By Tony Attwood
- Clubs are being dealt with under PSR rules, but 1 year on ManC are still untouched
- The ineptitude of the FA in running football is overwhelming
The turmoil at Tottenham Hotspur is by and large, the story of the moment. When Daniel Levy came along, they were worth £80m, but now they are said to be worth £2.6bn, if anyone really wanted to buy them. But I must admit if I had a company that had risen by that percentage over the years, I’d be very happy.
But Tottenham fans, rather than the shareholders, are miserable, as they usually are, because they don’t care about the value of the club since they don’t own the club. What they care about is winning things, and in this regard, they really are not that much different from Arsenal supporters. We generally don’t care too much that Arsenal’s financial report shows them losing more and more money. What we want is some more trophies for Arteta.
And herein lies the problem – success for the owner is often not success for the fans. Only by winning trophies AND making a profit can both be happy.
So, looked at financially, Tottenham’s situation is a wonderful success. Looked at from the fans’ point of view, it has been a disaster. Their recent honours list is
- Last European Trophy: 2025
- Last League Cup: 2008
- Last FA Cup: 1991
- Last League title: 1961
So not very many trophies. Compare with Arsenal (where some fans are also unhappy)…
- Last FA Cup win 2020
- Last league title: 2004
- Last European Trophy: 1994
- Last League Cup 1993
… and actually, there is not that much difference between the two – both hvae two trophies this century, although Arsenal also had two in the 1990s. And those two particularly prestigious English trophies (the FA Cup and the League) were both achieved this century, while Tottenham’s major domestics were very much in previous times.
And of course as one digs a bit deeper, the gaps grow: such as Arsenal won the FA Cup seven times this century while Tottenham haven’t won it at all. Arsenal have won the league twice this century and Tottenham haven’t. Looked at this way, the gap gets bigger and bigger.
But despite this, Tottenham’s value has soared up and up. TAnd some note that Tottenham’s squad value is reckoned by Transfermarkt as £774m, which sounds a lot until you get to Arsenal’s value which from the same source is £1.15bn.
However Tottenham fans are not just upset at Arsenal being worth more and having a team that has ended up higher in the league, even though Tottenham won a trophy in Europe. It is the approach that seems to annoy some of them. Arsenal appointed Arteta in December 2019. Sine then, Tottenham have had six different managers..
Now I know that number seems insane and impossible because as we have shown here, constantly changing managers doesn’t work. Indeed if you wanted to prove that fact that all you would have to do is look at Tottenaham Ho.
But yes, they have had Jose Mourinho, Ryan Mason, Nuno Espirito Santo, Antonio Conte, Cristian Stellini, Ryan Mason, Ange Postecoglou and Thomas Frank.
And there is that old definition about insanity being finding something that doesn’t work and doing it over and over and over again in the hope that it will by some miracle, work next time. And really, that is also the definition of Tottenham Hot’s approach. They and Levy are actually bonkers.
Yet Levy was, the season before last, the highest paid executive in the Premier League (£6.58 million a year; probably more last season). His personal fortune is calculated at £450 million. He was recently reported playing with the idea of building a 30-storey hotel with 180 rooms and 49 apartments next door to the ground. OK, but it doesn’t help win the league.
The fact is that since Levy took over Tottenham, they have moved to a rather nice stadium, which they haven’t had to pay. While Arsenal had years of privation paying for their new ground, Tottenham haven’t had that at all, and so by any standard they should have been pounding in the trophies, rather than picking up just one (last season).
They should in fact be the talk of London, and yet although all clubs do a few bad deals, Tottenham seem to glory in them.
Since 2018/19 their record has been, 4th (twice) 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th and 17th. Since 2018/19, Arsenal have been 8th twice, 5th twice, and 2nd three times. The difference between the two clubs is so massive you would have thought the honourable thing for Tottenham would have been to pack up and go somewhere else. But honour doesn’t seem to be part of it any more.
Indeed, one commentator reportedly said that Levy runs Tottenham Hotspur “like an investment bank” with staff feeling that even when they met their targets, that was never enough. It suggests that man-management has not been Levy’s strong point, which, when you employ around 750 people (according to Pitchbook), and are 100% hands-on, is really not very clever.
One of the problems of course, is that there are repeated reports of people, (particularly players), who think they have a “gentleman’s agreement” for something to happen in their career, only to find that Levy’s mind was elsewhere.
That might have only happened to a few players, but there is a problem, because players talk to players, and if the word in the playing community is that you can’t trust the word of the top man at Tottenham Ho, then that makes life harder as the club tries to sign top players. They demand more, with the “more” set out in the contract. Then it gets harder and harder to sign players. The word spreads, and players with a choice choose somewhere else.
Of course, Untold has no proof of this; we can only report what we read elsewhere. But the fact is that, according to newspaper reports, both Luka Modric and Kane felt they had a “gentleman’s agreement” with Levy about how and when they could leave. Their mistake was not to have anything in writing. Deals, the Telegraph reports, fell apart because Levy often was found to be haggling over the final 1% or 2% and would not back down. Promises, the report suggests, were not fulfilled.
At the player level, the Premier League is a small community. There are about 450 of them, and they talk to each other, and it does not take too much imagination to realise what they say to each other about Tottenham. In fact, it can be argued that by haggling over so many deals, Levy has, in fact, made it harder and harder for the club to conclude deals. It was all, in the end, his fault. Indeed, it is said by the paper that some clubs simply refuse to deal with Levy at all, although to be fair, it also says that opinions about the man do vary. We, of course, have no direct experience. But still, it is rather hard to feel sorry for Tottenham over their lack of recent trophies, given the level of crowing that their fans have been known to do on one or two occasions.
