Levy's Biggest Fan (not)

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FFs. When will people ever realise that we cannot afford to pay the wages and transfer fees of the people we all want to get.
If we could, then Van Gaal would have been here instead of Pochettino.
when I hear some stupid cunt saying, 'Levy should have made an offer Van Gaal or Benetiz couldn't refuse'
or 'we should be showing ambition by making marquee signings like Man U, City, Chavs and Woolwich' without thinking who can we sell to do so and how we going to pay the wage bill

Let's think about it realistically. We do not have as much as Liverpool, yet have outdone them since 2009, bar one time.
Despite in this time we have built an new World Class training facility -and are in the process of adding apartments which will be used by top European clubs and England - have been investing in building a new home.
We have done this not with the aid of energy rich oligarchs, like City and Chavs.

Man U are a phenomenon. They can spend, spend, spend. City and Chavs have money put in through the back door, through inflated sponsorship by own companies.
Woolwich, like it or not, earn triple what we do on match day income alone.
They all earn double, and some triple the TV revenue we do.
We have a £100m wage bill. £40m less than Liverpool, £60m less than Woolwich
Yet, our wage bill is a massive £92m, £105m & £115m less than Chavs, City and Man U respectively.
Top 4 wage bills invariably= top 4.
Yeah, I'm gutted we don't do better, but let's be realistic.
Liverpool were the masters of Europe and England and I suppose their fans have a right to feel more entitled than we fucking do.
But even they have been left behind. Why, because they cannot compete.
Think about that.

Also, I wonder if we would not have had european football this season if we would have made top 4 and outdone Man U, who did not have any European fixtures. I mean, they spent massively and played only 43 games in all comps to our 57 this season and still only managed to be just 6 points ahead of us.

Now, Joe Lewis, estimated the 5th richest owner in the EPL, is not an arab who owns an oil rich country and has bottomless pockets. He isn't a Russain Oligarch who owns state energy supplies and has endless cash.
Mansour has sunk over a £1billion into City, Abromovich estimated £2bn. It would be financial suicide for Lewis to do that.
Both those clubs were bought to legitimise their owners and for political purposes. They are not businesses.
If they were, they would be bankrupt.
Joe Lewis makes investments and sells them on at a profit. Which is probably what he'll do when the club is worth buying.


The only way we will be able to compete with the lot above us is if we have the financial means.
That either means increasing our revenue or being taken over by Qatar.
So, what is it?
Everyone says they hate the way that Chavs and City have bought success and cheat through financial doping. That's the only way we will be able to compete with those lot atm
So, do people really want that?
It's also funny that Mansour never thought about purchasing us, or Roman settled on Chavs. I wonder why that was?
 
Time for some more stats it seems :)

Between 1882 and 1888 we were a newly founded amateur club and not serious sontenders for the only major trophy available then. But in the interests of fairness to ENIC I'll include that trophyless period in my comparisons in this post. At other times I've used our 'professional' era and post 19th century era for comparisons.

Between 1882 and 2000 when ENIC took over there were 108 seasons (10 lost to the wars) and we won 16 trophies. That's a rate of one trophy per 6.75 years.

Under ENIC we're currently running at one trophy in 14.4 years (it will be one trophy in 15 years by this December, but again I will try to be be fair to ENIC).

So under ENIC our trophy rate has been over twice as bad as our normal average (and that includes 20 years as a non-League club!)

But it gets worse for ENIC, much worse.

Firstly, their only trophy is the most minor of the majors, the League Cup. Whereas our previous honours included 8 FA Cups, when it was a far more prestigious trophy than it is now, and arguably it was as important as the Lge for much of that time, 2 Lge titles and 3 Euro trophies.

Secondly
Brilliant post!! If our trophy per year percentage drops by another 0.164%, I will seriously consider supporting another club.
 
Are Enic really as bad as some make out? Greaves357_bestever Greaves357_bestever for example is quick to point out certain stats that paint them in a bad light.

Since ENIC came in, we've finished outside the top 5, 6 times. in 14 years. The lowest we finished in that time was 14th, but we're basically a guarantee to finish in the top half.

Before ENIC, the last time we finished top 5 was 1990, when we finished third. Before i was even born.
We had 4 top 5 finishes in the 80's.
just 1 in the 70's. A decade that saw us get relegated.

in the 00's? 3 top 5 finishes. Better than the 70's and the 90's.
We haven't finished lower than 6th since 2009.
five 5th placed finishes in the last 10 years. 4th twice.

1317px-TottenhamHotspurFC_League_Performance.svg.png


We're currently in our most consistent era ever. And not since the beginning of the 60's have we seen consistent league form, thats over 50 years. And we still have the moral high ground over the 4 teams that finished above us.



