate for us when we sacked a guy who is now managing Neymar? There are all of these indicators, and a lot of people who love the club clearly deciding ENIC's way is not going to give them success. I don't think my assumptions are any crazier than the other side of the argument, respectfully.

I think it's pretty clear. ENIC wanted to buy the club that was undervalued after Sugar's reign, and get it back to where it was supposed to be. They knew the fanbase had a lot of latent potential that could be awakened through more regular European football and monetized through a new stadium. They knew that sparing no expense on a stadium would be a sure-fire way of increasing the value of the club. They branded the club with the Amazon documentary because they wanted to package it up nicely for the next buyer who can take it on from here. I bear ENIC no ill will - that is entirely their right and they have done us a solid by building our infrastructure. But they do not care about us winning trophies as much as they do the profit on their investment in Spurs. That is essentially all I am arguing, and I think that is pretty clear. Otherwise they'd have invested from a position of strength to keep absolute difference makers like Poch and Kane on side.

Might I be absolutely crazy in suggesting the reason they haven't sold the naming rights is because they don't want to sign up for a 10-15-20 year commitment with a sponsor when a new owner might want to come in and brand the stadium themselves? Might the ESL have thrown a bit of a spanner in the works and now some important and rich people are evaluating what it all means? I think now is the right time for them to sell. I think they know that...I think they can hold on and see if football rights become even more valuable on the global market which will increase the value of the club again, but otherwise, they have done the hard yards. I think a lot of people are assuming ENIC's ultimate goal is to win with this new stadium, and I used to believe it too. None of the decisions we have made in the last two years suggest that is the case. I think they want to sell, and are a waiting for the right deal to present itself. In the meantime, Joe Lewis isn't chucking more money in, because it will effectively come straight out of the profit he will make on the club. And as I keep saying, he does not care about trophies as much as he does his profit.

 

[BrainOfLevy]

I actually think the ESL thing is super interesting. The Athletic broke the Kane story a few weeks ago, and there wasn't as much reaction from the club. They knew the ESL announcement was coming. That would have kept Kane.

I also think if there was any buyer about to swoop in, it would have massively shaken things up on that side. @parklane1 your post by saying I'm 'spreading muck' is like I have some ill will against them, and I promise you I don't. I used to be one of Levy's biggest defenders on here, hence my username. What I am is actually fascinated by the business of football (partly why I thought Levy was so brilliant, pulling off building a stadium on the old WHL site, to that quality standard, while we still competed on the pitch, it was actually pretty amazing). I love the strategy, I love figuring out what all of the decisions mean, why they are made. And I'm also a Spurs fan. So while I won't be privvy to every single conversation that happens behind the scenes at Spurs, I love reading the tea-leaves, and thinking about what it all means. TBH I get way more interested in the business side of the club than I do most of the matches, because I see matches as outputs of good decisions in the boardroom. Cup finals and big games though, of course I'm as frustrated as anyone when we lose.

One of the things I have learned in the last couple of years is to follow the money. Understand who owns the money, understand their goals, understand how their decisions get made. Everything for Spurs comes back to Lewis. In a capitalist society, that is pretty much how it works, and you can do this with all of the clubs, and figure out their strategies, their reasons for buying, their ambitions, what their realistic goals are. Most are rational. And in our case, I think it was ENIC's intention to increase the value of the club as much as possible, by spending as little as possible of their own money to get there, and then sell to a buyer that will hopefully make us really compete. It just so happens that once in a while you get a crazy guy like Pochettino who comes along, who believes in bigger things than money, and ends up succeeding beyond how anyone thought possible, and it actually throws a spanner in the works. Because ENIC probably didn't anticipate having to justify why we have fallen from title contention to 6th, and now they have a PR problem. I think Pochettino for them was Chelsea's Lampard hire. Work with the young players while the stadium build / transfer ban constraints were in place, keep us competitive, and then we'll push on once they're lifted, and THAT'S when we'll have our CL run. So @billyiddo I kind of agree with you, I think we will invest more, as I've said, but I don't think it was ENIC's plan to have us actually compete for the title. I'm sure this has been quoted by Levy numerous times - build the stadium and then try and get into the CL from there.

Then we get to ESL. Levy almost pulled it off. Got us to the top table, in as near a level playing field as possible with Real, Barca, Juve. It would have been an amazing achievement, and really interesting for a new buyer to come in and take on from there, and ENIC's profit would have been huge. It will still be pretty huge, but may have taken a hit. I wonder if plans are afoot for them to sell this summer. Maybe they will accelerate now the ESL is dead. Maybe Kane, maybe the manager hunt, maybe all of it is implicated.

