Daniel Levy - Former Chairman

[Ace Face]

I realise that. But your initial post highlighted poor officiating as a potential reason for costing us points, but every team (other than Arsenal) can point to that.

Can you blame DL and ENIC for two consecutive seasons disrupted by injuries to most of our key players?

Admittedly you could argue that our medical team and facilities are not up to the required standards, which is 100% on them, but that would mostly affect the recovery period and not the actual incidents which was unprecedented on this scale.

And re: our 17th place finish in 24/25, there are certainly mitigating factors there, including injuries.

 

[Gutter Boy]

When you read of all the lawsuits against Triller the owners of Eight Sports makes the alleged sale of his share of the club to them a little bemusing but of course £££££££ wins in the end.

The brickshow America is at the moment, maybe the Chinese company were the ones playing by the book? A lawsuit might be aggressive Trumpian foreign policy, with the Chinese being the ones obeying the rule of law?

 

[Muttley]

Personally, I never felt Levy was a great negotiator at all. It was pretty much spelt out in the Modric and Lloris autobiographies that Levy wasn't looking for quid-pro-quo where both parties feel satisfied with the outcome. Levy seemed to get to that point in any negotiation and move the goal posts. My guess is that approach meant he lost way more than he ever won, not that negotiation should be about winning or losing. It should be about winning and winning. As I said, it's about the quid-pro-quo.

I reckon it was really easy to become disenfranchised working with Spurs on transfers under a Levy regime. I think this was the point @SissokoWasGood (BoL) was inferring above. I know Poch lost the plot with the constant procrastination of Levy doing deals and upseeting the start of every season. We saw with our own eyes the amount of times we had to do major culls as Levy had let the squad get so bloated. We read so many times that we had the money but couldn't make the deal happen. We saw so many times transfer windows where the big clubs were signing 2 or 3 quality additions but we were in the 6-8 range.

I'm actually more excited now about going into transfer windows now that Levy has gone.

 

[Jurgen the German]

Sometimes change for changes sake needs to happen, DL had built up a certain level on animosity (obvious on this thread) that hung over the fan relationship with club, and there were legitimate concerns that he had hit a ceiling with his approach.

That said, the 6 or 7 years, sometimes 10, sometime more, re downward trajectory narrative is vastly overstated.
- We literally were 4th, five seasons ago (2022, 3 years post your 2019 statement)
- We were 5th, three seasons ago
- We were in SF of domestic cup twice, in that same five seasons
- We won the Europa League two seasons ago.

This is inherently the issue with serious football discussion and nuance.
- Tottenham went on an extraordinary run of league results from 04/05 season all the way to 23/24 (19 seasons with only 3 times out top 6)
- Despite Chelsea, City and Saudi Sportswashing Machine coming with money doping, and increased competition from better run clubs and rival of clubs like Villa.
- There always was going to be some drop off post our best manager/team combination in modern era and moving on of the current best player in the world, to paint it as some monumental fudge up is just too simplistic a perspective.
- Covid seriously hurt the club exactly at the point when the stadium was supposed to help

There is too much of a lazy narrative to paint the last 6-10 years or entire ENIC/DL period as a failure.

The last 2 years have been an utter clusterfudge, that is the story (if we had got 5th/6th this year, there would be no narrative re years of decline). The real question is why the last 2 years have gone so bad.
- Why have two manager hires failed to get a grasp on the PL (Jose/Conte never even looked like dropping outside top half)
- Recruitment with a serious nuance, why has the squad managed in both Europa/CL but looked horrid in PL (balance, type of player, physicality, is it a profiling mistake?). To say our recruitment is brick (i.e. bad players) is again OTT, balance and gaps for sure.
- Injuries, this gets swept under the rug every time, but no recruitment strategy, no squad depth model can compensate for 14 injured players, none.
- Why has our model gone from 5th highest spend and punching slightly above our weight to 5th highest spend and performing way below (except in Europe).

Re your two questions (even though not aimed at me)
- The club prioritized CL finishes because the financial model required it (perhaps our new/old owners will change this, lets see)
- Keeping Levy with same set of rules/controls (put in place by same owners we currently have) in place made no sense. The only model in which keeping him made sense was with more delegation of authority and him focusing on working with FA/UEFA (just like Dein used to get Scum favours) and the overall commercial side and continued development of Tottenham.

