Good afternoon, fight fans.
Fiscal prudence, the ability to peel an orange in one’s pocket, call it what you will. Daniel Levy has established himself as the master of the bottom line.
But in an unusually flamboyant move, it’s come to light that there’s one salary cap the boy Levy didn’t hesitate to smash.
His own.
Thanks to this very interesting piece in The Guardian, we learn that Daniel is the highest paid director in the football league.
Spurs Daniel Levy £2.61m
Manchester United Unnamed, £2.478m (Ed Woodward is executive vice-chairman)
Arses Ivan Gazidis £2.29m
Chelsea Ron Gourlay £1.957m. Gourlay left in October 2014. Included £1.5m pay off.
Liverpool £1.199m (Ian Ayre is the managing director)
Baggies Unnamed, £1.119m (Jeremy Peace is the executive chairman)
West Ham Unnamed, £646,000 (Karren Brady is the executive vice-chairman)
Everton Unnamed, £370,000
Saints Unnamed, £376,604 (Ralph Kreuger is the chairman)
Stoke Unnamed, £801,000 (Tony Scholes is the chief executive)
Sunderland Unnamed, £725,563 (Margaret Byrne was the chief executive)
Swans Huw Jenkins, £516,667
Hull City Assem Allam’s company was paid £165,000 for his and son Ehab’s services
Newcastle Unnamed, £150,000 (Lee Charnley was the managing director)
Leicester City £145,000 (Susan Whelan is the chief executive)
Burnley No director was paid a salary; some received interest and bonuses
Manchester City No directors were paid
QPR No directors of QPR Holdings were paid
Levy’s wage is understood to include bonuses for achieving targets. Which may go some way to explaining the indoctrinated party line about pushing on for a top four finish.
The stupidity cycle of achieving high enough in the table so everyone gets paid, but nobody wins anything won’t be broken with the onset of a new stadium.
Levy’s last few announcements have more than just hinted at a continuation of transfer austerity.
As wildly untrue as Daniel’s own description of our Academy was, it reinforced the fact that he genuinely believes buying talent in at a premium is complete folly.
I’ve laboured the point purely because it’s taken so long for some of you to grasp the fact that we are on precisely the same trajectory as Arsenal.
Arsenal fans have got every right to moan about the way their club has been run. Their supersized stadium experience has become inherently dull.
Yes, they keep qualifying for the Champions League, but trophy wise their record has significantly deteriorated.
They’ve won the FA Cup three times in the last seventeen years (2002–03, 2004–05, 2013–14) and the League just twice (2001–02, 2003–04).
It feels quite awkward describing this as ‘a demise’ given our solitary League cup win in the same period coupled with two forays into Champions League. But a demise it is.
Most Gooners I’ve spoken to openly acknowledge that aggressive commercial expansionism has come at a cost of the silverware, and they aren’t happy about it.
Nobody follows a football club for it’s end of year accounts, yet this fixation with ‘the top four’ has rather sickeningly given birth to a new breed of supporters who take real delight from a quite mindless fiscal stability.
I deliberately say mindless – because it’s not your money. I get excited by watching a horse I’ve backed win. When I’m told how much the trainer makes I can barely raise a shrug.
Who the f— gives a toss what the books look like at your favourite restaurant?
You go there because the food, the service and atmosphere are always tiptop. Not to congratulate the owner on generating enough profit to buy a second home.
When you mention Nottingham Forest, Liverpool, Tottenham, or whoever, you inevitably think of what the clubs have won and the characters that were integral to that success.
Normal human: “We were the Champions of Europe, the best in the world”
Flat Earther: “Ah yes, but I think you’ll find that our medium to long term stability places us amongst….”
Nobody in their right mind wanders about spewing figures like a demented Deloitte employee. Yet this is the mentality of a worrying number of apologist and ‘explainers’ currently supporting Spurs.
I don’t need what Spurs are doing explained to me. Thanks, but no thanks.
One enduring appeal of football has always been that a dull teenager can get as much out of watching a game as a meritous professor.
We’ve been reduced to celebrating contract extensions and worse yet, the volume of tickets the club can sell at venue that normally hosts finals, that we’ve hired to play in.
When you talk to your grandchildren, if you’re a normal human being, you’ll tell tales of going berserk at cup final, how Teemu taunted Zogba. If you’re a Flat Earther, you can tell the poor bastards how we once won a thing on Twitter and coloured the arch. Which er… is ordinarily white anyway.
The new stadium with it’s Cheese Room, Tunnel Club and Michelin star offerings reminds me of me on a Saturday night when I was working the rag trade a few good decades ago. Versace suit on my back, but barely enough to buy half a dozen pints in my pocket.
A sharp dressed fraud.
