Have we gone as far as we can under Levy...

[Jaispurs]

Businesses around the globe are going bust. ENIC run THFC as a business. We run at a small profit with wages under control and spending a large % of revenue on wages. Our premises (stadium) does not bring in the revenue we need to compete at the highert level. We have not been given premises like Man City or have land value in the most expensive area in London (Chelsea). Our neighbourhood is run down and in the poorest part of London and therefore not easy to sell to private property investors to turn into luxury apartments (Highbury). Our brand (THFC) has a high value but not in the same league as Manchester United)
Our costs need to be controlled and work to a structure that allows us to stay competitive.

We are not enticing for an Abramovich or a Oil rich country as the investment needed would be huge on our infrastructure (new stadium investment minimum £200m). Clubs that have been taken over by oil barons or rich benefactors have stadiums already in place and the only investment is the fun part - the team (PSG, Chelsea, Man United, Man City and soon to be West Ham.). This is why Daniel had his heart set on The Olympic stadium but the fans just wouldn't accept it so he dropped it. Having your team playing in an already built infrastructure of Westfield, transport links and cheap land would have been a business masterstroke. Our fans held him back (if you take out the emotion)

ENIC have built a magnificent training facility, a team capable of trading blows with the best there is and have invested in a young coach to bring stability to the playing side of the business.

For THfC to even be in the position we are with the revenue we produce is a masterstroke.

If our customers (fans) were more flexible and patient and looked more long term they would see that Spurs should be a mid table club and are punching well above their weight. Getting in th finance to fund a new stadium in a less than sulaburious surrounding with little sell on value is proving difficult but ENIC have everything in place to start work if that funding arrives.

Until the new stadium is built we may lose some customers or we may not perform at the highest echelon of performance so funding of the stadium is the priority. Short term spending is not. An emergency pot of funding cash would be available for Immediate investment if our revenue stream would be adversely affected (I.e. relegation). There may also be a small pot available if revenue could be dramatically increased (champs league qualification)

Hope that shows what an amazing job DL is doing and you guys want to change ? Fans always want more more more. We ae more than exceeding where we should be in the grand scheme of things

 

[parklane1]

Not at all, we are progressing as a force in the Prem and we just have to be patient. We do need a bigger stadium and we are on our way to getting one, the problem is that Chelski and Shitty are doing it the easy way ( and the wrong way imo).

 

[Spurs1960]

Bentley's contract is up in the summer of 2014 and he is on £50K a week.

Gallas 's contract is up on 30/6/2013 and he is on £60K a week.
Jenas's contract is up on 30/6/2013 and he is on £45K a week.

So there is £105K a week available for transfers.
Reportedly £67K a week is being spent on Holtby

That leaves £38K a week plus the wages of anyone we sell (Livermore or Huddlestone presumably).

That's got to be another £30K a week so at least £68-70K a week in the kitty for more wages. If we can get rid of Bentley then £120K a week.

 

[Spurs1960]

Businesses around the globe are going bust. ENIC run THFC as a business. We run at a small profit with wages under control and spending a large % of revenue on wages. Our premises (stadium) does not bring in the revenue we need to compete at the highert level. We have not been given premises like Man City or have land value in the most expensive area in London (Chelsea). Our neighbourhood is run down and in the poorest part of London and therefore not easy to sell to private property investors to turn into luxury apartments (Highbury). Our brand (THFC) has a high value but not in the same league as Manchester United)
Our costs need to be controlled and work to a structure that allows us to stay competitive.

We are not enticing for an Abramovich or a Oil rich country as the investment needed would be huge on our infrastructure (new stadium investment minimum £200m). Clubs that have been taken over by oil barons or rich benefactors have stadiums already in place and the only investment is the fun part - the team (PSG, Chelsea, Man United, Man City and soon to be West Ham.). This is why Daniel had his heart set on The Olympic stadium but the fans just wouldn't accept it so he dropped it. Having your team playing in an already built infrastructure of Westfield, transport links and cheap land would have been a business masterstroke. Our fans held him back (if you take out the emotion)

ENIC have built a magnificent training facility, a team capable of trading blows with the best there is and have invested in a young coach to bring stability to the playing side of the business.

For THfC to even be in the position we are with the revenue we produce is a masterstroke.

