ENIC...

Levy can be criticised for many things. But I keep seeing these following criticisms of him and ENIC, and it drives me crazy. A mixture of hypocrisy and not knowing what we actually want from our club.

Not spending in 2 windows a few years ago is levys fault.
Bringing in Poch, and going unbeaten at WHL which made everyone happy is in no way thanks to levy.

We’ve spent as much as most other clubs in the last 2-3 windows. That’s still not enough ambition from Levy, he still doesn’t spend apparently.

We’ve built an amazing stadium to try and get somewhere near the income of our ‘rivals’ so we can attempt to compete financially (organically) with the financially doped City and Chelsea, and bigger money generators of Liverpool and United. But fans turn that to Levy is ignoring investing in the football team?

Lots of fans feel detached from spurs at the moment. We didn’t win the cup final. It’s Levys fault we can’t compete with the richest owners in world football at City. But Levy wants us to try and compete, so he agreed to join our rivals in the ESL.
But now the fans say, that’s not the WAY we want to compete. Shame on Levy for trying to become part of the big teams who unfairly win everything. While similtaneously also, ‘why are you not spending more to be as good as teams like City that win everything Daniel?!’. Fans demand we become an unfairly rich team, but protest against the attempt to do just that.

We’ll never win anything with ENIC. We’ve been to 6 cup finals. 90 minutes away from 6 trophies.

Levy builds a stadium, builds a training ground, in 20 years gets spurs from intertoto contenders to a top 4 mainstay, that is considered one of the 12 biggest clubs in world football. Yeah but Levy only did that for 20 years because he wants to earn money. Everything positive is dismissed.

ENIC should sell, Levy needs to go.
Name me a chairman and owner from the other 19 clubs in the league who you’d want to be running spurs?

robin09 said:

Levy can be criticised for many things. But I keep seeing these following criticisms of him and ENIC, and it drives me crazy. A mixture of hypocrisy and not knowing what we actually want from our club.

Not spending in 2 windows a few years ago is levys fault.
Bringing in Poch, and going unbeaten at WHL which made everyone happy is in no way thanks to levy.

We’ve spent as much as most other clubs in the last 2-3 windows. That’s still not enough ambition from Levy, he still doesn’t spend apparently.

We’ve built an amazing stadium to try and get somewhere near the income of our ‘rivals’ so we can attempt to compete financially (organically) with the financially doped City and Chelsea, and bigger money generators of Liverpool and United. But fans turn that to Levy is ignoring investing in the football team?

Lots of fans feel detached from spurs at the moment. We didn’t win the cup final. It’s Levys fault we can’t compete with the richest owners in world football at City. But Levy wants us to try and compete, so he agreed to join our rivals in the ESL.
But now the fans say, that’s not the WAY we want to compete. Shame on Levy for trying to become part of the big teams who unfairly win everything. While similtaneously also, ‘why are you not spending more to be as good as teams like City that win everything Daniel?!’. Fans demand we become an unfairly rich team, but protest against the attempt to do just that.

We’ll never win anything with ENIC. We’ve been to 6 cup finals. 90 minutes away from 6 trophies.

Levy builds a stadium, builds a training ground, in 20 years gets spurs from intertoto contenders to a top 4 mainstay, that is considered one of the 12 biggest clubs in world football. Yeah but Levy only did that for 20 years because he wants to earn money. Everything positive is dismissed.

ENIC should sell, Levy needs to go.
Name me a chairman and owner from the other 19 clubs in the league who you’d want to be running spurs?

Click to expand...

