If You’re That Concerned About Levy – Where Were You When WHL Was Being Demolished?

A business model involving a closed shop is Levy’s wet dream. He has eyed the franchise model and this was the realization of the vision. Just sold us a different bill of goods.

Probably money played a big part even then, the Edwardes family at United and the Moores family of Football Pools fame were owners of Everton and Liverpool.

Everything Neville has said has been right… Sir Alex nailed it too.

Sad but we maybe we see now we lived in a golden age of football from the fifties up to the nineties, yes there was hooliganism and the facilities were rubbish.

It always intrigues me that a lot of the players from the fifties, sixties and seventies say they wouldn’t swap their memories for all the riches of modern footballers.

We were here with you H, ranting, screaming and crying… Thank goodness Baldy has finally pulled out of this league.. Happy days.

Totally agree.

No TV, you had to be there to see an FA Cup game, so fans a lot closer to the players and teams.

They actually called the 1953 Final, The Matthews Final after Sir Stanley.

They used to talk about great players in terms of never having one an FA Cup medal, famously Tom Finney.

I thought I was enjoying an unbeaten season at Fortress WHL but it all seems so long ago.
Then on to that red shithole – unforgiveable.

Don’t know the source but it’s being said Ceferin/UEFA have promised the”rich six ” more money to return.

Once again that man escapes from the locked room..

Of course, when I say “lack of readies”, I mean lack of sensible readies; we could always plunge ourselves even more into debt and perhaps, catastrophic debt.

I’m only too glad this disgusting venture has gone away……at least for now, anyway! But, I agree with both you and Harry – and many others, I’m sure – that I would rather have seen us in than out; it would obviously have helped ease our financial problems, too.

I sense, also, that there were “a lot of eggs in this basket” and that Joe and Danny boy have really got some problems, moving forward, in keeping the fans on board and achieving this with the colossal debt and the lack of readies seeming to preclude the purchase of quality players needed to get us back to where we were not so long ago, much less actually winning something meaningful.

The stadium build was sold to the fans based on a lie. Ie transfer funds won’t be impacted etc etc. Also it was built during a period of wonderful hope with poch delivering fantastic football and spurs in the mix to win things.

The ESL thing was a sham. A complete embarrassment. We were like the thick, ugly mate that had to be invited along to the party where all the sexy people would be. We had no right being there and we came out of this looking more feeble than the others

i would respectfully suggest that the move to the new stadium was also part of Levy’s plan to propel the club into the next phase of the game’s evolution. That’s why Levy’s involvement in the ESL debacle is so abhorrent to old geezers like me who were heartbroken by the total demolition of WHL. I would say good on him if it really had all been about playing the best of the best on a regular basis but to my old fashioned way of thinking that should be by fielding a top quality team with a penchant for positivity and flair rather than building a stadium that gives a free pass to the top echelon. I am against those piling on because it now seems fashionable to do so but there are a good number of us who see the ESL as having been part of Levy’s overall plan for self enrichment over many years and if you didn’t like watching the demise of WHL lane you sure as heck can’t applaud this latest episode.

Referring to your penultimate paragraph, it’s why I’ve had this feeling that we might lift this particular trophy at the weekend (not so sure, now! Busted flush or not, I feel Jose might have pulled a rabbit out of the hat for this one) as a kind of belated farewell to an era and minimal reward for those years of high promise that were squandered.

There has been an agenda and negative campaign over the years in downgrading the domestic competitions in favour of some kind of elitist European competition that is the CL.
It seems even that has not satisfied some of clubs despite the endless streams of income they have accrued.
As for fans, It’s the way the meaning of the word success, has been allowed to be changed with the “millenniums” gladly accepting this term where fourth is now classed as winning, meaning the joy of lifting a League Cup trophy for some means nothing.

I think we would mostly all agree with the abolition of the maximum wage in the early sixties. I have a theory, though, that that was the catalyst – and perhaps the main one – for how phenomenally successful Liverpool and Man Utd have become since (though they did have some success previously- though hardly on the same scale – United even winning three titles in the fifties)) : Suddenly the two big Liverpool clubs and the two big Manchester clubs were able to release their huge potential financial advantage and dominate the scene around them in Lancashire as the likes of Blackburn, Burnley, Bolton etc, prominent rivals in the past gradually faded away.

As ENIC reprivatised THFC they have been accountable only to themselves. Whatever fans thought about the new stadium there was little they could do to stop it. We have all known for years that ENIC are the poison at the heart of the club. So if this situation opens a door of opportunity to review the governance of football club ownership that forces some of these current owners to reconsider their positions and the cash cows they were hoping to rinse even further then I for one am more than happy to use this situation to try and effect change and if that change means an exit for ENIC and Levy then all the better

I strongly suspect financial carrots were dangled to publicly back down with a view to continue working behind the scenes on agreeable European competition reforms with more loot to pocket. Billionaires make daily decisions to forego local custom to expand global markets. Football is just another product. For all we know, these clubs have called a fantastic bluff, and pulled off the added bonus of fans reclaiming a sense of pride and ownership by feeling like they prevented it.

Great post. Levy had opportunities and failed to take them on numerous occasions. Paying himself a bonus after delivering a stadium one year late and 3x over budget illustrated perfectly where his priorities have always lain.

The League was always the true test but for footballers the most desired medal domestically – if they could only have one – was an FA Cup winners medal. In fact it seems the FA Cup was often considered THE BlG ONE! When Spurs won the League in 1951 I get the feeling, from what I have read, that while for our supporters that was all very nice it was could we please now go on and win the one they really wanted, the FA Cup!

Also, according to a book I have on the first 100 years of the Scottish Cup, it would seem for many years that that was regarded as the Blue Riband event of the Scottish game.

Well said mate.

Yes, very probably! Familiarity breeds contempt, as they say, as well and these “glamour” games will cease to be so by their frequency. And, most seasons, it seems likely, we’ll be in something like 15th position with nothing much to play for. Pretty tedious fare.

For the record, I haven’t liked at all the direction football has been going in since Sky got involved. It has become a business – no longer really a sport – and the plaything for revolting billionaires. The new (since 1992) set up has created huge financial and unprecedented disparities between clubs so that former giants (especially from other smaller countries), despite healthy fan bases, can no longer hope to compete.

While I’m all in favour of talented people being handsomely rewarded, it long ago became obscene and, as far as I am concerned, an insult to the average workers in this country. I don’t blame the players themselves for accepting these rewards (I wouldn’t have said No!) but as Dave Mackay has previously said allowing young men to receive such ludicrous amounts of money is totally irresponsible of society.

Another disadvantage of what has happened as a result of all this money is that finishing 4th in the league – and getting your hands on all that filthy lucre – has become more important than winning trophies! The League Cup has become almost an irrelevance and, much more tragically, the FA Cup has become wretchedly diminished in stature. The ability to hoard cash has made the competition at the top in some national leagues almost non existent (I would never have foreseen the day when clubs could win the Italian and German leagues NINE years running. This lack of meaningful competition is one reason behind the proposal of a Super League – traditional competition distorted by modern financing has become utterly boring and predictable.

It is extremely sad to think that clubs like Aston Villa and Everton – and, yes, even Spurs, have little hope of winning the league again (without favourable circumstances) unless some fabulously wealthy backers come along. The sad diminishment of the sacred ritual of 3pm, Saturday is something else we have had to stomach and the complete block of fixtures played at the same time that once made Saturday afternoons so special. Now, with Covid, there is usually only ONE game in the premier division being played between 3 o’clock and 5 o’clock on a Saturday afternoon.

Sadly, we older fans have to accept that things will never be as they once were, any more than the horse and carriage will be our principal means of transport. With all the money now in the game cheating has become the norm. Football accurately reflects the cancer in our society. I chide myself for not being strong enough to bin the game but having a lot of other interests that are not mainstream, I would have significantly less to talk to other people about and even less friends if I was to do this (though I’ve always enjoyed my own company, there are limits)

Football as we know it is out of control and the authorities are totally to blame for allowing this, the one main issue is players wages where clubs are simply overspending to such an extent that they are close to collapse.
A complete reconstruction of how revenue should be used with limits on expenditure and wages has to be introduced to give more and fairer competition to all clubs.
It’s their own fault to be in a such a financial mess, cut your cloth, balance the books and start with genuine ambition and take it from there, I can dream !

They knew after this last year the little people needed to feel they’ve had a victory of some sort, without doing anything of course…. this has been set up.

That last line has blown my mind. THIS is it folks.

The archetype.

Yes indeedy. I always said if I was able and anywhere near London at the time I would av chained myself to the turnstiles, I wondered, quite perplexed, why the great acceptance? There was barely a whimper, everyone had their last big day out taking photos and I phone vids and buying souvenirs….then turned to budgies, shiney facilities became the idol. Also whats quite ridiculous about this media led “fan revolt” that’s demonstrated what power and love the fans have supposedly…..WE JUST SPENT THE LAST YEAR WATCHING FOOTBALL ON TV WITH EMPTY GROUNDS!?!? Where was the resistance to that? And the destruction of lives and livelyhoods in the wider communitys??
This stinks of psy op, Boris the puppet, the media, all of them don’t give a sh@t about the people so what gives? All sudden it’s hands across GB for football which has been flogged to death in myriad of ways for the last 20 odd years. We are getting our tummy’s tickled and I want to know why….

While I acknowledge the validity of what Harry is saying above and realise that we wouldn’t wish to see our club left behind in any future developments, I am at a loss to understand this “unprecedented success” D Levy has given us. Like most fans, I imagine, I like the kind of “success” we had between 1960 and 1984 when we won 11 major trophies (not including Charity Shields, Super Cups ie glorified exhibition matches), second only to Liverpool and nearly twice that of anyone else (ideally, we’d have liked an extra league title or two) to success on the balance sheet, which, incidentally, includes over a billion pounds of debt which precludes us from buying any players of genuine quality.