We haven't won the league in 54 years, and its now harder than its ever been to do so. Even winning a cup is difficult. The last real fa cup final upset was Wigan, and it basically cost them their premier league status.

In our entire history, 133 years we've won the FA cup.... 8 times. thats around once every 16 years on average. But thats also not taking into account how different football was 100 years ago. And that still makes us the third most successful team in the FA cup.
The League cup is roughly the same. 4 wins since it started 54 years ago. An average of 1 win every 13.5 years. 12 Domestic cups in 115 years... We're hardly prolific.

So what is it ENIC are doing so wrong? I think we can all accept we're unlikely to win the league... We're known as a cup team yet in the 88 seasons since the end of world war 1, we've only won something in 16 of those seasons. That means Since world war one, 82% of our seasons have ended with no trophy. (I'm not counting the charity shield)

If someone was 100 years old, they'd have only seen tottenham end a season with a trophy 16 times.
 
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All im saying is, even before football became a dick measuring "who has got the biggest wallet" competition, we weren't exactly prolific.
And we've had 3 finals and one trophy under enic as well as our best run of league form. So it's arguable we're hitting above par with enic.
If you find it condescending, you must be one of those arguing we haven't won enough trophies under enic. But as I already said, in our 133 year history, we've only ended a season with a major trophy 16 times.
That's 117 trophyless years. So is it really a great crime we've only won one under enic? At a time of sheikhs and oligarchs?
 
Dude, those were Redknapp transfers. You can blame Levy for quite a lot, good and bad, but not Nelsen and Saha. He was backing Redknapp.
Redknapp has said since then his main target was Tevez, who he said would "win us the league" and Levy refused. I would guess he had other targets too, and Nelsen and Saha were not his second and third choices, despite his penchant for that kind of player.

Although he's shown more ambition than his predecessor Sugar, Levy has failed to back us at crucial times. One year later in January under AVB, and also when we actually achieved CL and the only notable signing was Crouchy. Levy has said himself he doesn't like buying players in January because prices are inflated. So I'd say, reading between the lines, it was more Levy's fault than Harry's here.
 
why does there have to be only negative consequences of having a rich investor back us? how do u know city, psgs & chelseas owners will all bail out & leave them in a world of crap. & i thought i was negative. citys owners have done a lot for the club & a deprived area. i dont see why u would be so against rejuvinating the crap tottenham area & investing in a better stadium & facilities. theres no gurantee they wil do a runner & leave us in a big mess. u seem to assume that to be the outcome.
In case you never noticed, Spurs have actually done a fair bit of charitable work in the local area. Is it more, or less, than the work done by City's benefactors? I'll let someone more familiar with both make that call. ENIC have actually invested in the physical infrastructure of the club with the new training ground, and the new player's lodge and stadium on the way.

What they have not done is spent hundreds of millions of pounds more than revenue on transfers and wages.

There is no guarantee a club with that kind of investment will go bust. Either the owners can swallow the debt or stretch out the expectation of repayment indefinitely into the future. But it CAN go wrong, and has done, more than once for many clubs. Leeds, Borussia Dortmund, Portsmouth, Rangers, QPR, Internazionale, AC Milan, Monaco, Anzhi Mahkachkala and others have all gotten into significant trouble when owners have overspent and either ran out of resources or decided to stop paying for the losses.

That might not happen, or it might, in the cases of both Chelsea and City. I'd rather not have Spurs in that position in the first place.

There is also a couple of moral arguments to be made. I'd rather do things in the harder, sustainable way because I feel the Chelsea way is like climbing Everest with a helicopter. It dimishes the achievement. I also disagree with the wilfull denial that Chelsea were funded through the robbing of another country's citizens. The way Abramovich got his money is why we have yet more problems with Russia today. I'd rather not have that stain on our club's honour, anymore than I'd like the money to come from a human rights abusing, terrorism-funding state in the Gulf.

I have principles which I value more than tin pots, and I'd rather take the longer, more honourable way and win fewer than the morally bankrupt instant gratification of either of those clubs.
 
Defending his own position before tomorrow’s game with Blackburn, Redknapp revealed: “I said to the chairman ‘Can you get me Carlos Tevez?’ That’s what I said in January. ‘Can we get Tevez?’ It wasn’t possible, but that was my dream.

“Daniel would have loved Tevez, but it wasn’t do-able because his wages are whatever they are – £200,000 a week. It was not possible at Tottenham to buy him.

“We tried to get Gary Cahill, but Chelsea came in and paid him a lot more wages than we could, so we lost him. With Tevez, it was me thinking ‘He’s not in the team, he’s fallen out with Mancini’. You don’t know, do you, unless you ask. It was just a little try.

