Where are we as a club? | Page 2 | Vital Football

Where are we as a club?

As they were growing, we actually never knew the allocation of our revenues between football and stadium though. Levy clearly said that they were separate but never told us what was in each bucket. So WSL, AJ fights, NFL, Stadium hospitality etc didn't mean that we would see that as football financial clout. I'm not sure people understand that.

We do need that stadium open again.


I can't remember the number but the net on game day was a huge number, much better than I had anticipated.
 
We're at a cross roads.
Football clubs do go through cycles. But if your club is going through a golden summer period you have to win trophies.

I saw a picture of the top 6 sides over the last 20 years. The amount of trophies Chelsea and the others have won in comparison is light years apart.

Us with one poxy league cup.
Generally over that time the team that wins the cups has been a traditional top 4 side or finished in the top 4. Given our position as a club and then managers (understandably) focusing on trying to finish top 4, I can sympathise with the lack of trophies to a certain extent. We reached 3 league cup finals from 2008 to 2015 and won once. As frustrating as it is to admit, I would say that is probably a fair reflection on where we were as a club and what we were competing against.

Since 2015 when we have been at our strongest for a long time we failed to reach any domestic cup finals. That is a significant failure given how good our team was during those years.
 
We're at a cross roads.

Generally over that time the team that wins the cups has been a traditional top 4 side or finished in the top 4. Given our position as a club and then managers (understandably) focusing on trying to finish top 4, I can sympathise with the lack of trophies to a certain extent. We reached 3 league cup finals from 2008 to 2015 and won once. As frustrating as it is to admit, I would say that is probably a fair reflection on where we were as a club and what we were competing against.

Since 2015 when we have been at our strongest for a long time we failed to reach any domestic cup finals. That is a significant failure given how good our team was during those years.


It certainly was, That was the best squad we've had for a long time. Wrong manager. Wrong time in Levy's mind to take a manager risk.
 
Daniel Levy has acquired power and profile in 20 years at Tottenham - but his project is still unfulfilled

Two decades after he was thrust into football as a young Premier League chairman, Levy's reputation continues to precede him

By Sam Wallace, Chief Football Writer and Jason Burt, Chief Football Correspondent 26 February 2021 • 9:01pm

He was the youngest chairman in the Premier League when he took control of one of its biggest underachievers 20 years ago on Sunday, and the success or otherwise of the Daniel Levy era at Tottenham Hotspur remains a subject of dispute to this day.

Spurs were 12th after defeat to Leeds United on Feb 24, 2001, four days after which Enic, the investment company partly owned by Levy, bought a controlling stake and he became non-executive chairman of the club, aged 38. Those close to him said that he never wanted to be chairman or to go through the kind of public row between his predecessor David Buchler and then manager George Graham that exploded in the months that followed.

Graham was sacked having been accused by Buchler of leaking sensitive information about the club’s finances. Then in July 2001, the club captain Sol Campbell, allowed to run down his contract by the previous regime, signed for Arsenal as a free agent in one of the biggest embarrassments in Spurs’ history. By mid-October, Levy was executive chairman of Spurs.
In the recent Amazon Prime documentary about the club in which Levy spoke candidly for the first time in years he reflected that he had run many businesses in his life. “A football club,” he concluded, “is the hardest I’ve run”.

Two decades on the club is at another crossroads this summer. The heady days of the Mauricio Pochettino era are over. His successor Jose Mourinho has overseen a place in a League Cup final few believe Spurs can win and progress in Europa League, but five defeats in six in the league. The questions over the future of Harry Kane, the club’s top goalscorer for the last six seasons, will not go away. With three years left on his contract, and turning 28 in July is this the moment Levy sells? Even if he wished to, the question is whether a market exists for £100 million players. That kind of fee would be useful for a club that had only just built its long awaited new £1 billion stadium when Covid-19 struck.

