A couple of months ago, I wrote an article for this site talking about the horrific, dystopian unamusement park that is Levyworld – a place where all your dreams come to be crushed beneath the tight-fitting oxfords of a tight-fisted, penny-pinching peddler of mediocrity and shambition.
I spoke about how Nuno was an uninspiring choice for manager (even if that choice were about the 9th or 10th such over the course of the summer) whose teams play a soporific style of football, but that he would be chosen purely because, in Daniel Levy’s mind, he possessed the killer one-two punch combination of being inexpensive to appoint and having low expectations of the club.
I spoke about how Fabio Paractici, as someone synonymous with the past ten to fifteen years of Italian football, was not the person to whom you’d look for an overhaul of a footballing style perceived as negative and defensive over the past couple of seasons.
I spoke about how at Spurs the football side of things has been deemed largely insignificant when compared to the investor relationships and property portfolio of the business, and that this approach has been continually fed through the Levy media machine to herald to fans as something truly worthy of praise as if a West End theatre audience might have turned up at the Ivor Novello theatre purely to marvel at the sumptuous archiving while the show itself consisted of Kenneth Branagh pulling down his chinos and defecating centre stage.
I spoke about how there has long been an all-pervading culture of failure acceptance within the Theatre of Broken Dreams that is the as-yet-unsponsored Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, amid the longest trophy-less period in the last 70 years of the club’s history (architecture prizes notwithstanding), during which time trophies have been secured by the likes of Swansea City, Wigan Athletic, Portsmouth and Birmingham City. Spurs is riddled with the vile rot of mediocrity from the inside out.
I spoke about how it could be little surprise that our iconic vice-captain was so keen to ply his trade elsewhere, at a club where football was the primary goal and where the game’s highest prizes were actually highly prized – as well as regularly delivered.
I spoke about how criminal it was that season after season, we have done our business late, left managers under-prepared, and entered the season without an adequate back-up for our widely-courted striker.
And I spoke about how at Spurs neither managers nor directors of football have received any sort of credible support from a small-minded, seemingly sociopathic tyrant who has reigned over Tottenham Hotspur (Football) Club for 20 years of continuous Premier League football in the most financially lucrative era in the English game’s history and delivered the sum total of two League Cup titles but an almost unrivaled record of net spend. They’ll be dancing in the streets of Deloitte’s, I’m sure.
And then came the start of the season.
Three straight wins. Three clean sheets. A Manager of the Month award for Nuno. And to make matters even better, Arsenal was bottom.
I chose to keep my powder dry.
An Arsenal-supporting friend of mine (he’s Canadian so doesn’t know any better) sent me a WhatsApp at the time, asking whether I regretted the article.
“So are you gonna take back any of the mean things you said about your owner given this and the refusal to sell your best player despite him very clearly wanting to go?”
My response, I feel, was quite level-headed, given the giddying heights we’d reached.
“Of course not. So far we’ve lucked out in hiring our 9th choice manager, bluffed our way through the Kane situation because City never bid anything like his value, signed a total of one player who will go straight into our first team… when he gets back from international duty followed by 10 days quarantine, and scored the less-than-impressive total of 3 goals just somehow without conceding. And anyway, one summer of moderate effectiveness when he was under enormous pressure to do ANYTHING does not make up for twenty years of incompetence.”
My position hasn’t wavered, and the three subsequent league games have entirely validated that stance. After a series of dismal performances, culminating in a woeful showing in the NLD this weekend, we now find ourselves in the bottom half of the table, and actually below Arsenal. 9 goals conceded, 1 scored so far in this current run.
So then, how do the rest of my Levyworld assertions stack up, six games into the season?
Nuno’s style of football has, as expected, turned out to be one of the more conservative approaches in the history of the Premier League. The team seems so reticent to attack as to be tragic. Despite boasting the likes of Kane, Son, Moura, Bergwijn, Alli et al, a graphic was presented before the NLD (Nuno’s Lamentable Debacle) that suggested Spurs boasted the lowest xG in the entire league, a statistic unlikely to have been enhanced by the match in question.
We are also informed through various journalistic routes that it was precisely this defensive brand of football that Paratici was most keen to pursue and that persuaded him against the likes of Fonseca and Potter. Once again, this was not exactly unforeseeable – it was screamed from every footballing fibre of his being.
