To the fans,
As owners of 25 years, we have lived the highs and lows of Spurs with you.
Finishing 17th this and last season does not reflect the stature or potential of this football club. We are bitterly disappointed and share your frustration. You, and we, expect more than this. We know this must never happen again.
Our approach to running the Club is, and has been, to trust the experts to do that, while backing them to be successful. The problems we found were deeper than we realised and were allowed to build over the last few years. We know that has eroded trust and we have to win that back. As owners, we take ultimate responsibility for the situation in which the Club finds itself.
We also take responsibility for rebuilding Spurs. Our ambition is to recapture the spirit of the Club and bring back the excitement, the fearlessness and the bold football we have always felt defined us. That means football comes first. The Board and Executive team have laid out their plans to meet this ambition.
This will require investment – in our teams, the academy, our backroom functions and more - and we are fully committed to this. We are not selling the Club. We are all in. We are investing in it. You will see more of this in the coming months.
We care deeply about Spurs. The rebuild the Club needs, and you deserve, has begun. The change required is deep. It will take time and commitment, but change is happening.
”On my very first day, what I thought would be a realistic target for the men’s first team would be competing for European places. If you’d have asked me a few months after I joined, when I was no longer an outsider, I would have told you the club was in a significantly worse state in some places than I thought.
“That is absolutely not meant to be a criticism of anyone or anything. It was just what I found. It was very clear that this wasn’t some form of turnaround that was required of the club in quite a few areas. It was really a complete reset.
”If I had to generalise, I would say on the non-football side of the club, in particular around stadium operations and commercial, that the club was and is really strong.
”I think if you look at the football side of the club, over a timeframe of five years or so, there has just been an explosion in progress across the Premier League.
”I’m not saying that Tottenham didn’t improve in that period. But what I can tell you is that when you look at where Tottenham were in many of those areas, compared to where I believe other Premier League clubs are, there was a significant gap. In some areas really quite worryingly so.
”I don’t think that there was what I would call a relentless obsession with football success.
”Our training centre is amazing, one of the best, if not the best in the world. But when you look around, it looks more like a five-star hotel than it does a performance environment. That will change over the summer.
“I think there are many areas where the club hasn’t got the right level of expertise.”
”Obviously, we were very disappointed when it became clear that we wouldn’t be appointing Roberto on a permanent basis [in February]. We were then in the interim market, which is generally not the broadest. There were a number of reasons why Igor was selected: he had managed in very high-profile and high-pressure environments - we didn’t want somebody that was going to wilt under that pressure.
”He has a history of making an immediate impact. He has managed in big clubs. He has quite a different personality to Thomas and we felt like something different was needed.
”But of course we were really aware he had no Premier League experience. Was it a risk in appointing him? Absolutely.
“It didn’t work out. I think it’s very clear it didn’t work out. And I don’t think that is in question. I don’t think anybody would argue anything else.”
”I understand the frustration around supporters. I think Tottenham supporters have been frustrated for some time. This is two 17th-place finishes in a row. It’s clearly not good enough. I think that is rational, normal, sensible, and, is what we would expect from supporters.
”The club had some serious challenges that it needs to address on the football side. We know what those are. We are addressing them. We are fixing them. Those challenges have not disappeared overnight. They built up over many years. I wish I could wave my magic wand and fix them overnight, but that is not possible. It takes some time to fix those issues.
“So I have complete confidence in what we’re doing, how we’re doing it. But supporters are rightly impatient. So I have to weather that storm.”