The ultimate owner of Enic is the Tavistock Group, based in the Bahamas and the huge investment portfolio built by the English billionaire tax exile Joe Lewis. Its investments include private golf clubs in the US, steakhouse restaurant chains, Florida medical research facilities, San Diego biotechnology investors and an Argentine energy company among others. Spurs is a relatively small part of it, but almost all the public profile of Levy and Lewis springs from their Premier League club.
Levy is now the longest serving senior club executive in the league by some distance but there is always the whiff of tumult at Spurs, the recent churn in senior staff being the latest. At the start of the pandemic last year, Levy very quickly went public encouraging players to give up part of their salaries, and furloughing staff. Both decisions were rowed back upon in the following weeks.

Spurs have transformed their stadium and their standing under Levy, although his time in charge has coincided with unprecedented wealth in the Premier League – for which they were one of the original six breakaway clubs. They have enjoyed some memorable moments, especially in Europe, but won only one trophy. They have fallen just short at times, when opportunity has beckoned. Like many in the league, they despair privately at the power of billionaire owners. Yet Spurs are owned by a billionaire.

Lewis was never prepared to inject cash. Instead, Levy’s plan in 2001 was to be self-sustaining, first improving a team that twice finished 15th in the 1990s, and then build the training ground and stadium. His allies say that he has completed the two latter projects to the highest spec – and it is the on-pitch performance, the part that is hardest to control, that has been the most unpredictable. The club itself, one source said, was crying out for change in 2001 - run like a “cottage industry” with no centralised marketing strategy and separate departments doing the best they could.

Levy was schooled in the family business begun by his grandfather, Abraham. It began as a hat shop in Stratford east London and then over the next two generations, via Levy’s father Barry, diversified into men’s clothing, including the Mr Byrite brand, later the clothing chain Blue Inc. Levy ran that along with brothers Jonathan and Robert, of whom Jonathan is involved in the running of Spurs. The connection with Lewis allowed Levy to invest in Enic which took control of Spurs, with Levy owning around 30 per cent.

Levy gained a first-class degree from Cambridge in Land Economy and Economics and in a recent interview with the university student newspaper, said that he went there from state school with a determination to make his career. “I was determined not to mess it up,” he said. “I enjoyed my time at Cambridge, but I wouldn’t say I lived the typical student lifestyle.”

Twenty years on from being the young exec thrust into football, his reputation precedes him. He likes to control every part of a player’s deal, down to the kind of details over incremental pay-rises that would ordinarily be left to others to finalise. His famed style of negotiation can be a shock to inexperienced player agents doing their first big deal. For the older generation of agents, and peers running other clubs, his demanding opening gambits generally raise a chuckle. “He stabs you in the chest rather than the back,” is one assessment. Levy can be exhausting but the notion that he triumphs in every negotiation is generally regarded to be a myth.

By now, Levy would have hoped to be overseeing a club competing to be London’s leading sports and entertainment venue. The new stadium was built to accommodate NFL and music concerts as well as elite football. Instead the gates remain closed on the great glass and steel vision on Tottenham high road. There are still no title sponsors naming rights, and yet another new executive – this one from the US – has been recruited to sell them.

Lewis is 84 and he will decide the ultimate fate of Spurs. He has a daughter and son who work with Tavistock Group. Levy’s son Josh is chief executive of another Tavistock company, Ultimate Finance. Enic once owned minority stakes in five other European clubs including Rangers in the Scottish Premiership but it was Spurs that caught Levy’s imagination.

The Levy of 20 years ago will have seen potential in the club as an investment, although perhaps he would not have imagined it would have occupied so much of his professional life as it has. One suspects that the diligent publicity-shy Cambridge graduate, who beavered away on the family business, has come to rather enjoy the power and profile that came with football. His business career has made him wealthy, as one of the best paid executives in the Premier League, although perhaps that is no longer enough.
 
Nice article. These next 5 years are definitely the most important chapter for Levy and his Spurs career.

