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Daniel Levy - Chairman

I'm not sure who appointed you the 'like police'?.... Surely we at least need a democratic vote before that sort of appointment? I'm sure you'd get parklane's vote however. ;)

Daniel Levy has been more than adequately paid (highest or second highest paid director in the PL for umpteen years and top 50 FTSE 100 CEO type money) for the job he does at THFC and that is before considering the (upwards of) £500m that his personal fortune has grown through his ownership of THFC. I think the owners even went through with a share buy-back a couple of years ago.... that struck me as a very obvious sign that the owners biggest aim is to increase their own wealth as opposed to the football club winning trophies.

Are you talking when redknapp took over? Enic issued shares the majority of which they bought. This money was then given to redknapp to buy players? Seems a strange thing to complain about when that's what you say you want from the owners.
 
I'm not sure who appointed you the 'like police'?.... Surely we at least need a democratic vote before that sort of appointment? I'm sure you'd get parklane's vote however. ;)

Daniel Levy has been more than adequately paid (highest or second highest paid director in the PL for umpteen years and top 50 FTSE 100 CEO type money) for the job he does at THFC and that is before considering the (upwards of) £500m that his personal fortune has grown through his ownership of THFC. I think the owners even went through with a share buy-back a couple of years ago.... that struck me as a very obvious sign that the owners biggest aim is to increase their own wealth as opposed to the football club winning trophies.
You make it sound like Levy is personally attempting a non verbalised Gerald Ratner moment.
 
Are you talking when redknapp took over? Enic issued shares the majority of which they bought. This money was then given to redknapp to buy players? Seems a strange thing to complain about when that's what you say you want from the owners.
No I'm talking about club funds being used to buy back preference shares (though to be fair they may have been issued by one of Lewis' companies in the first place)
 
No I'm talking about club funds being used to buy back preference shares (though to be fair they may have been issued by one of Lewis' companies in the first place)

It's a limited company not a plc. They either issue more shares (as they did when redknapp took over) which any shareholder can buy. Or they buy shares from another shareholder.
 
I'm not sure who appointed you the 'like police'?.... Surely we at least need a democratic vote before that sort of appointment? I'm sure you'd get parklane's vote however. ;)

Daniel Levy has been more than adequately paid (highest or second highest paid director in the PL for umpteen years and top 50 FTSE 100 CEO type money) for the job he does at THFC and that is before considering the (upwards of) £500m that his personal fortune has grown through his ownership of THFC. I think the owners even went through with a share buy-back a couple of years ago.... that struck me as a very obvious sign that the owners biggest aim is to increase their own wealth as opposed to the football club winning trophies.
That share buy back has been done to death 100s of times. It wasn't an attempt to increase their wealth. Lewis used one of his companies to buy 40m worth of shares and then Spurs bought them back. It was a way of giving a 40m loan with no interest to be paid.
 
Top notch analysis right there, that's how football works? why the fudge does anyone turn up then ...
Yes football does work like that. In general the most expensive squads with the best players win the trophies. It is rare for it to happen the other way around. As for turning up that's why teams who are not the "big 5" don't even try to do anything other than survive in the PL or Possibly grab a european place. I cannot believe we are even having this discussion.

It is the case that in the era of the Champions league to finish top 4 and win a cup in the same season has not been achieved by any one but the big 5. Most teams do not have the squad depth to compete on 2 fronts let alone the 4 fronts that were expected of Poch ( he got to the semis of the league cup too that season losing only on penalties iirc).
 
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Yes football does work like that. In general the most expensive squads with the best players win the trophies. It is rare for it to happen the other way around. As for turning up that's why teams who are not the "big 6" don't even try to do anything other than survive in the PL or Possibly grab a european place. I cannot believe we are even having this discussion.

It is the case that in the era of the Champions league to finish top 4 and win a cup in the same season has not been achieved by any one but the big 6. Most teams do not have the squad depth to compete on 2 fronts let alone the 4 fronts that were expected of Poch ( he got to the semis of the league cup too that season losing only on penalties iirc).
You can edit that to big 5 mate.
 