At this juncture, I think it’s probably worth proffering two pertinent observations. Firstly, when you have a run of conceding three goals in each of three consecutive games, all without traveling beyond the bounds of the North and South Circs., I don’t know that we can still call this style of football ‘defensive’. I think ‘dour’, ‘miserable’, ‘negative’ and even ‘shambolic’ are probably more apropos. Secondly, should Brighton – managed by the aforementioned overlooked-and-clearly-far-too-cavalier Graham Potter – win their ‘derby’ game against Palace, they will sit atop the English Premier League, having thus far conceded a mere four goals with their devil-may-care football in five matches to date. Irony, thy name is football.
With little signs of footballing success on the horizon, the stadium, which has seemingly managed to infect even Anthony Joshua with the Club’s gangrenous inadequacy, has nevertheless been awarded further architectural plaudits. Ironically the building containing the trophy cabinet has earned more trophies than the football team has during ENIC’s toxic tenure. Elsewhere in the club, failure remains all-pervading.
With Spurs having somehow managed to cling onto a man who patently doesn’t want to play for them anymore, England’s captain has staggeringly appeared entirely disinterested during his performances to date and generally wandered about like the proverbial fart in a trance. It looks as though he’s resigned himself to never winning anything and to his club career being largely purposeless, which one can imagine would take the wind out of even HMS Victory’s sails. Quite how the prospect of playing alongside Dele Alli, Eric Dier, Davinson Sanchez, and an unfit Tanguy Ndombele was meant to motivate Harry into pretending to possess even a single shit to give is quite beyond me. But then Daniel knows best.
Yet again the final pieces of the playing squad jigsaw puzzle (the picture from which, one can only assume, is that of a massive steaming turd) were secured on deadline day, leaving no time for Nuno to incorporate Emerson Royal into the squad or give him a preseason, and no time to find a remotely interested buyer for the outgoing Serge Aurier, who was therefore allowed to depart entirely for free. This must be some new zen form of financial acumen, to which mere mortals such as I am completely unfamiliar.
There is still no adequate back-up for Kane, and in fact when you consider that Bale, Lamela and Vinicius have departed – who between them made up 30 of our goals last season – and that the only attacking signing made was Bryan Gil – who in the true Tottenham tradition appears to be ‘one for the future’ – it becomes clear that not only have Levy and Paratici not enhanced the situation but they have in fact considerably worsened it, regardless of how strongly they fluttered their eyelashes at the likes of Lautaro Martinez and Dusan Vlahovic.
So here we go again. Second verse, same as the first but a little louder and a little worse. We have a less charismatic but slightly less divisive manager playing a depressingly morose style of football. We still have some of the dead wood players with the stink of failure attached to them, while others have been shipped out for free. Our record premier league goalscorer still doesn’t want to be there and is now playing accordingly, but we have no striker with which to give him a break. We’ve got a boxing tenant whose credit is going to be significantly reduced in future, with still no sign of that sweet, sweet NFL money wending its way back to N17, and the long-anticipated ground sponsor remains entirely fictional. It’s almost as if attaching your name to a laughing stock club during a global pandemic would give a potential sponsor pause or something. We’re not scoring goals and we’re leaking them like a colander coracle. We have an ill-prepared squad, the excuses of “It takes time” are already being trotted out by our captain, and our players are causing international incidents then missing games while they hide out in Croatia.
Levyworld has really stepped up the drama this season. The robots are taking over. Just as chaotic and incompetent but with an added splash of that special ‘je ne sais what the fuck’. Levy remains at the heart of everything wrong within TH(F)C. The club will not start to climb out of its current horror show until it is rid of the out-of-control freak (much like a control freak but with a penchant for shambles). He bestrides the club like Binky the Giant Clown Tyrant, shaping the club in his own image, with an army of malfunctioning incompetent clown robots.
I had thought of starting to refer to the place as White Shart Lane, but it’s actually a bit harsh on sharts. At least they follow through.
Not in Levyworld. No following through there. No ambition but shambition. Never jam – not today, tomorrow or ever.
Welcome back to Levyworld. The lunatic androids are running the asylum. Here’s to another twenty years of this guano.
At the start of the season when I said Nuno be gone by February when we’re languishing around 10th-12th…, to which the response was a top 4 place beckons… however when I said ok, who of the top 4 teams we’d be replacing… he couldnt answer…. 🤣
yup
100%
Time to start spending Saturday afternoons voicing displeasure in Levy’s direction..!
