This piece covers almost the entire Levy tenure, which I know I will be going against the popular opinion that most Spurs fans have that is they want Levy to leave and ‘get out of our club’. I don’t agree with this (yet, as I will get onto).
I want to briefly start at the beginning of Levy’s tenure with Spurs, which I think we all can agree we weren’t in a great spot. We consistently finished mid-table, with no real ambition or hope of finishing near the top 4, which was difficult looking at where we were when we had the likes of Gazza and Hoddle.
He began with us with a huge task on his hands, to get us back to the glory days with years ending in one. Throughout the years leading up to Poch, we enjoyed players such as Ledley King, Luka Modric and Gareth Bale, but we also had to watch some seriously mediocre players which fleshed out the team around some greats.
That is where Pochettino comes in. He took us from a slightly above mid-table team to a title challenger, whilst playing some amazing football. One of my most memorable games was from our last season at the Lane, where we played West Brom. I was sitting next to the away fans for this game, and we were so dominant that they were singing ‘We’ve got the ball’ when they had the ball, and then ‘We’ve lost the ball’ when we won it back, as they had nothing else to shout about. We were that good. This was a great time to be a Spurs fan, and how we didn’t win anything is a travesty.
After Poch we have had some great managers, but none have panned out as we hoped. Conte seemed like the biggest chance to win anything, with very recent success in the Italian and more importantly the English League, so we would be lying to ourselves if we said we wasn’t very hopeful with Antonio. Now I’m not going to get into why it didn’t work out with Conte, I think it was a range of factors and everyone in the club was partly responsible for the lack of success, but here is my opinion on Levy and the ownership right now.
I do not believe that we should be ‘Levy Out’ and ‘ENIC Out’ just yet. As I touched on earlier, when he took over, we were mid-table with no proper infrastructure around the club. Now I know that having a fantastic stadium and training ground isn’t necessarily very important in the short term, but in the long term it is. Levy has built these to help the longevity of the club to keep us at the top.
The money the new ground brings in on match days, along with the boxing, music and other sporting events is currently trumping every other club in the Premier League, and this is only going to increase in years to come.
This means even if we aren’t finishing in the top couple of places in the league, we won’t be far behind the teams that do revenue-wise (so imagine what we start bringing in if we are at the top). Levy is trying to future-proof our club, and I think some people are too short-minded to realise this.
Now the other main talking point is the spending. I know most Spurs fans have a problem with the spending (whether it be the amount or the players) of the club. I am conflicted in this issue, and here is why. We all knew when Conte came in that he was going to demand spending on specific players which will suit his system. I think the initial thought of this was great, as we all thought that this may change Levy’s spending habits. The fact is… it did.
Under Conte we spent more than we did under any other manager, in 3 transfer windows. With a net spend of over £150m, I don’t think anyone can argue that Conte wasn’t backed. Poch had a net spend of around £50m whilst at Spurs and I agree he wasn’t back as much as he should have been, but with us in the initial stages of planning the new stadium I can see why.
With Conte, the revenue was there due to us having started playing in the new ground and he was backed. I have heard from a good source that the stadium is being paid off over 30-50 years so our net yearly payment to pay off the stadium cost is around £30m. Basically this shouldn’t affect us too much in the transfer market.
So, this is my argument to the rest of you Spurs fans. The last couple of seasons where we have had the new stadium fully functioning, we have spent quite a lot, and if we stay in the Champions League this will only grow. Do you not think that Levy is absolutely justified to see if he can run and spend like a top club? He has done a lot for the club over many years and has shown a trend over the last couple of years that he will spend when we have the money.
Now my stance is that he has to stick to this model and keep spending, as even without Champions league, we will still generate a lot of revenue. If he doesn’t continue to do this, then like most of you Spurs fans I will be ‘Levy Out’. But I do think it is very premature to be wanting Levy and ENIC to vacate our club, especially when we don’t have a buyer / chairman in-mind that we know would be any better.
That is my stance, like I said I am not a huge Levy fan and think he should be our chairman forever, but I believe he deserves his chance to act and deliver as a top club chairman should do. I hope you enjoyed this piece and I hope it gives you all something to think about…
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