It’s neither overstated nor a lazy narrative. The Europa League triumph was a fantastic achievement and something every Spurs fan will cherish. However, the league remains the ultimate barometer of a club’s progress, or lack thereof, because it reflects performance over 38 games rather than a handful of knockout matches.

Since reaching the Champions League final in 2018/19, our league finishes have been 6th, 7th, 4th, 8th, 5th, 17th and 17th. While there have been occasional highs along the way, the overall trend is difficult to ignore. The trajectory has been downward for a number of years, culminating in our worst league finish in decades.

For me, the aim should never be to choose between league consistency and trophy success. We should be striving for both. The best-run clubs are capable of challenging for honours while remaining competitive in the league year after year. Winning the Europa League was a major positive, but it shouldn't completely overshadow what has been a sustained decline in our league performances.

 

[Jurgen the German]

Can you blame DL and ENIC for two consecutive seasons disrupted by injuries to most of our key players?

Admittedly you could argue that our medical team and facilities are not up to the required standards, which is 100% on them, but that would mostly affect the recovery period and not the actual incidents which was unprecedented on this scale.

And re: our 17th place finish in 24/25, there are certainly mitigating factors there, including injuries.

Not directly, no. No chairman or owner can prevent a player from pulling a hamstring or suffering an impact injury.

However, if we're talking about two consecutive seasons being heavily disrupted by injuries, then it's fair to ask questions of the club's infrastructure. The ownership is ultimately responsible for providing the facilities, medical department, sports science staff, conditioning programmes, recovery processes and overall environment that are designed to minimise injury risk and maximise player availability.

You can't have it both ways. If the club is praised for having world-class facilities and being at the forefront of sports science, then it also has to be scrutinised when injuries become a recurring issue over an extended period. At some point, it becomes more than just bad luck.

I'm not saying Levy and ENIC are personally responsible for every injury, but they are responsible for appointing the people, investing in the resources and overseeing the structures that are meant to keep players fit and available. If key players are repeatedly breaking down over multiple seasons, it's reasonable to ask whether the club is doing everything it can to address the problem.

 

[Raziel]

It’s neither overstated nor a lazy narrative. The Europa League triumph was a fantastic achievement and something every Spurs fan will cherish. However, the league remains the ultimate barometer of a club’s progress, or lack thereof, because it reflects performance over 38 games rather than a handful of knockout matches.

Since reaching the Champions League final in 2018/19, our league finishes have been 6th, 7th, 4th, 8th, 5th, 17th and 17th. While there have been occasional highs along the way, the overall trend is difficult to ignore. The trajectory has been downward for a number of years, culminating in our worst league finish in decades.

For me, the aim should never be to choose between league consistency and trophy success. We should be striving for both. The best-run clubs are capable of challenging for honours while remaining competitive in the league year after year. Winning the Europa League was a major positive, but it shouldn't completely overshadow what has been a sustained decline in our league performances.

It is mate, literally the last 5 years include a 4th and a 5th (still CL finish), which if you take out the 16-19 seasons, would still rank as matching our best results in 36 years, the last time we did better than 4th/5th outside of that 3 season run, is 89/90, so to claim 4th & 5th are some grand fall off just isn't real. It's not even a reversion to mean.

I don't disagree with striving for more, we absolutely should, but to be clear I think Spurs fans have some alternate reality some days
- The ENIC era hasn't been some disaster that dragged the club down from some heights
- Spurs has 18 major trophies in 145 years, barely an average of >1 trophy a decade, again outside of a small period of time, not a club that competes at the very top tier.

16-19 is an overachievement, a moment in time, we lack the squad or resources to turn it in every season without a whole lot going right, and the media gives us zero credit for that. Liverpool spent 400M on a title winning squad and came 5th, Chelsea has spent uncountable money and came 10th, but if we don't get better than 4th, we have fallen?

And to be 100% clear, the last 2 seasons are a disaster, see my earlier post, and there should be a review, accountability, changes, all the things that it deserves, but the 6-9 year drop off isn't real.

If you want a lazy/simple answer with no nuance, we sold Son and Kane, and that's the only fudging difference between the team coming 4th and 17th ..

 

[Jurgen the German]

It is mate, literally the last 5 years include a 4th and a 5th (still CL finish), which if you take out the 16-19 seasons, would still rank as matching our best results in 36 years, the last time we did better than 4th/5th outside of that 3 season run, is 89/90, so to claim 4th & 5th are some grand fall off just isn't real. It's not even a reversion to mean.

