I have been thinking about writing a blog on Daniel Levy and ENIC being twenty years in charge of our club for a while now, ever since it turned 2021 in fact but with the actual birthday being today I decided it was time to pull the trigger and actually do it. You see this is not my first blog on Daniel Levy…. hell it likely wont be my last however I do wish it would be. So, as I write this I very much hope it is the last time I write about the man in charge of our club.
The reason is not that I dislike him really but for the simple fact that for me the man who is the chairman should not be a headline maker. He should be a silent figure in the background doing his job in a way that enables others to do theirs and get the headlines. A referee who is always the centre of attention *coughs* Dean *coughs* is for me not actually very good at their job. The ref who’s name you do not know and hardly notice, that one is doing their role perfectly.
I think it is impossible to really talk about Daniel Levy and 20 years of him at our club in broad brush strokes as if you did you would call his tenure an astonishing failure with only one league cup. In footballing terms that is not good enough and a manager / head coach would be sacked (Levy has sacked nine) and even the man who won that only trophy was gone the following season.
Fans have felt let down by this and continue to be annoyed to this very day by what they feel like as a glass ceiling to the clubs ambition. It is true as fans we want the club to spend money like it grows on trees and win it all like we have seen other teams do and that of course is part of the problem. Around the time ENIC bought Spurs a certain Russian mob boss and oil land seizing oligarch bough Chelsea.
We as Spurs fans then got to sit back and watch as they played fantasy football in real life, buying who they wanted whenever they wanted and just building teams and if a mega money signing flopped, they sold them at a loss and just bought another. Meanwhile we were picking up young duos from Peterborough and hoping they might develop.
To compare ENIC and Mr Levy to Roman at Chelsea is like night and day. Total opposites in their approach and so for many fans, including me at times, its a constant frustration and annoyance to see us languish. Trophyless year after year.
What can change this? Well Daniel Levy told us all this from day one. He laid out a vision for us all as fans and for the club that to compete – with Joe Lewis / ENIC not being the owners to just throw money in – we needed bigger revenue so more money to spend. We needed a bigger stadium and this is where I think the debate on Daniel Levy becomes interesting.
You see he is absolutely right. With the rules in the game, largely brought in due to what Chelsea did and then later Man City, clubs cannot just inject cash and spend like crazy now. You have to have a large income base, something Tottenham just did not have. Also rules around players changed, again due to clubs like Chelsea and Arsenal building foreign legions of some of the best players from around the world – in the Premier League you have to have a number of players which are classed as home grown.
Knowing these rules and the impact it would have on the game in the future Levy set about building for the future. Obviously hoping to compete in the short term but knowing that long term is where the club could struggle so the training centre was first. The club invested heavily in creating Hotspur Way, which is regarded by FIFA, the NFL and World Rugby as one of the top five training centres in the world.
This facility and the investment in coaching has brought about the development of a number of Premier League level players. Harry Kane, Harry Winks, Walker-Peters, Onomah, Caulker, Bentaleb, Smith, Townsend, Carroll and many more have all graduated from this system and are plying their trade as professional players.
The obvious name to pick out though is the once in a generation talent that is Harry Kane. Without the investment from Daniel Levy in developing our young players this young man might have always been in the Arsenal set up, or simply drifted along and out the door to the lower league. Kane is the shining jewel of what ENIC set out to achieve by making this investment and it is one we can all agree is paying off.
Currently we have Japhet Tanganga pushing for a place in our defense and Oliver Skipp returning from loan in the summer (likely a Championship winners medal around his neck) hoping to nail down a place in our midfield for the next decade and that is not to mention our latest hot shot striker in Dane Scarlett who is already being talked about as having a big role in our first team next season.
These players developing and coming through means the club are able to generate talent which can enable the team to be competitive in the Premier league and then it is down to adding the “star dust” through signings to take us to trophies. I know, as we read this that has not clicked yet however I would say there is a factor in winning trophies that a lot of people ignore. Luck. You do need it and Spurs have been without it for some time now. Just watch the opening three minutes of the Champions league final – knowing the handball rule was changed before that game and then reverted back after. I will never not think about that and what might have been.
So with the academy in place and the training facilities built the stadium was the big one. Buying up land in London is not easy and so it took a long time before construction could begin, something else which was used to attack Levy over the years (who remembers the whole ‘not one brick’ thing). However here we are, 2021 and the stadium is very much a reality and it is beautiful. It is our home and will be for many years to come.
So it is safe to say on the pitch over the last twenty years we have fell behind in trophies however our performance in the Premier League have improved. We are now considered on of the ‘big’ teams in the league, something when Levy took charge would have been laughable. Again, only one League cup but more semi finals and finals (including the Champions League) than during any other period in our history. Brings me back to that luck thing. Just think how different perception would be if all things were exactly the same, our spending, our signings and when and where we sold players – yet we had the luck to lift the trophies we could have in this time.
Now I know I know, you make your own luck. Sign better players and maybe they make the difference in these big games and yeah you could argue that for sure, fine. I am not looking to convince people one way or another here but I do think we all need to agree that off the field the transformation under Levy is something that has to be applauded.
£22m Enic bought the club for. A value of over £2bn, despite the pandemic, now exists. The stadium is built and yes some might point to the debt there but when open the stadium not only completely pays for its build from events and additional fixtures beyond Spurs (NFL and Rugby) it provides ALL gates, which is near double White Hart Lane but also a massively increased merchandising sales figure.
The club is in an incredible position off the field and that is down to Daniel Levy. He has faults, I have listed them many times, however given the constraints in terms of what money he has had invested, none, he has built the club into a global brand and is still growing.
Will he be here in twenty years time? Who will own us? I do not know but I hope when the history of this club is written in a hundred years this man is looked upon as the man who transformed us into something…only time will tell if that happens though.
-SJ
