Bluto Blutarsky
Well-Known Member
- Mar 4, 2021
- 15,294
- 71,177
News keeps getting worse, worse.
The ousting of Daniel (COYS)
- Thread starter ChappersES
- Start date
rossdapep
Well-Known Member
- Aug 25, 2011
- 22,377
- 80,623
By most metrics from a footballing perspective, Levy has failed.
The obvious one - how many trophies have we won? 1
Invested in the academy and focused on integrating them into first team. Yet other than Kane, how many top talents have we produced that have gone on to become genuine established players for us?
13 coaches appointed, how many have been a genuine success?
Transfers? How many players have been an immediate success under their current coach? Most have needed a new coach to get the best out of them.
DNA and identity of the team. Do we have one? The coach has always set this, when it should be the club.
Successful DOFs appointed? Commoli, Baldini, Mitchell and, soon to be, Paratici, all have left under a cloud of negativity.
Finally, every time Tottenham looked like they were going somewhere, which may I add was always under coaches he did not pick, he applied the handbrake which led to regression.
If Levy was a CEO placed in there by the owners, he'd have been fired ages ago.
The obvious one - how many trophies have we won? 1
Invested in the academy and focused on integrating them into first team. Yet other than Kane, how many top talents have we produced that have gone on to become genuine established players for us?
13 coaches appointed, how many have been a genuine success?
Transfers? How many players have been an immediate success under their current coach? Most have needed a new coach to get the best out of them.
DNA and identity of the team. Do we have one? The coach has always set this, when it should be the club.
Successful DOFs appointed? Commoli, Baldini, Mitchell and, soon to be, Paratici, all have left under a cloud of negativity.
Finally, every time Tottenham looked like they were going somewhere, which may I add was always under coaches he did not pick, he applied the handbrake which led to regression.
If Levy was a CEO placed in there by the owners, he'd have been fired ages ago.
sundanceyid10
Well-Known Member
- Aug 22, 2013
- 3,379
- 8,319
‘Spursy’ that’s the DNA that Levy built and his footballing legacy, which unfortunately is still not a legacy but very much the present and past under him.
ultimateloner
Well-Known Member
- Jan 25, 2004
- 4,609
- 2,264
Its not just about money that's been put into a club.
I think most owners profit from business-as-usual, average scenarios. In these circumstances, your argument stands.
However prudent owners would also consider extraordinary circumstances, such as when revenue dries up and when credit lines are all gone. We've had this during Covid, and Credit Suisse has just gone under for the latter reason.
Therefore the prudent way to go is only deal with the cash-strong clubs, due to lower default risk. Its the same thing as saying that our 1 dollar isn't worth the same as Arsenal or Liverpool's, from a stakeholder perspective. Therefore its likely that we have to pay a higher price for the same product in the market.
ultimateloner
Well-Known Member
- Jan 25, 2004
- 4,609
- 2,264
Yeah I think so.
DL could have rolled the dice then and won the PL. But then he thought 'why risk the money' given CL (his main objective) can already be achieved.
In the end of the day he doesn't have the risk appetite for a title challenge.
mmidgers
Well-Known Member
- Jul 21, 2009
- 1,755
- 3,435
Misfit
President of The Niles Crane Fanclub
- May 7, 2006
- 21,317
- 35,170
JacoZA
Well-Known Member
- Aug 2, 2013
- 889
- 4,801
If I remember correctly, the THST asked the club to explain how it judges success at the club. Was this ever answered? Because it seems to me that the biggest issue here is that what we consider success is not necessarily what the club considers success. And if that is the case, it might very well be judged from the inside that the club is very successful at the moment - with the on-field results having a much smaller impact on that assessment than it does among fans. Which is why nothing changes and why the odd fan unrest will have no effect because everyone with any real power within the club will just look at their own assessment and say “well, we are doing well - the fans are just being unreasonable“.
IamSpurtacus
Well-Known Member
- Jun 5, 2019
- 1,487
- 7,011
That makes no sense.
