Today’s remarks to the press from Gareth Bale make for uncomfortable listening and one can only imagine the levels of discomfort that are currently being felt at this moment by our illustrious leader Daniel Levy. Whilst this situation is very much on Levy, it would be churlish to start branding the Tottenham CEO a mug or similar would be wide of the mark. I believe that the strategy as Levy saw it at the time was something he thought would give the club, the brand, a boost.
All deals carry an element of risk, but if Levy had what he felt there was a genuine understanding with Gareth, and it was felt that the boy was coming home, to at least do his best, then I can understand Levy being drawn in. Many would have been.
The sad reality is that today’s quotes, leave no credible room for excuse. We all know that the original deal was for one season. However, none of us expected Bale to fall out with yet another coach.
For the love of Chas & Dave – Bale came here because things weren’t going too well at the club when the club was Real Madrid!
So is this all Mourinho’s fault? Let’s pause the White Noise and expand upon that. Is it Carlo Ancelotti’s, Zinedine Zidane’s and José Mourinho’s fault? All three coaches ran out of patience with the boy. Are all 3 unreasonable monsters?
Spurs have been spun.
My advice to Levy – I know he’s a keen advocate of unsolicited advice – is not to whitewash this and instead do the honourable thing. Back Mourinho and encourage the Portuguese to start picking Tottenham players.
What about the money? We’ve racked up over a billion, let none of us pretend anyone really cares. Throw it on the pile. I’d be happier never seeing Bale in the shirt again. That would in fact be a fairer deal than the current one. It would be an honest arrangement.
The Bale fairytale is officially over. Kaput. The jig is up. I’d take a less than perfect Steven Bergwijn over a Gareth Bale callously using as one punter on social media called it, ‘a PureGym membership’.
Yo stilts!
It’s about the stupidity of the people that built those homes – that can’t get conventional mortgages or even double glazing – not the ‘estate managers’ eh?
15 million quid a year? I reckon most people would move into a house in Jaywick for 12 months for that money!
You couldn’t pay me to manage Spurs
I heard Trevor Sinclair and Simon Jordan speaking on the wireless earlier.
They were discussing another manager and Sinclair goes; “but the problem he had at that club was that there were some egos in the squad” To which Jordan chuckles and replies “yeah, you mean management stuff?”
What is a manager paid to do? Keep telling the media it’s all about poor attitude every time you play badly? Not good enough I’m afraid…
Great comment
I take your point, My comment was rather flippant and poorly considered.
Perhaps your ego has to match Jose and then prove it on the pitch.
Having said that, I don’t actually think there are that many players like that around, so moaning that we don’t have a squad full of those is a bit pointless. He has to do his job of managing different personalities and get on with it. It’s part of his job description.
Fair point. Perhaps I got it wrong, perhaps it’s the type of ego a player has?
Whatever way way you look at this, Bale was just a vehicle to try and hoodwink the fans into believing we are behaving like an ambitious club.
I can’t quite believe how directionless we have become post stadium move. You need stability, a plan, a cohesive rebuild of the squad, continuity etc at a time like this.
Bringing in ‘the winner’ and bringing back the ‘prodigal son’ to sell a few shirts is Levy making it up as he goes along, just as he has done for 22 years.
Beating Real Madrid at Wembley a couple of years ago now feels like a lifetime.
Thanks Levy, you got your stadium done and shafted the fans with false hopes. You bring in Bale and “the best manager in the league” to cover your backside and think we’re thick enough to suck it up. Well not all of us are, stick your one League Cup up your ar*e and f*ck off!
Maybe just a bit of perspective, he’s a Madrid player, they’ve still got him next season but he’s also in a battle with Madrid about wages etc etc. I think Levy and Bale got caught up in the romance of Bale coming back for a loan but it’s looking like we won’t be taking first dibs on Bale as it stands and wouldn’t levy want to pay less anyhow next year. I hope bale sits with Jose and levy when he gets back and then say you’ve 10 games to influence your future either rot fo 12 months and retire or do something with the twilight of your career, because regardless of fans hurt feelings this statement could be explained away if bale wins us the next 10 games.
