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.