Yes, The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium- The Home of Failure.
Like I say, not a shrewd operator but merely intransigent.
Yes, talk about hubris. But, at least, unlike that smug git at the Villa,Doug Ellis, he hasn’t yet named a piece of the stadium after himself!
But apart from that, Levy’s OK, yes? I do enjoy your blogs, HH. I really hope that the heat will finally be turned up on this hideous waste of time that is Daniel Levy.
I got part way through the Amazon series and couldn’t muster enough will to finish it.
We all know there’s a perception that “football people” aren’t the most intelligent, and whenever I watched Daniel Levy in that series, I saw him actively attempting to manipulate that perception for his own advantage. His body language and speech pattern is a textbook example of someone who firmly believes he is the most intelligent person in the room, and he absolutely loves the notion that others consider him to be a shrewd operator.
He needs to be played nearer the the box as per King’s observation.
Yep its time to start filling your Saturday afternoons with something more satisfying and yes i meant Saturday we wont even make 7th this year.
Like ze germans… as the snatch quote goes….😉
I found the Amazon ‘documentary’ so embarrassing on so many levels.
Watching It running around like he’s a passionate busy bee, looking at the place settings in the restaurant, and sitting there having a coffee with the players at the training ground. Then the bit where he’s at some club event where he’s addressing the VIP crowd, looking up ‘cheekily’ saying “and I really want to win a twofee…” it was so pathetic and cringe worthy it’s untrue.
Have you ever seen or heard such complete and utter bullsh*t in your life?
Yes indeed. Just stick the Levyworld sign up on the door and leave Spurs to rest.
100%
Well there been none for the last 22 years, many of us never imagined that the new stadium would change anything.
Some of us even predicted this, especially against the backdrop of the amount of debt created to build the bloody thing. None of it made sense, at any point…
Still using the same modus operandi, Nuno will go the same, well paid, way. The con was there from the start.
Look at Arsenal, the hotel, the flats, the retail, the increased capacity and still they have lost touch with the big four.
We’re even worse off and the extra income even if it was spent on players will not close the gap on the big four.
We were sold a lie and most swallowed it whole. That’s how conmen work, they use people’s desperate need to believe in something to fleece them. Sad story really.
There’ll be no success under ENIC, not sustained anyway. Tough to swallow.
He thinks anything he sells is worth a fortune and when he buys he won’t even pay the going rate to pull something half decent out of the bargain bucket!
This utter cr*p he constantly spouts about him “doing the best for Tottenham Hotspur” needs to stop. If he was we would not be in this mess, he’s a lying snake who treats all around him as if he’s the only one with something between their ears. Insufferable man…
Brilliant!
One of the best articles I have read on this site. I do ask myself even if the money was rolling in from the new stadium’s events, other than football, where would it go? Either, it would be paid in dividends to Enic or it would go to reinforcing the squad on a meaningful basis, rather than the penny pinching antics of Levy for the last twenty two years. Then I came to the inevitable conclusion that even if a decent proportion was spent on the football team rather than on bricks and mortar for a change, would Levy allow the right people to manage, coach and recruit for the club and take a back seat. The answer would of course be no as he cannot help micromanaging situations that he knows nothing about. It was interesting to note that last week there was a report that Levy had valued the club at £3.5 billion. The man is a megalomaniac. He did not even get a professional valuation but made it up himself. I think that explains quite a lot about his mind set.
Yep .
Excellent article. Sadly all too spot on.
Superb piece, well written. Sums up things perfectly and succinctly.
I think they originally wanted to buy into Spurs because they were not a club that generally achieved and won things regularly, at that point in it’s history.
They knew that the expectation would be manageable from a financial perspective. So therefore they’ve never ever been ambitious about football, they want us to stay exactly where we have been for the last 20 years. The sleepy fans have only aided them.
Redknapp was an accident really and we got in the Champions League, Pochettino was also a punt that worked out far better than expected. I don’t believe that either of those achievements were part of the Eric plan. They of course gladly took the extra windfall of cash but It gave the fans a glimpse of where we could go, Levy’s worst nightmare.
This along with the constant boasting about the stadium means that the underachieving is even more noticeable and laid bare. I have no idea where this whole thing goes from here, but you can bet Daniel didn’t even bother to predict anything.
The penny pinchers that use other peoples money, have clearly bitten off more than they can chew.