So I promise, I am not spreading muck. I am fascinated by the business of it all. I don't think ENIC are EVIL. I just don't think they ever intended to be the people investing at the level of Chelsea of City. I think they wanted to make a fat profit on the club, and let someone with deeper pockets / more passion take it on from there. The Amazon documentary, given Levy hates interviews and publicity, clearly wasn't because he just fancied being on a TV show. They are trying to attract a buyer. And I would really disagree with people that think it's all the ENIC masterplan to have us compete for titles in 5, 10 years or however long it takes. They will always spend whatever the club can afford, no more, no less.

 

[billyiddo]

1)I don't think the idea that there 'might not have been a transfer budget to carry over' is the refutation of my point that you think it might be?

2) I completely agree with you that the last 2 years were the ones to show Kane should stay. And we blew it. From a position of strength. We took everything that made someone like Kane want to stay - a manager that gets the best out of him, a club that looked like it was following a plan and progressing, and totally blew it. Levy made the JM hire because he was doing the best he could, within the constraints of the ENIC plan. We weren't going to back Poch and make a real step forward, we were going to squeeze as much as possible out of this squad, and pray we don't fall too far. Kane always said he would stay if he thought we were progressing. I'm sure he is non-figuratively quoted as saying it. I'm not sure there can be too much argument about it. We don't feel like we are progressing anymore, and Kane it out. Who's fault is it?

3) We sacked a manager a week before a cup final. We sacked Harry for coming 4th. We sacked Poch for being a few points off of 4th and 6th when he was sacked. If your argument is we sack managers because we expect them to be top 3 with the lack of backing we give them, I'd say that's a frankly insane way to run a football club. I think we sack managers because they realise ENIC aren't going to want to push on beyond this comfortable point, and it's easier to get someone else who feels they can use Spurs as a useful stepping stone, and will be happy with the ENIC plan. I'm sure Levy is quoted somewhere as saying he wants managers to need us as much as we need them. Clearly so they will be pliable to our plan and structure. AVB needed us after Chelsea, was for all intents and purposes unhappy with how the Bale money was spent, and left. Harry was always a rescue act that ended up working too well. Poch clearly got frustrated with the constraints. Jose was clearly a punt. But we don't hire a manager and back them in say, the way Liverpool back Klopp. We sign players that will likely be good investments over the mid-term, that some other manager will likely get something out of if the current one fails, and their quality should hopefully keep us 6th. That isn't real backing to help us push on. We've arrived at a position of strength a few times, and we haven't seized the day.

4) Ultimately, if we want to push past 6th, we invest like we want to push past 6th, or at least back managers and get behind a plan. Our average position of 4th is almost entirely down to the ridiculous work Poch managed to pull off under those constraints, which we have squandered. What we are seeing now is a regression back to ENIC's actual level, when they don't have a miracle-working, lemon-loving crazy person who was happy to turn down Real Madrid to stick this out, because he believed in building something. If Poch wasn't that way inclined, we likely would have regressed way before it.

5) I'm not dreaming anything up. I'm taking these arguments to their logical conclusion. I think we all accept ENIC don't take money out, and they don't put money in. My argument is, I want someone to put some money in. Maybe a sugar daddy, maybe a tech billionaire, maybe a sports investment group, maybe someone as rich as Joe Lewis but who has a little more passion for Spurs, and is comfortable chucking the odd couple of million in to get a deal over the line, if we're at a position of strength. It seems like most people are happy to say 'we are happy with ENIC putting nothing in and taking nothing out, and we think this strategy will bear out'. I don't think the strategy will bear out, because I don't think people who love this club would want to leave if we were about to really push on. So I would challenge that point, and really ask why people seem to be happy with our owners for treating our club the exact same way that Arsenal's - who have a terrible reputation - treat theirs? People are effectively arguing for ENIC's right to not put any money in, when all that means is that Lewis does not give a flying fudge about the trophies the club wins, as long as he profits on the investment. People also seem to be arguing that by really backing a manager and getting him the players he wants, e.g. Moutinho, Skriniar, Grealish, we risk doing a Leeds, despite the blatantly obvious examples of players like Sissoko signed for big money, likely because they have versatility and longevity (so multiple managers will want them) rather than getting behind a manager who has a plan to win. I think there's a huge gap between doing a Leeds and pushing to win some trophies. It doesn't mean spending City money, but it does mean Lewis could have chucked in a few million to help us maintain a position of strength. He didn't do that because it's an investment to him. And fans, for reasons beyond my comprehension, are passionately defending his right to do so, despite the last 2 years of terrible decisions and our best player wanting to leave.

