Sir Alex Ferguson famously quipped that dealing with ex-Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy was more painful than his hip replacement. Sam Allardyce, the former West Ham United manager, will know better than most what he meant by that.
Because while Ferguson was dragged into torturous negotiations over the deal which brought Dimitar Berbatov to Old Trafford – Daniel Levy forced Manchester United to part with a Premier League record fee of £30.75 million on deadline day 2009 – the man who spent nearly a quarter of a century at the helm of Tottenham Hotspur made plenty of other enemies in boardrooms up and down the land.
Take David Sullivan, for instance.
When it came to discussions regarding the potential sale of Scott Parker from West Ham United to their bitter rivals, Sullivan and Levy butted heads like two territorial stags bashing their antlers together.
That it took 14 years for another player to leave East London for the North – Mohammed Kudus followed in Parker’s footsteps this summer – speaks to what Allardyce described as a ‘fractious’ relationship between both boardrooms.
Sam Allardyce recalls West Ham United’s negotiations with Tottenham over Scott Parker
Ironically enough, ‘Big’ Sam Allardyce sold Scott Parker to West Ham from Newcastle United in the first place. They would be reunited, albeit very briefly, once Allardyce was parachuted in at Upton Park following their relegation under Avram Grant in 2011.
But if Levy thought he could convince West Ham to sell the reigning FWA Footballer of the Year on the cheap, Sullivan had other ideas.
“[Levy] rang me a couple of times when I was at West Ham, because he thought he could do a deal with me,” Allardyce says, speaking on the latest edition of the No Tippy Tappy Football podcast. “And you know the fractions between David and Daniel. Fractious, to say the least.
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“Harry [Redknapp, Spurs’ manager at the time] wanted Scott Parker.
“I said, ‘it’s simple, Harry. Absolutely simple. David said it’s £6 million, take it or leave it’. [Redknapp replied], ‘Well Sam, at his age, Daniel won’t go that far because he’s old’. I said, ‘Harry, it’s £6 million. That’s it! £6 million and he’s yours’.
“I sold him from Newcastle to West Ham for £6 million, he’s an England international, it’s £6 million! It’s not often a chairman let’s me say £6 million, but David Sullivan has!
“So, in the end, Daniel rang me! And I said, ‘it’s £6 million. We need to get rid of him but you’ll have to speak to David, and David wont budge. Probably if I told David that you’d spoken to me, he’d have put the price up to £8 million!’.”
In the end, West Ham got the sort of fee they were looking for. Parker would go on to enjoy two impressive years at Tottenham before winding down his career at another London-based outfit in Fulham.
He and the aforementioned Kudus are the only players to swap claret and blue for the white of Spurs since Michael Carrick back in 2004.
Speaking of a certain £54.5 million Ghanaian winger, Kudus opened up on his West Ham criticism recently. His second and final season at the Hammers was dominated by debates over his attitude, not to mention his less-than-stellar returns in the final third.
Even Spurs boss Thomas Frank was not too impressed by a miserly 2024/25 tally of five goals and three Premier League assists.
“Being talked about almost every day on the TV, it’s hard to deal with,” Kudus told Sports Illustrated.
“From people who don’t even know you, literally, they just watch you for maybe 90 minutes and then there’s a judgement on sometimes who you are or what you are and stuff like that, which I personally I don’t think is fair.
“I think the best people can really talk about you are the people that spend the most time with you almost every single day, you know.
“But, that’s part of the work. And we as athletes, of course, we have to deal with that. That’s why I say don’t be famous or something like that, but you can still use it to your best ability and, and have an impact on other people’s lives.”