Long time readers will be more than aware that my contempt for Levy’s mismanagement of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, and the ENIC business model itself. For a good while my annoyance was not just unchecked, but unrivalled.
The abuse I received on a routine basis was probably on par with what the those invested in the horse industry when the motorcar first became a mainstream threat to their own industry. Except of course, I wasn’t a threat to anyone’s living, but I was demanding that fans think. That was enough to inspire the same levels of discomfort in many.
My angst has always been centred around the unwillingness of the owners to back a coach. Andre Villas-Boas wasn’t backed, he was treated appallingly and walked.
Mauricio Pochettino was also treated appallingly, although that poor love buckled up and endured the ride for some five and a half years. A period comparatively good efforts on the grass were unrelentingly ignored by Levy and ENIC who plough onwards with their vision.
I tried to warn you, but you shouted me down. And now the situation is no longer reversible. Nobody can simply ‘get Levy out’, that moment has well and truly passed. The debt is insurmountable for any normal investor. Look at the numbers.
- Tottenham’s total debt up to £852million
- £215million of the bill is composed of interest
- Some debts will still be outstanding until 2050
- Repayments will average £37m-a-year until 2042
- Over the last 5 years, only £21m-a-season was spent on transfers
Now let’s flesh out the numbers with some context. That stadium may well have the ability to generate all manner of exciting revenue streams, but these will now all be in slow motion in a post COVID-19 world.
However, that’s not the core problem. It’s a matter of record that Spurs don’t tend to win anything, and given trophies are the metric in professional sports, so Tottenham Hotspur is not a successful football club.
Anyone seeking to buy a football club is either looking to latch onto existing success, or buy a doer upper. We’re neither.
What ENIC have done to Spurs is to essentially make them into the most expensive doer upper in the history of football. Investors like a punt, but at time of writing, it would cost any prospective buyer the wrong end of a billion pounds just to ask Levy & ENIC to walk away, without compensating them for their gallant efforts in producing this springboard for potential success.
One could realistically suggest that another £300million would be needed to get what is a mid table team into the elite football mix. Harry Kane is 27 in a couple of weeks.
Anyhow, fast forward to this morning and Matt Law was chosen to go public with the news that some fans have commissioned a plane with a ‘Levy Out’ banner strapped to it.
Alas, this now rather predictable ‘protest’ will achieve nothing but catcalling from other club’s fans, just as the Arsenal Fan TV boys produced nothing but derision with their equally sad theatrics.
Thankfully don’t like in a Marxist Superstate and ENIC cannot be asked to pack up and quit by grey suited officials. So that’s not an option.
ENIC one would presume would be open to a mega bid, but who in their right mind buys when the price is so high and the returns look so far away?
No, if you late to the party folks are serious about ENIC going, then you’ll need more than a £600 whip-round that will get you a mention on MOTD.
You’ll need someone with so much money to throw at Spurs and the Shopping Centre deal that it won’t bother them if they ever get back in their lifetime. That means a very short list. Maybe George Soros will see the banner on the TV, and he’ll become inspired.
You missed the boat, lads.
“Demolishing half of Tottenham? Blame Haringey council, those they give nearly a million a week to.
God elp ya
I would expect nothing less than to help the local community during Covid, seeing as they’re demolishing half of North Tottenham it’s the least they could do. The people on the ground doing the work I did actually recognize in a comment. Not giving ENIC praise for it sh*t, the club and the people working in it I will always back.
Trouble with you is, you don’t seem able to differentiate. Slagging off one doesn’t mean you’re slagging off the other. Levy was in the soup kitchen with an apron on was he? 😂
You ain’t loyal and you ain’t faithful ” that I do know for sure. Own your $h!£. You can’t have it both ways. Even when my club was/is doing fantastic work during the covid ting you couldn’t even find it in yourself to big them up.
You know f**ck all mate. That’s obvious…
The “faithful? That certainly ain’t you.
Non football events at the stadium will cover a chunk of the debt and so will the academy
As in the length of time it has to be paid back in? 25 years? I Doubt it. Non football events will cover a good chunk of it along with the academy.
Watched it doing the rounds on twitter, thought the same then.
And I’ll be dead or be 85, or which ever comes first.
I didn’t say I liked the idea, just that there is money to be made in the approach.
Whenever we start to do well on the pitch Levy seems to think that he or other factors are behind it and that the manager is just dispensable. He’s been wrong every time, the man is probably an egomaniac with a Napoleon complex, in fact that where he and Jose are actually quite similar!
Levy isn’t comfortable with anyone who can’t function under his jackboot…
In a nutshell … we’re fu**d
He’s a football genius you know. He once signed Rafa VanDerVaart on deadline day you know… 😂
Amen.