I get the argument that the stadium is about to be the game changer, I really do. And I will always refute that with the idea that I don't think Poch and Kane would be out if that was actually going to be the case. No one doubts Chelsea want to win things. I don't think people doubt Liverpool's ambition. People in the game definitely doubt ours. It goes back to this club being an investment for Joe Lewis. He isn't as passionate about trophies as we are, and he isn't going to do all he can to get us them. And beyond assuming that the stadium is going to change everything despite completing it leading to our worst 2 years in the last decade, I don't see why people are defending his right to keep us going with these constraints.

1) ok...

2) mate i think i've shown in the last post pretty clearly that the money spent on the squad since the CL final was a fair old chunk of change and is likely an amount that Pochettino would have been happy to have known he had coming his way to improve the squad (from balancing ins and outs to 160m+ net in 2 seasons) - in light of that I think it's a complete stretch to suggest that Pochettino copped the hump because he knew he wasn't going to get financial backing over the coming years (as the evidence suggests he actually would have got backing)
As for Levy's motivations it's positive spin v negative at this stage so no need to drag that out.

3) My argument was simply to refute the claim of yours that the club are happy sit in 6th and not aim higher, again same as with my response to point 2 above - i feel i have given clear examples that show what you state is the case is in fact wrong, a club that is happy to finish 6th sacking it's managers for being on target for 6th does not make sense, they are the actions of a club that is not happy with only achieving par. Now you can argue that they don't always provide the backing required to do better than 6th - but to argue that's where they are happy for us to sit is just not supported by their actions.

4) Ultimately, if we want to push past 6th, we invest like we want to push past 6th - agreed 100% and i feel simple way to determine this free from agenda would be to compare our level of spend v that of the teams around us - again i have done this and it shows that we are indeed investing at a higher-than-6th-place-level

5) there's a lot of stuff to unpack in this paragraph but it's mostly just negative spin that i will respond to with a more positive take so there's little use in addressing it all. Believe it or not im not really interested in pouring over multitude of decisions taken over the years, there's always going to things that went wrong and mistakes that were made - as i always tend to come back to with owners - medium to long term is how you judge them and at the minute the medium term is looking bad, so there will have been a lot of bad decisions made over the last few years that brought that about.

If your position is you want an owner to buy us and pump his own money in then fine that's understandable - but taking exception to the current owners because that's not how they operate seems a little strange to me - copping the hump with a man you've never met because he isn't throwing his own personal wealth at a sports team you follow is a little bit ludicrous don't you think?

Most of your points at their root come back to not backing Poch when we were close to big things because of our self imposed net spend of close to zero during the build, that's no longer a cross to bear so...

 

[BrainOfLevy]

1) ok...

2) mate i think i've shown in the last post pretty clearly that the money spent on the squad since the CL final was a fair old chunk of change and is likely an amount that Pochettino would have been happy to have known he had coming his way to improve the squad (from balancing ins and outs to 160m+ net in 2 seasons) - in light of that I think it's a complete stretch to suggest that Pochettino copped the hump because he knew he wasn't going to get financial backing over the coming years (as the evidence suggests he actually would have got backing)
As for Levy's motivations it's positive spin v negative at this stage so no need to drag that out.

3) My argument was simply to refute the claim of yours that the club are happy sit in 6th and not aim higher, again same as with my response to point 2 above - i feel i have given clear examples that show what you state is the case is in fact wrong, a club that is happy to finish 6th sacking it's managers for being on target for 6th does not make sense, they are the actions of a club that is not happy with only achieving par. Now you can argue that they don't always provide the backing required to do better than 6th - but to argue that's where they are happy for us to sit is just not supported by their actions.

4) Ultimately, if we want to push past 6th, we invest like we want to push past 6th - agreed 400% and i feel simple way to determine this free from agenda would be to compare our level of spend v that of the teams around us - again i have done this and it shows that we are indeed investing at a higher-than-6th-place-level

5) there's a lot of stuff to unpack in this paragraph but it's mostly just negative spin that i will respond to with a more positive take so there's little use in addressing it all. Believe it or not im not really interested in pouring over multitude of decisions taken over the years, there's always going to things that went wrong and mistakes that were made - as i always tend to come back to with owners - medium to long term is how you judge them and at the minute the medium term is looking bad, so there will have been a lot of bad decisions made over the last few years that brought that about.

