All our thoughts right now ought to be focused upon the team and how the season ends, but sadly we’re beyond all that now. We have a dysfunctional squad, a caretaker coach, and fans on standby (online anyway) for the next demonstration outside the stadium.
Who will be the next Spurs’ gaffer? The list is short and Tottenham’s financial resources surely have to be questioned.
As I discussed yesterday 👆, the decision of the Chelsea board to admit fan representatives is an inspired one. Sure, it’s a fundamentally limited titbit, not to be confused with full transparency. But on an upbeat note, it would surely diffuse the ‘power’ of officially recognized supporter associations.
No.
“only intelligent on paper” brilliant.
Tavistock – route of a lot of evil
How shall we feck off our lord
I won’t bet on it did you hear what Ole of Man United said he will play with reserves some of the games that means he will be giving 3 points to Leicester and Liverpool as a gift in that case I don’t know where Spurs will make up that points.
Grumpy old white guy (who looks like a hairy tomato) says what?
Tottenham are not top 50 most valuable franchises according the latest list of Forbes. The most valuable football club in England is Man United £4.2 billion, Liverpool £4.1billion, Man City£4billion and they are all outside list of the top10 in the world.they are 11th 12th and 13th on the list. Chelsea is 25th with £3.2 billion and Arsenal is 38th with £2.8 billion. That shows Levy is failing everywhere Money wise football wise prestige wise you name it.
Massive potential 6 point’er final game
Interesting.
Respect for the tradition is actually future proofing your brand long term. Going for the quick buck sometimes is the worst idea possible. You see it all the time right now and it’s destroying popular culture before our eyes.
No money to be made for generations to come, just kill it dead for a few bucks in the present. It’s actually lunacy, even from a money focused perspective…
Everyone must watch The Life Of Brian.
Leicester beaten. The door is open, will we walk through?
Take a look at the stoning, and the guy who said he had a lovely piece of halibut.
I haven’t actually seen The Life of Brian in its entirety, Harry, but I like the clip I’ve seen where the Messiah tells his followers they can go off and fend for themselves (?) etc., and that they don’t need him any longer and one solitary voice pipes up from out of the large crowd, “I do.” Or something like that – I can’t actually recall it very well – but I thought it hilarious.
A bit like intelligence not letting to common sense!
Ah fair enough, I thought you where meaning more the club ownership model.
I’m still not convinced though – most of Europe seems to be based on ‘you can only do what the laws day you can do’, whereas our approach is ‘you can’t do what the law says you can’t’.
There’s something to be said for the American model whereby it’s equal winnings and the teams finishing at the bottom get first dibs on the next draft. Just don’t mention the closed shop 🤣
Yes, the matter of common sense; Hugh McIlvanney once described Jock Stein as raising common sense to the level of an intellectual force (I doubt our directors do that, especially old baldy) and that if the wagon train was surrounded by Red Indians, Stein would be the man to get you out.
Probably referring to this quality of common sense and general savvy (as opposed to mere academic intelligence), Bob Crampsey, a writer on Scottish football and a former headmaster and once winner of the BBC radio programme Brain of Britain and later a semi finalist in Mastermind – so a man of some intellect – is reputed to have said that Stein’s was the most powerful intelligence he had ever encountered.
I like the reference to a certain Welshman re gigs and Giggs.
Very impressive this, this garnering of information regarding our directors’ academic qualifications. Doesn’t seem to help them at all, though, when it comes to creating a successful team on the pitch, alas.
All very nice and dandy. I’d wager not one has an ounce of common sense. I’d further wager not one has any real interest in football.
They are there to make business decisions. Not footballing decisions.
I was talking about industry. But let’s face it. Most leagues have one maybe two teams who dominate. So I don’t see any difference.
Sadly all too true
For the record, Ron Robson has just resigned. I don’t doubt their academic records but their record in bringing on field success to a professional football club is laughable. Perhaps their qualifications seem better suited to another business, eg, a property group, oh, hang on, that’s what we are isn’t it?
They’re only intelligent people on paper.
Its chaos but it has been for years. Without being too deep, there is a lot of chaos in the World right now as well. I can’t remember a time when I felt things were running smoothly with our club.
However, the amount of garbage written about any club nowadays, from creative ‘journos’ to people who can’t even spell, is ridiculous & this just fuels the fire.
The board want relative success & that means a top 6 finish with an occasional quarter/semi final thrown in.
The beginning of the end of success on the pitch began with the new stadium as other income was guaranteed (pre-Covid) by NFL & gigs (not woman beating Ryan).
I don’t think there is an answer – we won’t pay the going rate for top players & we don’t have regular success to attract them & now we (like everyone else), don’t have match day revenue.
We’re stuck with Joe & Daniel for the foreseeable so don’t expect anything to change.