I’ll just leave this here…
https://youtu.be/dogtRHhQ11s
Perhaps Private Frazer should be the club’s new mascot.
‘We’re doomed. Doomed!’.
Levy has delivered “world class facilities” whilst running the football club into the ground. Does Lewis really need Levy anymore? What does Levy bring to the table now? He has boosted Enic’s NAV as well as his own, but he only owns 29% of Enic so Joe could theoretically sack him at any time. I don’t believe that Lewis is blind to Levy’s deficiencies as we are not. There will come a time when he will realise that the football side of the business aids cash flow and income when it is successfully run, something Levy has amply demonstrated over twenty years he is incapable of.
The depressing reality, unfortunately.
The problem with our shirt deals is that they are already in hock for the next 5 years or something with the banks, and they won’t plumpen up unless we win something.
Naming rights isn’t worth very much. Like seeing listing on eBay where people are asking a fortune doesn’t equate to them getting paid one.
TV deals will increase over time, but for everyone, the only way to earn more is to win stuff.
The solution, the model that works remains the same.
Build a team and win stuff. The rest is just fluff, jibber-jabber, fancy wrapping.
Levy hasn’t a clue how football works – and so we’re doomed.
He’s been ****ing about for 20years and delivered one trophy and one billion quids’ worth of debt. Those are the facts, sadly…
Been saying this for ages, he gets his 2m bonus for ‘delivering’ the stadium but what has he done in terms of trophies etc? He’s hired and fired more coaches than any other chairman, spent less on the team than any other chairman in the top 10 and won one League Cup in 20 years.
Joe won’t sack him though, so long as the pie and flow charts look good, he’s safe as houses. He’ll hand reigns over to his son who no doubt will have had ‘expectation management of the fans’ ground into him from birth…
#LEVYOUT
Unfortunately Levy Jnr will probably be our chairman.
Yes, made not a jot of sense appointing someone fired for wasting 400m.
Makes me think levy lost his mind at seeing poch proved right about what he’d been saying for the past two years.
The little man felt embarrassed and hurt and, on the rebound, got himself into an Irrational, illogical relationship.
Now he finds himself in a ludicrous situation and must surely be in two minds about whether he wants the fleeced returning to the enic dome.
Even his most devoted seals are going to be in uproar at paying the world’s most expensive prices for this.
He acted in haste in November, now the repentance begins ….
Let’s hope so but nobody’s holding their breath…
Businesses are bought and sold with huge debts remaining, but has the club’s debt repayments been manufactured in a way that intentionally puts off possible suitors .
😂
I just can’t see how Jose fits in to all of this. It’s common knowledge that he was successful in the past with big budgets, he won’t get that.
It’s also known that ENIC won’t push on to win stuff so the football might as well be of a style that will at least excite the faithful without actually challenging for anything or playing in the Champions League. Jose will not provide that either.
I might be proved wrong, but it’s my guess that Jose was brought in to get us into the top 4 because he was available. Levy was in denial of a need to rebuild patiently after the lack of investment in the team and blamed Poch for the decline of a stale squad. Or certainly was more comfortable in making it look like it was all the manager’s fault and sacked him.
True, Poch had probably given all he could and such levels of over achieving must been tiring work for him and his staff over 5 years. My point is, sacking him was only a sideways or dare I say it, even a backwards step.
We need a manager who can work with the cheaper younger signings and academy graduates that Levy is comfortable with, while also providing a good brand of attractive football.
That’s what Poch pretty much did, so Levy needs to find another Poch. Nothing else will work while ENIC are there. They had a formula under Poch but Levy was uncomfortable with the fans expecting us to be challenging for big things, it all costs too much you see…
ENIC OUT
You have to look for the silver lining.
By 2050 we will be debt free & hopefully Levy free and can push on for the title.
You are quite right that the price Enic would want is in the realms of fantasy, so nobody is going to buy them out. By the way, £300 mill to fix the team is probably conservative. I do not agree that Levy is unassailable in his position. If we slide towards the bottom half of the table, are out of CL qualification, and the stadium is half full when spectators are allowed back, there will be a lot of pressure on Levy whose mistakes in every area of the football side of the business are now being magnified in the press. I cannot believe that Lewis is happy at the current situation and he is not a man who will allow this to carry on ad infinitum. Being loaded up with so much debt at the moment is excruciating bad timing and dangerous. Levy is a busted flush and needs replacing to protect Enic’s investment. He is not unsackable.