Jose loves egos as long as you back it up on the pitch. Zlatan, Ronaldo, Diego Costa, John Terry etc.etc. The sort of players who change clubs and make them into winners, not the sort who go somewhere and hoover up medals on the back of other players’ abilities. Game changers, not changing room ponces. Ego is fine if it’s based on ability and results (‘count my medals / trophies’). Ego with nothing to back it up is just noise. Too much noise not enough game changing shiny proof in our squad.
Half of those are duffs for me… Reggy and Hojberg thumbs up they walk into the first 11… Roden and Berg have potential… Ndom and LoCelso have it all to do prove.
He has a more important and wider role than chief scout now. He’s pretty much our sporting director with a wide range of duties, he oversees all youth, performance, scouting and recruitment. He works with Maureen same as he did with Botch targeting players…….. Hitchens last two world class signings in the game was Suerez for Liverpool and Modric for us..
Watch the Amazon doc ‘All or nothing’.
Jose obviously loves Zlatan.
Yet apparently he needs money and big players for success.. The biggest and best players have egos.. At Chelsea in his first term they were buying loads.. Some egos made it, others didn’t.. Ibra loves Maureen and without a doubt, even at 38 years old Zlatan has the biggest ego in world football..
Bale never went on strike.. And he’s got plenty to be proud of. 18 odd major titles including four champions leagues.. He won more titles than Zidane, scored more than Ronaldo Nazario, got more assists than Beckham.. He is a Madrid legend..But his fall from grace has come at a relatively young age. Unfortunately.
Jose hates egos, unless it’s his own…
And he hates his job! Nice…
Levy will only instruct a DOF, SD (or whatever the fancy pance term for head scout is these days) to bring in players that fit the buy young and cheap with an aim to sell on profile.
Jose will be gone in the summer and we may well end up with another Comolli, Baldini etc type person but it’ll be a different ‘coach’…
I mean the worst part of all is that when the most highly paid player in Spurs team don’t care about the club can you imagine what the rest of the players think? for me that is the toxic part of all ask yourself why any other player care wether we lose or exit any cups since you throwing money left and right to people who don’t deserve it by merit at least if I’m one of the players it will cross to my mind, there is wisdom saying when your smartness exceeds the limit you will end up being dumb that is Levy he thought he done master stroke look how stupid he looks now mugged by the golfer hahaha
Spot on.
Watch his agent lose interest now. Not even the Chinese will be mug enough to pay him his obscene wages anymore.
Did Rose spit in someone’s cornflakes or something. He did a job.
Lost lots of matches without Danny Rose mate.
Bale’s a cokc. He proved he was a ckoc when he followed Modric and went onstrike.
I never wanted him back, but eventually blindly, embarrassingly got sucked in by the fairytale. The thought that after all those years he’d have grown up, sweep it under the carpet sort of thing.
I got sucked in when his form started to improve and hoped that he was starting to play for the club.
The reality is he was a cokc, he’ll always be a cokc, and we are the ones who all need to grow up.
I really do wonder and wrack my brains to think what it is he is ever going to be proud of when his career comes to an end, because I know how I’m gonna remember it, how Tottenham fans are going to remember it, and certainly how Madrid fans are going to remember it.
Why would a player of such talent manufacture that for himself? I’m at a loss.
Ndombele, Lo Celso, Hojbjerg, Reguilon, Bergwijn and Rodon are all pretty good signings. Sure, there have been some duffs, but show me a club where every signing comes good. That said, moving forward, he could save us all a lot of heartache if he just refused to take any more calls from Jose’s mate Jorge Mendes.
He’s not a Mourinho player is he, that’s probably it in a nutshell , the lad has a personality, he hates that.