No seller can insist on keeping the executive team in place against the will of the buyer. He's effectively blocking any sale
If a buyer could only purchase Lewis 70% stake, they would simply appoint their own board as majority shareholder and fire Levy
I think this is clickbait
Guy won't stop until he is crowned the Lord of Tottenham, has a statue of himself outside the stadium and a biopic released on him. Has delivered the stadium, training ground etc and yes its been a massive achievement and should be congratulated on it but just feels like it will be downhill from here tbh.
Other clubs have evolved in their on the field related operations, I look at us and still get 90s/noughties vibes about the way we go about things and how ultimately everything seems to come back to the chairman and his hands on approach to everything. Not sure there's any other chairman out there who gets more attention than Levy.
Other clubs have evolved in their on the field related operations, I look at us and still get 90s/noughties vibes about the way we go about things and how ultimately everything seems to come back to the chairman and his hands on approach to everything. Not sure there's any other chairman out there who gets more attention than Levy.
rossdapep
Well-Known Member
- Aug 25, 2011
- 22,377
- 80,623
Quite common with business takeovers, right? As there needs to be a handing over process?
Anyway. It really is quite sad. We are being held at will by a guy who believes it's his responsibility to take us in the direction he believes whereas he faces no resistence to it. Just surrounded by yes men and people in his ear.
Unfortunately he is so deluded to think he's doing a cracking job cause the financials tell him so and CL qualification has been achieved a lot over the last 10 years.
He is also so obsessed with risk that he will never do what this club needs to achieve.
We are in stasis and it's quite hard to see how we get out of this
arnoldlayne
Well-Known Member
- Aug 20, 2007
- 1,109
- 1,174
Not sure if this has already been posted. (Alyson Rudd from The Times)
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...re-is-eating-managers-for-breakfast-7p8fdh2sf
The Tottenham Hotspur nerve centre is housed in an office that can be reached from the club’s impressive stadium via a walkway. There are no views of the pitch, no sense at all that the business is a football business. It is an obvious metaphor for the puzzle that is Tottenham, a club that regard themselves as part of the elite and yet cannot find a way to win significant silverware.
If the club are a baffling entity from afar then we caught a glimpse of just how frustrating they are from within when Antonio Conte, the club’s former head coach, embarked upon an emotional rant after his team’s 3-3 draw with struggling Southampton on March 18 that was, in part, a dig at Spurs’ inherent flimsiness. Conte, a coach used to masterminding successful campaigns, railed against a Tottenham culture that he claimed blocked the path of any manager with a coherent plan of action.
The outburst reinforced the notion that Spurs are not built to win; that if they are ahead with 15 minutes left of a game, no one will be surprised if they lose; that if they have a shot at the title, they will implode close to the finish line; that if they go on a cup run they will falter when it matters; that if they reach a Champions League final, they will not have the character to seal victory. What, then, is at the heart of such an inability to clinch success?
Simon Chadwick, professor of sport and geopolitical economy at the Skema Business School is well-placed to offer an explanation. Chadwick has spent a good deal of time in the Tottenham nerve centre, having worked with the club on a British Council project establishing links with China and Thailand.
“Inside that office building are people who have been to very good universities and business schools and worked across different sectors,” he says. “In other clubs those people would be sitting inside the stadium, looking out over the pitch and they would never forget why they were there. Those people are making the decisions and they are doing it in a building that isn’t even inside the stadium.”
There are, of course, other clubs who house their commercial staff away from the stands and may have more suitable facilities at their training grounds, but Chadwick is intrigued by how the physical distance is mirrored by the cultural one. There is a conflict at Spurs between the need to make money, to be a viable business, and the desire to win trophies.
“There is a fundamental misalignment between what people think the club should be doing and what they are doing,” Chadwick says.
The club cannot decide what they stand for, according to Chadwick, and are being pulled in three directions.
“Spurs were established as a community-based club with a reputation for playing football in a particular, attractive way,” he says. “It was one of the first clubs to float on the London Stock Exchange and that instigated a process of cultural transformation in the 1980s into the 1990s to become about controlling costs and making it a project.