If our customers (fans) were more flexible and patient and looked more long term they would see that Spurs should be a mid table club and are punching well above their weight. Getting in th finance to fund a new stadium in a less than sulaburious surrounding with little sell on value is proving difficult but ENIC have everything in place to start work if that funding arrives.

Until the new stadium is built we may lose some customers or we may not perform at the highest echelon of performance so funding of the stadium is the priority. Short term spending is not. An emergency pot of funding cash would be available for Immediate investment if our revenue stream would be adversely affected (I.e. relegation). There may also be a small pot available if revenue could be dramatically increased (champs league qualification)

Hope that shows what an amazing job DL is doing and you guys want to change ? Fans always want more more more. We ae more than exceeding where we should be in the grand scheme of things

Our income is recorded as £163.5 million
Wages are £91.1 million which is about 56% which is low for a football club.

Chelsea income £222.3 million - wages £189.5 million
Arsenal income £255.7 million - wages £124.4 million

 

[Ironskullll]

No, I don't think so. I don't think it follows that we need to spend on two players with hefty price tags, if indeed the aim is to bring the team up to and past the 4th place level the team is already at. If that were the case then surely several of the other places in the squad would also have had to have been filled with players with hefty price tags. That not being the case it does not follow that hefty price tag players are required. Therefore progress is not out of reach of Levy, in fact the evidence is there that the club as a whole has out-performed its potential, and that by challenging teams such as Chelsea in terms of league position the team shows that it already has the potential to build on what has been achieved so far. It follows that if Spurs can acquire players such as Bale, Berbatov, Modric, Lennon, Loris, Sandro on relatively modest fees then the last two pieces of the jigsaw can be filled likewise.

 

[spurs mental]

In Levy we trust.

No way would I swap our chairman to become a rich mans play thing. No way.

We're slowly but surely getting there, progressing well, whilst living within our means.

As others have said, the sooner we get this stadium, the sooner the league titles and other trophies will come.

AVB and the players just have to keep trying to get into the CL for the next few seasons, get the revenue up ever so slightly more per season and we're on the pigs back.

In Levy we trust.

 

[Jaispurs]

Our income is recorded as £163.5 million
Wages are £91.1 million which is about 56% which is low for a football club.

Chelsea income £222.3 million - wages £189.5 million
Arsenal income £255.7 million - wages £124.4 million

That may be true and looks good from the outside. However in any other business spending 56% of your turnover on wages would be deemed out of control - the problem is football wages are out of control so therefore to an extent you need to play the game

 

[Azazello]

Levy's a very smart guy and clearly is no mug.

It's only just begun.

 

[noahrobert]

Overall I'm really impressed with Levy. He's 'gangsta' and I love that about him.

I remember the days before he arrived... We were awful.

I loved that the first thing he did was sack Graham and replace him with Hoddle.

However he is 'Different'. A la Simon Jordan at Palace refusing to pay agents fee's after agreeing a deal for Tim cahill from millwall, then ending up being relegated by such a narrow margin. levy has at times cost us players with a bit of the scrudge Macduff and probably has cost us champions league twice. But I do love Scrooge mcduff.

He has done us proud. He has given us identity, made all my (and almost ALL of them are) Arsenal mates envy us. They all rate us heavily this year Btw, and really rate AVB's methods too.

I hope his steady improvement will continue. He has steered us from shite to contenders and regular contenders at that for champions league on a smaller budget that MU LFC AFC C$FC and MC$FC.

Who says that steady progress won't continue. His emphasis on youth has Tom Carroll, Steven Caulker, Townsend and Livermore all featuring in the premier league from within the ranks. 4 who are EPL quality in one season. Plus Kane playing EPL at Norwich makes 5. When did that last happen. Plus people celebrating Pritchard, coulthirst etc in our youth teams.

That's aside from Nuturing Modric, bale, Lennon, dawson, BAE, Kaboul, walker, Rose, Sandro.

He's almost if you look at as a Dad comparison, you would rather have had Levy as a dad than ken bates.

Daniel Levy, take a bow, you done us proud!

 

[DuDe]

I simply cannot understand any person who underestimates this man ...

... He is Ours, and I would not have it any other way.

Additionally, has it ever occurred to you guys that SPECTRE starts with two - rather special letters of the alphabet ... ?

 

[Stavrogin]

But surely the Modric deal and getting VDV off the wage bill left money for us to force the Moutinho deal? I thought it was more of a case of leaving it too late.