I'm almost certain we've gone over this before, but hey, I enjoy the discussion and you present your points well.

I can understand the criticism you aim at Lewis more, based on the wish for more investment. I find it difficult to judge that personal choice and I see that as disconnected from questions about how well Levy is running the club.

Levy owns around 30% of ENIC, with Lewis owning the rest. I see no realistic way of Levy investing his own money without Lewis doing the same proportionally to ownership share. Not saying he otherwise would have, but to me that particular criticism of Levy doesn't sit right.

Likewise, mate - always happy to have a pleasant discussion. ;) I don't criticise Levy alone for that - I used to, but I remember someone (might even have been you, mate) making that point a while back, and I felt it was a good one. When I highlight how their ownership model holds us back and cripples us in many ways, I refer to either Levy & Lewis or ENIC in general. At least, I try to.

I criticise Levy individually for not caring a single jot for the club's sporting goals, which I feel is fair given how his entire schtick for 20 years has been semi-competently investing the club's own money into risk-free infrastructure over on-field improvement.

They did buy (most of) the club, with their own money. In hindsight it's a great investment that seems like just printing money with little risk. That ignores the possibility of us doing quite a bit worse on the pitch. You mentioned trophies, but you didn't mention that we damn near got relegated during previous owners.

It's a lot easier to say there's no risk when it's not your own money.

It is absolutely printing money - not with little risk, *no* risk.

ENIC spent about 15m to buy us - maybe up to 45m if you could all the other share buyouts beyond their initial purchase.

That is all they have spent on us in 20 years. And with the explosion of revenues, exposure and income of English football in the twenty years from 2001 to 2021, they would have been guaranteed at a minimum a 200% return on their investment, even if we had been *relegated* - no way would we ever have been worth *less* than the pittance they paid for us. That has nothing to do with them, everything to do with the absolute skyrocketing value of being in the Premier League.

That is zero risk.

Investment in infrastructure has perhaps been the financially best decision, but I also think it's been the best decision for us as a club. Easier to say low risk when it's not your money and if ignoring potential bad outcomes. See Valencia.

Risk to the club from infrastructure projects not working out? Maybe, but no skin off Levy/Lewis's nose - they could still sell us for a 200% profit even if our stadium was an unfinished concrete husk like Valencia's. And, additionally, why would we have ended up in that position? The club's own money was used to build a stadium and training ground - if both had gone (even further) into cost overruns, all that would have happened is the club would have cut spending on players even further and ploughed that into infrastructure.

In all cases, the risk to Levy/Lewis is precisely zero - their total exposure to Spurs is just 45m, a fraction of Lewis' ill-gotten gains. They could sell us for 2x that today, in the next hour if they wanted to. It's all pure profit, most of it not due to them but due to the explosion in value of the PL as a whole.

Again, we are talking risk to the club versus risk to ENIC. There is no risk to ENIC, and never will be, because their total exposure to us is 45m - a miniscule fraction of Joe Lewis' ill-gotten gains.
 
Yet you hold it against levy for disagreeing with you.

Levy started enic with financial backing from lewis and his own (and family) wealth (there were othersi believe they bought out). When buying tottenham they had to sell many of their other assets (autonomy, rangers, sparta prague...) to raise the funds. The majority of his wealth is spurs. He hasn't got hundreds of millions in the bank he can just invest in new players. He has chosen the less risky path because it is his wealth at stake. We've seen rangers, qpr, liverpool (under hicks and gillet), potsmouth, sunderland, leeds, villa (under both learner and their previous owners)... countless others take the more risky path and fail.

If you want new owners, fine. I do too. But stop digging out levy and complaining about him for not being what you want him to be.

I don't hold it against Levy for disagreeing with me, mate. He disagrees, I already know that. I don't care what his opinion is, he doesn't care what mine is.

I care about my club, and ENIC's, long, grinding, dirt-cheap ownership of it being a negative thing on the whole - I take exception to his and Lewis' ownership and their actions, not their opinions.

