I am going to take a different direction in my comments on Spurs. I am not going to change in hoping that Ange is allowed to stay another season to see his project through. I still believe that the best chance for Spurs to develop a competitive team under the present ownership model is to bite the bullet and let a manager work through the inevitable ups and downs of changing your football course. To continue on the sacking course will take much longer IMO to move the team forward. I still think ENIC run the 'business' in the right way and in those terms Levy is the most successful director in the PL. The problem is, most of the other PL teams do not follow this model. Most of the teams in the PL are a vanity project. Their owners are by and large billionaires or Nation States and not trying to run a business sustainably, on the contrary, most of them are wanting to look good and feel the glow of thousands, or even millions of fans adoration. There are exceptions of course, Spurs obviously, Man. United, maybe Brentford. You would have to do a lot of research to know exactly, but I think it's fair to say that the majority put results before profit. Levy always tries to evangelise the sustainable method, but who's buying it? I think he's hoping to win a cup to get himself off the hook but he's not going to change his methods to do it. Why would he, his model has produced millions for himself. It looks like his plan now is to sell the club in part, or as a whole, or probably the whole in parts over time. Spurs are now a big player in terms of revenue but in team finance terms they are mid-table because they are not taking into account the league they are operating in and the way it works. Something has to change, it's just a matter of time.
Daniel Levy isn't a fair play crusader. He's not a sporting evangelist. He's a grifter working an angle. It suits him and Joe to stand up against the likes of City, Chelsea and Newcastle and their 'cheating'. Whereas, they were happy to use their economic advantages to manoeuvre businesses out of the way of the new stadium and pay someone to break into West Ham during the 'Stratford Affair'. They will be gone in time. Apart from the stadium, what will they have achieved and who will miss their brand of ownership?
No I don't believe he is a crusader for sport but he is the opposite of a grifter. Grifters break the rules Levy uses them. The Glazers and their ilk are the grifters. We NEED a grifter to compete in this league
He's a businessman. He'll pay to break into a rival's premises and look at their books. He's "alleged to have paid to burn down a rival's premises". He's a grifter.
Grifters don't pay to look at rival books they just fake them, you'll be telling me Trump is President next.
Is this the West Ham/Newham Council thing? I don't blame him, if so. Absolutely bent as ****. Tories robbing the electorate, as usual. Do I think that Levy's above such things? Of course not.
It's pretty much a matter of time before Ange is let go, but we're letting him see out the season as it's not as if he's made the club a toxic environment like Conte or the ubermensch had, and equally importantly it's likely he is just a poor component in a system so one small part needs replacing much like when Martin Jol replaced Santini (and not, say, a top-to-bottom ****show like Comolli and Ramos) That being said, you are onto something with Levy's approach, because the approach was perfectly sound in the 2004-5 when it was implemented because at that time the Premier League was far closer to the SPL than people would ever admit as it was Man Utd and Arsenal at the top and Chelsea had just won the Euromillions to gatecrash at the top of the table, so with four CL places all we needed was either one of those clubs (or Liverpool) to have an off season or even we'd have a season where we'd pip one of them and that would secure Champions League football The problem is a second club won the Euromillions a few years after - actually, worse, a second club won the Euromillions twice and the main issue is the second megabucks owner installed a framework not unlike what we did in 2004 but at a much higher level due to the finance backing it up plus created the basis of a string of clubs to funnel players into that club and/or keep players out of our reach by retaining them within their own club bubble As soon as that happened then there were five clubs we were competing with to nip into the CL instead of four, and that's without a club having a vintage season here or there that could feasibly increase the number of clubs we'd be competing with to six And that's before the apparent collusion with clubs clearly wiping their backsides on PSR rules but looking out for one another by shuttling youth players between each other for stupid money to keep their house of cards standing
My point is that he will break the law with nary a second thought...WHEN IT SUITS HIS AND JOE'S PLANS. As far as binding the rules to spend more money on sporting endeavour...not a sausage. His hands are tied by PSR...or whatever current PL/UEFA legislation permits...there's nothing to be done... When it comes to making money, the law's just an obstacle to be overcome.
I’ve been saying for a while that I think Levy gambled on a bigger impact on the competition from FFP/PSR and other regulation, and while it’s too early to say that long term it was the wrong choice, it hasn’t had the short term impact he was likely hoping for. Most clubs are finding ways around it, and/or (this is a guess as I haven’t crunched the numbers) doing a better job recruiting well and selling for big profit. Having a big revenue generating stadium is a great asset to the club and the debt is sensibly structured and managed as well as it could be, but between covid and the general shift in the footballing landscape in the PL and on the continent, I sometimes feel like Levy is playing the game he would have won a decade or so ago, but isn’t a winning strategy in 2025.
The main issue is the PSR Cheats swapping academy players between each other for £20-30m every summer doesn't break any rules, so that loophole is going to continue to be abused And this, ultimately, is where our lack of academy integration has hurt us for the better part of a decade, because while the Mansourites and Chavs in particular are not only cheating the balance sheet with playing swaps with academy players but also sitting on some fat sell-on clauses for all manner of players, we are lagging behind to a considerable degree due to not raising the potential value of countless youth players for several years
It wouldn't surprise me if he did break the law, but it's not been proven. Fiddling the books would probably be pretty quickly caught, on the other hand. Some clubs have basically been given free reign by the government, unfortunately. We can't enforce the rules, as it would upset some dictators. Perhaps those fit and proper persons tests should've been done properly? Letting arms dealers and criminals buy English clubs was stupid.
He did it, but as it can't be proven, it's OK. They did it, but paid for the best legal advice to avoid the rules, but it's not OK? If you like... My point is that they're breaking the rules to achieve sporting success. Our owners were allegedly breaking the law to increase their already considerable wealth... How you feel about that is, of course, up to you. Personally, I think it's time to stop accepting "at least we tried", when it's long gone time to try a bit ****ing harder.
We don't know that he did it, but they didn't want to prove that he did, as it would lead to discovery. The fallout would go further than their already rich owners, who were aiming to increase their wealth. You don't really believe that West Ham moved to Stratford for footballing reasons, surely? As for other club owners, I draw the line at dictators and mobsters. Levy may not be perfect, by any means, but he's not either of those, as far as I know. I'd also prefer to avoid owners like Man Utd's and that really doesn't leave much, unfortunately.
What gets overlooked with that situation is we technically didn't need a private investigator to look into it, given it was in plain sight what was going on when the boardrooms of West Scam and the Olympic Park Legacy Co. were exactly the same As I think I said at the time, the likelihood was Levy made sure that got out into public domain to kick either Haringey Council or (more likely) the Mayor of London up the backside - and given who was Mayor of London at the time, he should have kicked a few other places while he was at it
I fail to see any point in discussing West Ham's intentions in moving stadiums. I give not one tiny ****. Why would I? I'm pissed off that I'm still paying for the ****er, but I doubt that anyone posting on here is going to run the argument that COYS Daniel authorised the blag so that he could do anything other than enrich ENIC. If he had been offered that deal, we'd be playing in Stratford instead. No matter how much you dont want to address it, it's about why he will go the extra (illegal) yard to achieve financial gain, but will never step beyond the line to win something, transforming from Tony Soprano to your prissy, spinster great-aunt. We all know it's true, no matter what...