I don't disagree with striving for more, we absolutely should, but to be clear I think Spurs fans have some alternate reality some days
- The ENIC era hasn't been some disaster that dragged the club down from some heights
- Spurs has 18 major trophies in 145 years, barely an average of >1 trophy a decade, again outside of a small period of time, not a club that competes at the very top tier.

16-19 is an overachievement, a moment in time, we lack the squad or resources to turn it in every season without a whole lot going right, and the media gives us zero credit for that. Liverpool spent 400M on a title winning squad and came 5th, Chelsea has spent uncountable money and came 10th, but if we don't get better than 4th, we have fallen?

And to be 100% clear, the last 2 seasons are a disaster, see my earlier post, and there should be a review, accountability, changes, all the things that it deserves, but the 6-9 year drop off isn't real.

If you want a lazy/simple answer with no nuance, we sold Son and Kane, and that's the only fudging difference between the team coming 4th and 17th ..

If you look at it another way, we've managed just one top-four finish in the last seven seasons, and we even missed out on Champions League qualification in a season where fifth place would have been enough.

If our finishes had been something like 4th, 5th, 5th, 6th, 5th, 6th and so on, then I'd agree there would be a strong argument that we'd remained consistently competitive. But that's not what the league table shows. Instead, it points to a pattern of inconsistency, including two bottom-half finishes.

To put that into perspective, over that period we've actually finished in the bottom half of the table more often than we've finished in the top four. That's not the profile of a club steadily progressing or consistently competing at the highest level; it's the profile of a club that has become increasingly unpredictable from one season to the next.

 

[thfcsteff]

Is that true? Surely the same could be put the other way, like those who can't let Frank go without him being hated.

I just think people are discussing the past as they see it TBF

I think time will level out the Frank reactions. He has been the unfortunate bearer of a burden he should never have shouldered. I can certainly say my personal responses through the season were not just practical but over-emotional (I see @Bishop waving from afar LOL) when the truth is yes, he did a poor job and this was never the right job for him given the stability and expectation he came from versus the instability and huge demands we carried.
Besides consistently not liking the job he did, I have always been consistent on feeling he was shafted by the churn above him so soon after arrival.

 

[thfcsteff]

Not to respond for him but there have been lots of reports over the years of rival chairman disliking doing business with us. Even Simon Jordan who calls him a friend has mentioned that he preferred not doing business with Levy because of how difficult he was. Fergie said the same, Analus also and there have been many mentions over the years and I don't believe these people were talking purely about the price but more so his negotiating stance.

Yes being hard headed about the price you want for a player can be beneficial to the headline figure, but if that then means that sale takes all summer to happen (Berbatov, Kane, Modric) it gives little time for the replacement's also extended negotiations and for that player to bed into the squad. It also limited our ability to sell our unwanted players because everyone knew our pricing was quite unreasonable.

Absolutely true.

 

[robp135]

The brickshow America is at the moment, maybe the Chinese company were the ones playing by the book? A lawsuit might be aggressive Trumpian foreign policy, with the Chinese being the ones obeying the rule of law?

Most of the lawsuits came about when Biden was in office.

 

[robp135]

Not to respond for him but there have been lots of reports over the years of rival chairman disliking doing business with us. Even Simon Jordan who calls him a friend has mentioned that he preferred not doing business with Levy because of how difficult he was. Fergie said the same, Analus also and there have been many mentions over the years and I don't believe these people were talking purely about the price but more so his negotiating stance.

Yes being hard headed about the price you want for a player can be beneficial to the headline figure, but if that then means that sale takes all summer to happen (Berbatov, Kane, Modric) it gives little time for the replacement's also extended negotiations and for that player to bed into the squad. It also limited our ability to sell our unwanted players because everyone knew our pricing was quite unreasonable.

I think there was a point in time where we were on the outside looking in at the bigger clubs and Levy represented us well on those negotiations. Not allowing us to be bullied. Similar to the methods that Brighton are using now. How you handle one negotiation will impact your reputation and set the precedent for the future. But once we effectively became on of those clubs, we never operated the way they did. The other clubs, the agents etc they want to work with Arsenal, United, Liverpool, City, Chelsea because they don't mess around. They generally pay both the club and the player close to what they are asking for outside a few exceptions and the deal gets done quickly al]owing the selling club to reinvest.

 

[SissokoWasGood (BoL)]

If you look at it another way, we've managed just one top-four finish in the last seven seasons, and we even missed out on Champions League qualification in a season where fifth place would have been enough.

