Bit of a difference in cashing in on a player who wanted to go and as a club being used as a PR process. We will not have a perfect outcome or a perfect world but can we not at least try to have some fucking soul? Trust me Levy isn’t perfect, made plenty of mistakes, I’ve been as fucked of as anyone with him, but all in all I think he has had the best interests of our club as well ash is own business side at the forefront. I don’t expect everyone to agree but people outride slagging ENIC off seem not to see what has happened other clubs who were on our level around 15 years ago.
Agree with a lot of what you are saying.
Critically though I do not believe Levy has THFC’s interests on equal standing to ENIC’s and I am utterly sick of their ownership and champion change. Not that we will get it anytime soon.
I feel the football club has been used to support the wider aims of ENIC. To a degree we have benefited and to a degree we have suffered, but on field success only seems necessary to an extent.
For me, a crucial difference between our clubs owners and other owners has been that their ownership of our club seems to have facilitated them in their major land deals obtained at preferred rates for our owners, at other clubs that’s not, it seems, been the principle aim, with perhaps the exception of West Ham
In our case success on the pitch has resulted in funds from the football side of the business being used for wider non football transactions and that is understandable, but also annoying as winning or seriously looking like your trying to win seems to have been unnecessary.
My fear going forward is that the football club is of much less value then the property / land / stadium income then there would be little to no point in major investment. For example Premier League survival results in ( I think ) 80 million a year, so what does a championship win bring ? Double that maybe but it would require 5 x more investment, so what’s the incentive if your Levy ?
Makes much more sense to try to finish 4th on as tight a budget as possible. That’s the economic argument and why I often feel the brakes were applied when we are / were so close.....
As for where we were 15 years ago, yep I see your point, but where we were when ENIC took over in 2000 was mid table. I would not bet against being in the same situation when they leave and in 19 years, 1 trophy is awful for a club of our standing. And let’s not lose sight of what we became under them ( and Sugar also ) a bit of a joke in the wider scheme of things. In the shadows to Chelsea, Arse etc year on year and that being sort of “accepted” and we morphed into this plucky, slightly skint club that was “punching above our weight”.
In the 19 years prior to ENIC’s arrival we won 3 FA Cups and a UEFA cup, finished in the Top 3 were considered to be one of the “big 5” and were a club who could legitimately claim to big, we were not “Doctor Tottenham” in those days with horrific records against so called “rival clubs”. We were not the club of “Lads, it’s Tottenham”
Even in the mid to late 80’s we would be signing players like Waddle, Gazza, Lineker etc - would we sign Sterling, Hazzard or Aubameyang these days ? Nope. We don’t sign anyone at times and even when we do it’s a buggers muddle far too often. We end up with Frasier Campbell on loan, Clint Dempsey, Mouthino deal breaking down, Dybala breaking down.....
Yes Sugar took us on a path to mid table, but his era lasted 9 years and delivered a trophy too.
And that’s my problem overall with ENIC. They have not really substantially improved us on the pitch so much that they deserve the continued pass on their failures, yes we look “shiny and modern” and “new” but we also have a hint of cheap and failure about us too.
And in our current crisis what’s ENIC got to say about it all? Pretty much nothing. No leadership and that’s how it’s felt for too long. Has the Chairman made us an anchor tennant in our own Stadium ( can we even say it’s ours ? ) who has the £500 million debt, ENIC or THFC - I never feel it’s clear.
I do understand it could be a lot worse and it might get worse, but consider this;
Leicester were 6 points above us when ENIC arrived...... since then Leicester have won the league and are still above us, by around similar margins and 19 years have passed.
