Daniel Levy to blame for Spurs’ backwards step

Daniel Levy to blame for Spurs’ backwards step












Daniel Levy’s custodianship of
Tottenham Hotspur has seen the club rise and rise and it’s fair to say
that he has been furnished with a lot of praise over this period. He is
prudent and when people ignorantly talk about Tottenham ‘doing a Leeds’
or suggest that the finances perhaps need to be looked at a little closer,
they soon find out we are in rude financial health.


A fair amount has been
spent on transfer fees (even if, perversely, the failed fringe players
often cost more than the regulars), but the wage structure is sensible
and a lot of money has been recouped. Few clubs can claim to have got
value for money off Tottenham. Consider the following: Dimitar Berbatov
£30.75m, Michael Carrick £18m, Robbie Keane £19m, even Anthony Gardner
at £2.5m.


The Rafael van der Vaart signing
showed that while Harry Redknapp has the wheeler-dealer reputation,
Levy is much more deserving of it. £8m for one of Europe’s most
impressive attacking players. It was proclaimed one of the best deals in
years, as fans of better clubs than ours wondered why their chairman
hadn’t signed the Dutchman.


In the same August
transfer window Tottenham needed a striker more than anything and didn’t
get one. Redknapp had already spent £27.75m on Robbie Keane and Jermain
Defoe a year and a half earlier and £10m on Peter Crouch six months
after that. He also had £14m Roman Pavlyuchenko at his disposal, but
none were quite good enough to lead the title challenge Redknapp
promised.


In January Robbie Keane
was released on loan and the trio left at the club were doing even worse
than expected. To finish in the top four again we needed a quality
striker. This wasn’t just Redknapp’s opinion or the fans’, Levy
sanctioned the purchase of an attacker and failed to deliver.


While other clubs identified targets and made the deals happen (Manchester City signed Edin Džeko on 3^rd January, Liverpool signed Luis Suárez on the 28^th)
Tottenham were making inadequate bids all over the place (mostly in
Spain). Some of the names and numbers may not be completely accurate,
but this is what was reported from reliable sources: Andy Carroll (£23m -
£25m), Fernando Llorente (£26m - £33m), Diego Forlan (£13m - £17m),
Alvaro Negredo (£17m), Guiseppe Rossi (£30m - £35m) and Serio Aguero
(£38m).


Very few people got
value in the transfer window, the £50m spent on Fernando Torres is
evidence of that, but missing out on Champions League football is a
greater cost than overpaying for a player.


Defoe, Pavlyuchenko,
Crouch and Keane have scored in 11 of our 36 league games this season.
None can really claim to have been underused by Redknapp, or to have
seized their chances when they had them. Their poor form is by far the
biggest factor in the failure to secure Champions League qualification.


And failure to sign a
single striker wasn’t even Levy’s biggest crime of the season. If there
was any doubt as to whether he considers Tottenham Hotspur Football Club
anything more than a subsidiary of ENIC International Ltd there isn’t
any more. 129 years of history were less important than a bit of extra
revenue and better transport links. If he’d had his way Spurs would have
left Tottenham and gone to east London. Others may disagree, but I’d rather support a club with integrity than a soulless, successful one.


Unfortunately this isn’t
over. The club is in a shameless legal battle challenging the decision
to award the Olympic Stadium to West Ham and have talked about looking
for a new site for a stadium, not necessarily in N17. The Northumberland
Park Development has been inexplicably abandoned and throughout the
process fans have neither been consulted nor kept informed.


If Redknapp’s position is under scrutiny and Defoe’s, Crouch’s and Pavlyuchenko’s, Levy’s should be as well.






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nice find. i did think in jan that levy was too involved in the stratford saga and the beckham thing went on for ages

This stadium move has just gone on to long now, the fans are sick to the teeth of it, i said all along " not proud of myself "we would pay the price for not buying in January , then arry got all rapped up in Beckham, this was more proof he was feathering his nest for england by getting all pally pally with the FA's golden boy , the season has been one big flop, and i fear whats round the corner