Daniel Levy transfer disasters gibbs

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, ‘To lose one transfer target, Mr. Levy, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two on the bounce looks like carelessness.’

What does due diligence at Tottenham Hotspur look like?

First, we suffered being played by Nottingham Forest by a frankly shabby double act of Morgan Gibbs-White and his agent, who, being small-time crooks, secured their small-time prize of a bump in salary and just one more year on the player’s contract. Nothing screams commitment like adding a year to your existing deal.

However, this isn’t the first time; the wisdom of Daniel Levy has been called into question. Thanks to the diabolically timed Amazon documentary, we got to see just how confused Tanguy Ndombele was to be on the Tottenham premises at all. There had been mumblings about the boy in France being unreliable, and yet Spurs didn’t send anyone with half a brain to speak to him. He was never going to work for us or, arguably, anyone else; he was living in some parallel universe.

‘Spurs In For Gibbs-White’ then translated into ‘Spectacular Egg On-Face’.

The most embarrassing was yet to come

Then we had the perpetually on/off business with Eberechi Eze being our next signing of the summer. This tale saw, we were led to believe, Daniel Levy swooping in to personally negotiate a deal with Crystal Palace’s Steve Parrish.

This didn’t match with another piece of information that was doing the rounds, namely that Daniel Levy had (yet again) stepped back from transfer negotiations. So surely this had some truth in it, so that our beloved CEO could be perceived as daring and heroic.

Last night, the most reliable writer for The Athletic, David Ornstein, announced that Eze was off to Arsenal. Fabrizio Romano added that a medical was scheduled.

What lies ahead, now, for Daniel Levy?

It all seems to be drifting away from the man who so many credit with so much. The levels of incompetence he has delivered in various respects have finally tarnished his once clean-cut image. There are still no naming rights for the arena, Donna-Marie Cullen fell, but was she actually pushed to save Levy from greater embarrassment?

The video of Gary Neville and Mr. Levy chatting about transfer weight in beams was cringeworthy; neither man is an architectural visionary; they are simply customers of those who are. The video of Daniel chatting amiably with Vinai Venkatesham was, at best, a meaningless love-in.