“The Enic ownership — which has an 85.55 per cent stake in the club — means Spurs are not the most important asset for an owner — in this instance Joe Lewis — but one of a number of assets. The DNA of the club becomes further diminished by this. So by the early 2000s you have a process of transformation, a club with a culture juxtaposed with a short-termism.
“I worked with intelligent people at Spurs but that stands in stark contrast with the intuitive right-hand-side-brain-Spurs, which are about emotion and excitement. Then there is a third strand around strategy which is trying to reconcile those two things but in doing so, the culture is eating the strategy.
“The club could not listen to Antonio Conte too closely because the strategy dictates otherwise, and the DNA and culture of the club also dictate something different.”
It is not as if the football strategy is in itself commendable, according to Sarthak Mondal, lecturer in sport management at the University of Portsmouth.
“There are three kinds of players you need to build a team,” he says. “There are the long-term prospects who you bring in aged 18 or 19, the medium-term prospects who are 24 and leave by the time they have one last contract so the club can make some money, then the third kind who are the stop-gap solution. In my view the club have allowed managers to bring in players who suit their style every time. And none of them can play with each other.
“They need to build a culture that sets them up for long-term success. At Chelsea, in the Roman Abramovich era, they bought in players that suited the team, not the manager, and that has not happened at Tottenham.
“Winning is a mentality that cannot be bought — it has to come from the culture within a club.”
But back to the stadium. It cost £1 billion, has a 62,850 capacity and is so imposing that for it to house a mediocre team is unthinkable — and yet its very existence may well ensure that the team underperform.
“The stadium is staggering — arguably, it’s the best stadium in the world,” Chadwick says. “In one sense it was not hubristic because over the past five to ten years TV income has plateaued and we are waiting for new broadcasting models to emerge, which they are doing, slowly, but we don’t yet know what the broadcasting future of football will be.
“Where we do stray into hubris is whether Spurs needed to go quite that far. They’ve got their own micro-brewery and fast-filling pints. Spurs are ceasing to be a football club and becoming an event destination. Once you’ve created that kind of asset you’ve got to do something with it.”
Many things are being done. As part of a deal with Formula One, an electric karting track underneath the stadium will open later this year. Spurs have a £40 million, ten-year contract with the NFL and hope to host the Super Bowl one day.
“Yet Spurs are not about that,” Chadwick says. “Tottenham possibly thought by building a new stadium they would solve a lot of their problems. Short to medium-term that is not the case. The culture needs to be addressed.
“I wonder if the only way we will see the transformation needed is through different ownership.
“Essentially Spurs have a culture that people are unwilling to challenge. It doesn’t matter that you’ve got Harry Kane and a new stadium, and you’ve qualified for the Champions League, the culture is so deeply embedded that it is an obstacle to effective management on and off the field. Conte was a cult-of-manager appointment, but the club are trying to function in a different way. Conte was fundamentally misaligned as a manager at this kind of organisation. By contrast, look at Jürgen Klopp at Liverpool — that was a fantastic alignment.”
Spurs built the new stadium too soon, according to Mondal.
“It was a bit over-ambitious given they had not won a trophy,” he says. “They tried to emulate Arsenal and the Emirates, but they could have expanded step by step. Daniel Levy [the chairman] has to remember that the core business of a football club is to win games and if they do that the fans will be happy and then maybe turn up to events being held in the stadium.”
Arsenal are never far away when it comes to the dissection of Spurs and Levy could legitimately argue that he and the club are being judged too soon. The downfall of Arsène Wenger, the former Arsenal manager, was wrapped up in the juggling act he performed as the club covered the cost of building the Emirates.
Now that Arsenal have settled into the pattern of life at an expanded stadium and are able to back their manager, they are in pole position to win the title. Patience has won the day in Highbury and it may do the same in Haringey. It is entirely plausible that Levy, in building the stadium and addressing revenue streams, has put in motion a means to combat the “Spursiness” that has frustrated the fanbase for too long.
Chadwick, after all, concedes that Spurs deliver a level of strategic planning that is absent at many other clubs.
Most big businesses exist to make money, but football is more complicated.