As for the bit about them selling their other assets, that's not quite how I remember it going down. They paid 40m for a 25% stake in Rangers in 1997, expecting to make about ten times that (iirc, they estimated Rangers' value at a ludicrous 470m or thereabouts). Their chairman then sidelined Levy and Lewis, taking their money but giving them nothing. They got tired of this, and eventually sold in 2004 for about 8m, three full years *after* buying us. They sold Sparta Prague five years after buying us in 2006 for less than they bought the stake for.

I don't think much can be made of that other than them exiting unprofitable investments. Their past ownership ventures did ,however, give us the memorable admission from Levy in an interview that he had no connection to football whatsoever and it was purely about the money for him and Lewis - something he'd lied about when taking over Spurs, when he blagged about being a lifelong fan and all that rubbish.
 
You make it sound that Levy is on easy Street and has got it made. Yes he has got it made, he effing made it. It's a life time of work for him and has encountered a huge amount of headwinds along the way (I think @Raziel posted a good list the other day), many that would make most businessmen give up. We are all benefitting from his work (you obviously disagree), work that certainly doesn't warrant being described as 'barely competent' 'smalltime' etc...I actually find that insulting. He has navigated a complex route to get us set up for the next 100years on exactly the same site this club has always called home. Has that been at the cost of success? D'you know what...I don't think even that can be answered with anything but a guess.

I think what this boils down to is someone (Lewis) is sitting on a personal fortune and it galls you that he won't sugar daddy us. You just don't see it happening any other way. We came 90mins from winning the biggest game in club football...so it's certainly can happen another way, even a barely competent one. :D

He is on Easy Street and has got it made, mate. See my response to @braineclipse - the explosion of value in the Prem means he would never, ever have lost money, even if he did absolutely nothing. As it stands, he basically became the highest-paid CEO in the league for 20 years, paying himself a salary that means that he's likely already made more from us in salary alone than he's ever put in to buy us in the first place - that is the most zero-risk situation there is.

As for his dubious results, he took the club's revenues and ploughed them into infrastructure, while being hit-and-miss on literally everything else and cheap as chips on the playing side. That is what he did for 20 years. Is that a great value-add? If we had just hired a semi-competent CEO and paid him or her half of what we paid Levy, I'd wager we would have seen the same results, although I admit, that's just a guess on my end.

As for me being galled by Lewis not investing in us, yep, absolutely - he's a useless deadweight of an owner and I think we have suffered from having that type of absentee ownership for 20 years, including in that game you mention where a club with an incredibly stale squad that had not bought a single player for a record-breaking 18 months went into it against a well-funded side with ambitious owners who had backed their coach.

We definitely got a long way with a wondercoach like Poch, the best we ever had. But in the end, ENIC's parsimony brought us down, mate. It shows our limitations more than anything.
 
So welcome back, I'm just going to pick a few points vs. rehash old stuff

The stadium investment was a "no brainer" except
- For years I listened to people on this board tell me it was all smoke and mirrors and would never happen because it would cut into Spurs profit (and ENIC would be out after their quick flip)
- Building the stadium and training ground seems obvious, building the best, building it multi-purpose, investing in the area is not "minimum required"
The 4th most succesful bit ignore City & Chelsea who have won more under their sugar daddy reigns than in the 100+ years prior. It also ignores in the decade or so before there were other clubs who were ahead of Spurs who have dropped into the back of the back
- We have gotten to a QF or better 21 times under their ownership (this is an interesting conversation)

And that's where you and I disagree

- Should we have done better under Levy's ownership on the pitch? = absolutely (Apparently via computer simulation it's almost impossible for us not to have done better)
- Have they done bare minimum = no, clearly the training ground, stadium show a greater ambition than base line effort.
- City & Chelsea, combined with the impact of early PL & CL money on United, Pool & Scum are huge circumstantial things that have very little to do with our actions but have huge impact on any results.
- Your comment about random youth vs. established product is truly weird one, because historically "random youth" has been a much better buy for us than established (or at least expensive), e.g. Bale, Berbatov, Dele, Eriksen, Modric, Lloris, Walker are all sub £20M? our most expensive players? = Soldado, Sanchez, Ndombele & Lo Celso. This is where the "insert transfer missed" comment usually lands but never includes the transfers we missed that would have failed.