Also remember this was 12 months on from the window we made that offer for Aguero and also had bids for Llorente, Negredo and Andy Carroll turned down, but hey you carry on insisting that Saha was his first choice.
 
The bit i bolded. Public relations let downs.
Sorry the bolding thing isn't as obvious as it was.

I don't like the secrecy to begin with. They have no need to keep us in the dark as much as they do. The stadium is a good example of this - Levy is obsessed with it. Also the bollocks surrounding the potential appointment of De Boer - a man who innocently answered a straightforward question to a Dutch journalist, and was hung out to dry by Levy when all he'd done was tell the truth. The over zealous stewarding, the hiding behind the local council when it comes to the issue of flags and banners etc, his tight fistedness and inability to see the bigger picture when a calculated risk could have really paid dividends. All these are, or were concerns for me.

I originally wanted to keep the Enic issue out of replying to your post, which was excellent, not just as a defence of Enic, but as a pointer to where we are, and where we've been, and what we should be happy with - the last bit is, of course subjective, and is something we're all never going to agree on.
 
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Fidel Castro Fidel Castro Ha, you're a toff. I should have known you only do comments - answers are more difficult ha ha. Stay cool brother - have a nice night x
Sorry I couldn't reply late last night . My holiday apartments at the farm are taking up all my
time ( half term) and tomorrow is a change over day so l have to be up exceptionally early .
I can only look at the forum occasionally and for a limited time . . While the suns
out l have to make hay .
The vast majority of your comments I find interesting and tend to agree with . In this rare
case regarding young Athnony l differ . Rather a little anorak for my taste with his relentless admiration for the regime and warped exceptance of our crap silverware return . Never been
so bad since Stalin liberated Berlin . The constant McMillanism of " you never had it so good "
is so "cock and bull " and is not in the ethos and tradition of our once great club . I naively want
a " white riot " . I must one day tell you about my night out with Topper back in the day .
Please once again except my apologies ..
 
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But two of the current top for were nowhere in the 80's?
And have had sudden influxes of cash that were unseen in the whole of football history until that point.

We were a top 4 side in the 80s. Us, Utd, Woolwich and Liverpool are essentially the pre-Sky top 4. We stumbled just as Sky showed up with a pot of cash. Then as we tried to catch up, and were nearly there, Abramovich and Dubai showed up and threw money at a couple of nobodies, buying their way into competitiveness. Take that silliness out, and we'd be back in the top 4. In the real world, we can't, and so must do more to fight our way back into contention.

I don't like the situation, but it is what it is.
 
Did anyone think that every time he said "dirty no good..." he was going to say "Jew"?

I kept wincing expecting it but was pleasantly surprised.
 
Are Enic really as bad as some make out? Greaves357_bestever Greaves357_bestever for example is quick to point out certain stats that paint them in a bad light.

Since ENIC came in, we've finished outside the top 5, 6 times. in 14 years. The lowest we finished in that time was 14th, but we're basically a guarantee to finish in the top half.

Before ENIC, the last time we finished top 5 was 1990, when we finished third. Before i was even born.
We had 4 top 5 finishes in the 80's.
just 1 in the 70's. A decade that saw us get relegated.

in the 00's? 3 top 5 finishes. Better than the 70's and the 90's.
We haven't finished lower than 6th since 2009.
five 5th placed finishes in the last 10 years. 4th twice.

1317px-TottenhamHotspurFC_League_Performance.svg.png


We're currently in our most consistent era ever. And not since the beginning of the 60's have we seen consistent league form, thats over 50 years. And we still have the moral high ground over the 4 teams that finished above us.



We haven't won the league in 54 years, and its now harder than its ever been to do so. Even winning a cup is difficult. The last real fa cup final upset was Wigan, and it basically cost them their premier league status.

In our entire history, 133 years we've won the FA cup.... 8 times. thats around once every 16 years on average. But thats also not taking into account how different football was 100 years ago. And that still makes us the third most successful team in the FA cup.
The League cup is roughly the same. 4 wins since it started 54 years ago. An average of 1 win every 13.5 years. 12 Domestic cups in 115 years... We're hardly prolific.

So what is it ENIC are doing so wrong? I think we can all accept we're unlikely to win the league... We're known as a cup team yet in the 88 seasons since the end of world war 1, we've only won something in 16 of those seasons. That means Since world war one, 82% of our seasons have ended with no trophy. (I'm not counting the charity shield)

If someone was 100 years old, they'd have only seen tottenham end a season with a trophy 16 times.
Good post, it's important to remember all this and puts things into some kind of perspective.

