Daniel Levy and those like him have been attacked by former Tottenham gaffer, André Villas-Boas on the Keys and Gray podcast. The Portuguese pulled no punches, even claiming that the Spurs chairman didn’t even have the balls to ride out the storm that surrounded the European Super League fiasco.
I take a view that the claim of extravagance is absolutely spot on. Andre, like most of the rest of the footballing world, knows that one develops a team first, as opposed to focusing on ‘positioning’ a club as a brand.
Without disappearing down a rabbit hole of Daniel Levy’s flaws, this is a crucial aspect when thinking about who the next Spurs coach might be. How many people are the right fit for a football club where football routinely comes second?
The direction of travel adopted by Levy has failed to yield any silverware, yet the CEO is still going through managers like socks. Perhaps a review of priorities is called for?
I was working for the club at the time. AVB resigned. The press said by mutual consent.
He, AVB, gave a list of 4 players he wanted. He was given a snide version of those players. Like all our managers under ENIC, they are asked to deliver a Rolls Royce service for reliant Robin money.
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Some people equate intelligence with years spent being indoctrinated
As ever you hit the mail on the head Mar Bella . Thanks for getting these points across concisely and eloquently
and defences…
Intelligent sheep?
Not at all👍
Our illustrious NL rivals will, at some point, make a comeback; history suggests this.
Pretty accurate summing up of events there, I would say.
Good of you to say!
What I could never understand was that some otherwise intelligent seeming people were taken in by Levy, same as intelligent seeming people taken in by Tony Blair, too.
I had already stolen it and will post today!
Superb – thank you.
I posted this yesterday, but I feel it is relevant to this blog, so apologies for reposting.
Marbella Spur
23 hours ago
As far as a new manager is concerned, it is frankly to me almost an irrelevance because there hasn’t been and will never be a manager who will succeed at Spurs whilst Levy is running the club. My manager of the season is Sean Dyche who never gets a mention but who has kept Burnley in the PL for nine years with substantial lack of transfer funds and salary spend and I fail to understand why the likes of Martinez and Southgate get a mention before him. People say Burnley do not play attractive football, but then neither did Spurs under Mourinho and we didn’t mind initially as we were seduced into accepting Mourinho’s style as a precursor to winning trophies. I doubt Dyche, along with many other touted candidates, would want to work for Levy anyway.
Several other matters caught my eye recently with all of them reinforcing my opinion of Levy and the way the club is run.
Firstly, Spurs have applied to the council to extend the training facilities. Some of you will say that this is no bad thing. I say that this is another example of Enic prioritising the property assets over football success and this is essentially something that has been going on since time immemorial and sums up in a nutshell why we fail as a football club.
Secondly, like many of you, I read that when Griezmann was at Real Sociedad in 2014 that we lowballed them with an offer of €23 mill when he had a buyout clause of €30 mill. We of course refused to pay the price, Atletico Madrid swooped in and exercised the buyout clause and further down the road, sold him to Barcelona for approximately €120 mill. Another example of Levy’s symptomatic , penny wise, pound foolish transfer strategy.
Thirdly, I also read this week with interest a report in the Daily Express,( I know it’s a terrible rag ) that we had agreed personal terms with Ruben Dias of Benfica, Mourinho’s first choice as a central defender reinforcement but pulled out for reasons unknown. You can probably guess that Levy refused to pay Benfica the price they wanted and so he went to City and is a candidate for PL player of the season. Levy went on to buy Rodon instead.
In conclusion, I can only say that I can see no progress at Spurs whilst Levy is running the club as his mistakes are too numerous to mention and he never learns his lesson which is something any good businessman needs to understand.
Already have, AVB refused to resign after defeat to Liverpool
0-5 at home, my understanding was Baldini offered to resign
But i bow to your superior knowledge
Talk to Frank.
Agree. I think many of the Super League Club’s are in financial difficulties and saw ESL as a financial saviour.
Some fans have taken 20 years to realise what this schmoozer is all about and unbelievably there are still those that say “but look what He has done for the club, new stadium, etc etc……”
My inbuilt BS detector went off the scale in 2001.
But what can we do, seriously, what can we do?
Correct. And Levy smashed in a lavatory door afterwards
👍
Rodgers will be our new man. Heard from someone in the game…
I like your phrase about developing a team first.
Spot on H
AVB resigned fella. He wasn’t sacked.
I refer the honourable gentlemen to be answer I gave earlier….
I mentioned this before in that managers are now realising the way this club is being run, and that success on the pitch has another meaning to those in charge of proceedings, the ulterior motive being money.
Therefore despite all the trappings of a shiny stadium and superstar training facilities, it appears Levy is failing to get the man he wants no matter how much financial reward is being offered, that should tell him he does not have the pulling power he maybe once had.
My only conclusion is that he already has someone to start from the summer, or he is a desperate man in a desperate situation, and that is looking most likely.
Simply brilliant, mate👏👏 H, you should post this as a blog. The man speaks the truth.
