Any top-level coach looking at Spurs will know that there is a ceiling to Levy and ENIC’s ambition. All Levy cares about is the top 4. THFC is a cash register and a brand to be sweated for all it’s worth.
Once upon a time, we had 2 world-class players in Bale and Modric, players you build a team around, but Levy wasn’t interested. A bit more investment at a crucial time and who knows what we might have achieved. Instead, we got Saha and Nelson.
Spurs finished 4th but lost out on Champions League due to Chelsea winning a domestic cup. Redknapp fell on his sword, and we were back on the hiring and firing bandwagon until Levy stumbled upon Poch (LVG was his first choice) Forward a few years, and we are blessed with 2 world-class players in Kane and Son and a number of top drawer players.
Kane is a once-in-a-lifetime player, a world-class player who cost the club nothing, a Levy wet dream. We finish the 16/17 season unbeaten at home and 2nd in the league.
The team and the gaffer are in their pomp and another couple of players suggest Spurs can be serious contenders. Again Levy shows no interest and instead sells the best Right Back in the Premier League to a direct rival and replaces him with a reserve for half the price from Paris St Germain.
The slow malaise continues and the gaffer’s warnings about the need for fresh recruits are ignored. The inevitable happens when the gaffer can no longer coax performances out of a squad that is sick of the sight if one another.
Levy then hires a serial winner perhaps a couple of years past his sell-by date but a winner all the same who has won trophies at every club he’s managed. Until he arrives at Hotspur Way that is.
He’s expected to wave a magic wand with players who are unfit, disinterested, and plain not good enough. The failure to succession plan for the departures of Dembélé, Vertonghen, Eriksen and the demise of Rose and Ali has finally caught up with the squad.
José calls out a few of the snowflakes but player power prevails and Jose heads off into the sunset on his Vespa with another hefty severance package courtesy of our bumbling chairman. So what next? What mud is left for Levy to throw at the shopping centre wall?
We’ve had the affable Dutchman, the babbling Spaniard, the Cockney Wheeler Dealer, the precocious Portuguese, the underappreciated Argie, and the manager who has won it all. Each one ultimately suffers the consequences of Levy’s meddling, his buy cheap buy twice approach.
Every one of them either had squads that were dismantled on them or handed squads that were damaged. But managers are now onto Levy to the point that you now have Graham Potter ruling himself out of the job in favour of the stability of Brighton.
Young coaches probably prefer to learn their trade at a low ranking club where they are allowed to lose a few games without being in fear of their job, where they don’t have to work under unrealistic demands of an autocratic chairman who controls everything from player recruitment to the tea bags at Hotspur Way. I saw one comment on Twitter the other day that struck a chord with me, it said ‘people are saying Kane needs to leave Spurs to win trophies, it is Levy that needs to leave for Kane to win trophies’ Chance would be a fine thing, what a joke shop THFC is right now.