Good points. In response -

  • The 4th most successful bit is in response to people on this board and across the web talking about us like we were a League One team before ENIC bought us, some minnow lucky to be in the Prem at all. Less so here, definitely - more on places like r/coys with a larger proportion of younger fans who tend to underestimate our historical size. We weren't the biggest club, and we were in a tough moment hovering around mid-table when ENIC bought us. But we were the 4th-biggest club in England, out of 92 - we weren't some also-ran. We are more of an also-ran now, at least if you go by trophies.
  • Re: QFs, it used to be that folks cited the finals we reached, then the semi-finals...and now the quarter-finals. Mate, come on. I'll try later to compare the records of clubs reaching quarter-finals, but I did previously analyze the rates of clubs getting to finals. In the past decade, we got to three finals. In the past decade, Aston Villa also got to three finals. And they had a spell in the Championship in between. So much to be thankful to ENIC for, eh? ;)
  • Re: Random youth, it's not what the manager wanted, was more my point. Pochettino's ability to turn utter donkeys into world-beaters was amazing - we got to a CL final with Winks and Sissoko, and Poch more than anyone had earned his choice of players. But all we bought for him for the vast majority of his tenure were punts on youth and cheap second-choices - he wanted established players instead, and that ultimately did bring him down.
 

Done us good? But there are other owners who have done more.

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That is the model for those clubs as without it they would be irrelevant
Everton are now screwed and can’t plough anymore money in. Not sure why their affected so badly
Chelsea we know about. Roman backs his toys and fair play to him
And Villa owners are really good too
It’s why they refused to buy the club if they sold Grealish as they knew what they could add
But all 3 clubs without that investment are basically bolton
 

Done us good? But there are other owners who have done more.

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The problem isn't that spurs owners are not financially doping the club, but that other owners are. It distorts the market and puts those clubs at massive financial risk.

Also that graphic is misleading. Burnley at £0?.
https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...-left-club-90m-worse-off-and-loaded-with-debt

Apart from city and chelsea, the other owners want to make a profit. They might invest at the start (usually with borrowed money, or in burnley case the clubs bank account) chasing the dream of the prem/champions league. If that fails (which most do) then they scramble to get the money back. Or just dump the club.

We need a strong spending cap brought in.
 
Thanks Lilbaz, that was interesting.
I was really disappointed to hear that Pompey are stabilised and trying to bounce back.
A club that cheats this deeply and blocks other teams from glory deserves to go to the wall.

Despicable behaviour over those years, spending money that wasn't theirs, fans gloating, investing non-existent funds and leaving debtors in their wake.

In short, f*ck Pompey, f*ck Cheat$ki, f*ck Leeds and any other club who took their turn at the top table, pushing other clubs out of their way, by cheating.

There must be ~10 clubs who missed out on promotions or cup wins or league places or league wins because of these cheats.
 
That's the way it is. The EPL is designed to attract big money. Those are the rules. Fraud happens from time to time in any industry. I'll bet we see other owners learn from Levy on building a stadium, a long term asset financed with long term debt while paying themselves handsomely for supporting the project.
The problem isn't that spurs owners are not financially doping the club, but that other owners are. It distorts the market and puts those clubs at massive financial risk.

Also that graphic is misleading. Burnley at £0?.
https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...-left-club-90m-worse-off-and-loaded-with-debt

Apart from city and chelsea, the other owners want to make a profit. They might invest at the start (usually with borrowed money, or in burnley case the clubs bank account) chasing the dream of the prem/champions league. If that fails (which most do) then they scramble to get the money back. Or just dump the club.

We need a strong spending cap brought in.

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