If your position is you want an owner to buy us and pump his own money in then fine that's understandable - but taking exception to the current owners because that's not how they operate seems a little strange to me - copping the hump with a man you've never met because he isn't throwing his own personal wealth at a sports team you follow is a little bit ludicrous don't you think?

Come on, Pochettino was clearly frustrated. He felt the need to publicly pressure the club. He felt the need to threaten to walk if he won the CL. You'd think he would be happy with the backing, but he clearly wasn't. He wanted to win the biggest prizes. ENIC wanted to 'compete for the CL places'. Also for Poch it was not just the money, but actually signing players who would be genuine difference makers. There was a lot of talk that Levy thought Jose was decisive and Poch wasn't. Poch would argue he wanted a level-up type of player. He wanted the type of backing for his plan that Klopp got at Liverpool. And he probably would have won us some trophies had he got it. Not the money, but the trust in the players he wanted.

I'm not saying they want the club to stay 6th. I'm sure they want us to go further than that. But they are not willing to invest to make us title contenders. And they don't want us to fall below 6th. I am positive this has been quoted, either by Poch, his staff, or Levy himself. But it was keep the team competitive, use young players, and when the stadium is ready, THEN compete for the CL places. I am sure even going forward we will get the odd 4th under ENIC. Clearly not enough for Kane. Clearly not enough given where we were.

Ironically the one time it looked like we had our act together as a club was when it looked like Levy had reduced the expectations on hiring Poch - there was a clear sense of 'it won't be top 6 or bust'. But that reduction of expectations meant we actually operated with a clarity of strategy that allowed us to beat clubs with more money. Which meant a few years of overachieving. But it meant straying from the ENIC plan if we were going to keep that up. Poch wanted to challenge for the biggest titles. Just to be clear, I am not saying I want 6th, or that ENIC 'want' 6th. I am saying I want to challenge for the biggest titles, as did Poch, as does Kane. I think you are saying we will spend more in the new stadium and probably have a few years in the CL when other clubs struggle. I am totally open that it is a situation that will happen. I am saying it is not enough, not for where our best manager and player of the modern era wanted us to be, and I think a new owner is much more likely to have us in title contention, where as I think under ENIC that is a long, long way off.

To your last point - no, absolutely it is not a ludicrous take!! This is exactly what I am getting at. We are fans. We love Spurs no matter what happens. We go to the games, we buy their beer, and we will never take our business anywhere else. We will follow them all of our lives. And so what I am struggling to wrap my head around is that people seem absolutely fine to be treated as an investment, by an ultimate owner with no passion for winning trophies, when they have absolutely no where else they will take their business. We will pay the highest ticket prices in the country. Absolutely fudging OF COURSE I want an owner to put some of his own money in! Other owners do. Or, I want an owner that wants to take us on the next step, as happens in PE all the time. We are fans, and the amount of fans on this forum that are happy to go 'well, can't really expect him to put his own money in, so what are ya gonna do?' just baffles me. We can absolutely hold them accountable, we can absolutely be frustrated that the ultimate barrier to our success, given how much time and money we spend watching and talking about their club, is the fact that they won't put more money in. They are entitled to make a profit on the club. But Levy's greatest trick is making out he is the 'custodian of the club' and doesn't want us to do a Leeds, and having that be how a lot of fans view him, so he completely gets away with his bosses lack of desire to put any money in. OF COURSE we should want our owners to chuck a bit in, especially when we come so close to trophies. Plenty of other owners do that. Some then get bored. Some of them are actually bloody good chairmen.

 

[billyiddo]

@BrainOfLevy If Pochettino was told that he'd get 160m on top of any sales made to rebuild the team with and that wasn't good enough for him then i don't know what to say - i don't know what he or anyone else would have realistically been expecting in the first couple of seasons having moved in to the stadium. Frankly I think you're projecting here mate tbh as a way of dismissing the money that has been spent post stadium move as it contradicts your position that the club aren't going to invest moving forwards. I think ive said all that needs to be said on the matter now. Anyone reading can form their own conclusions on this particular point from what has been posted.

