Was it better before Levy?

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AshfordGill

AshfordGill

Active Member
May 22, 2011
864
185
43
Ashford, Kent
As an outsider I spend a reasonable amount of time reading the threads and comments here, and I whilst I expect to find the Arsenal and Chelsea (and even West Ham) fans here slating the club hierarchy and Levy in particular, I am amazed how many of your own supporters are so completely anti. I know that no chairman/chief exec is perfect and it is clear that some appointments have been ill advised, but and it’s a fairly big but, if we just look at the premier league years (and yes I am old enough to know that you have a history long before this) but for the sake of this thread I will concentrate on the premier league, before Enic and Levy Spurs were a consistently inconsistent premier league team who generally finished somewhere between 10th and 14th in the league and almost never beat the top 4 sides, now I am not certain when Enic took the club over but in the last 8 seasons your average league position has been 6th with 6 top 5 finishes, in the 8 seasons before that your average league position was 11th with a best finish of 9th. Also under Enic you have seen Bale, Modric, and Van Der Vaart in your team, probably only Klinsmann could be listed above those in stature in the world game amongst all your premier league players. So whilst I accept that Enic and Levy may not be perfect these have been generally been good times to be a Spurs fan and do you really hanker for the days of Dozzell and Rebrov, for Gerry Francis (who I always liked actually) and Christian Gross at the helm?
 
No, it was far, far worse. Sugar saved the club, but made some poor decisions along the way and Scholar virtually bankrupted us.
 
Yes, it was (obviously) .

Was it better between the point where Scholar had the club on the verge of extinction
and ENIC taking control ??

No (IMHO) .
 
when it comes to money and growth, Levy has been absolutely brilliant in taking us forward and allowing us to even remotely compete with the richest.

However, I follow football for.... football, Like all fans. But there has to be a balance. - and for what levy does so well in terms of financials, he seems to do the complete opposite most of the time with the decisions that affect football; that element that we all support the club for.

however you look at it, 12 years in charge and we've only won 1 trophy. Fans need more than that over that sort of time period. There has to be some glory, not just book balancing.

During this period, some shocking decisions have been made, which Levy seems to getaway with every time. But the time has come for a lot of fans, where they now question Levy, who seems to have cleverly escaped any blame for so long.
 
Levy has improved the club as far as I am concerned. There seems to be little understanding from many fans complaining about him. As I see it he has done what he thinks is in the best interests of the club and the criticism he gets for the 'mistakes' suggests a lack of understanding of the problems.
 
The Levy/Sugar years have been a Dark age in the clubs history.

Success for some on our board is about balancing the books,
for others Glory.

They have not delivered .
 
from 1991 - 2001 when Levy became our chairman were poor on and off the pitch...the high spot was the 1995 Klinnsman season ... coming 8th and FA Cup semi final
and the 1999 carling cup win in the most turgid final ever!

those years gave us Christian Gross and bloke in a coat and several near relegations and no European football...We saw Teddy Sheringham, Yurgen K, Ginola, anderton, and then it gets a bit thin on the ground culminating in Campbell going to the gooners.

since 2002 we have won a cup and lost 2 finals, we have come 4th twice and 5th 4 times... 1 season in the champions league and 6 seasons in uefa/europa league...we have seen the likes of defoe, berbatov, keane, carrick, modric, bale, VDV, king, Edgar Davids, Lloris, etc.

Personally I don't want my club bankrupted...we came close enough to that when we had to sell Gazza to save us... so to have given us 7 seasons of european football, some great players, and a current good squad while managing to balance the books means the Levy has done very well for us...I just wish he'd stop employing every 2nd manager who turns out to be a donkey... Santini (donkey) Jol (good) Ramos (donkey) Redknapp (good) AVB (donkey) hopefully he'll just stick to the good from now on
 
Before Levy we had Klinsmann, The famous five, won the league cup, youth players came through the system, judas and Barmby. I enjoyed some of the sugar days mainly because I was used to us being crap! But there was still excitement and great memories.

Levy and Enic have run the club their way, and overall there has been a big improvement in terms of the club being more professional and they deserve credit for taking us to our current position in terms of missing out on top four is viewed as failure.

The reason fans have a issue is as Roo said, he summed it up well and the limitations of Enics ownership hold us back from moving much further.
 
It's all very easy to criticise decisions after they have gone wrong, and with thousands of fans it would follow that some will guess right some of the time but you need to look at the motives for the decisions and also the nature of football.

Football is not a science and picking players and managers will always have an element of luck about it. The sacking of managers is a common event because of the uncertainty of the whole thing. It's all about opinions, and we all have those, but's it's a waste of life to bleat about those that do make decisions especially when they are not made for selfish reasons.
 
No. Sugar always kept his hand in his pocket and tried to run the club as cheaply as possible, which meant we spent most of the time making do with cheap alternatives on the pitch and in the dugout, which typically led to mediocrity and stagnation.
 
humanbeingincroydon said:
No. Sugar always kept his hand in his pocket and tried to run the club as cheaply as possible, which meant we spent most of the time making do with cheap alternatives on the pitch and in the dugout, which typically led to mediocrity and stagnation.
Click to expand...

I think at that stage Sugar HAD to run a tight ship.
 
humanbeingincroydon said:
No. Sugar always kept his hand in his pocket and tried to run the club as cheaply as possible, which meant we spent most of the time making do with cheap alternatives on the pitch and in the dugout, which typically led to mediocrity and stagnation.
Click to expand...

Which brings memories of us trying to find cash to buy Kevin Scott and Rocky Ronnie!
 
And a special shout out to Gerry Francis, he nearly got us to the FA Cup final and at one point was 2nd in the league near Christmas with Chris Armstrong banging in the goals, for that he deserves high praise :p
 
Boss said:
And a special shout out to Gerry Francis, he nearly got us to the FA Cup final and at one point was 2nd in the league near Christmas with Chris Armstrong banging in the goals, for that he deserves high praise :p
Click to expand...

Gerry Francis was unbelievably unlucky with injuries.
 
I know a lot seemed to have in a way "turned" on Levy and I can understand why but I'm fully behind him. Sugar saved us but then things just went a little sour, Levy has turned us into a real force again with the investments he/ Enic/ Lewis has made and for that I feel somewhat indebted to him. Yes he's made some ****ing awful decisions but I think his decisions has always been with the best interest of Spurs at heart.

I'd rather have Levy than say a Vincent Tan/ Assem Allam/ Venkys's etc.
 
Levy has improved the club and facilities no end, all credit for that and tbh...thats his job! and what he should stick to. What his job isn't, is player selection for purchase, he employs all these others to do it, takes advice, then still buys players anyway.
 
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