If one wished to lampoon one of the many foreign owners in the football league, then one could have had a fair old romp this week. Massimo Cellino’s trigger happy regime at Leeds United continued as he sacked Darko Milanic after just 32 days at the club. Even Brian Clough lasted longer there; the word ‘damned’ may not be a strong enough expletive to describe the direction in which Leeds could be heading.
Or one could focus on Birmingham City and the way in which the crimes of owner Carson Yeung continue to shroud the club in uncertainty and instability. It was not that long ago that the club went a whole home season unbeaten in the Premier League and won the League Cup in 2011. Now they lie in stagnation under the stewardship of a parent company thousands of miles away.
Then there’s the vain, narcissistic fool Tony Fernandes, who must be a weekly cause of embarrassment for any Queens Park Rangers fan with an ounce of self-respect. For Fernandes, owning a high profile football club doesn’t bring quite enough attention; he must ensure he is front and centre of every camera shot and at the heart of every story. Not content to let the players who played 50 odd matches last season savour what they had just done in achieving promotion, he had to be on the Wembley pitch and on Joey Barton’s shoulders.
Can you imagine David Gill on Ryan Giggs’ shoulders or David Dein on Patrick Vieira’s after a title win? These are not the actions of a sane and serious person. Not content with what was already an embarrassing public feud between Harry Redknapp and Adel Tarrabt regarding the player’s weight, he then has to appear in the media with his own photo of his flabby flanks. His tenure at the club has been an abominable display of conceit and self-publication which I can only guess is rooted in a personal insecurity of one form or other.
I could have written about any of those three risible regimes, but I instead decided to focus on another one, this time involving an English executive. Daniel Levy’s time at Tottenham began positively; he earned a reputation as an arch dealmaker in the transfer market and the team progressed on the pitch. But things have at best plateaued, and at worst declined, over the past few seasons. Yet Levy appears beyond reproach, and remains the one element of stasis at a club that seems to be in perpetual flux.
His tenure at the club has been an abominable display of conceit and self-publication which I can only guess is rooted in a personal insecurity of one form or other.
Levy became Tottenham Hotspur’s chairmen in 2001, when the club was going nowhere fast. In time, the club began to make progress, eventually establishing themselves as regular qualifiers for UEFA Cup. Only a final day defeat to West Ham prevented Martin Jol from giving Levy what had always been his dream for Tottenham: Champions League football. The following manager Juande Ramos delivered the club’s first major trophy of the century, the League Cup in 2008. Though the club never managed to establish itself among Europe’s elite, so to speak, during this period they were nevertheless moving in the right direction.
The appointment of Harry Redknapp pushed Tottenham even further in the right direction, as they achieved that much craved place in the Champions League. Redknapp would have done this twice had Chelsea not won the tournament in 2012 to negate Tottenham’s fourth place finish, which proved a cause for double celebrations as far as Chelsea’s supporters were concerned.
Levy deserves a share of the credit for what may in the future be considered a peak in Tottenham’s trajectory. For a while, his stubborn stances in the transfer market paid off; he squeezed Manchester United twice over the sales of Michael Carrick and Dimitar Berbatov. He managed to lure Rafael Van der Vaart to the club one notorious deadline day. Though the signs were there that from early on that he was not slow to sack a manager, it could plausibly be argued that each dismissal, from Jol to Ramos to Redknapp, constituted progress. The Spurs front six of Parker, Modric, Lennon, Van der Vaart, Bale, Adebayor was probably their best team since Gascoigne, Waddle, Lineker and the rest under Terry Venables.
It’s not an easy thing to do; to make such a grave decision when things are going swimmingly and you seem on the cusp of becoming a Champions League team.
However, and I’m sure you anticipated a however, the origins of the present crisis lie in these heady days. Though restricted by the ever-changing planning regulations, Levy and Spurs had to make their move into a new stadium, or sell the club to an even wealthier benefactor than Joe Lewis, or both, back then. The decision had to be made when they were in a position of strength on the pitch, and their value was at its highest off the pitch. It’s not an easy thing to do; to make such a grave decision when things are going swimmingly and you seem on the cusp of becoming a Champions League team. Arsenal made the decision to move stadium in the midst of the club’s most successful period. This brought some short term pain, but they are now set, not just for our lifetimes but possibly for even longer.
On the pitch, I believe Tottenham possess a coach who will develop and improve them if he’s given time and, crucially, full control and recruitment. A further mistake of Levy’s was the appointment of Franco Baldini as director of football who clearly had little relationship with Andre-Villas-Boas. Mauricio Pochettino proved at Southampton he can drill a team into being both disciplined and stylish. But giving Tottenham a seat at the top table could be beyond his reach, such are the institutional restraints on him. Manchester United and Arsenal with their revenue streams will remain there or there about’s, Chelsea and Manchester City will be very hard to dislodge bar any freak catastrophes. Tottenham move into their new stadium in a few years, but could find themselves decades behind by then. They needn’t have been.
Dan Zeqiri
You can follow Dan on Twitter: @ZeqiriDan
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