If our finishes had been something like 4th, 5th, 5th, 6th, 5th, 6th and so on, then I'd agree there would be a strong argument that we'd remained consistently competitive. But that's not what the league table shows. Instead, it points to a pattern of inconsistency, including two bottom-half finishes.

To put that into perspective, over that period we've actually finished in the bottom half of the table more often than we've finished in the top four. That's not the profile of a club steadily progressing or consistently competing at the highest level; it's the profile of a club that has become increasingly unpredictable from one season to the next.

I think you and Raziel are both arguing your case really well here. I instinctively land more on your side, but it’s been fun to read this debate.

The question I have for @Raziel , is that even if we accept things weren’t that bad under Levy, that post 2019 wasn’t a clear drop, did anything at all suggest we could progress on from there? Because it feels like even the bull case for Levy is that he has us largely in the top 6, largely in Europe, and that’s great, but there are another couple of gears to go up from there, and I just don’t think Levy had any clue about how to get us there.

I find myself almost agreeing with the idea that there wasn’t a big drop attributable to Levy since 2019. But then I look at those league finishes, and the range of different managers, and I just see no plan to get further. To challenge for the title, genuinely and consistently. I think his playbook will have just reached the limit of its effectiveness, and it was time to move on.

Through a lens of being a top 6 club, he’d done an excellent job pre 2019 and arguably a good one since. Through the lens of building a title challenger, he wasn’t the guy.

 

[Baleforce]

I think you and Raziel are both arguing your case really well here. I instinctively land more on your side, but it’s been fun to read this debate.

The question I have for @Raziel , is that even if we accept things weren’t that bad under Levy, that post 2019 wasn’t a clear drop, did anything at all suggest we could progress on from there? Because it feels like even the bull case for Levy is that he has us largely in the top 6, largely in Europe, and that’s great, but there are another couple of gears to go up from there, and I just don’t think Levy had any clue about how to get us there.

I find myself almost agreeing with the idea that there wasn’t a big drop attributable to Levy since 2019. But then I look at those league finishes, and the range of different managers, and I just see no plan to get further. To challenge for the title, genuinely and consistently. I think his playbook will have just reached the limit of its effectiveness, and it was time to move on.

Through a lens of being a top 6 club, he’d done an excellent job pre 2019 and arguably a good one since. Through the lens of building a title challenger, he wasn’t the guy.

But it was only a drop from a recent consistent high.

On average the last 7 years are still better than the average pre ENIC.

Two years of 17th is brick, but considering we were averaging 14th in the pre ENIC decade it’s far from end of days.

 

[thfcsteff]

I think there was a point in time where we were on the outside looking in at the bigger clubs and Levy represented us well on those negotiations. Not allowing us to be bullied. Similar to the methods that Brighton are using now. How you handle one negotiation will impact your reputation and set the precedent for the future. But once we effectively became on of those clubs, we never operated the way they did. The other clubs, the agents etc they want to work with Arsenal, United, Liverpool, City, Chelsea because they don't mess around. They generally pay both the club and the player close to what they are asking for outside a few exceptions and the deal gets done quickly al]owing the selling club to reinvest.

I think this is pretty accurate for sure.

It sort of sums up Levy's strengths and fatal flaws.
He is, undoubtably, the best off-pitch business chairman the Prem has ever seen. I think that's almost beyond dispute. That's because he LOVES that side of it.
The football side? We know you cannot run it like that. Obviously you negotiate, but it's a different cadence. He killed so many managers by either switching goalposts at the end or simply taking too long to get a deal done. Managers want most business done for pre-season. That was rarely what we did.

I am really interested to see if we meet the Van Hecke asking price in the next 48 hours. We need to. If he has a good World Cup, then his price will shoot up. Plus the manager really wants him. I know he is essentially replacing an outgoing, but we need to do the deal in this case IMO. We've spoken big, this is an important moment to act (apologies, not Levy related at the end other than we don't want to do what he did with these sorts of situations)...

 

[metalgear]

Levy and Spurs were never fined for anything they hired a firm of accountants to examine the legality of the bid as WHU were receiving public money in their bid for the tenancy.
Three people were charged and fined for spying but were never connected directly to Spurs or Levy.