One big piece is the world getting back to normal. That is out of his control.

I'm also hoping that Levy will be introspective about which hats he wears within the club in the future. I always feel that he should focus on the things he's good at and step away from the other pieces that 2 decades have proven are not his forte.
 
Nice article. These next 5 years are definitely the most important chapter for Levy and his Spurs career.

One big piece is the world getting back to normal. That is out of his control.

I'm also hoping that Levy will be introspective about which hats he wears within the club in the future. I always feel that he should focus on the things he's good at and step away from the other pieces that 2 decades have proven are not his forte.

People never take into account who has to report into and how little room for freedom of action he's actually had over the years. But that's a whole other story.

For now, this season alone he is responsible for keeping hold of N'Dom when Jose wanted him gone and the same with Dele (yet to see the impact he can make) and of course Bale, who may well save our season on his own if he can keep fit.

He's also the first man that told Jose, change or else and Jose listened.
 
People never take into account who has to report into and how little room for freedom of action he's actually had over the years. But that's a whole other story.

For now, this season alone he is responsible for keeping hold of N'Dom when Jose wanted him gone and the same with Dele (yet to see the impact he can make) and of course Bale, who may well save our season on his own if he can keep fit.

He's also the first man that told Jose, change or else and Jose listened.

lol - I guess Levy didn't have 60k fans in the stadium delivering the message so had to do it himself. It's great to see the change in Jose since the start of Feb. It will be interesting to see if they stick or whether he drifts back.
 
Dele and Bale if on song can make a big difference but only now showing signs, also Lo Celso has been out . Kane was out for a while with both ankles. Son is in a bit of a dip and Bergwijn not performing. Lamela and Moura have moved up a notch or two recently. Vinicius has not really clicked.
So it's not like Jose has had all the strings to his bow in tune previously.
But its coming together hopefully at the right time for a big push.
 
If we can string some wins together....you show that thing called consistency...I will start coming around.

We just slapped two shit teams...so we did what we should do...kick the shit out of lesser competition. I like that.

Keep rolling and if Bale can continue to be a factor that teams MUST account for...yeah I can easily see us making a late push for top 4...will be close though and we will need help.
 
Dele and Bale if on song can make a big difference but only now showing signs, also Lo Celso has been out . Kane was out for a while with both ankles. Son is in a bit of a dip and Bergwijn not performing. Lamela and Moura have moved up a notch or two recently. Vinicius has not really clicked.
So it's not like Jose has had all the strings to his bow in tune previously.
But its coming together hopefully at the right time for a big push.

Jose has taken too long to get all the strings to the bow in tune. He is paid an incredible salary every year to do this and it shouldn't have taken until March 2021 when he joined us in Nov 2019.

He took too long to put Ndombele in his natural position. He ostracised Dele, assumedly over a non-football matter. Whilst Bale turned up injured back in pre-season, he took too long to integrate him. He also stubbornly wouldn't use Sanchez allowing us to play with a higher backline.

Jose got obsessed with low-block and counter-attacking systems and tried to put square pegs in round holes. I doubt his pride would ever let him admit it but I just hope he has learned from his visible mistakes to the rest of the football community. There is still a great and winning coach in there though. I'm starting to get optimistic again after these last few weeks.
 
Jose has taken too long to get all the strings to the bow in tune. He is paid an incredible salary every year to do this and it shouldn't have taken until March 2021 when he joined us in Nov 2019.

He took too long to put Ndombele in his natural position. He ostracised Dele, assumedly over a non-football matter. Whilst Bale turned up injured back in pre-season, he took too long to integrate him. He also stubbornly wouldn't use Sanchez allowing us to play with a higher backline.

Jose got obsessed with low-block and counter-attacking systems and tried to put square pegs in round holes. I doubt his pride would ever let him admit it but I just hope he has learned from his visible mistakes to the rest of the football community. There is still a great and winning coach in there though. I'm starting to get optimistic again after these last few weeks.
100% there muttley, but the old saying "your never to old to learn" comes to mind, lets hope JM thinks like that.
 
