Levy's in a deep, deep hole and he's feeling it. Apparently, season tickets are being offered to members who are at 60,000+ on the waiting list and memberships are being cancelled left right and centre. All of our preferred managerial candidates are out of reach and our inertia is affecting the confidence of all but the Levy Lunatic Fringe. He needs to do something pretty ****ing spectacular to right it....or make it look like that might happen, before ST renewal day hits and things are even worse than they are already. Doing the right thing is now far less important than doing something spectacular that looks good in the short term. At which point, I'm dreading hearing who's the next chump who thinks they're the manager/head coach. Honestly, I wouldn't be at all surprised if we repeated the Jacques Santini debacle and picked some **** international manager, who Levy thinks can con Harry Kane into staying..... Welcome Gareth Southgate!
I’m not surprised about ST tickets, although Twitter only represents a fraction of ST holders there’s been quite a few claiming they won’t be renewing. That was inevitable too, you can’t be charging extortionate prices and serving up absolute dog **** for a lengthy amount of time. Fans can begrudgingly accept paying for it to a degree if the football’s good but essentially paying to stay at The Ritz and getting some rundown B&B service? There’s only so much people will take with that. I don’t think the “Spurs interested in superstar” play will work anymore either. We’ve seen it too many times in the past. Everyone’s sounding like a broken record saying this but this is such a crucial period for Levy at the moment. He just cannot afford to get too many things wrong, if anything at all.
I don't want spectacular....another Mourinho-style appointment would be a total disaster. No matter what Levy promises in advance, he will **** the manager over...fail to supply the promised signings and buy whoever he thinks are 'just as good but a proper bargain'. If I had any faith that Levy would appoint Potter (coach) and Rangnick (DoF) as a pairing and LET THEM GET ON WITH IT, I'd have considered a season ticket myself. That would provide an interesting proposition of progress through good football, with a strategic vision of how to sustain that progress. I'm not even renewing my membership because I have zero faith in Levy doing it. He just wants the current crisis to go away...and then it's business as usual.
One thing the Taurine Empire can do that most other clubs can't is they can identify a coach they have hopes can lead Monster Energy Dusseldorf a few years down the line, so they stick them in at G Fuel Vienna for a few seasons to get the experience and also a grasp of how the operation works as well as the tactical plan which are remarkably similar between the two clubs even though the personnel are not (for a year or two, anyway...) Why do I bring this up? Well, imagine if we had a setup that could allow Ryan Mason to spend a few years getting up to speed without the pressures of having the top job, so that a few years down the line he could seamlessly move into the top job with more experience under his belt and a firm understanding of the tactics that would be deployed Don't suppose ENIC still have large stakes in Slavia Prague, Basel or AEK Athens?
Hansi Flick confirmed as the new manager of Die Mannschaft. Wolves in talks with ex-Benfica coach Bruno Lage, so that'll continue their Portuguese monopoly. Spurs in talks with "someone in the next 7-10 days but it is tricky".
Ali Gold was making the point last week that now the season has finished for most sides - certainly the sides where the managers reportedly on our shortlist work - Levy can meet them in person rather than just chatting over the phone, which apparently he sees as very important. The delay is frustrating though. Hopefully we see some movement soon.
Right, so he can hand over those theme park coupons you have to cut out the side of a cereal packet. Can't do that over the phone now can he?
In all seriousness though this is a major decision and I can see why Levy might want to not just have met the new gaffer over Zoom before he pulls the trigger on this one.
Which has improved our league performance hugely with very few hiccoughs. So perhaps he's not as bad as you think.
The government make speculative financial providers give this warning... "Past performance is no guarantee of future results" It's good advice....Levy appointed Mourinho on the basis that his c.v. looked great and if time hadn't rendered him obsolete, he would have been. Do you want him back or should we appoint someone who is going to do a good job in the future? The same goes for Levy...his time should be over for appointing poor managers and buying overpriced, mediocre players. If we're going to progress again as a football team, he needs to get someone in who actually improve us from here, not piss around in a field that he's not not expert in because he's got nobody to sack him or tell him to call it a day.
I prefer to measure performance on results not opinion. Of the ESL six only us and Man City have got better since ENIC was appointed. Everyone else has got worse. That suggests to me that however many mistakes Levy has made, his equivalents in Liverpool, Man Utd, Arsenal and Chelsea have made more. The other problem is that if Levy goes we get an unknown quantity instead. I completely agree that Levy should appoint better deputies and trust them, but the choice isn't between an enhanced version of Levy and Levy. It's between Levy and sonething worse.
The past is over. It's literally history...I want a future better than the club is currently providing or set to provide whilst Levy meddles in things that he doesn't have he required skill set for. Levy needs to remove himself/be taken away from having any significant hands on control over the football element of the business. I'm okay with him doing the NFL and developing the High Street and I have for years indicated that he does a passably good job in that regard. I fully accept that ENIC are not going anywhere and that any other owner is a risk...but that doesn't mean that they can't and shouldn't be trying much harder than they currently are to make us resiliently competitive. Tottenham is now an amalgam of numerous different businesses under one umbrella, if he's not going to be sacked for his ineptitude over the last 3 years (he should be), Levy should solely be doing what he's best at. Currently, he certainly isn't.
I don't want to be unfair to Mourinho, so I'm going to say something in his defence here, appropriately about defending. His success has always come from having a solid base, largely playing on the counter and grinding out results in big games. Spurs was not the place to do this, both in terms of the traditions of the club and our support and what the squad is capable of. We need to look to the examples being set by other clubs who are overperforming, when it comes to continuity and planning. Levy appears to have considered this, if you put any stock in his recent statement, but we'll see whether it's accurate soon. We didn't have the right players for a manager like Mourinho, because our squad was set up for a much more attack-minded coach. It also had some serious depth and balance problems, but bringing in a completely different philosophy created even more work.