Well maybe you should work on your language then mate because to me you quite clearly stated on a number of occasions that for ENIC 6th was the limit of their ambitions and that was true for people defending them also. If we're saying that they didn't want to finish below 6th then i guess i would have to say... well of course? You're probably referring to the Poch quote from the season we were delayed moving in to the stadium when he was on record saying the club is not focused on winning titles - to me that's just referencing the fact that the focus at the time was on delivering the stadium, Im sure for some of you that is a ghastly quote, but for me the stadium had to take precedent.

I think you are saying we will spend more in the new stadium and probably have a few years in the CL when other clubs struggle No, no i am not saying that - post stadium our revenue will be a match for anyone bar the two Manchesters - obviously 6 in to 4 doesn't go so there will be years where we miss out just like every other top 6 side has over the last 10 years but over a 5 to 10 year span i expect us to be challenging for the title (hard work if City and United are at their maximum level) and picking up trophies.

It's a nice passionate post regarding the last point mate but it's too late in the evening for me to type out a worthy response

 

[BrainOfLevy]

@BrainOfLevy If Pochettino was told that he'd get 160m on top of any sales made to rebuild the team with and that wasn't good enough for him then i don't know what to say - i don't know what he or anyone else would have realistically been expecting in the first couple of seasons having moved in to the stadium. Frankly I think you're projecting here mate tbh as a way of dismissing the money that has been spent post stadium move as it contradicts your position that the club aren't going to invest moving forwards. I think ive said all that needs to be said on the matter now. Anyone reading can form their own conclusions on this particular point from what has been posted.

Well maybe you should work on your language then mate because to me you quite clearly stated on a number of occasions that for ENIC 6th was the limit of their ambitions and that was true for people defending them also. If we're saying that they didn't want to finish below 6th then i guess i would have to say... well of course? You're probably referring to the Poch quote from the season we were delayed moving in to the stadium when he was on record saying the club is not focused on winning titles - to me that's just referencing the fact that the focus at the time was on delivering the stadium, Im sure for some of you that is a ghastly quote, but for me the stadium had to take precedent.

I think you are saying we will spend more in the new stadium and probably have a few years in the CL when other clubs struggle No, no i am not saying that - post stadium our revenue will be a match for anyone bar the two Manchesters - obviously 6 in to 4 doesn't go so there will be years where we miss out just like every other top 6 side has over the last 10 years but over a 5 to 10 year span i expect us to be challenging for the title (hard work if City and United are at their maximum level) and picking up trophies

You keep going on about the money spent since the stadium move as if we weren't coming off of 18 months with no signings. I have already said if we are consistently the 3rd biggest spenders, I'd be delighted.

I don't know how I can be clearer. Tell me if you think anything I'm saying here is inaccurate: We hired Poch to be our Lampard. Transfer ban / Stadium build constraints. We wanted someone who could work with young players, and keep us competitive, and then when the stadium was finished, then we would be able to make a real push for the CL places, and expect to be in them as often as possible. What happened was that Poch massively overachieved, and felt we could win the biggest prizes with a little bit more of a push. Title contenders, CL final, and now the decline (my saying the regression to the ENIC mean) is having to be managed because we never expected to do that well.

I am totally open that ENIC want us to be in the CL more often than not. I will give you that. I have been saying 'not fall below 6th' because I have been trying to demonstrate that their strategy to this point has been to keep us in Europe, maintain the veneer of the club that is ready to explode, and if we kept falling too far back like Everton for example, we certainly wouldn't be in any ESL discussions. I think the difference in what we are arguing is that you feel ENIC have been given an unfair rap in this thread because they will now invest to be a closer member of the top 6, rather than a best of the rest, and I am arguing that we have allowed ourselves to fall away from competing for the biggest prizes.

I am not disputing we will invest more in the new stadium. I am not disputing that this will bring us closer to Liverpool and Arsenal. I am not disputing we will have the occasional top 4 finish under this model. What I am disputing is that we should be happy about it, given that we got so close, and now a generational talent who loves the club wants to leave.

Look...I just want ENIC to sell up. I think they want to sell up too! And I do get it, sustainable growth means more. But we got so close, and we are watching a 2 year regression because we never planned to be that close. It won't be the worst thing in the world to be spending more and at a level more comparable with the rest of the top 4. Let's just hope they actually back a manager going forward and get behind a plan that will allow us to win trophies, rather than cut the legs off from them if we get too close. Because right now, my worry is even if the overall spending power of the club is increased, we still have to trust their decisions on the football side, which have been frankly awful these last couple of years. Not awful if you are fully aware of the constraints of the ENIC model, but awful if you were looking at this as a fan and thinking that we had some of the best people in the world in their positions, and we are blowing it.