“It’s not enough to win games,” Chadwick says. “You’ve got to win them in a stylish way with well-known players while making money in markets around the world, while delivering a financial return to shareholders. It is hard to reconcile these targets. It’s like football Whac-A-Mole.
“Spurs are the embodiment of the convergence of demands and pressures on the bottom line.
“Joe Lewis didn’t get rich by being nice or paternalistic and is not actively engaged with the club. Levy shapes the strategy. If Lewis wasn’t happy with what Levy is doing, he’d have fired him by now. Lewis is never questioned and at the same time he never questions Levy. Levy has not lost his job, Mauricio Pochettino has, José Mourinho has, Conte has.
“Culture eats the best managers in the world for breakfast.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...re-is-eating-managers-for-breakfast-7p8fdh2sf
How Tottenham Hotspur’s misaligned culture is ‘eating managers for breakfast’
Alyson RuddMarch 20 2023, 8.00amThe Tottenham Hotspur nerve centre is housed in an office that can be reached from the club’s impressive stadium via a walkway. There are no views of the pitch, no sense at all that the business is a football business. It is an obvious metaphor for the puzzle that is Tottenham, a club that regard themselves as part of the elite and yet cannot find a way to win significant silverware.
If the club are a baffling entity from afar then we caught a glimpse of just how frustrating they are from within when Antonio Conte, the club’s former head coach, embarked upon an emotional rant after his team’s 3-3 draw with struggling Southampton on March 18 that was, in part, a dig at Spurs’ inherent flimsiness. Conte, a coach used to masterminding successful campaigns, railed against a Tottenham culture that he claimed blocked the path of any manager with a coherent plan of action.
The outburst reinforced the notion that Spurs are not built to win; that if they are ahead with 15 minutes left of a game, no one will be surprised if they lose; that if they have a shot at the title, they will implode close to the finish line; that if they go on a cup run they will falter when it matters; that if they reach a Champions League final, they will not have the character to seal victory. What, then, is at the heart of such an inability to clinch success?
Simon Chadwick, professor of sport and geopolitical economy at the Skema Business School is well-placed to offer an explanation. Chadwick has spent a good deal of time in the Tottenham nerve centre, having worked with the club on a British Council project establishing links with China and Thailand.
“Inside that office building are people who have been to very good universities and business schools and worked across different sectors,” he says. “In other clubs those people would be sitting inside the stadium, looking out over the pitch and they would never forget why they were there. Those people are making the decisions and they are doing it in a building that isn’t even inside the stadium.”
There are, of course, other clubs who house their commercial staff away from the stands and may have more suitable facilities at their training grounds, but Chadwick is intrigued by how the physical distance is mirrored by the cultural one. There is a conflict at Spurs between the need to make money, to be a viable business, and the desire to win trophies.
“There is a fundamental misalignment between what people think the club should be doing and what they are doing,” Chadwick says.
The club cannot decide what they stand for, according to Chadwick, and are being pulled in three directions.
“Spurs were established as a community-based club with a reputation for playing football in a particular, attractive way,” he says. “It was one of the first clubs to float on the London Stock Exchange and that instigated a process of cultural transformation in the 1980s into the 1990s to become about controlling costs and making it a project.
“The Enic ownership — which has an 85.55 per cent stake in the club — means Spurs are not the most important asset for an owner — in this instance Joe Lewis — but one of a number of assets. The DNA of the club becomes further diminished by this. So by the early 2000s you have a process of transformation, a club with a culture juxtaposed with a short-termism.
“I worked with intelligent people at Spurs but that stands in stark contrast with the intuitive right-hand-side-brain-Spurs, which are about emotion and excitement. Then there is a third strand around strategy which is trying to reconcile those two things but in doing so, the culture is eating the strategy.
“The club could not listen to Antonio Conte too closely because the strategy dictates otherwise, and the DNA and culture of the club also dictate something different.”
It is not as if the football strategy is in itself commendable, according to Sarthak Mondal, lecturer in sport management at the University of Portsmouth.
“There are three kinds of players you need to build a team,” he says. “There are the long-term prospects who you bring in aged 18 or 19, the medium-term prospects who are 24 and leave by the time they have one last contract so the club can make some money, then the third kind who are the stop-gap solution. In my view the club have allowed managers to bring in players who suit their style every time. And none of them can play with each other.
