Last month, Tottenham Hotspur’s chief executive, Vinai Venkatesham, effectively laid the blame for the club’s plight squarely at the door of former executive chairman Daniel Levy.
In a meeting with the club’s Fan Advisory Board (FAB) in early March, Venkatesham revealed that an internal review had highlighted a catalogue of failings during the Levy era, including “insufficient focus… on on-pitch success”; “a wage structure and player transaction approach that had impacted competitiveness in the transfer market”; a squad “lacking quality, experience and leadership”; and “an internal culture requiring improvement”.
The message from Venkatesham, who is the closest thing to a direct Levy replacement in the club’s current hierarchy, was clear. Like a new government blaming the country’s decline on the previous administration, Venkatesham felt he had inherited a mess that he and his colleagues were now working to clean up. (This political analogy does not quite work because, with or without Levy, ENIC is still the club’s majority owner, even if the individuals involved have rebranded to ‘the Lewis family’.)
For his part, it is easy to imagine that Levy — now removed from the day-to-day melodrama at Spurs — might believe he has been proven right in spectacularly quick time. In his final interview at Spurs — released in early August, a month before he was sacked by the Lewis family — Levy told Gary Neville on The Overlap: “When I’m not here, I’m sure I’ll get the credit.”
So, is Venkatesham right that Levy’s failings are the reason for the club’s historically bad campaign, or has Levy been vindicated in his claim that supporters would miss him?
It is a complex question, but the worse Spurs’ season gets, the more fans are wondering about Levy’s legacy, as well as the short-term impact of his stunning sacking in September.
Assessing Levy’s culpability for Tottenham’s demise should not be confused with wondering if this year may have turned out differently if he had remained in post. To address the latter, there is a compelling case that Spurs would not be in the bottom three with six league games to play with Levy still in charge.
Perhaps the single biggest mistake made by the club’s current decision-makers — namely Venkatesham and sporting director Johan Lange — was failing to dismiss Thomas Frank as head coach sooner. It was apparent to many observers by the end of November, during which Spurs had lost to rivals Chelsea and Arsenal in the meekest fashion imaginable, that Frank’s time as manager needed to end.
It was increasingly obvious by mid-December, when Spurs suffered the first of two 3-0 thrashings by Nottingham Forest this season, and by January it was completely unavoidable. Frank, though, was not sacked by Venkatesham and Lange until February 11, having been allowed to preside over the winter transfer window (a disaster) and eight straight league games without a win, which set Spurs on course for a relegation battle.
No doubt about it, Levy would have acted sooner, not least because the ire of supporters would so obviously have been directed at him. In Levy’s absence, Frank acted as the lightning rod for supporter dissatisfaction and a useful shield for Vivienne and Charles Lewis, Nick Beucher (all three of whom many Spurs fans would struggle to recognise in the street), and Venkatesham.
Had Levy still been in place, he would inevitably have been the object of fans’ fury. It is not hard to imagine more protests on the High Road and the majority of the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium united in strains of ‘We want Levy out’ as Frank’s side slumped to one of their many grim home results over the winter.
Had Levy been able to sack Frank after, say, the defeat at Forest on December 14, there would still have been ample time for Spurs to save — or at least stabilise — their season. They could have pipped Manchester United to the appointment of Michael Carrick as a try-before-you-buy option until the end of the campaign.
Even if Levy had listened to his ally Fabio Paratici, the club’s former co-sporting director with Lange, and moved for Igor Tudor before the turn of the year, there might have been time for the Croatian’s hardline approach to make a positive impact on the squad. Venkatesham and Lange did not turn to Tudor as a replacement for Frank until February 14, after Paratici had left the club and when Spurs were firmly entrenched in a doom loop.
For all his shortcomings — and more on them shortly — Levy was rarely slow to dismiss a coach if the fans had turned and the situation was becoming ugly, and he would surely not have been frozen with indecision in the same way as Venkatesham and Lange as results hurtled south under Frank.
That is not to say that Spurs would have enjoyed a successful season under Levy — they would still have had a limited squad, an unsuitable coach, and injuries to James Maddison and Dejan Kulusevski — but there’s good reason to think it might have been miserable and underwhelming, rather than catastrophic.
However, acknowledging that Levy is unlikely to have allowed the current season to become so dire should do nothing to decrease his share of the blame for Spurs’ predicament. In fact, there is a case that Levy remains the single most culpable individual for the mess that Spurs find themselves in – even if their worst campaign in decades has not happened on his watch.
If they are to be relegated for the first time since 1977, it will have been Levy’s decisions which set the direction of travel for one of the biggest underperformances in the history of the English top flight.
The thin and imbalanced squad inherited by Frank, Levy’s 13th and final permanent managerial appointment, was assembled on Levy’s watch, the result of years of hubris and corner-cutting in the market, and the former chairman’s habit of lurching between strategies, styles and personnel.
The “culture in need of improvement”, identified by Venkatesham’s review and so many of Spurs’ previous managers, was surely set from the top down by Levy, who always appeared more interested in the business side of the club than the football.
For all the transformative work Levy did to elevate Spurs financially, the club has been in sharp decline since at least 2019, and there are myriad decisions and strategies — from sacking Mauricio Pochettino to wasting generational talent Harry Kane — that all come back to him.
Levy’s leaves an impressive bricks-and-mortar legacy in the form of the stadium and training ground but he also laid the foundations for what has happened on the pitch this term – even if his successors will thank him for the relegation clauses inserted into most players’ contracts, should Spurs go down.
Venkatesham’s assessment to the FAB last month was short on accountability for the current decision-makers, including himself, but was actually an insightful summary of the club’s historic failings, in line with what many supporters have been saying for years.
Sources close to Levy, who preferred to remain anonymous, declined to comment when contacted for this column but pointed out that Levy was constantly restricted in his running of the club by ENIC.
And Lewises do deserve a significant share of the blame, too. While they have tried to present themselves as a fresh start, ENIC allowed Levy to run the club as he wanted for nearly a quarter of a century, tacitly or directly approving his every decision.
For his part Venkatesham has done precious little to correct the mistakes identified by his review since assuming control, during a season characterised by inaction, missteps and a woeful lack of leadership from the top.
As Spurs slide towards the Championship, there is therefore plenty of blame to go around.
Levy, though, arguably stands as the chief architect of Spurs’ woes, even if he is unlikely to have allowed this season to reach such a historic low.