New stadium is going to be packed in every week once we have fans back. It’s basically a huge money whore which is problably why it’s built. Instead of the stadium I would of loved to see the money invested on the pitch but where is the profit in that? Take your blinkers off and you can see we are run like a business rather than a football club. If we had the same investment on the pitch like city and Chelsea we would of won a few trophies by now. Joe Lewis is a billionaire. How much of that has he put into Tottenham? The fans will be paying the stadium off in the end not the owners. After it’s paid off they will pocket. Why would they sell? It’s a business model that makes a fortune.

also why do you think Levy is happy to get top 4 always rather than a trophy m? Because of cl money!

ps: has Joe ever been to one of our games?

olliec said:

New stadium is going to be packed in every week once we have fans back. It’s basically a huge money whore which is problably why it’s built. Instead of the stadium I would of loved to see the money invested on the pitch but where is the profit in that? Take your blinkers off and you can see we are run like a business rather than a football club. If we had the same investment on the pitch like city and Chelsea we would of won a few trophies by now. Joe Lewis is a billionaire. How much of that has he put into Tottenham? The fans will be paying the stadium off in the end not the owners. After it’s paid off they will pocket. Why would they sell? It’s a business model that makes a fortune.

also why do you think Levy is happy to get top 4 always rather than a trophy m? Because of cl money!

ps: has Joe ever been to one of our games?

Click to expand...

The stadium wasn't built for profit it was built for sustainability.

Trix said:

The stadium wasn't built for profit it was built for sustainability.

Click to expand...

But surely it will profit in the future? Look at the state of Stamford bridge but the owners are happy to invest in players then refurbish the stadium.

olliec said:

But surely it will profit in the future? Look at the state of Stamford bridge but the owners are happy to invest in players then refurbish the stadium.

Click to expand...

No point trying to compare us to Chelsea, none whatsoever.

I

Trix said:

No point trying to compare us to Chelsea, none whatsoever.

Click to expand...

I agree mate I would actually compare us more now to Leicester, Everton, West Ham and Villa as they seem be catching us up and spending more. It’s worrying! I really hope we get a few serious players to plug the leak in our squad at the moment.

olliec said:

I

I agree mate I would actually compare us more now to Leicester, Everton, West Ham and Villa as they seem be catching us up and spending more. It’s worrying! I really hope we get a few serious players to plug the leak in our squad at the moment.

Click to expand...

Going to be interesting to see how Everton go over next few years with the fact they have a new stadium to finance. All be it one costing half as much as ours but still surely going to have some effect on there relatively free spending over past 4 or 5 seasons.

olliec said:

I

I agree mate I would actually compare us more now to Leicester, Everton, West Ham and Villa as they seem be catching us up and spending more. It’s worrying! I really hope we get a few serious players to plug the leak in our squad at the moment.

Click to expand...

Imo West ham won't invest much if they don't make CL and Everton now have a stadium to finance. We will have to see how these clubs go about things but covid has hit us worse than anyone. Levy has said over and over the stadium would be bringing us the revenue we need to compete and thus far it's brought in nothing. No amount of planning could have foreseen a year without the use of the stadium financially speaking.

I'd also say regarding the other clubs you mention new owners often throw money at the club's for the first few seasons until they realise it's nothing in the grand scheme of things and they won't catch the established money clubs. Then the asset stripping begins. Hard to say how things will pan out this Summer.

olliec said:

But surely it will profit in the future? Look at the state of Stamford bridge but the owners are happy to invest in players then refurbish the stadium.

Click to expand...

For starters, Chelsea have been trying to build a new stadium for years but keep running into complications. If it was up to them, they would be in a new stadium by now. Secondly, comparing our financial situation to Chelsea is apples and oranges.

robin09 said:

ENIC should sell, Levy needs to go.
Name me a chairman and owner from the other 19 clubs in the league who you’d want to be running spurs?

Click to expand...

From purely a footballing perspective, absolutely not Gold & Sullivan, and not the Glazers either. Obviously there are serious morality issues with City but in purely football terms they've been excellent, and nobody with £bns is squeaky clean in that regard.

What makes you feel that ENIC are the apogee of football club ownership and no other owners in football could have done as well if not better? I don't feel that what they've achieved is particularly exceptional, we're about where we've always been for the greater part of our history - unlike a good number of other clubs in the league.

I bet the thing that really attracted DL to the ESL was the guaranteed qualification. There would be no financial pressure to achieve any kind of sporting success whatsoever, as the money would come in regardless.

jimbo said:

and nobody with £bns is squeaky clean in that regard.

Click to expand...

Elaborate with examples, please.

Daniel Levy - the man who hired the most expensive manager in the world to win trophies for the club before sacking him the week before his first cup final, and then throwing in a kid from the youth team to lead the team out at Wembley against one of the best managers in the history of the game.