“They need to build a culture that sets them up for long-term success. At Chelsea, in the Roman Abramovich era, they bought in players that suited the team, not the manager, and that has not happened at Tottenham.
“Winning is a mentality that cannot be bought — it has to come from the culture within a club.”
But back to the stadium. It cost £1 billion, has a 62,850 capacity and is so imposing that for it to house a mediocre team is unthinkable — and yet its very existence may well ensure that the team underperform.
“The stadium is staggering — arguably, it’s the best stadium in the world,” Chadwick says. “In one sense it was not hubristic because over the past five to ten years TV income has plateaued and we are waiting for new broadcasting models to emerge, which they are doing, slowly, but we don’t yet know what the broadcasting future of football will be.
“Where we do stray into hubris is whether Spurs needed to go quite that far. They’ve got their own micro-brewery and fast-filling pints. Spurs are ceasing to be a football club and becoming an event destination. Once you’ve created that kind of asset you’ve got to do something with it.”
Many things are being done. As part of a deal with Formula One, an electric karting track underneath the stadium will open later this year. Spurs have a £40 million, ten-year contract with the NFL and hope to host the Super Bowl one day.
“Yet Spurs are not about that,” Chadwick says. “Tottenham possibly thought by building a new stadium they would solve a lot of their problems. Short to medium-term that is not the case. The culture needs to be addressed.
“I wonder if the only way we will see the transformation needed is through different ownership.
“Essentially Spurs have a culture that people are unwilling to challenge. It doesn’t matter that you’ve got Harry Kane and a new stadium, and you’ve qualified for the Champions League, the culture is so deeply embedded that it is an obstacle to effective management on and off the field. Conte was a cult-of-manager appointment, but the club are trying to function in a different way. Conte was fundamentally misaligned as a manager at this kind of organisation. By contrast, look at Jürgen Klopp at Liverpool — that was a fantastic alignment.”
Spurs built the new stadium too soon, according to Mondal.
“It was a bit over-ambitious given they had not won a trophy,” he says. “They tried to emulate Arsenal and the Emirates, but they could have expanded step by step. Daniel Levy [the chairman] has to remember that the core business of a football club is to win games and if they do that the fans will be happy and then maybe turn up to events being held in the stadium.”
Arsenal are never far away when it comes to the dissection of Spurs and Levy could legitimately argue that he and the club are being judged too soon. The downfall of Arsène Wenger, the former Arsenal manager, was wrapped up in the juggling act he performed as the club covered the cost of building the Emirates.
Now that Arsenal have settled into the pattern of life at an expanded stadium and are able to back their manager, they are in pole position to win the title. Patience has won the day in Highbury and it may do the same in Haringey. It is entirely plausible that Levy, in building the stadium and addressing revenue streams, has put in motion a means to combat the “Spursiness” that has frustrated the fanbase for too long.
Chadwick, after all, concedes that Spurs deliver a level of strategic planning that is absent at many other clubs.
Most big businesses exist to make money, but football is more complicated.
“It’s not enough to win games,” Chadwick says. “You’ve got to win them in a stylish way with well-known players while making money in markets around the world, while delivering a financial return to shareholders. It is hard to reconcile these targets. It’s like football Whac-A-Mole.
“Spurs are the embodiment of the convergence of demands and pressures on the bottom line.
“Joe Lewis didn’t get rich by being nice or paternalistic and is not actively engaged with the club. Levy shapes the strategy. If Lewis wasn’t happy with what Levy is doing, he’d have fired him by now. Lewis is never questioned and at the same time he never questions Levy. Levy has not lost his job, Mauricio Pochettino has, José Mourinho has, Conte has.
“Culture eats the best managers in the world for breakfast.”
Last edited by a moderator:
DCSPUR64
Well-Known Member
- Dec 2, 2018
- 1,477
- 2,380
So sad, I love this football club, perhaps Mr. Levy will do what's right and step down. I very much doubt he will!