If any of them are claiming any success on the football side, they should be escorted to the nearest institution. It’s chaos.
Daniel Levy graduated from Cambridge University in 1985 with a First Class Honours Degree in Economics & Land Economy.
Matthew Collecott is also Group Operations & Finance Director of ENIC having joined the group in 1998. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants & worked for PWC.
Donna-Maria Cullen graduated from the University of Cape Town in 1984 with a double Masters in Politics & English.
Rebecca Caplehorn graduated from Loughborough University with a Joint Honours Degree in Physical Education, Sport Science & Mathematics.
Non-Executive Directors:
Jonathan Turner graduated from Oxford University in 1994 with a First Class Honours Degree in Philosophy, Politics & Economics.
Ron Robson is a Managing Director in the Tavistock Group and Deputy Chairman of Mitchells & Butlers plc, a FTSE 250 group that is one of the UK’s largest owners of managed pubs and restaurants. He is a member of the Institute of Charted Accountants of Scotland
Academically, they appear to be quite bright but that obviously doesn’t mean you know much about football. When you’re protecting your income, you do your best to make sure no-one else can rock the boat.
Very true, and I can honestly say that it’s the only time that I have ever agreed with him!
To be honest the fact Jamie refers to them as clowns isn’t really saying much. He’s had a chip on his shoulder with Spurs since his dad was sacked.
Are our board a “bunch of highly qualified people”? If they are, and I am sure you know more about this than me, I would rather have the bloke working in the local chippy running the club, given the job the board are doing. In the immortral words of Jamie Redknapp, “they’re all fu**ing clowns down there”.
At the same time, Zee Germans have a closed shop whereby Bayen win every year, so I’m not convinced that I’d be following their model too closely :-/
This is the problem… the board can’t see the potential in letting a non-voting fan give his five pennies worth on their ideas. They can’t see the point in getting opinions from someone who loves the team, loves the matches, probably knows lots of dry details about matches. They can’t see how all that should affect their profit making schemes…. because they know best?
Some board chiefs were originally strong fans perhaps… but they’re ‘vision’ has been clouded with thoughts of squeezing more money out of their company). This is where having close proximity to a ‘real’ fan can help you keep real perspective of what is good for your business. Football, like other businesses of ‘passion’, don’t follow the normal rules of other businesses. You have to confirm to core beliefs of those with the passion in the hobby or sport for it to really succeed.
Take Marvel movies. About 15 years ago Marvel was almost bust. The early movies were of mixed quality. Many decisions were made by the ‘corporate people’ or the ‘artistic people’ and they didn’t really fit in with expectations of what Marvel movies should really be.
Kevin Feige started off as an intern under producer Lauren Shuler Donner. Feige adored the comics. He ‘got’ the storylines and he knew the details. He coerced an irritated hairstylist on the set to use the classic hairdo we see Wolverine eventually wear throughout the X-Men series, rather than whatever gawdawful design she had in mind being an ‘expert sylist’.
The Head of Marvel studios saw potential in Fiege and began sending him to the sets of every Marvel film being produced, in order to advise the filmmakers.
Most people in Hollywood didn’t care for or even like Feige at all. Especially the heads of the corporations whose film sets he was posted to.Sony, Fox, Lionsgate, etc; most of them couldn’t care less about what Feige – a man with actual passion and knowledge about the characters in the films they thoughtlessly churned out – had to say.
Heck, they didn’t give a rat’s ass about what anyone had to say. All they cared about was their bottom line. And if remaining true to the source material seemed like it may affect that bottom line (and believe me, it often did) they chucked that idea out the window.
But Kevin Fiege would not be put down by those money-hungry bureaucrats. Some time in the mid-2000’s, he proposed one of the grandest, loftiest schemes in film history. The MCU.
After watching first-hand, for several years, as the corporations ruthlessly butchered his favourite characters, Feige (the same intern, who at this point was prominent enough to propose concepts and have Marvel stop and listen to them) decided to step up and act.
He gathered the few characters that Marvel hadn’t sold off their rights to, and decided to make movies for them. Properly, and with respect to the source content.
And the rest, as we say, is history (culminating in Infinity Wars).
A FAN saved Marvel movies… and made them big money.
Zee Germans allow a union rep on their board. A strategy that on the face of it works well. You rarely see or hear of strikes.
Fan representation on the board, would at least, one hopes give the fans perspective on matters, where it’s clear currently the board don’t think about the fans at all.
The Chelsea fans that come on the board will have absolutely zero voting rights on decisions.
It’s like bring your child to work day basically.
Do people really think that a bunch of highly qualified people on the board, who are making decisions to maintain their position/income are going to let a fan, Joe Nobody who works in the chippy for 20 hours a week have an input? Interesting.