Dele and Bale if on song can make a big difference but only now showing signs, also Lo Celso has been out . Kane was out for a while with both ankles. Son is in a bit of a dip and Bergwijn not performing. Lamela and Moura have moved up a notch or two recently. Vinicius has not really clicked.
So it's not like Jose has had all the strings to his bow in tune previously.
But its coming together hopefully at the right time for a big push.

Before any of this, it was when I was warning that setting up and playing so negatively and defensively would cost us cheap points - in my mind at least 10 points was what we lost when we shouldn't have - Jose only changed direction when he was forced to by the criticism (pundits saying the worst football they've ever seen etc) and more importantly the direct intervention of Levy - Levy acted when leaks were coming from the players whatsapp group, which started showing exactly what they thought of Jose's negativity in training.

Just a short while ago, everyone was getting on the players backs that they couldn't pass, couldn't tackle, couldn't hold the ball etc etc and just to emphasise my point that this was nonsense - a swift change in tactical intent and that has all but disappeared.

I wanted Jose to turn it around because if he hadn't I would have personally called Levy and begged him to sack the charlatan - as it is, he now knows the score - forget all the bollocks about how much it would take to get rid, it's complete and utter nonsense.

Jose always had the experience, what he had to do was accept that he needed to concentrate on whole Team patterns of play, not just about 10 men behind the ball.

As far as management is concerned Jose knows he is in the last chance saloon, and it was the threat of seeing that marker being called in that's got him thinking differently.
 
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Up until December we were on an unbeaten run of 11 games. Then came the Liverpool game which they won with one freak goal deflected off Toby.Then Leicester which we narrowly lost due to an own goal and a penalty. Then against Wolves we were ahead until the 86th minute when they equalised from a corner to get the draw.
Not that long ago we had lost only 2 games in 20.
We reached a final.
We narrowly lost in an entertaining game against a resurgent Everton in the FA cup.
We have reached the last 16 in the Europa.

There have been individual defensive errors for sure. Jose maybe shouldn't have called them out but it's a fact, he didnt lie.
Our attack was not in great shape with Dele sulking and reportedly injured. Bale not fit, Moura not performing, Bergwijn lost his way but Jose persevered to be fair, Lamela was coming back from injury, Harry got injured. Even Son is in a scoring dip.

Now...Harry back fit, Bale sharper, Dele being professional, Lamela influencing games and even starting, Moura ditto, Ndombele fitter and Reggie back, things are looking different.

Jose has made mistakes and been a dick like he always has been but there have been other factors. I'm not placing all the blame on his shoulders.
 
Before any of this, it was when I was warning that setting up and playing so negatively and defensively would cost us cheap points - in my mind at least 10 points was what we lost when we shouldn't have - Jose only changed direction when he was forced to by the criticism (pundits saying the worst football they've ever seen etc) and more importantly the direct intervention of Levy - Levy acted when leaks were coming from the players whatsapp group, which started showing exactly what they thought of Jose's negativity in training.

Just a short while ago, everyone was getting on the players backs that they couldn't pass, couldn't tackle, couldn't hold the ball etc etc and just to emphasise my point that this was nonsense - a swift change in tactical intent and that has all but disappeared.

I wanted Jose to turn it around because if he hadn't I would have personally called Levy and begged him to sack the charlatan - as it is, he now knows the score - forget all the bollocks about how much it would take to get rid, it's complete and utter nonsense.

Jose always had the experience, what he had to do was accept that he needed to concentrate on whole Team patterns of play, not just about 10 men behind the ball.

As far as management is concerned Jose knows he is in the last chance saloon, and it was the threat of seeing that marker being called in that's got him thinking differently.

I see you got the chat group bits :clap: I was like, no way, and then, wow, this is a bombaroo! Nobody knows.
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