Olympic Stadium: Men fined for spying on West Ham

Three men who spied on West Ham as the club was bidding to occupy the Olympic Stadium, are fined.

www.bbc.co.uk

Plausible deniability. Why would accountants risk their professional reputation and careers if not paid sufficiently?

 

[metalgear]

Levy lost me after three windows of zero transfers in. This after promising that the stadium build would not affect the football side of the business. That was peak Poch era and we reached the CL finals. Much easier to get quality players then compared to now.

 

[robp135]

I think this is pretty accurate for sure.

It sort of sums up Levy's strengths and fatal flaws.
He is, undoubtably, the best off-pitch business chairman the Prem has ever seen. I think that's almost beyond dispute. That's because he LOVES that side of it.
The football side? We know you cannot run it like that. Obviously you negotiate, but it's a different cadence. He killed so many managers by either switching goalposts at the end or simply taking too long to get a deal done. Managers want most business done for pre-season. That was rarely what we did.

I am really interested to see if we meet the Van Hecke asking price in the next 48 hours. We need to. If he has a good World Cup, then his price will shoot up. Plus the manager really wants him. I know he is essentially replacing an outgoing, but we need to do the deal in this case IMO. We've spoken big, this is an important moment to act (apologies, not Levy related at the end other than we don't want to do what he did with these sorts of situations)...

Wonder what @90sSpursBook thinks of this. Had Lewis purchased Spurs in 1991 with Levy in charge instead of Alan Sugar. Ever so slightly more ambitious and with a bit more football understanding in the true boom period of football. Where would the club be today?

 

[Raziel]

I think you and Raziel are both arguing your case really well here. I instinctively land more on your side, but it’s been fun to read this debate.

The question I have for @Raziel , is that even if we accept things weren’t that bad under Levy, that post 2019 wasn’t a clear drop, did anything at all suggest we could progress on from there? Because it feels like even the bull case for Levy is that he has us largely in the top 6, largely in Europe, and that’s great, but there are another couple of gears to go up from there, and I just don’t think Levy had any clue about how to get us there.

I find myself almost agreeing with the idea that there wasn’t a big drop attributable to Levy since 2019. But then I look at those league finishes, and the range of different managers, and I just see no plan to get further. To challenge for the title, genuinely and consistently. I think his playbook will have just reached the limit of its effectiveness, and it was time to move on.

Through a lens of being a top 6 club, he’d done an excellent job pre 2019 and arguably a good one since. Through the lens of building a title challenger, he wasn’t the guy.

So completely different conversation.

- Do I believe the club dropped off some cliff in 2019, no
- Do I believe the last 2 seasons are that said cliff, yes
- Do I believe some of that was just inevitable cycle, yes
- Do I believe (to your point), we built well enough to sustain, no

I'll give you an alternative option that shows what I mean

1. Our current history, we succeeded the best 3 seasons and manager/team combination with a very short term focus with 2 win now managers, got moderate results but not quite over the line, manager in after, actually got us the monkey off the back trophy but oversaw a slide in the PL that we haven't be able to fix (yet), result 2 x 17th place, and a narrative of 6-10 years (btw, the 10 year comments are hilarious) of decline
2. Alternate option, in Nov/Dec of Ange's 2nd season it's already clear, club makes a decision and fires him, lets arguably say we go for RDZ then (he's supposedly been on our radar for years), we buy properly in January then again in summer. Lets arguably say we got back to 8th in that season, 60 points this season would have got us 6th, 66 points (same as Ange's first season) would have got us back into top 4 and CL.

That's why to me, people are confusing things
- Did we have the budget/spend to consistently push top 4 and challenge for things? no, we haven't been there long before current ownership restrictions
- Did we genuinely fudge up in the last 2 years (not last 6), yes, it was correctable, I'd argue it was correctable up until January this year (fire Frank, hire RDZ, buy 3-4 players then), if we took action, the first 17th place would have been an outlier caveated by cup win, now it's a pattern.

I go back to what the game is now
- Liverpool spent 400M on a title winning squad and regressed
- Arsenal has spent >1B on a squad for Arteta
- United spent 200M+ on 3 front line players last season and from talk are going to spend more this year.
- Chelsea's spend is uncountable.

Right now we are playing net zero spend, and our fans think the problem is 6 years ago .. make no mistake, I think RDZ is a good manager and will have us punch above our weight, but if the plan is Robertson, Senesi, JVH, Savino, Harry Wilson and maybe one real attacking intent signing (MGW or a CF), it isn't enough and no amount of hindsight blaming will change that.