Brilliant comment 👏🏾
Maybe it’s due to your lack of punctuation 🙂
I do wonder if AVB might be just a little upset having had the training ground of his last club set on fire by the fans
I doubt it was because of the attractive football he played
He was so upset with Levy but kept taking his money until he was fired
I don’t ‘get it’ – I seem to be agreeing with H more and more.
Did you read it upside down in the middle of hailstorm?
Tip top eleven stone ,sadly utterly spot on.
In saw this in a completely different way.Reading between the lines, it seemed from the full quotes that AVB wanted a a pay rise as a reward for keeping his word a mere year after joining the club, and threw a strop when he didn’t get one/
😂😂Levy apologists gave me red I love it .
Absolutely well put. I had a decent car three years ago, a car that should’ve done me right for another ten years easy. But Covid came along and I couldn’t maintain it properly, and now my motor is succumbing to so many problems that I reckon it’s going to properly sh1t itself within the year.
Levy also didn’t maintain his car properly.
Difference is, Levy stopped maintaining his car way before Covid came along, and now it’s proper fkuc’d, and he basically needs a new wagon.
But webuyanycar.com ain’t gonna give him the cabbage to upgrade from a Fiat to a shiny new Beemer.
Not sure I agree. ESL will be the death of UEFA an$ unless it’s a colossal bribe, not that they wouldn’t take that, I can’t see the turkeys voting for Xmas
I wouldn’t underestimate the ESL owners. They’ll lie low for a while, learn from this and buy off UEFA next time.
Media experts are saying football TV rights deals have peaked and that has panicked some clubs, plus you have the financial damage done by Covid.
The next interesting thing to watch is which clubs have a go at holding back some of their fixtures, say Man United v Liverpool and sell that game like one of the big boxing extravaganzas on a pay per view basis.
I think Levy prospers under the criticism the guy is serial maniac who enjoys when the world is against him kind of sadistic if somebody tells me Levy is behind the different papers which is writing lately that Serge Aurier is on demand the likes of Madrid AC Milan and PSG are inquiring him I can believe 100% I can see clearly Levy’s fingers there 1- he wants to make him sensational defender so he can sell the Spurs fans to keep him next season 2- he wants to inflate his price so any team wants him to pay top dollar, Levy is master he wins in all cases.
There’s nobody. There’s nothing left, nowhere left to go. They need the Super League’ cos ENIC fc are not fit to be a domestic football club anymore. Ryan Mason is the only taker. If Rafa takes a Jose style quick pay day then it’ll be same again in a year or so…..
We would all do well to remember if Levy had his way we wouldn’t even be in N17. Theyve built something else now and nobody wants any part of it whos worth a dime in the sport. A slow rot is upon us, along with our once illustrious NL rivals. Only our memories remain.
Lol, AVB had a 50million release clause, you can bet your bottom dollar that Levy as soon as he heard of PSG’s interest had an instant hard on and was readying AVB’s departure quicker than Salah goes down in the box. No manager after reading that would ever want to go to Spurs.
I think this is the best comment I have ever read in regards to levy and the club. Completely hit the nail on the head in every sense. How can Spurs ever progress with this mindset coming from the top. Time for change, not so easy to sell at the end of a pandemic though. Buckle up for a few more season of the same, if not worse when Kane leaves and we replace him with Troy Deeney.
Levy’s balls are the size of marbles. He has succeeded in making himself the pantomime villain of the piece, the baddy everybody loves to hate. Hope he thinks about that next time he tots up his millions. You’re not wanted mate, you’ve been sussed years ago by the intelligent ones amongst us, now even the regular sheep have caught up to the plot. Get lost and take your parasitic investment company with you.
Any top level coach looking at Spuras will know that there is a ceiling to Levy and ENICs ambition. All Levy cares about is top 4. THFC is a cash register and a brand to be sweat for all its 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 put on CL due to Chelsea winning the CL cup. Redknapp fell on his sword and we were back on the hiring and firing band wagon 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 RB in the PL to a direct rival and replaces him with a reserve for half the price from PSG. The slow malaise continues and the gaffers 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 are 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 hes managed. Until he arrives at Hotspur Way that is. Hes 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 Dembele, Vertonghen, Eriksen and the demise of Rose and Ali has finally caught up with the squad. Joae 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 Dutch man, the babbling Spaniard, the Cockney Wheeler Dealer, the precocious Portuguese, the under appreciated Argie and the manager who has won it all. Each one ultimately suffers the consequences of Levys 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 trde at a low ranking club where they are allowed lose a few games without being in fear of their job, where they don’t have to work under unrealistic demands of an autocrtic chairman who controls eveything from player recruitment to the te bags at Hotsur Way. I saw one comment on Twitter the other say that struck a chord with me it said ‘people are saying Kane needs to leave Spurs to win trophies, its Levy that needs to leave for Kane to win trophies’ Chance would be a fine thing, what a jokesjop THFC is right now.
Daniel Levy, “the guy that buys socks with holes already in them”…