Feeling the pain of being 'Spursy'

My early memories of Tottenham Hotspur were of the double winning team of 1960-61.  At the time that was an exceptional feat and Spurs had some outstanding players such as captain Danny Blanchflower.  Our next door neighbour in Billericay was a keen Spurs supporter and my father expressed his admiration across the garden fence.

Today I have a couple of good friends who are Spurs fans.  Winning the Europa League at last gave them something to celebrate.

Looking in from the outside, big Ange seemed to me like a grumpy ideologue attached to one way of playing with no Plan B, but it is clear that many Spurs fans thought that he deserved another chance.

I am a great admirer of his successor and I think that Brentford played more attractive football under his leadership than many allowed, but it's a big step up.

In any case many think that the real problem at Spurs is Daniel Levy.   In many way he exemplifies the conflict between football as a business and fans who just want success on the pitch.  Of course, no doubt Levy would argue that this tension is imagined: it's not either or.

Levy has appointed plenty of executives with the idea of stepping back on football issues but he is still involved in every area at Spurs. On transfers, Levy is there for the early recruitment meetings, when the sporting director Johan Lange and head of scouting Rob Mackenzie discuss targets for a certain position; the screening process, when targets are whittled down; and the follow-up meeting, when two or three options are presented to the head coach, who gives his order of preference.

With a first choice identified, Levy works on the negotiations, like in January, when a block in talks left Antonin Kinsky’s agent sitting in a petrol station in Prague on New Year’s Eve, prompting Levy to fly out early on New Year’s Day and strike a deal. Even at the last stage, Levy is across the final details, including a player’s medical, when he is emailed the results and knows when it finishes so he can be there at The Lodge, the club’s hotel next to the training ground, to welcome his new signing with a handshake.

In an interview with Varsity magazine, published in January 2020, Levy said being a chairman of a football club was like “running lots of different businesses” and he has his finger in every Spurs pie, from the academy and the women’s team, to the commercial and catering departments. He holds monthly meetings with staff in charge, where previous targets are checked and new ones issued. Levy’s environment is always demanding. 

Levy insists that his tenacity stems from a genuine love for the club, instilled ever since his great uncle took him to watch his first game at White Hart Lane against QPR aged “seven or eight”, when he says he wore a “huge rosette”, ate “hotdogs” and swung “one of those rattles”.    Of course any of us who are around Levy’s age  could come up with that kind of narrative and it is difficult to check.

But talk to those who know Levy and a word that comes up again and again is also “perfectionist”, someone for whom delegation has never come naturally. His obsession with the building of Tottenham’s new stadium gave Levy “sleepless nights”; he had cameras installed so he could watch the construction live at home and email staff with concerns.

Yet Levy’s all-action style inside Tottenham jars with his reluctance to engage outside the club, which creates an absence of accountability. “There’s never any defending of the club or the club defending itself, it seems to me, which makes it even more difficult,” Postecoglou said in April. 

To make it happen, some believe Levy needs to surround himself with experienced football executives, rather than the intelligent but like-minded business brains he has relied on for so long. Donna-Maria Cullen, one of Levy’s closest advisers and a key part of the stadium project, has stepped down from the board in a move believed to have been instigated by the Joe Lewis family trust, which was aimed at shaking up the hierarchy. Vinai Venkatesham, the former Arsenal director, started work as Tottenham’s new chief executive this month. A club spokesperson said Cullen stepping back was her own decision.

Levy’s conviction that his job is to protect Tottenham’s interests and ensure the club is financially self-sustainable lies behind his stringent approach to spending. One Premier League club has imposed a near-complete ban on transfer dealings with Spurs, such has been the infuriation with Levy’s negotiating tactics.   Tottenham’s spend on wages as a proportion of their revenue is the lowest in the Premier League.

As an innovator, Levy has often been overlooked. Tottenham’s 63,000-seat stadium has been a market leader for its corporate reach as a multi-purpose arena that hosts NFL games on its retractable pitch, go-karting backed by Formula 1 and music concerts from the likes of Lady Gaga and, this summer, Beyoncé. Inside the game, Levy has spoken positively about the chance of cup matches being staged abroad, while during the pandemic, he led the way among owners in the search for solutions around testing in stadiums.

Many Tottenham fans would say that global, corporate-first vision has seen Levy, the highest paid director in the Premier League with a salary of £3.7million, take his eye off winning consistently on the pitch.