The ousting of Daniel (COYS)

easley91 said:

Over the past two evenings there were some ready to lay the boot (and more) in to Levy. Even if it wasn't even down to him at all, he'll get the blame. Unfortunately these same folk won't credit him when things like this come off, or his hiring of Munn, Lange, Paratici are all working well together. They'll lie in wait for the next transfer that appears to be going tits up.

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Hell some were ready to bring the blowtorch to his head.

Levy's only blind spot was getting too involved in transfer decisions that he had little or no insight or experience in.

The fact he has finally deferred to Paratici,Munn and Lange is to be applauded.

I never wanted Levy out of the club (afterall, we would have nowhere near the infrastructureand revenue streams without his business accumen), just wanted him less involved in player acquisitions and sales.

Some brownie pts to the bald eagle
"Tottenham made great efforts, their chairman and sporting director were very happy. They both worked very hard, up until 3am to reach an agreement.

dontcallme said:

I think maybe he's doing what he should have been doing a decade ago. He's assembled a transfer committee of football men and he's focusing on his strengths, making money.

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Which is what many of us in this thread have asked for

It's true most fans, of all clubs, seem to have absolutely no idea how the transfer market works and this is a big part of why they get so angry and spout nonsense on Twitter and the like.

Pulling off two useful signings this early in the transfer window is almost unheard of, not just for us, but for most clubs. It is really rare.

Fans always call for us to "get our business done early" or even more stupidly "just pay what they want Levy, stop quibbling". If you're one of the people who say that then, frankly, you're dumb as dishwater and you should get off Football Manager and start taking in the real world. It just doesn't work like that. If we go straight in at what they ask, they'll ask for more. Why wouldn't they? They know we're desperate because clubs only go shopping in January because they're desperate. Regardless, why accept a bid on January 1? Might as well wait because someone like Bayern might come in and up the price (which is what happened in this case). I'm just amazed we got Dragu on January 10.

What people seem incapable of grasping is that in January buying clubs often don't have the control or power in a deal—that usually lies in the player and the selling club. This is especially the case when we're talking about good players who are in demand, i.e. exactly the players we want our club to be after.

So Dragu and Werner so early is a massive coup. Dragu especially could easily have been a Porro situation where the club drags it out to the 31st and holds us to ransom because they can and may as well keep the player.

Well done to the transfer team. Very impressive work. Especially when you consider the inaction of all our rivals.

And why is this happening? Because we have the FFP headroom we need to strengthen while Arsenal, Chelsea and Man U, perhaps even Liverpool, do not.

Good financial management will underpin us being able to build success under Ange.

I think you can guess that, currently, I'm not up for the ousting.

dontcallme said:

Agree. Levy has certainly made his share of fuck ups in the past and got involved in footballing decisions that he shouldn't have.

It appeared the last transfer deal instigated by him was Spence who looks like failing and losing us money. Hopefully this is it for us and he'll now focus on putting the right buying committee in place rather than playing scout himself.

The last 3 seasons have been really good for us in the transfer market. We've brought in Bentancur, Sarr, Kulusevski, Romero, Bissouma, Udogie, Porro, Richarlison, Maddison, Johnson, Vicario, VDV, Werner and soon Dragusin should be confirmed.

That's 14 1st team squad players with question marks over only 1 or 2.

No other Prem side has done any real deals so far this month. We've as good as finalised deals for 2 players in needed areas.

This is an excellent step in the right direction.

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Yeah our transfer dealings have been very good in recent times.

Just a shame we had such a stagnant period before this that left us catching up and cost us Kane… :-(

dontcallme said:

I think maybe he's doing what he should have been doing a decade ago. He's assembled a transfer committee of football men and he's focusing on his strengths, making money.

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To be fair he's done it before and been hurt when it's blown up in his face, Paratici seems to have taught him how to love (having people make transfer decisions for him) again.

The biggest key for me is having two big players in by mid January (second week). I know some want business done for 1st January, but that just isn't realistic. I think we're one of very few PL clubs to have done any incoming business so far. This is a major improvement and we have significantly strengthened. Hopefully this is a sign of things to come with the people in place and and getting things done.

The Werner deal showed we decided and got it done in a couple of days, in an ideal world that happens every time. But each deal is different, with different moving parts. I do think if Dragusin chose Bayern we would have had someone in mind and moved on to them.

It's a good start.

Ribble said:

To be fair he's done it before and been hurt when it's blown up in his face, Paratici seems to have taught him how to love (having people make transfer decisions for him) again.

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True. I remember him hiring a caretaker for 3 quarters of a season while researching our way forward. He hired Arnesen to oversee everything football related, he then left. I think this shook Levy a lot.

He hasn't always got the hiring right and maybe that, in part, led to him taking matters into his own hands.

