So this is the 100th blog post on our website. Thank you to anyone reading, always really appreciate the opportunity I have here to share my rambled thoughts with fellow Tottenham fans. That being said as I sat to write this one (borrowing from one of my favourite TV shows here..) I just wrote one word. Bugger!
There are so many things to think about right now, so many different problems and so many potential solutions and to make it all worse they are all interlinked. The chairman and board, the owner, the debts of the club and the COVID pandemic… the squad, the manager, the coaching and the recruitment….. as I say, where to start. I guess clear the obvious first.
The failed European Super League.
I wrote a long blog piece recently on this and as such I do not wish to repeat any of those thoughts here but instead what I would like to do is say in its current form that plan is dead. Six English clubs colluded behind the rest of English football to help form it, to help ring fence their incomes and future and then they got hit with the wrath of English football leaving them all with no choice but to withdraw from the league they helped establish.
The clubs had signed paperwork and as such will likely now face financial penalties in the millions to withdraw. To clubs like Man City and Chelsea that is welcome money launder….. I mean tax write off opportunities and to clubs like Manchester Utd and Liverpool it is very small change. However to Tottenham and indeed our neighbours up the road those financial penalties could not come at a worse time.
Focusing on us, because as ya know, f**k them, we have a stadium debt of circa £650m and a government loan of circa £170m. With the stadium empty the government loan was taken in order to cover the costs; it has served that function but without fans returning in good numbers and events being allowed again by next season the struggle is going to be very real.
The pandemic is not something the board or Daniel Levy himself could have predicted. I sympathise with them and the difficult situation they have had to navigate. For me personally it does not let them off the hook for the morally bankrupt plan with the European Super League but I do get the taking of the Government backed loan when it was done and the hope that normality (whatever the hell that is) returns in time for the 2021/22 season allowing fans and incomes to return.
Daniel Levy & the board.
A big problem in expecting fans and income to return however is that since our stadium has been empty our team has had a quite severe fall from grace. It has been a straight nosedive from where we were and sadly the reason for that lands on the owner, the chairman and the boards shoulders. From a failure to invest during a time of strength to then failing to invest again when the manager who achieved that time of strength asked… to then failing to make the financial changes and structural changes needed to allow for a new manager to shape the squad how he wanted and then we come to the before mention European Super League decision.
Many reading this who have felt Levy & co needed to go for a long time are possibly rattling off a longer list but I am focusing on what I believe to be the key points which has brought us to this unique situation we are in now where for the first time our official Supporters Trust have called for the board to resign. This is not something I ever expected to see and knowing the people (even the little that I do) involved in the Trust it is not something they would have wanted to do. It is something they feel they have been forced into doing.
The Trust on a regular basis engage with the club and have meetings with Daniel Levy and other board members. These meetings are always minuted and one of things I have always respected is how the Trust have put across the views of fans in the larger community in a respectful and constructive way and also engaged with the club rather than fighting with them allowing for a good working relationship to develop. Any working relationship however is built on trust (no pun intended) and sadly the Tottenham board has destroyed the trust anyone in our official supporters group had by lying in multiple meetings about the European Super League. If they lied so easily there, what else have they or could they lie about in the future.
The chairman of the other 14 Premier League clubs have echoed that of our supporters trust by saying they will no longer work with Daniel Levy. They have no trust for the man now and we can all understand why.
So in the past when you say ENIC out and a few people holding up banners it was easy to dismiss, maybe even roll your eyes but now the movement is not just people sick of not winning trophies and blame Levy for that but it is also people who are angry about being lied too. People who realise that if no one else in the Premier League will deal with us until he has gone then how can we operate? The six clubs are of course trying to dig in and hoping this will all pass but with every day that goes by this is looking less and less likely.
A government backed review is underway into football club ownership in this country and it is widely expected that when concluded a law will be passed to ensure every football club must have fan representation on its board. Something the Tottenham Hotspurs Supporters Trust have called for and invited the club to get ahead of the curve and implement something like that now. That invitation has been left unanswered at the time of writing this.
So is there actually a way back for this board? Joe Lewis the owner we can all pretty much just write off as playing any part in any of this. He does not care. He owns this club as an investment, one which his company will cash in at some point and make an insane return on but if anyone is thinking maybe now at this point he will put some money in himself to write the ship; no chance.
So how can the chairman and his board survive. They have to placate the mob (us fans) also steer the club forward financially in a terrible position and repair the relationships with every other club in the league outside of the five clubs Daniel Levy considers our rivals. Not sure those teams see us as a rival anymore but that is a different conversation. There are still rumblings of financial penalties, maybe even point deductions being made against the six clubs and also sanctions on those involved once the review is complete.
In the short term if we want to sign a player from any of those 14 clubs this summer they will not even take our call, they have all as a group agreed a no dealings policy. How long that lasts we do not know. One would assume if you have a player that is demanding a move and one of those six are willing to pay the price you want, you are going to do that deal… however football can be a strange place sometimes and “cutting your nose off to spite your face” does seem to be something many of those owners would do right now.
Transfers and the squad.
You see I mentioned above about possibly buying players this summer, right now that seems highly unlikely. The club have put out though their usual “leaks” that they have zero funds for transfers and will only be able to spend what they recoup from sales. Many of the Tottenham squad would be sold if it were up to the fans however even without the ultra cut throat approach there is still a number with only a year remaining on deals etc who need to be moved on this summer.
The problem, or one of the problems, for Tottenham when looking to offload players has been Daniel Levy. He wants to get the best price possible and that is okay but he is applying a purely monetary metric to what is in fact footballing decisions. An example here is a player like Dele Alli. A player I really love and wish for him to stay and take next season by storm BUT we had a manager who did not want him. We had a player wanting to leave to play football and a club willing to take him pay us a loan fee and pick up his wages in full. Daniel Levy blocked this.
