Good article on Levy / DoF / Ramos

Gary Stevens Age : 30 Joined : 24 Jul 2007 Posts : 1798

Seven years after ENIC took control of Tottenham, the story has been well-aired, the strategy made clear, plugged again and again by the Levy spin machine. After a false start in which a former Messiah was given too much money to spend on the wrong players, we now have a solid system in which the chairman, manager and a director of football identify players who are simultaneously British, young, have good sell-on value and are the players we need to progress on the pitch. That system ensures continuity should the manager, whose focus is to coach the players the system gives him, change for whatever reason, and has given us a top four squad.

But here’s the thing. It seems that the new manager, appointed because the old one was apparently too much of a clown to take us to the fourth place we “required” on the back of our clever planning and investment, thinks that most of this top four squad is not good enough, and has a list of up to 30 new players. Something doesn’t ring true and, in all the increasingly heated arguments raging around the messageboards, pubs and wherever Spurs fans gather, I’ve yet to hear an explanation that adds up.

If the squad is good enough but the manager wasn’t, a change of manager would sort the problem. But, although “it’s early days” and “too soon to judge” etc etc, it seems our new manager has decided it’s soon enough to judge that the squad doesn’t cut the mustard. What’s clear is that he looks unlikely to take this sub-standard squad to fifth place. Now, it would be unfair to lay the blame for what looks set to be our worse league finish for three years at the door of a manager after the bungling disgrace that disfigured the start of the season. But a reasoned analysis also makes it impossible to avoid wondering how the previous manager managed to get this sub-standard squad to fifth. I’ve heard it argued that he ‘rode his luck’, but it takes more than luck to sustain something over 76 games in the self-styled Best League In The World’.

So maybe the squad isn’t good enough. And if not, what does that say about the famous strategy? Why have we bought all these players, who we now need to ship out and replace, if they are not good enough? Of course, anyone can make a mistake – even the most successful managers in the country. But for the Fergusons and Wengers, the Forlans and the Jeffers’s are the exceptions. It seems our new manager, chosen by our chairman and director of football, thinks the players assembled by our chairman and director of football are not good enough.

For experienced Levy-watchers, how this pans out promises to be very interesting indeed. Because one of the two things he is very good at is avoiding any responsibility for anything that goes wrong. (The other is making lots of money – which is great if you are a shareholder, but less impressive if you are a football fan. Especially if you are one of the fans whose money is fuelling the rosy balance sheet. And who realises that Daniel Levy is the major shareholder). But I digress. Whichever way you look at it, Levy has clearly got something wrong. Is it his choice of manager? Or his choice of players?

Of course, I am being too harsh. Because we’ve already been told, by the Levy spin machine, that it’s Damien Comolli’s choice of manager. And his choice of players. In fact, Daniel Levy has very little to do with any of the major decisions at Tottenham. No sirree. His mistake is to trust people like his director of football, his manager… Yes, his mistake has been to adopt the system he has spent much of the time since Hoddle was sacked telling everyone was the key to success.

Just to recap, our system means that we have a long-term plan that builds a quality squad and ensures that a new manager doesn’t come in and demand wholesale changes. Which is why our new manager is demanding wholesale changes. So is Ramos’s quality to have quickly recognised the true potential of the squad? Or is he merely doing what most new managers do and asking for time to bring his own people in? He is, of course, better qualified than me to say – better qualified than Damien Comolli and Daniel Levy too, perhaps. But it strikes me as easier to say ‘I need a completely new set of materials’ than to make the best of the ones you have. No great new managerial twist there.

Whenever you put the Levy regime under serious analysis, there are too many contradictions, too many statements that don’t add up. The current system at Spurs, as it has been explained to us, is clearly not working. That’s not to say such a system could not work, but it needs to be based on football reasons – not financial reasons and certainly not on the basis that it makes it easier to pass the buck. Does, for example, the DoF have a brief to buy players the team needs to step up, or players the balance sheet needs to show as good investments? Do we buy future potential to the exclusion of current value? The DoF system can work, if the DoF and the manager agree on the players needed, and the DoF is working to the manager for football reasons. I’ve often imagined the “collective responsibility” conversations going along the following lines:

Manager: “I need player X.”

DoF: “X is too old and too highly paid. But you can have Y or Z – make your choice.”

Manager: [sigh] “I guess it’d better be Y then.”

Chairman: “Good, we’re all agreed.”

But what do I know? We’re just fans, we know nothing of the modern business of football or the real pressures people face. Our role is to spend our money, support the team (but not too boisterously) and believe all the old cods the club’s PR machine feeds us. A good job, then, that we are too stupid to notice one other inconvenient truth. Of the five managers Levy has appointed in his seven years in charge, the most successful was the only one he didn’t chose.

http://www.topspurs.com/thfccol-martinc.htm

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The great fallacy is that the game is first and last about winning. It is nothing of the kind. The game is about glory. It is about doing things in style, with a flourish, about going out and beating the other lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom.