The Current State of Spurs (and some sympathy for Thomas Frank)

[BrentwoodSpur]

This is very good IMO explaining where we are, even with the "they are mates" angle

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Just watched this, and agree with Jordan. He has a pragmatic view of the club as a business and I think he’s correct in what he says

 

[tommysvr]

I think it's too early to be definitive on Levy yet. To be fair, what we're seeing now is partially his responsibility and partially an outcome of decisions he made.

That said, I actually agree with you and think history will be kind to Levy. He had us top 6 for pretty much 20 years and we challenged for the title 2 or 3 times in that time period as well as reaching the CL final. The problem was as you say - over expectation. We've won the league twice in almost 150 years and not challenged for it much more often. Yet, he was pilloried because the club didn't challenge for the big prizes more often. While we should always aspire to do better, I think some fans need to remember that they support Tottenham Hotspur. As harsh as it sounds, we aren't Liverpool or Man U (or the northern and southern lottery winners).

I said it while he was here so this isn't some nostalgia tinted declaration but I think, even acknowledging his mistakes, Levy was incredible for this club.

It looks very bleak at the moment. I've no enthusiasm for anything Spurs and I think a lot of fans feel the same. We'll keep going because that's what supporters do but it's as bad as I remember it for a long time. I take some consolation in the fact that you're never as high as you think you are when you're soaring and you're never as low as you think you are when you're down.

I'm sure we'll have some more dark says in our short term future but Tottenham Hotspur will rise again.

I agree with a lot of it — we’ll look back on Levy’s’ time fondly. That said, I think he’s just as much at fault for setting expectations higher than our standing. Sacking Poch 6 months after the CL final, Mourinho on the eve of another (even if I agreed with that) and then finally Ange when he actually did deliver what we all wanted sends a very clearly confused message of (imo) “we don’t actually know what we want.”

 

[K.D.D.D.D.Soc]

I'm still not convinced Levy leaving has changed a single thing at the club.

What do people think is running differently under the new regime? What would Levy have done better or worse? What decisions would he have made differently?

We will never know.

 

[Bedfordspurs]

No clear leadership being shown form the very top to the very bottom
Only one part of the club looks like it has a plan and that’s the ladies team which says how things have evolved
And I do mean from the very top down so board.. football management and on pitch leaders

 

[MartyFunkhouser]

No clear leadership being shown form the very top to the very bottom
Only one part of the club looks like it has a plan and that’s the ladies team which says how things have evolved
And I do mean from the very top down so board.. football management and on pitch leaders

Where is this so called famous VV PR and leadership?

 

[Muttley]

I think you're right. Proof of the pudding will be in the January and summer windows. The Lewis' have made a lot of noise about wanting to be competitive but it's easy to say that in September when you can't do anything about it. I'm very, very skeptical that the family who've owned this club through 25 years of prudence are suddenly going to start splurging especially if we are bound to lenders on the wage structure as Simon Jordan has strongly hinted at.

Levy, whatever his faults, was at least a figurehead for the club and you had a good idea how things were going to be run because he always seemed to do what was best for business.

It's as I said above, the biggest single determination of the club changing will be the squad strategy and it's evolution. Groundhog day could be at the end of August where we've seen another major overhaul and we've gone down the quantity over quality route again. Then we should expect exactly the same outcome as previously. It will serve us right.

I'm hoping this new regime will finally figure out that this squad is stacked. It needs big money 1st team signings like we've had with VDV and Kudus and more quality. It needs academy promotions. It needs churning of the players who can't make the next level. What it doesn't need is 6 or 7 signings in a summer window.

 

[DeanoAustin]

I agree with a lot of it — we’ll look back on Levy’s’ time fondly. That said, I think he’s just as much at fault for setting expectations higher than our standing. Sacking Poch 6 months after the CL final, Mourinho on the eve of another (even if I agreed with that) and then finally Ange when he actually did deliver what we all wanted sends a very clearly confused message of (imo) “we don’t actually know what we want.”

I guess we'll never know his thought process but you could argue that what Levy did with Ange was entirely in keeping with how he's always run the club.

