Agreed but all turned sour in late 80's early 90's when rebuilding East stand cost double its original budget, debt reached circa £20m (when Spurs total revenue was a fraction of that, top players like Linkeker cost under £1.5m) a vast sum at the time. Things so dire Scholar (then Chairman) tried to sell Spurs to Robert Maxwell (later stole zillions from pension funds before dying) and only rescued from Maxwell by Sugar buying us.
Scholar turned a relatively wealthy club into a club with high debts through poor management, failed diversification into sports clothing etc.
Problem was the debts didn't change, no sugar daddies around, so Sugar sold off any assets he could and cut costs where possible so as to pay down debt.
Footballwise we had an excellent manager in David Pleat until 1987 followed by Terry Venables, another excellent manager both of whom put together very good teams with top players and came close to silverware (close to title in 1987, won FA Cup 1991), but Venables tenure ran in parallel with Sugar's cost cutting.
From the time Venables left Spurs (circa 1993) and rest of 90's we had squads with a few 'stars' (eg Sherringham) but much of the team were of lower quality - there just wasn't the money to buy quality players throughout the team - but for example in 1994 we brought in Klinsman, Dumitrescu and Popescu when we already had Sherringham and Anderton.
But the teams were not finishing high up the table and this coincided with the start of PL where finishing high up the table and playing in europe brought in large sums of money.
So Spurs were in the position where we had 'so so squads' needing more quality but not having the money to buy them in during the more money orientated PL. And the squad simply deteriorated over the 90's as the best players moved on or retired and there wasn't the money to bring in the good players.
The hard times really came into focus under manager Christian Gross in about 1997 with Spurs toying with relegation - and a few years when getting over 40 points was the season objective. .
The league positions reflect where we were :
1996/97 - 10th
1997/98 - 14th
1998/99 - 11th (but League Cup winner)
1999/00 - 10th
2000/01 - 12th
2001/02 - 9th (Sugar sells 27% of Spurs to ENIC, Levy becomes Chairman)
2002/03 - 10th
2003/04 - 14th
2004/05 - 9th
2005/06 - 5th (start of Spurs turnround under Martin Jol, and 'Lasagne gate')
2006/07 - 5th (Sugar sells rest of his shares to ENIC who them have majority control of Spurs)
So for a decade in the 90's through into about 2004 Spurs league position was much closer to what we now would associate with the likes of Crystal Palace or Fulham and reflects the quality of squad we had at that time. And to be clear, league position and europe determined most of the money received by clubs and cups generated very little - very different to pre PL times when winning cups generated decent money.
The start of the PL also started an era when match crowds increased and match day revenues increased - but Spurs missed out having a relatively small stadium of 36k capacity.
So by the time enic took majority ownership of Spurs
- the squad was in a poor way, but improving from 2004 onwards when our first Sporting Director, Frank Arnesen shredded the squad and brought in over 20 players for first team and u21's, lots of duds but also a handful of gems. Sadly Abramovich poached Arnesen a year later.
- A stadium not generating money and requiring replacement
- Very little assets left inside Spurs
- Low profitability and cash generation = very limited ability to buy good players.
- Spurs were firmly embedded in bottom half of the table, past glories many years in the past
So that's where Levy/enic started - with Spurs in a very bad place..
Taken 20 years to get to where we are partly poor choices (eg of managers), certainly Haringey council politics screwed the stadium development by a decade, Oil money and state money (including Russia financed Abramovich) buying PL clubs vastly increased the cost of doing business, covid intervening for 3 years just as the stadium opened and other outside changes being some of the reasons.
Could Levy have done things better or more quickly - quite possibly. But Hicks and Gilette screwed up Liverpool for years, and Glazers have been doing the same to ManU - both saddling their clubs with huge debts without improving the clubs fortunes - and Ashley trashed Newcastle etc, so we'd have been a lot worse with many other owners.
