Daniel Philip Levy, the man who bravely spearheaded the delivery of arguably the finest combination of stadium and training facilities in all of European club football, and who diligently secured a regular place from the outset in the most prestigious elite club competition (currently on temporary hiatus rather than permanent cancellation), must find it utterly inexplicable that the fans of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club seem so curiously and infuriatingly bereft of gratitude for his endeavours. After all, as he has told us repeatedly, “everything we do is in the long-term interests of the club”.
A few weeks ago, in his programme notes at the end of the season, he spoke of ambition.
“I have always been and will continue to be ambitious for our club and its fans”
he said. More recently, in addressing Harry Kane’s concerns at the club’s apparent lack of success in terms of trophies, he stated “All I will say is his frustrations in not winning are shared by me and all the fans and players. We all want to win.” And herein lies the crux of the issue. It’s a question of definition and interpretation.
If one clicks open Dictionary.com and looks up the definition of ‘Ambition’, it describes it as “an earnest desire for some type of achievement or distinction, as power, honor, fame, or wealth, and the willingness to strive for its attainment”. I genuinely have no reason whatsoever to doubt Daniel’s desire for achievement or distinction (although perhaps it might be tempered by thoughts of managing fan expectations in the longer-term) and he’s allegedly, by his own words, as frustrated as our itchy-footed number 10 when that achievement fails to materialize. I suspect, however, that he might have confused ‘ambition’ with ‘aspiration’, which is simply defined as “a strong desire, longing, or aim” or “a goal or objective that is strongly desired”.
The keen-eyed reader will have spotted that the willingness to strive for its attainment is notably absent from that second definition.
Daniel may well aspire towards success, and in that vein has emblazoned “the game is about glory” all over the Theatre of Failure. And yet it seems as though the carefully-constructed plan for attaining that status consists largely of waiting for it to fall into his lap. His consistent failure to fully back managers throughout his tenure certainly supports this
One of the more incredulous aspects of this is that at several points it almost did fall into his lap. Destiny has on a number of occasions left Spurs on the cusp of success, only for Daniel’s own shortcomings to snatch mediocrity from the jaws of adequacy. Amidst his scattergun approach to managers – an approach that aimlessly lurched from club playing legends to petulant Frenchmen to affable Dutch journeymen to dour Spaniards to Cockney wheeler-dealers to stubborn Portuguese to unqualified, self-appointed club legends to player’s friend Argentinians with a history of smaller clubs to potentially outdated serial winners – there were fleeting moments when, in spite of himself, Daniel might have had greatness very much thrust upon him.
I am of the opinion that Levy has his own individual logic with regard to the squad ability, he believes they are good enough to achieve success, and it’s the managers that have failed.
Success being CL qualifiers which is the only criteria for him and the board, and reaching the CL final only strengthened that belief, however the truth is somewhat different.
And then it was 1.3 billion? Determined to enhance their assets and property portfolio; not quite so determined to have a genuinely successful team out on the pitch!
Freemason! Yes, um
Quite!
These managers, of course, just don’t want Levy’s cheap, bargain basement (and often still not good value even) signings!
What is the point, though, of having a magnificent stadium if the team that plays in it is hopeless? It’s simply embarrassing to have such a gulf between facilities and playing standards, rather like Queens Park playing at Hampden, except that there are good footballing reasons for that, historically, the Glasgow club being the original aristocrats of the game up there.
I happen to think the stadium was a bit more than double; I seem to recall that in 2016 it was 400 million and MY thinking “that’s likely to be around 700 million then”
🙂
and that’s not a plea to let Ryan run loose
Freemason
Levy kicked Mace off of the internal fit out and appointed his own contractors , causing massive delays , go figure as to the the 120 % Increase in costs
Great post.
Levy is both out of touch and out of his depth when it comes from to football.
However, when it cones to making excuses and patronising the fans with them, he really does take some beating.
Blaming a manager for not ‘wanting’ signings is outrageous. We all know that Poch didn’t want more mid priced dross from Ligue 1 just to fill the squad out. What sort of players were you offering him Daniel? If they had been his actual targets or had the required quality, of course he would have wanted them.
Its this idea that he thinks he can pull the wool over the fan’s eyes that I find particularly disrespectful. He clearly doesn’t credit the fans with having anything between their ears whatsoever.