I just don't know what to say anymore....

olliec said:

I

I agree mate I would actually compare us more now to Leicester, Everton, West Ham and Villa as they seem be catching us up and spending more. It’s worrying! I really hope we get a few serious players to plug the leak in our squad at the moment.

Click to expand...

The only club who is remotely "catching us up" from that list is Leicester and they are spending less than us

SUIYHA said:

Daniel Levy - the man who hired the most expensive manager in the world to win trophies for the club before sacking him the week before his first cup final, and then throwing in a kid from the youth team to lead the team out at Wembley against one of the best managers in the history of the game.

I just don't know what to say anymore....

Click to expand...

How about Daniel Levy is a ****?

If the last week doesn’t sum up how we have won so few trophies under ENIC, nothing will

robin09 said:

Name me a chairman and owner from the other 19 clubs in the league who you’d want to be running spurs?

Click to expand...

I am going back to this point. It's a weird belief that Levy is some kind of irreplaceable superman chief exec.

He is a flawed character (as are all of us) who has made many mistakes, and last week broke the bond of trust with the fans.

There are many competent people out there who could do his job

(the idea that fans can't criticise his performance without submitting a short list of interview candidates for his replacement is truly bizarre)

Amo said:

Elaborate with examples, please.

Click to expand...

There is an inherent immorality in hoarding wealth to such vast levels that you are a billionnaire when poverty is rampant and large numbers of people are suffering because of it. You will also find that a good number of billionnaires have acquired their fortune through morally questionable practices, be that fairly direct through corruption, exploitation, etc or indirectly by investing in and supporting such practices. Russian, Chinese and Middle Eastern billionnaires have benefited from authoritarian state backing with real human cost - such as Abramovich and Mansour. Bezos, Musk and Zuckerberg are hardly heroes for humanity. The 'best' billionnaire is probably Warren Buffet... actually with the naming rights still up for grabs maybe he'd like to turn the stadium into a giant Margaritaville.

(That was a joke, I know Margaritaville is Jimmy Buffet.)

SUIYHA said:

Daniel Levy - the man who hired the most expensive manager in the world to win trophies for the club before sacking him the week before his first cup final, and then throwing in a kid from the youth team to lead the team out at Wembley against one of the best managers in the history of the game.

I just don't know what to say anymore....

Click to expand...

I don't believe for one minute he brought Mourinho in just to win trophies.

Levy brought Mourinho in first priority to get CL football and all the cash that comes with it.

thebenjamin said:

I bet the thing that really attracted DL to the ESL D the guaranteed qualification. There would be no financial pressure to achieve any kind of sporting success whatsoever, as the money would come in regardless.

Click to expand...

It was to sell the club for more money, surely?
Think about how much more valuable we are in it, than out of it.

olliec said:

New stadium is going to be packed in every week once we have fans back. It’s basically a huge money whore which is problably why it’s built. Instead of the stadium I would of loved to see the money invested on the pitch but where is the profit in that? Take your blinkers off and you can see we are run like a business rather than a football club. If we had the same investment on the pitch like city and Chelsea we would of won a few trophies by now. Joe Lewis is a billionaire. How much of that has he put into Tottenham? The fans will be paying the stadium off in the end not the owners. After it’s paid off they will pocket. Why would they sell? It’s a business model that makes a fortune.

also why do you think Levy is happy to get top 4 always rather than a trophy m? Because of cl money!

ps: has Joe ever been to one of our games?

Click to expand...

Ok, you raise a few more points that I forgot to counter in my previous post about ENIC criticisms. Please tell me if you think any of my points are invalid.

We are run like a business

Professional football has been a business for a long, long time. It's 'professional', for that very reason. It's one of the biggest businesses in the world. TV pay per view channels, shirt sales, state of the art stadiums, official paint sponsors etc etc
We wouldn't see foreign billionaires taking such an interest in owning pro football teams if there wasn't something for them to gain. Not necessarily financial, but almost always somehow linked to financial gain. Or at least the prospect of financial gain, as football will make you broke more often than it can make you more wealthy.