 

[Bedfordspurs]

You keep going on about the money spent since the stadium move as if we weren't coming off of 18 months with no signings. I have already said if we are consistently the 3rd biggest spenders, I'd be delighted.

I don't know how I can be clearer. Tell me if you think anything I'm saying here is inaccurate: We hired Poch to be our Lampard. Transfer ban / Stadium build constraints. We wanted someone who could work with young players, and keep us competitive, and then when the stadium was finished, then we would be able to make a real push for the CL places, and expect to be in them as often as possible. What happened was that Poch massively overachieved, and felt we could win the biggest prizes with a little bit more of a push. Title contenders, CL final, and now the decline (my saying the regression to the ENIC mean) is having to be managed because we never expected to do that well.

I am totally open that ENIC want us to be in the CL more often than not. I will give you that. I have been saying 'not fall below 6th' because I have been trying to demonstrate that their strategy to this point has been to keep us in Europe, maintain the veneer of the club that is ready to explode, and if we kept falling too far back like Everton for example, we certainly wouldn't be in any ESL discussions. I think the difference in what we are arguing is that you feel ENIC have been given an unfair rap in this thread because they will now invest to be a closer member of the top 6, rather than a best of the rest, and I am arguing that we have allowed ourselves to fall away from competing for the biggest prizes.

I am not disputing we will invest more in the new stadium. I am not disputing that this will bring us closer to Liverpool and Arsenal. I am not disputing we will have the occasional top 4 finish under this model. What I am disputing is that we should be happy about it, given that we got so close, and now a generational talent who loves the club wants to leave.

Look...I just want ENIC to sell up. I think they want to sell up too! And I do get it, sustainable growth means more. But we got so close, and we are watching a 2 year regression because we never planned to be that close. It won't be the worst thing in the world to be spending more and at a level more comparable with the rest of the top 4. Let's just hope they actually back a manager going forward and get behind a plan that will allow us to win trophies, rather than cut the legs off from them if we get too close. Because right now, my worry is even if the overall spending power of the club is increased, we still have to trust their decisions on the football side, which have been frankly awful these last couple of years. Not awful if you are fully aware of the constraints of the ENIC model, but awful if you were looking at this as a fan and thinking that we had some of the best people in the world in their positions, and we are blowing it.

What would be great is if you can find a buyer for the club please

 

[billyiddo]

@BrainOfLevy
I think you are correct that we didn't set the bar at title challenge when we appointed Poch - It was always stated the aim was to be in the CL places when we arrived in the new stadium and was always refered to as being ahead of schedule. Are we using that as evidence now the club don't ever have ambitions to go further? We were at that point a non top 4 club with a solitary appearance in the CL to our names and a mammoth stadium build fast approaching - i mean sure we need to be ambitious but targets for managers also need to be somewhat realistic. I see it always as a step by step target, the aim way back when was always to break the top 4 glass ceiling and then from there to push on and challenge the league - crawl before you can walk and all that.

It was a case of peaking too early - had that 16/17 team peaked in the final year at Wembley instead of the final year at WHL, with the following season being our first in the new stad with the Ndombele/GLC/Sessegnon money available to strengthen the team, then we'd have likely taken that and run i would imagine...

fudge

 

[Bedfordspurs]

@BrainOfLevy
I think you are correct that we didn't set the bar at title challenge when we appointed Poch - It was always stated the aim was to be in the CL places when we arrived in the new stadium and was always refered to as being ahead of schedule. Are we using that as evidence now the club don't ever have ambitions to go further? We were at that point a non top 4 club with a solitary appearance in the CL to our names and a mammoth stadium build fast approaching - i mean sure we need to be ambitious but targets for managers also need to be somewhat realistic.

So your saying when we appointed a coach (he wasn’t called a manager) who had never won a trophy and lost his first job with his beloved ex club bottom of the league we weren’t expecting to win the league ...
I’m sure we brought around 25 players in during his time too
But weirdly the ones who played the most were the ones that were already here (Hugo, rose, Walker, jan, moussa, Kane, eriksen, Chadli... lamela...)
So maybe it comes down to whose in charge as lots of people have said all along
And to reconfirm I am being sarcastic
The worst thing that’s happened to us is our expectations have changed. It’s a good thing if the players can mentally match up to it (that’s a huge fix for any manager) and we of course have the fans driving it too. But it will take some more time to get back to being a top side and it will need some money