Yes. And that was my point.
It was nearly 20 years ago. 20 years before that we were winning back to back FA cups. When it was among the most prestigious competions in club football. Followed up a couple of years later with European glory.
And that was without Daniel Levy.
So. You make my point for me. Thanks. Sammys statement of fact that we would still be a bottom half club without Levy is pure bollocks. He doesn't know that. Neither do you and neither do I
But what happened after those Cups and European glory? And how was that connected to what came after?
It's easy to point at the on-pitch results and say things were better, but the context does matter. That Scholar era looked good on pitch, but the financials were decidedly shaky as he tried to invent the PL before the rest of the league was ready for it, and Spurs paid the price.
We very nearly did to a Leeds. The structure was simply not there. And the result was that when everyone else copied the template we had set, and ran with it, we were left in the dust, essentially kneecapped by being the first ones to try it before the system was there to back it up.
Then we faced the Sugar purgatory as we essentially were on life-support before ENIC bought the club. It wasn't entirely thrilling, but they have been utterly correct that building the off-pitch support to allow for an on-pitch giant to sustainably exist was the way to go. Instead of booming and busting again (as several other clubs have done), we've slowly built ourselves from being just another football club to a part of the European elite.
I think Sammy is correct that without Levy we'd still be bottom half is correct. The only reason we are not is the slow creation of the infrastructure to make consistent European football possible. Other clubs have had bursts of investment in their squads, but they've all then had a bust as players aged or got sold and the project changed. The difference with us was that we built the bones of something bigger, and grew around them. I think we do know that, as we've seen everyone else fuck it up. We didn't, and it was because of Levy's passionless focus on the business side that we didn't.