However, I think that Spurs were actually a bigger, more successful side in the 80s and possibly the 70s, despite the worse-on-average league performance. This is going by what I've been told and heard rather than personal memory as I wasn't alive til 85, but I think back then we were better able to attract big players and were regarded as a more glamorous side. Winning cups meant more back then, and our success in Europe and domestic cups made other clubs envious of us. I think this perspective is also needed in order to have a critical look at where we are now. Though you are right in saying it is now harder than ever to challenge for the high league places.

It can't be denied that ENIC have improved us, compared to where we were before. Though I think there is definitely an argument, like I've written before, that they have been too risk averse at times.
 
I was born in 91 so i don't know what it was like in the 80's obviously. However, I do know that the money in the game has changed completely. It used to be posible to get a bit of a team together and have a run at the league. Nowadays, you need to spend a billion to do that. And that has a knock on effect to the players. When it was easier to win the league, it was easier to attract players. Back then, just living in London would have been a good incentive. Whereas nowadays the big players nearly always end up at the same 5-10 top clubs in europe.

As for the envious thing, i would have to disagree. Not because i think clubs wouldn't have been envious of us back then, but because theres only 4 clubs in the country that wouldn't swap places with us this season. We're still enviable, its just that the parameters have changed. What it means to be a top club has changed. It used to be that, having the odd run at the title every few years and making a final every few years made you a top club. But nowadays, being financially sound, run at a profit, and finishing high enough in the premier league to earn a place in a european competition qualifies as being a top club. Winning the league isn't special anymore. Whats special about a trophy that essentially goes to the highest bidder, and a team of people that, the majority of which weren't even born in the same country as the team they play for.
I agree with some of the sentiment, but mate......

Winning the league, the fa cup, league cup, europa cup, champions league.... they are all fucking special. All bragging rights down the road, all great memories to the guys in the stands when they are there. All prestige for our club.

Some young whipper snapper gives me stick about our failure in the fa cup >>> kid, spurs are the only non-league team to ever win that thing, jog on. Records and history mate.

Sure there is a monopoly right now on top 4, but look at Liverpool, same could happen to Chelsea and City easily I reckon as they have far less history than the bin dippers.

Every now and then a team will beat the financial trend and achieve more, and it might be rare, but if anything it makes it even more special.
Southampton this year, didn't win the league, but boy did they do well. Say we get lucky next couple of years - with a bit more clout in a fair few areas than Southampton, that could be our 1 year.
Would it not be special?
And isn't being a spurs fan partly about having hope. I mean ... Jesus, the luck we've had... when we get to an important game, part of me is waiting to hear how half our squad has got food poisoning again lol
 
Care to elaborate? I agree though. Whenever i see people saying "Enic/Levy out, 1 trophy in 14 years isn't good enough" I can't help but think these people don't really understand the club, or football in general.


You obviously don't know the club.
1 trophy in 15 years is our worst run since the 2nd World War, but that's acceptable?

You PL balance sheet supporters do my head in, football was alive and kicking before you or the PL was thought of, yes it has changed but we haven't got owners clever enough to change with it, there have been countless missed opportunities under ENIC, and Levy's total inability to appoint the right manager has nothing to do with the trophyless run I suppose, how many times has he got to sack his own appointment before idiots like you wake up to the fact that he ain't all that.
 
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You obviously don't know the club.
1 trophy in 15 years is our worst run since the 2nd World War, but that's acceptable?

You PL balance sheet supporters do my head in, football was alive and kicking before you or the PL was thought of, yes it has changed but we haven't got owners clever enough to change with it, there have been countless missed opportunities under ENIC, and Levy's total inability to appoint the right manager has nothing to do with the trophyless run I suppose, how many times has he got to sack his own appointment before idiots like you wake up to the fact that he ain't all that.
The scale of the cost of football changed at the same time we (the club) had an economic crisis. We've now been playing catch-up for twenty years.

I fully get the point that this has been our lowest era as far as trophies go. I also feel it's short-sighted to point to that and at the same time deny the effect that increased money has had on the game. Our competition got a big head start when we were at our weakest. We're slowly catching up, but it does take time.

It's very easy to blame Levy, ENIC, Redknapp, AVB, Baldini or the tooth fairey, but no club makes no mistakes. The difference is that clubs with a lot of money can recover from mistakes faster by buying their way out of trouble. We can't do that. The alternative is to run the club at a large loss, but that means either suffering the fate of Leeds/Portsmouth or the owners swallowing the loss themselves. They're under no legal or moral obligation to do that.

The reason we're in the situation we're in isn't because of ENIC, it's due to the off-pitch rot which happened during the 80s which knee-capped us at exactly the wrong moment. That was what let the current "top 4" create some distance between us, and that is what we've been trying to overcome ever since.

I am not going to paint ENIC as perfect, they're not, but they did not come into the picture and take us backwards from a position of competitive strength.
 
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