Personally I feel unless we get a billionaire investor or our new stadium brings in the bucks we are not going to be able to push beyond 3rd or 4th. Technically speaking City, Chelsea then Utd and the Scum have more money then us, and in the end should end up ahead of us. It's hard to compete when they can afford more firepower then us.

We don't know that - we haven't had sustained CL football - which we surely can have in the near future.

If we get the CL two or three years in a row, then the team will continue to improve - and although City will (conceivably) always put out a stronger first 11 than us, the difference shouldn't be so great that we can't compete for the championship.

 

[Jenko]

Didn't read the article. Quick answer to the title - fuck no!

 

[EastLondonYid]

With the resources we have, the size of our ground and the money we generate on matchdays, i think Levy is doing an amazing job year after year keeping us in the top 5, yes i would love to win the league in my lifetime, but lets be realistic as to who we are competeing with, and tbh, i would be gutted and horrified if we ever returned to the days when we sat in mid table looking enviously up at the scum 20 or so pts clear of us by now.

 

[nialsy2005]

Firstly, Thanks for starting an objective thread with both sides up for discussion rather than a standard kneejerk thread. Im firmly in the pro levy camp, simply because im old enough to remember the car crash days of irving scholar, and how close we came to extinction. And you dont have to be that old to remember the sugar days where we might have pushed the boat out to sign "sexy" players (Jurgen), we still didnt have the infrastructure in place to pull us out of mediocrity, albeit with the odd decent cup run.

To get a club of our size (which is medium to large in my eyes, when you consider turnover, world status and stadium size) with no mega investment to a stage where we are capable of challenging (and achieving) top 4 finishes is only to be applauded. Yes, he's frugal with transfer money, but he has to be. We've made some pretty high profile spending errors in the last few years (bentley, Bent, Gio etc) and we have to balance the books. remember, we only made just shy of a million of profit last year, which was nearly our best performance EVER (not 100% sure on that figure, feel free to correct me).

Sure Levy has his faults, but i think he learns from them. The MJ sacking was handled exceptionally poorly in my eyes, and could have ended much, much worse for him. But i honestly believe he has the clubs best interests at heart, and if he could spend more, he would. But signing a 30 million player who might flop could seriously SERIOUSLY damage us. Yes, they could propel us up the table, but they could just as easily not. See Mr F Torres and Mr A Carroll for further details.

And just remember, if ENIC sold up, we could just as easily be bought by Venkys MKII. So my 2 cents is, let the guy get on with it. It could be SO much worse.

 

[KILLA_SIN]

No I don't think so, I think if anything we are about to start to see how far we can go under Enic/Levy. The last ten years ha been more the ground work, building the infrastructure of getting us to the status of a top side because we were in pretty bad shape when they took over. Now we should hopefully start to reap the rewards.

I think a lot of the fans need to get away from the right here right now demands and really get more realistic expectations because Enic/Levy have surpassed all mine. A lot of people need to also stop demanding they spend money its not yours to spend and how they see fit to spend it up to them. Like others have said they have taken some massive hits on some players.

 

[SteveH]

If your view is Levy is, he is not doing a good job. Then supporting a non big four team (Arsenal, Man U., City, Chelsea) is not for you.

Spurs will not be buying the mega players - we will have to build from within our means. That's life.

Move on - no quick fixes at Spurs

Oh by the way - I'm loving it! COYS

 

[sloth]

Levy is the best Chairman in the league imo, by any metric he's out-performed all his peers over the course of his ownership, yes we've had the odd dodgy-season, but if he were a football manager he'd be in the SAF/Mourinho class, and yet so many still think we could do better. The interesting question for me therefore is why is there such a disconnect between what we've done and what people think we should/could have done?

One thing a lot of people say is if we only pushed out the boat for such and such then CL would be probable and that would pay for the outlay on the player in the first place. That seems to me two behavioural biases wrapped into one, the first is the optimism bias, where people placing only a small stake (or no stake at all in this case) tend to think the favourable outcome is more likely than it is (this is why people do ridiculous accumulators, or play the National Lottery, even though they know that the person selling them the bet is the one who makes all the money, i.e. it's a negative value rigged bet, the same as sticking a quid in the fruit-machine, logically people know the truth but the optimism bias means they place the bet anyway). The other is that people aren't very good at comparing what happens, what's actually happened with their imaginary version of events if only something different had been done. In our speculative universe invariably all our decisions are good ones and work out exactly as we'd imagine they would, whereas in reality our decisions sometimes work out how we hoped, but often don't. The real world is messy our imaginary one is neat and predictable.