Another masterstroke by Levy.What has Hitchens actually achieved in either role.He is just as culpable as Levy regarding recruitment,even if he is working to order.
I would suggest most of us on here could have sourced better players even under the financial restraints that Levy imposes.
Oh come on…
Definitely a Levy attempt at window dressing. However, if he respects Jose so much (as we are led to believe) then Jose was free to block it right? 🤔
Except Jose is not the man for a rebuild. A rebuild under Levy will be chiefly made up of young players. The idea of Jose and a rebuild of the squad at Spurs are incompatible…
Levy loves a bit of fancy window dressing to distract the faithful from the cheapo tat they’re actually buying into…
Is it a key reason behind such a disappointing season? Not for me, it’s a side show but one that conveniently lets Jose off the hook, yet again for the cultists…
What about all of those matches we lost without Bale so much as on the bench… 🤔
Steve Hitchen was promoted in September 2020 to ‘technical performance director’.. Part of a 3 man board he is more than the chief scout now… His role is pretty much the same as a sporting director.. Just different words.
100%. My only worry is this: is Levy actually going to listen to a sports director?
“Remember Paul Mitchell, traveller, and beware.”
All parties wanted it to work , it didn’t – we saw glimpses of his quality which he still has .
the premier league and cup comps are physically demanding- more than any other league in Europe
you can be A Real Madrid player and play at 50% for a large % of games .
Many young/fit quality players come to England and don’t cut the physical aspect of the English game.
Such a shame . We move on
Very good yardstick
My test on most of these contentious issues is usually would a Man City or Liverpool take back an ex player in Bale’s situation?
For Levys next trick, A public bamboo flogging of Glenn Hoddle in the centre circle on the retractable surface™ of the “Tottenham Hotspur stadium”
All meeting convid guidelines of course.
Beam me up
He never really came home. Home is gone.
Legacy destroyed. Fantastic work by this clusterf@$k of an ex football club. Wrong decade for Bale.
When PR and nostalgia feel good spin goes spectacularly wrong.
8.30pm: Channel 5.
I will never be convinced unless I hear it from Jose that Bale was anything other than a Levy vanity project. Trouble is I wouldn’t mind betting that agent Barnett is in Levy’s ear complaining about how unfairly poor Gareth has been treated…by yet another manager.
Spot on
Totally agree. I always believed Bale came to Spurs only to give himself some match fitness so he could feature in his last international tournament and nothing more. The way he has, as confirmed by Jose, been managing his own body, how many minutes he can play etc etc was simply to fine tune himself for the Euros. The day he took the Instagram photo showing him in good form then moments later pulling out of the prem game showed complete disrespect to the club. Jose needs time to rebuild and being constantly undermined or having pressure put on him to play certain individuals by Levy needs to stop. Jose needs to start trusting his instinct and start being ruthless again. He seems like he’s trying too hard to please everybody. He’s trying to hard to be Mr. Nice. That’s not the Jose I love or Jose the serial winner. If you want Mr Nice levy you should have stuck with Poch.
Levy needs to bring in a sporting director who knows football inside out and set up a recruitment/scouting scheme that works. Campos is available I believe and he has found many diamonds in the rough which is Levy’s pricing structure. Levy has done many great things as Spurs Chairmen from a corporate world with sponsors etc and building an amazing stadium but he has simply not been great on footballing matters and bringing in a sporting director would benefit Levy and Jose massively.
It’s Abramovich buying Andriy Shevchenko all over again – didn’t Jose have to put up with that one too?!
No sane jury in the world would convict Levy (on this occasion) we’ve been spun like a mark. Time to roll up the metaphorical sleeves and be above the flim flam
Levy hasn’t been keeping his nose out, that’s the problem!
Levy should keep his nose out. He has no business telling the manager who he should or shouldn’t play.
100% behind that H. Why should Maureen take the fall for the wage thieves? He shouldn’t.