"Tottenham made great efforts, their chairman and sporting director worked until 3am to reach an agreement"

Assume the sporting director is Munn so credit to him as well as Levy.
In one of his interviews Ange said he usually gets his own way so looks like it's all coming together at Spurs on the recruitment front, he wanted a CB and now has one who it seems can fill many positions in defence.

dontcallme said:

True. I remember him hiring a caretaker for 3 quarters of a season while researching our way forward. He hired Arnesen to oversee everything football related, he then left. I think this shook Levy a lot.

He hasn't always got the hiring right and maybe that, in part, led to him taking matters into his own hands.

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I don't imagine that Commoli & Sherwood pursing their own agendas in their time helped either, and tbh I'm not sure I can remember anything Franco Baldini actually did when he was at the club! We've had some proper stinkers for sure, Levy really lucked out with Paratici and even then he came with baggage.

Ribble said:

I don't imagine that Commoli & Sherwood pursing their own agendas in their time helped either, and tbh I'm not sure I can remember anything Franco Baldini actually did when he was at the club!

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Levy naturally has to take responsibility for the hiring.

Baldini wasn't a straight DOF but I remember ITK saying we did deals very professionally when he was there.

Well done to all involved in these two deals.

No getting away from the fact that the CB is at least one window overdue

Looking forward to seeing the new boys and the freshly fit again army in the flesh next month!

Coys

He deserves credit but I will say that its largely down to the deals we're getting largely thanks I'm sure to Paratici. I don't think Levy has ever had a big issue with signings like the ones we're making. It's the fact we are signing players who the manager is happy with but at a cost that suits the board. The issue was always having managers who wanted 60m centre backs rather than 30m ones for example.

Levy deserves credit for getting the right team to get the right players to fit our budget. We got it so wrong for some time starting late under Poch. Now he has a recruitment team with a clear strategy and a manager who will work with the players who fit. It's the full team that is working well now and it makes Levys job to sign off on a deals s lot easier.

Seems to have finally got the right system in place with enough trust in the people to do their jobs, fair play to levy for that, needs to carry on in this way. Bringing Patrici to the club and sticking by him is one of the best moves he’s ever made

Just like in the summer, I have to say fair fucks to Levy for already bringing in the players we needed within a tight time frame and not dragging things out unnecessarily.

Long may it continue

Levy deferring to the football experts, listening to them and crucially, enabling them, is the Levy we all want to see really.

jurgen said:

Levy deferring to the football experts, listening to them and crucially, enabling them, is the Levy we all want to see really.

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I know this is kind of obvious, but it really depends who the "footballing experts" are, I think 2 things have changed at Spurs.

The first is the effect that our stadium is now having on our finances. It could be argued before that although Levy may have agreed with Poch and his rebuild, we weren't in a position financially to achieve it, so he tried to go with big managers to keep us going until the stadium dragged us back to the spending table. Also covid prevented us from investing heavily sooner.

The second is actually trusting people within the club to spend the money correctly. Since we have got Fabio in our spending has greatly increased and continues to increase. Add the Ange effect to give extra motivation.

The stars have aligned, Levy got Fabio, someone he was wanting for years according to reports and he has got a manager that encapsulates the spurs ethos.

He has finally got everything right, we are playing the spurs way, we are signing either established players at reasonable prices or some of the best youngsters around. Finally we have a setup that can really create a dynasty.

I'll add this finally, whenever Ange is asked whether he wants to win a trophy, he always says the same thing, he doesn't just want to win one trophy, he wants to build a team that consistency challenges for trophies.

I think Levy has the same idea, he doesn't want a club that challenges for a season, he wants to have a club that have the right strategy, financial stability and a club setup that will keep challenging. With the amount of times we've been in Europe in the last 15 years, you could argue it's already working (to a degree).

What I will say is that if Ange does bring us success in the next couple of seasons, then Levy should be given massive credit. You can't call him out for everything bad and say it's just luck for everything good.

I was reading the FT and they had an article on stadiums and how it's a game changer for clubs nowadays with events and it focused on the 'Spurs model' which all clubs across Europe are trying to copy. That's Levy.

The Brighton model that everyone goes on about is done by an ex spurs guy, who bases his model from Levy.

Everything is coming together and I wouldn't be surprised if we splashed more cash this window.

You can see that we are so close, a top class forward player (maybe a winger and a striker) in summer and another 8 (possibly this month) and we're pretty close to having a squad capable of challenging on all fronts.

Which is remarkable, when you think we've had to battle with state owned clubs, clubs who have spent half a billion (or more) and clubs who like Liverpool and United who have massive fan bases.

We are in a very strong position and that comes from Fabio paratici, Ange and Levy. Strange how only two of them get the credit round here though.

The real thing that might show more than anything that Levy could be changing his spots is the Spence move.

Including a buy option of only €10m is admission that he made a mistake pushing for this signing and is willing to take a loss on it to get him out the club.

In the past Levy would have been stubborn enough to at least push to get his money back to minimise the idea that he might have got it wrong. Spence would have seen out his contract and we would have ended up losing more money on wages.

Real progress IMO