Lots of people in the know, including those who've worked for Levy, have stated that the main ambition was to get into the Champions League. By December or January last year, the only realistic way for us to do that was to win the Europa. Arguably, keeping Ange rather than the upheaval of a new manager was the best way to do that. However, by finishing 17th (which was unacceptable regardless of context) it became clear to Levy that Ange would never get us top 4 consistently and he wasn't ever going to repeat the trick of winning the Europa to offset that. Therefore, for a club where top 4 and CL football is the goal, Ange was never going to work.

Or maybe I'm talking gonads. Who knows.

 

[johnola]

I'm still not convinced Levy leaving has changed a single thing at the club.

What do people think is running differently under the new regime? What would Levy have done better or worse? What decisions would he have made differently?

Primarily Levy wanted fresh external investment.

That died when he was removed.

And then some messages came out about ambition and since then I don’t know if I have heard anything from the regime.

 

[johnola]

I guess we'll never know his thought process but you could argue that what Levy did with Ange was entirely in keeping with how he's always run the club.

Lots of people in the know, including those who've worked for Levy, have stated that the main ambition was to get into the Champions League. By December or January last year, the only realistic way for us to do that was to win the Europa. Arguably, keeping Ange rather than the upheaval of a new manager was the best way to do that. However, by finishing 17th (which was unacceptable regardless of context) it became clear to Levy that Ange would never get us top 4 consistently and he wasn't ever going to repeat the trick of winning the Europa to offset that. Therefore, for a club where top 4 and CL football is the goal, Ange was never going to work.

Or maybe I'm talking gonads. Who knows.

And this season the only pathway is to win the Champions league .

 

[tommysvr]

I guess we'll never know his thought process but you could argue that what Levy did with Ange was entirely in keeping with how he's always run the club.

Lots of people in the know, including those who've worked for Levy, have stated that the main ambition was to get into the Champions League. By December or January last year, the only realistic way for us to do that was to win the Europa. Arguably, keeping Ange rather than the upheaval of a new manager was the best way to do that. However, by finishing 17th (which was unacceptable regardless of context) it became clear to Levy that Ange would never get us top 4 consistently and he wasn't ever going to repeat the trick of winning the Europa to offset that. Therefore, for a club where top 4 and CL football is the goal, Ange was never going to work.

Or maybe I'm talking gonads. Who knows.

Maybe he realised that...but he still talked about how much he wanted to win something, how much it meant when we did and that the ultimate reason for sacking Ange was because he expected us to compete on all fronts. That's where Levy's expectations don't much his actions. We haven't had the squad to do that for about 6 years now. Frank's been setup to fail massively with that being the expectation.

I also think Ange would still be in the job had we finished 8th and lost vs Frankfurt in the quarter finals. But that's obviously impossible to prove.

 

[Muttley]

Primarily Levy wanted fresh external investment.

That died when he was removed.

And then some messages came out about ambition and since then I don’t know if I have heard anything from the regime.

It's a great shout. Fresh external investment would have distilled everyone's share. Eventually. Levy / ENIC plus the shares of the external investors together would have been a bigger voice against the holding Tavistock group.

Who knows whether Levy's external investment was a power shift, a strategy to get more on-field success or even to increase the size of the club overall. We clearly could have had all 3 happening at the same time.

 

[Legohamster]

I tried to put it in the Frank thread, possibly explained it badly

When Frank took over we had won 2 home games in 2025, one of them was against Southampton, Fans were already annoyed at losing almost everything home game and paying £60 plus for the privilege of doing it

Adding to the losing it seemed like it was deemed OK to be losing these games, it seemed like the players/managers were just turning up like a pub team on a Sunday with zero prep or care and the manager was calling out fans publically for daring to criticise it.

We were awful

Frank takes over and the fans are already on edge about the home form and a couple of defeats and they are on his back already, that's not to say he's completely blameless, but he seems to be getting the flack for our home form for the entire year.

Losing every week becomes habit and it's a hard one to break, whoever took over would be facing the same sort of issues.