Snarfalicious
Well-Known Member
- Jul 15, 2012
- 15,744
- 72,236
Good to see more and more coverage on Levy’s obvious failings. Not sure how much traction we will get, but I don’t think it can hurt.
Bluto Blutarsky
Well-Known Member
- Mar 4, 2021
- 15,294
- 71,177
A couple of things come to mind. First is - Daniel Levy is the Managing Director of ENIC Group. That means, that unless Lewis (or rather the trustees of the Lewis Family Trust) is going to force Levy out at ENIC - and there is no indication whatsoever that Lewis is dissatisfied with how Levy is running the business - Levy has the initial say in whether or not ENIC will sell their shares, and for what price.
I have no idea how ENIC is structured as a company - but I would guess that Levy has some kind of right to match any offers for Lewis' shares of ENIC - which means that Levy could put together his own group of investors - with the caveat that they keep Levy in control.
Second, I am pretty sure Levy thinks he is the best chairman in the league. And, by some metrics, he could be correct. And depending on the buyer - they too could favor the off-the-pitch investment more than on-the-pitch success.
spurs9
Well-Known Member
- Aug 31, 2012
- 11,912
- 34,513
I will start be saying I'm Levy out, just so there is no confusion if it looks like I'm defending him.
Some of these metrics are just made up, I mean "how many players have been an immediate success under their current coach" is not a metric a chairman would be judged on.
Some of these metric are useless without context e.g. "13 coaches appointed how many have been a success" is useless without knowing the average number of coaches arcoss the league in that time and what % of coaches are a success.
Also, whilst trophies have been a major disappointment, you also have to take average league positions into account e.g. in the last 50 years, we have only finished in the top five 19 times and 12 of those were under ENIC.
And your point about Levy being fired if he had been placed by the owners, well that depends on why the owners bought the club, if it was for success on the pitch at any cost you are right, however if it was to make a profit (and it was for our owners), they would be very happy. They bought the club for 50m and it hasn't been run at a loss and its is now worth 1.9b, that is a 38x on investment.
fridgemagnet
Well-Known Member
- Jan 18, 2009
- 2,449
- 2,909
If they do increase ticket prices next season (season ticket far out of my meagre means) nothing will say more loudly that they really can't read a room or just DGAF; I don't just mean in terms of the dross that's been served up for years but right in the midst of a cost of living crisis too.
If they had any sense of what's going on they'd swallow any price increase themselves and fund a decrease/discount for a season too.
The clubs are getting more and more revenue from TV deals, a chunk of money coming in from FIFA for players going to the World Cup, deals for image rights etc from gaming companies, that money should be going back into helping the fans I'd argue it should be a condition on any deal from TV rights FIFA etc that a set percentage is used towards keeping ticket prices at a maximum cap.
It won't happen that way but it should or similar.
If they had any sense of what's going on they'd swallow any price increase themselves and fund a decrease/discount for a season too.
The clubs are getting more and more revenue from TV deals, a chunk of money coming in from FIFA for players going to the World Cup, deals for image rights etc from gaming companies, that money should be going back into helping the fans I'd argue it should be a condition on any deal from TV rights FIFA etc that a set percentage is used towards keeping ticket prices at a maximum cap.
It won't happen that way but it should or similar.
olliec
Well-Known Member
- Jun 20, 2012
- 3,607
- 11,834
Not sure if this is true but the absolute cheek of this. Club has no direction and our star player could be off but he feels it’s ok to raise the price when we haven’t been excited about anything for years! This guy needs to remember that this club is nothing without its fans! Those season ticket holders need to start making a serious political statement.
Cuore da Leone
Active Member
- Jun 5, 2021
- 75
- 247
I hope the anti-Levy singing will continue! We should not stop
FibreOpticJesus
Well-Known Member
- Aug 14, 2005
- 2,835
- 5,064
Price rise. Turgid football. Over priced merchandise. Over priced beverages. Levy. SUNDAY FOOTBALL. After many years I have decided to not renew. I brought the season ticket to guarantee Saturday 3pm footy. Bit of a double edged sword for Levy as I can buy tickets in good locations around the ground at will. Which is what I will do.