My opinion on Jose aside he was the manager. So Dele sat on our bench and hardly played for an entire season. A waste of a player. A waste of money for the club and a waste of a squad option for Jose who was so bloody minded he just would not play him even when stuck with him.
Daniel Levy is the chairman but if you do not back the managers what is the point in having them. When you appoint someone to run the team and aim to bring success on the field you do so as you have looked at their skills, CV and decided they can do it. To then micro manage that by refusing to sell or loan players and / or signing players not asked for (Gareth Bale) then you end up in these kind of situations.
Under Pochettino Danny Rose, Eric Dier and Toby Alderweireld all were under offer and the manager was happy to let them go and make changes however all deals died with Levy. £40m for Danny Rose, £40m for Dier and £60m for Toby were all realistic deals that all went. Let us not even think about what happened with Wanyama where a deal was done and then Levy tried to grab an extra £1m only for the deal to collapse and Wanyama eventually had to be paid to leave.
When a manager says it is time to sell a player it is not always about getting the best price for a football club but about removing that person from the squad. If someone is wanting out and becoming toxic that may not impact Levy daily but it would impact a coach, his team and the squad. You look at the big clubs and how the sell it is ruthless. When you are no longer wanted you are gone. Yes they are richer than us but we can afford to do this, we choose not too.
Recruitment.
Of course one of the main reasons our squad is packed full of players that need to be moved on is that when we do recruit the recruitment has been poor. There is no escaping that and it is something which has gone on a long time. You can blame the scouts however from my understanding they are given specific jobs, they write their reports and do their research and submit that information to the transfer committee at the club. This group then look at that and decide if to go for player or not. Daniel Levy once again sits on this committee. He is there along with the first team head coach / manager, the chief scout (Steve Hitchen… the man who hates transfer windows) and our academy director.
The idea is simple, this “council of transfers” make decisions on players with each bringing their own perspective. Academy director will point out any time a youngster could do the job just as well… however in the past we have seen this just not happen. I refuse to believe John McDermott one day woke up and decided I am going to work for the FA and earn less money. I believe he made the change as he was sick of helping develop some of the finest youngsters in the country, in many cases having to fight tooth and nail to keep them at the club, only to watch us sign second rate players from Ligue1 to play ahead of them.
I can give so many examples but let us look at the signing of N’Jie when we had a very talented striker in Kaz Sterling in the academy. The amount of minutes N’Jie got as he was simply not up to it could have gone to Sterling and his career could be on a very different trajectory. Marcus Edwards was possibly the most talked about young English talent in the game at 16. He was a sensation. The club signed N’Koudou. I not only struggle to find the logic in that signing based on what was already in the squad but when you consider it was to put him ahead of this young talent is insane.
Edwards of course never got that run of games, that exposure and instead like Sterling are having very different careers to the ones that they could have had. I know there are many factors but my point here is about making dumb ass signings that (a) does not improve the first 11 and in turn (b) blocks the pathway for youngsters in the first team squad.
Now in the most recent transfer window Gareth Bale came home. I was personally shocked by this and got swept up in the joy of seeing him our shirt again. It was a day of pure joy when he came back, not something that can taken away. It was just a great few days around the club and atmosphere among the fans etc. However given how much he has played, been played by the manager was the deal worth it? Who else on that transfer committee would have said yes to that deal when we now know Jose did not want him. He is world class so maybe the academy director would have been okay but with Hitchen a scout surely he would have voiced concerns around fitness and levels of performance given his recent history.
The reality is this was a pure Daniel Levy signing. No committee, no discussion or consultation which means our recruitment system at the club is broken. If the chairman believes he knows best above all and has the autonomy to do these things then what is the point in even sitting on this committee… something I am convinced John McDermott felt.
To move forward whoever comes in as the new manager should be wary of this and should be clear from day one that signings will not be made in this way. Look at scouting data, look at players who fit a certain profile, compare them to youth prospects and the current squad. Does this player improve the first 11? If the answer is no they do not get signed. Signing players for the squad… makes no sense. Yes I am fully aware there are occasions you sign a player with hope for the future, for me that is a different recruitment team altogether, that is academy recruitment and the two should be considered different.
New manager.
Since Jose was removed from his duties, just one week before the League Cup final, Ryan Mason has stepped up from his role with the U18’s to take charge of the first team for the rest of the season. Maybe if we had lifted the cup and he secured a top four finish in these final games then he might have been given the chance for next season to continue in the roll but the plan is to find a new full time manager as soon as possible so that they can implement their vision on the squad in the summer ready for the 2021/22 season.
Whoever is the manager they will be walking into a serious problem. Fans are angry. Players are looking disinterested and resigned to failure. The two world class talents in the squad in Kane and Son are both being linked with moves away and both seem keen to take that step. The chairman is under siege from fans and other clubs. The club itself is now hated with every team wanting to “banter” the so called member of the big six … I could go on… but I will stop there as that is enough.
Tottenham’s first choice and second choice have both rejected the club in the last few days and I am led to believe one other manager, who is currently out of work, has also said no to even an interview as not interested given the state of play in North London right now. The remaining candidates are a mixture with a couple of names being well known and very successful in Italy and others who are more well known for their style of play being attractive. Do any of these men have the ability to walk in and convince the stars “give me one season” and also have the power to clear the deadwood and in turn have the backing to bring in who is needed to get us playing again. We actually have the spine of a very good team but under Jose we lost our identity… we lost a style or any pattern of play.
Right now it is very difficult to see who could come in and do that. It is difficult to image any sort of turn around really and so I will end this blog with the title of it as simply I have no answer…. WHAT DO WE DO NOW!?
-SJ