He’s a pillock who thinks he knows best, well, look at the state of things now. He doesn’t…
In terms of the General Conditions of Contract for project management , any project that exceeds 15% of its total initial value is a failure and was not planned for correctly ,once the 15% in variation orders are achieved ,the contractor then is allowed to renegotiate the total value of the contract…the stadium was almost double ? I dont know how the budget was exceeded by so much unless there was major issues with regard to structural integrity that the project needed redesign mid through work being done. This also matches with the way Daniel Levy runs the football club,absolute wanker
I think all Spurs fans share the same frustration when it comes to Daniel Levy. I have complained about him endlessly on this blog and in my personally opinion i think the positives and negatives of having him as a chairman are very simple to analyze.
Financially he is no mug and we can be very proud of both the stadium and the training ground. It’s definitely a tick for DL but we need to move on from it. It’s used in his defence every time he is criticised and nobody is beyond criticism regardless of their past achievements.
He’s known to be a tough negotiator and whilst that may have saved money in the past on wages or transfer fees i feel that long term this approach has been detrimental for the club. There are clubs that simply refuse to do business with us and now we are searching for a new manager this approach will not work with modern managers who know they need to earn the maximum over a short period of time.
This leads to my next point, recruitment. Specifically managerial/coaching appointments. You could argue that Levy has only got this right once in 20 years with Poch. If you remember at the time Louis Van Gaal was our first choice but he decided on Utd. The only manager he got right wasn’t his first choice.
I’m not going to dig too deeply into player recruitment as I’m sure there are scouts or experts he uses or has used during the 20 years. He’s not fully at fault on this point but I now believe the buy young & cheap and sell high approach is not the model we need going forward, especially in our new stadium.
To summarise, i think we can all agree that Levy’s skills are best suited to the club’s infrastructure. He does have a proven track record (not without costly mistakes) of getting projects finished. I know we can point out things that went wrong but i think it is fair to give him this credit.
However, from a football point of view his track record is appalling. One cup in 20 years, manager less and comfortably sitting at the top of the laughing stock table. If had a £1 for every Spurs meme I’ve seen in the last year i could buy Harry Kane for my 5 a side team.
For our club to move forward the solution is simple, DL has to relinquish all control of footballing matters. All control.
Kind words Sir!
Can you guess what the f….. stands for?
I just realized I forgot to put mother between bald headed and f…..!
A depressingly accurate picture of the wee bald headed f—–, MS.
Actually, it would be fairly typical of my timing!
Yes, he blew it for us! “The Theatre of Failure” Very apt, Harry. The trouble with the “long term interests” is that it appears to be so long term that any genuine success – if it ever comes – is likely to be beyond my lifespan and that of quite a few others on this website. I’m so pleased Spurs are possibly going to be a power in the land when I’m six feet under!
Post is good, but yours MS, better. Really gets to the crux of the problem. Levy is the same as too many of the players, after all he can get and just like them glorying in it.
I’ll grab it! 👊
Great post, well written.
I have reproduced my post of yesterday to explain why I think Levy doesn’t care.
https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/cec35ec4dec125da36e430963eed0fc5?s=64&d=retro&r=pg
Marbella Spur
19 hours ago
I should think Levy laughs uncontrollably more than we all think. After all, he has spent over twenty years deceiving the Spurs fan base for his own benefit. He is and has been for some time the highest or second highest paid CEO in the PL. He was paid a £2 mill bonus for going 100% over budget on the new stadium and being one year late in delivery. He charges the fans the highest ticket prices in the PL and probably not far off the world, allied to the highest food and beverage prices just to rinse the fans a little bit further .During his tenure which as we all know has yielded one League Cup, he has not put one penny into the club whilst enriching himself at the expense of the club’s football success. Not only that, if one values the club at approximately £2 billion before debt, his 30% shareholding in Enic is worth £300 million and it hasn’t cost him a penny except failure in all footballing matters which conversely is the only thing that matters to the fans. Let us not forget to mention the cost to the club of all the redundancy payments the club has had to pay out over the years due to the chairman’s poor judgement in filling management, DoFs, coaching, analytical and scouting staff positions. Then of course there is the reputational damage to the club perpetrated by Levy which includes his attempt to furlough the staff and to charge ST holders for the new stadium, even in the knowledge that it wasn’t going to be ready in time and that we had another year at Wembley. Levy has also managed to make himself the most disliked CEO in PL and European football. Apart from his singular lack of self awareness which is assisted by having the hide of a rhino, does he really care? He’s been getting away with this deception for over twenty years and most of us have been either too stupid or too supine to realise it and too lazy to do anything about it. Levy can continue to laugh uncontrollably at our expense whilst we continue to weep.