Another reason is that it's hard to engage with the process of making money in a way it isn't with a game of football. We just want to think we've got a stash of cash no matter what and that we're being stingy or something when we don't spend it. This isn't helped by the fact that some clubs do operate that way.

Another reason is because some people don't get what Levy is in it for, or rather they do, they understand it's about money for him, but they see that as separate from the club doing well. So they imagine that he's saving it up for himself (or maybe nothing as definitive as that just a general feeling that he's keeping the dosh for himself), and by not spending it does him good at the club's expense. The truth is they've only taken one dividend (where money is paid out of the club and directly to the investors) in over a decade of owning the club - and that a decade or so ago. They are not going personally going to make money from day-to-day operations, their only hope for turning a profit is to sell the club, and to sell it for a lot the club has to be doing well. In this circumstance the desire to do well personally is indivisible from the desire for the club to do well. If it's counter-productive for the club to not invest in a new player, then it is also counter-productive for Levy personally not to do that.

For me, the reality can only be seen when you stand-back and look at the big picture. Of course Levy will make mistakes, just as he will have successes, but to measure his worth over-all then you have to compare him to his peers. Where is Tottenham today compared to our peers, to Liverpool, Chelsea, Utd, Everton, City, Arsenal, Sunderland, Leeds, Newcastle, Villa, what inbuilt advantages/disadvantages have we enjoyed over that time compared to those rivals? Where were we when ENIC took over?

 

[Ionman34]

I personally think that a lot of fans are realistic and realise that we have hit something of a glass ceiling and that challenging for 4th or 3rd is probably as good as it gets at the moment.

I also think that Levy recognises this, which is the reason for the massive improvement in infrastructure we are seeing in the new training ground and new bigger stadium.

I honestly believe that Levy is setting us up nicely for long term, sustained success, instead of splash the cash short term, instant but unsustainable success which could have terrible repercussions for the club. We as fans just need to be patient and realise that we haven't had it so good for a long long time.

Exactly this.

Levy has a mindset that is not shared by the majority of British people. The 'short term gain' mindset is now so ingrained into the British psyche that few see beyond the immediate.

I believe that DL's business plan is looking, at the very least, over the next 10 to 15 years with a view to making us one of the major players in World Football, not just in Europe. Over the last 10 years he has masterminded our steady progression from utter garbage to one of the strongest teams in the league which, incidentally, puts us on the outskirts of European elite. He's engineered partnerships with clubs on 4 different continents, increased our Worldwide exposure, increased our revenue, increased our holdings and value, allowed us to be a serious consideration for WC stars (where before we were laughed at for having the temerity to make an enquiry) and he's done all of this whilst turning over a modest profit.

In every aspect he has improved our club, despite the knock backs of massive investment to rivals by oligarchs, and his own learning curve errors. He is in the process of taking us a step further with the new stadium which, if some of the rumours are correct, he will have financed in such a way that our costs will be minimal.

Have we gone as far as we can with Levy?

Mate, we've yet to start the second leg of the journey.

 

[mk_spur]

I personally do not like Levy (not that he will lose any sleep) i find his antics at time wrong (jol the biggest example) and his inability to sign players when they are really needed and not when it suits him. His attitude to moving to Stratford had my head ready to explode but thankfully that is now a non issue.
Despite my misgivings towards him personally i cannot and will not say he is doing a bad job as clearly is doing a very good job in certain areas and is probably the best chairman in my lifetime at the club although the bar is not to high in that respect. I have a grudging respect for his bloody mindiness and i respect he has no fear of treading on supposed bigger dogs toes. He obviously has a clear business plan and vision for the club and he has definitely brought a professionalism to the administrative side of things.
He isnt my cup of tea when it comes to transfers but then im looking at from a fans perspective and i dont hold the purse strings so again its hard to be subjective from my angle. Sign one or two forwards of class stature and i will be a fully paid up member of the mini me fan club.

 

[Redfap]

I think we have one of the finest chairman in the world. I have supreme confidence. This club is in excellent hands.