Financial Fair Play has made the business of football more accountable (seemingly, anyway - more on FFP later) than ever before. You can only spend on wages and transfers, a % of the club income. The football side is now more closely tied to the commercial side than ever before. You cannot go back to a time where Tottenham could be a little toy for a rich owner to throw away millions without a care.

So the criticism that Levy/ENIC run it as a business, I personally find meaningless. I think what fans mean, is that he's too careful in balancing the books. That's impossible to escape due to FFP nowadays. Everyone has to link expenditure to income.

If we invested on the pitch instead of the stadium

I never quite understand what fans mean by this.
We don't earn as much revenue as any of the 5 other 'big 6 clubs'. Due to FFP, we can't spend more than we generate in revenue. So even if we didn't build a new stadium, and put any resources we had towards the squad, we'd be stuck in a cycle of spending all our money, less than every rival has, winning nothing, so not growing our revenue. Year after year.

The other thing, which is as important, is we haven't spent THAT much on the stadium, yet. It's going to be paid off over a long time with money we don't currently have. We can get a loan from banks because the stadium is a sound investment in the club. We could not get a loan of the equivalent amount from the banks to buy M'Bappe, Haaland and Sancho. That also ignores the fact that, again, we couldn't physically spend more than Financial Fair Play allows us to even if we COULD divert that loan to player transfers.


I think now is a good time to talk about FFP because I keep mentioning it

Financial Fair Play is a bullshit system to maintain the current power hierarchy

FFP keeps the big clubs big and the small clubs small. Success is so inextricably linked to investment in the playing squad, that the teams who are earn the most, can therefore 'legally' spend the most and then will win almost every trophy available. Burnley will never be able to compete with Manchester City, or Tottenham for that matter. They're stuck in the chicken and egg of needing to sell more merchandise, earn more from TV and prize money, before they can spend more. But they can't grow to that level until they've spent more first!

FFP is barely any fairer than the European Super League proposal. It's just slightly more subtle, and we're already accustomed to it. But we should be protesting that as much as the ESL and CL reforms.

The fans will be paying the stadium off, not ENIC

I mean, yes. We're the customers. Part of the income. That's why they charge us to enter the stadium. But you won't pay off anything if you don't spend money on the club. The vast majority of the money will be paid by TV income, stadium naming rights, using the stadium for non-spurs events. But yes, we will also contribute as fans. I don't see how that's a criticism of ENIC.

Why doesn't Joe Lewis spend some of his own money on making us better

Again, you can say due to FFP. But imagine those restrictions didn't exist. How much would he have to spend to compete for the trophies each year. For the league, europe etc. City spent a fortune, and have won a lot purely due to that. But United and Chelsea have also spent vast amounts in the last few years, and have won very little. If Lewis spent say, 250m, could you say that would guarantee success? Would we win the league because of that 250m? Success correlates with spending, but it doesn't guarantee it. You can spend the money badly, like United. To tell Joe Lewis to spend a quarter of a billion pounds for the 'chance' we might pip City to a title, is hardly a strong sell. And again, it's not physically possible with the current state of the club and FFP anyway.

My opinion is this

Levy needs to step well back from the football side of things, and creae a long term structure that allows a sporting director and scouting philosophy to install a long term plan.

Levy needs to also communicate with the fans better. There is a disconnect that he can be blamed for.

The Euro Super League was a bad idea, due to no promotion or relegation, and not asking for fan approval first. BUT it is exactly the way for us to become big enough financially to compete and win trophies long term, as FFP prohibits that.

Without the ESL, the new stadium is the ONLY way for us to compete long term with the bigger clubs as we have to increase our revenue to allow us to increase our spending. If you protest the ESL, you also criticise the stadium build, and you want ENIC out for not spending more.
Then you have a completely invalid argument. You don't want a solution to your own criticisms.

Even a new owner would be in the same boat. And, again, say FFP didn't exist, why would a new owner, a billionaire owner buy us for 900m or 1bn, when they could buy Burnley for a fraction of that, and just make them a force? If you say because we have a better squad, and a better infrastructure and we're closer to the top. Well then, that's all thanks to ENIC.....