I wouldn’t put a sale completely out of the picture. Think of Levy’s obsession with American sport especially the NFL. He modelled the stadium on American stadiums. Think of Spurs like a franchise like the LA Lakers or The New England Patriots. There are a limited number and they’re a licence to print money, especially if you have lucrative TV deals and in the States a wage cap and a draft system.
We’ll never have a draft system but Levy would love a wage cap, more money for Joe and Daniel. Now look at Spurs the way a potential US investor would. That debt wouldn’t worry him. Repayments of £37 million, the naming rights could bring £20 million a year. Better shirt deals etc will take care of the rest.
For all American sports popularity its presence worldwide is limited unlike the beautiful game the world’s favourite sport. That’s what Spurs offer, the worlds favourite sport in the world’s most popular League.
Spurs are based in one of the world’s greatest capital cities, a financial hub, a draw for corporate interests, players and especially players wives. They have the world class facilities we all know about. They have big crowds at games and the fanbase is growing at home and abroad and has plenty of room for more. It has a good team that wouldn’t need a fortune spent to at least be competitive. It has a notable history and is known as a team that likes to excite fans with their football ( present company excepted). When Covid subsides the popularity of the Premier League will likely increase with new entrants like Amazon, Apple adding to the riches and the worldwide market will continue to grow. Think of the franchise model again. The number of teams is limited, most of the top ten aren’t for sale, a lot of the rest aren’t very attractive or are too small, Bournemouth, Brighton.
Remember when Saudi Arabia wanted to buy a team they didn’t go to France, Spain, Italy or Germany. There is no shortage of money in the world for the big sports teams, look at the price of NFL, NBA teams. Human vanity will come to our rescue, the desire to be associated with the glamour of sport at the elite level.
Nobody is buying Joe out because there is no margin for profit after spending 2bn. So enic out is not anchored in reality.
But enic out is not the most common pipe dream doing the rounds. Far more widespread is the summoning up of a another mirage; that of an all-conquering, trophy-winning team of “Jose players,” (aka “natural winners, committed to the cause…”)
Our coach had that in his last job after a world-record spend up but was sacked for taking them closer to the bottom 3 than to Klopp and Guardiola (and for still perpetrating dire football.)
Enic will certainly not be giving him that. If he lasts another year he may be allowed a third of a team’s worth of bargain-basement “Jose players.” But not even Donna Cullen is going to try and spin that into a recipe for glory.
There’s a chain of thought that it may have to get way worse before it gets better. It just annoys more knowing that this time we were close. On the Leeds thing, God bless Jack Charlton. A proper football man who won’t like what he’s been seeing
Buying foreign players for the fan market is largely a waste of time, Son being the obvious exception (though not on current performances.) Do you see the clubs that regularly win trophies doing that? Players should be acquired solely on talent and their ability to fit into the team, not because Levy wants to make a few million more quid selling shirts. We tried that with Yedlin and what a turd he turned out to be, albeit a racy one.
Trouble is everything Levy does is about making money and nothing he ever does is about us winning trophies. ENIC fc is just a money making organisation and nothing else. We’re a selling club with zero ambition and managers are just caretakers until results go south as they always do due to lack of investment and so on. It’s like a depressing revolving door to nowhere.
I think we should do a Leeds – have you seen them play under Bielsa? Sheer poetry in motion.
Should also be noted that these thieves purchased all this for the sum of 22m, which they must have had back 100 times over already. Hunter Davies has said on radio that the debt level is dangerous I believe. So for all those spongles that were saying we don’t want to do a Leeds, we are a bloody sight closer today than we would have been had he invested in say tevez and cahill instead of saha and Nelson. And as is pojnted out incase anyone is thinking well we can still move on, we can’t really. We are unbuyable. Naming rights won’t happen, who wants to be associated with mediocrity? Kane will walk this summer and nobody can really blame him. Got the best striker in the world who touches it more in his own box than the opponents. I used the analogy a house of cards a couple of years ago, I’m afraid it was right, except I didn’t predict how serious this whole situation is…. 💔
Good point, it does all feel too late. It’s saddening to know that the club we love is saddled with debt that it never had before and that we are stuck with owners who won’t back a manager properly, ever.
So there we go, a couple of John Lydon quotes; ‘no future’ & ‘ever get the feeling you’ve even cheated?’ Smart guy, shame he’s a Gooner albeit not a plastic one like half of them…
#ENICOUT
Spurs still have potential to make a lot of money (stadium deal, some shrewd player purchases -not the full compliment we need but some big names in some open Asian markets maybe a top Indian kid?) The problem really, is all of this can be done at Newcastle, or Leeds or a number of other clubs that don’t need an upfront £2bln fee. Best chance we have is Lewis ain’t getting any younger.