You can bet that Nuno will be the next fall guy before Paratici also gets the bullet. Not Levy’s fault, he’s only done his best to get the best people in right?
😂😂
Yep, George Graham the manager. First thing Levy did was sack him and get Hoddle to ingratiate themselves with the faithful. Once their feet were under the table for a few years they stopped bothering.
’DNA’ my ar*e…
“…at Spurs the football side of things has been deemed largely insignificant when compared to the investor relationships and property portfolio of the business, and that this approach has been continually fed through the Levy media machine to herald to fans as something truly worthy of praise…”
And herein lies the core root of the problem.
It’s a story in the same vein as the FIFA funded “United Passions” – a sports movie where the execs are portrayed as the heroes.
As long as ENIC & Levy are at the helm, Tottenham Hotspur will continue to be haunted by Keith Burkinshaw lamenting that “There used to be a football club over there”
Well written and great points.
The situation we are in is utterly shameful. That’s all there is to it.
This talk of calling these crooks out as merely ‘Levy hating’ is the usual cancel culture bullsh*t that pervades modern life.
They’re in charge, we win nothing and we are in a complete and utter mess. Are the fans supposed to take the blame then? 😂
Half as ‘well’ dear, half as well! 😂
I agree mate.
Excellent piece.
He’s noticeably absent… funny that !
An excellent piece, I wish I could articulate my feelings half as good.
Please send this on a stamped addressed envelope to Mr. Daniel Levy, Hotspur Way.
It’s actually only one league cup trophy under ENIC’s 2 decades of disillusionment . Sugar was in charge for 1999 win.
Nice idea but unfortunately I can’t see the NFL or events impacting on Levy’s profit making stadium. Levy doesn’t care about the footballing side impacting on the other events. He keep them separate. It doesn’t matter if the team flops because most NFL and event goers aren’t Spurs fans anyway. It needs the football fans to start boycotting matches and stop buying merchandise, along with protesting. Otherwise Levy and enic simply won’t be impacted.
With owners like that morale has plummeted to an all time low. You can’t expect the players to believe what has now been proven to be a lie perpetuated by the poison dwarf. He is using them all to make money for enic basically. He is like some billionaire movie producer paying peanuts for extras in a multi-million dollar making movie.
Yes they make big money, but as the likes of Kane have proven they want more than that in their relatively short footballing careers.
Great article.
One key point to pick up on is that people are saying AJ went all “Spursy” on Saturday night and lost all of his titles. This is just banter but one thing you do NOT want is your billion pound venue being associated with losing no matter how ridiculous it sounds. One thing i can tell you for certain is that boxers will think twice before fighting there.
It will take just one successful NFL team to suffer a bad loss and the THFC venue will be synonymous with failure. Let’s be honest, THFC are already synonymous with failure.
If we sack Nuno we will be back to square one with the same uncommitted players still not being very good. I think it’s safe to say we can give up on Dele. He needs to be sold. Then we enter the other issue where Levy will overvalue him, so he’ll be forced to stay. This is the circle of pain we are in.
Some of us have been saying this for over a decade. Pity more people didn’t see the light back then. They used to laugh at us, but they’re not laughing now are they? Spurs fans are almost sheep like in their devotion to what they wrongly believe is supporting the club. The club is not the problem it’s the parasites that have ensnared it and are now sucking out the life blood.
If you’re one of these simpletons let me explain it in junior language you can understand; THFC and enic/Levy are two different entities. You can support the former whilst wanting rid of the latter. Don’t confuse the two as one, it’s not rocket science.
Thanks Beadle that was marvellous.A cracking article.
Great article, we have surely entered a new circle within Dantes inferno. I don’t recall a time I had such little belief or optimism that things can improve.
In addition to using cash reserves from the club itself, Spurs and chairman Levy utilised lending funds from HSBC, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America Merrill Lynch in order to fund the construction of the stadium. All in, the borrowing totals £637 million – £525 million of which was refinanced by Levy in September of 2019.
“Cash reserves”……..So money was there for players.
Current zombie-Kane being described as playing like a ‘fart in a trance’ has made my morning
Putting the ENIC state of affairs aside, I still don’t see why there should be such an insipid, lifeless performance as that yesterday, where is the pride, the spirit and desire, in a game like that, we are in deep doo-doo !
Brilliant article.
Would love to see what tappa thinks of your views! The views of the majority of us on here indeed.
In short…. We’re f*cked..