Strange kind of “success” you’re celebrating. Yes, it is “horribly hard” for us to compete with some seriously rich clubs but a comparatively small club like Leicester City seem to be making a better feast of it than us, AND, the one manager who was enabling us to punch above our weight wasn’t backed at crucial stages with the subsequent, inevitable down spiral of results leading to his eventual sacking. Great success, too, the stadium, I reckon, costing about three times the figure doing the rounds in 2016 and a whole year late, for which our already overpaid chairman gave himself a hefty bonus. SUCCESS?! Hot Dog, as an American might say.

You have to laugh, Pep saying he was against the Super League because it’s unfair when success is guaranteed.

It’s laughable for gas bags like Gary Neville to be banging on about greed from their soap boxes in Sky Sports and BT Sports. I missed out on watching football for years because my family couldn’t afford pay per view when the PL was set up and these platforms gobbled up the TV rights. Of course bed wetting millennial don’t remember this, they think football began in 1992. It’s ironic for Neville to be pontificating about protecting grassroots football. He played for a Man Utd team who opted not to defend their FA Cup in 2000 in favour of a money spinning jolly up in South America which contributed no end to the degrading of the Cup that was once considered as big winning the league in some parts. But hey that’s show businesses and money talks. Do we honestly believe that if the ESL had not gone ahead, Sky wouldn’t be pushing to the head of the queue with their cheque book out with Neville as their poster boy for a new dawn for European football?

@theboyhotspur

Its that snobbery, elitistism and self entitled nonsense that destroys football with the money. It is meant to be a competition where anyone can win not a chosen few. Lesser teams what a joke watch basketball if thats your view and lets be honest Tottenham cant even beat the lesser teams

Literally every innovation since abolishing those microscopic wage caps 50 years ago has been heralded as THE DEATH OF THE GAME AS WE KNOW IT, including the creation of the Premier League and Champion’s League. The Super League may have been a ‘not bad’ idea but calamitously presented.

As for ‘greed’, what about all the smaller clubs hooting for money they haven’t earned, and absurdly overpaid TV pundits egging them on in an orgy of useless virtue-signalling?

D Levy has given THFC unprecedented success. But it’s just horribly hard turning that success into winning things on the pitch year after year.

It feels a little like a pile-on at the moment. Confected outrage stoked by the Twitter-ati and Media outlets – “We must have a target”

It’s taken a lot for me to feel some sympathy towards Blofeld but he’s our baldy tw$t and in this instance he’s sniffed a chance for his employers, the club and himself to take a big boy step up. Can’t fault him for wanting to be part of it.

People probably didn’t mind seeing WHL go to usher in a new, better era where our super stadium would help us enter the CL regularly and give us the money to challenge the best. We had a brilliant young team and everything looked great – just a bit more money would give us the edge. (Shame the 300M we had stashed away was marked “For Property Development Purposes Only”).

The CL and new stadium money were the carrots dangled in front of us to make us forget a large part of our history was being destroyed together with what became a fortress towards the end. 53 points in the last season just at WHL (17-2-0 if memory serves). Yes, that’s more than we have after 32 games this season.

So it turns out the best in question were Villa and Everton, and our hallowed new ground has already been ransacked by West Ham, Leicester, Everton, and especially Bayern. We “needed the CL to attract better players” but we didn’t sign anyone for over a year, failing to back our best manager in recent history. We didn’t support the other guy either, who has a proven track record of winning trophies when backed properly.

We are worse off in terms of the squad AND finances than we were when leaving the Lane. We have an incredible debt weighing us down for the foreseeable future. The best generation of players I have seen at Spurs was allowed to grow stale and fall apart player by player without winning even the much maligned “tinpot” Carabao Cup. We are not far off being a midtable side. All of this amounts to gross negligence on the management’s part.

I have believed Levy has to go for years, and if this serves as the last straw that turns most fans against ENIC and Levy, then it’s completely fine by me.

I wish I could go back in time and send this to you a few years back. I totally agree with you here on this levy was right in the super league thing. Where are these sword swingers when it comes to uefa and fifa who lets face it have the monopoly board game on greed and corruption. Would still have loved to have seen ur face reading this a few years back.

I don’t disagree H, a point I made in a comment on one of the earlier posts is that something has to give now.

Based on the history and the backlash of this ESL debacle (which I would rather have seen us in than out if it had gone ahead) I don’t see where ENIC go from here. I sense there were a lot of eggs in this basket and without investment in the squad (laughable) I don’t see how we get back to competing regularly. The THST I think will insist on new owners (which obviously holds no sway at all but it’s further bad publicity) and fan engagement seems to be at an all time low.

I’m interested to know what Joe and Daniels objectives are from today going forward.

“I can’t even express how tedious games against lesser teams have become in recent years.”This will be the feeling of Madrid,Barca and Juventus when they have to play us and the arse every week.It’s all relative.