‘We need to win the league. We want to win the Premier League, we want to win the Champions League.’
It was easy – and fun – to mock Daniel Levy’s justification for the sacking of Ange Postecoglou after delivering the club’s first trophy in 17 years.
Yet his point wasn’t entirely ridiculous. He was right that winning the Europa League – undeniably albatross-shiftingly huge as that was for the club and the fans – couldn’t and shouldn’t be enough on its own. It had to be the start of something bigger, and the idea that Postecoglou wasn’t the man to deliver that future was a brutal but entirely justifiable conclusion.
The problem is that Levy doesn’t ever seem willing or able to turn that gimlet-eyed laser focus on himself.
Without knowing all the details, it’s impossible to know exactly what and how the Morgan Gibbs-White fiasco happened and where precisely the blame lies. But it’s impossible to avoid the very vivid idea that Daniel Levy, the king of the contract negotiation, got thoroughly played by someone.
Whether that was Gibbs-White and his camp using Spurs to drum up interest from more desirable clubs and/or strongarm Forest into handing him a vastly improved new contract that in reality gives him much more than it gives the club; they get a big short-term win and some more control over what happens next season, but it’s a contract that still amounts to not much more than a one-year extension.
Or perhaps it was Forest who have played Levy and Gibbs-White, the whiff of impropriety sending Spurs scurrying off with their tail between their legs and Gibbs-White cowed into signing a new deal to avoid anything going any further.
Who knows. But the confirmed and definite loser in the whole circus is Spurs. Spurs and Levy. And it is very, very Spursy. It is very Lads, it’s Tottenham. It is enormously the history of the Tottenham.
Barely two months after winning the trophy that was supposed to change everything, they are the banter club. Again.
The Gibbs-White fiasco would be bad enough in a summer that had gone well. This is not, currently, a summer that is going well for Spurs. A squad that won the Europa League almost despite itself and tumbled down the league in vaguely ludicrous fashion to help that cause has had only the most minor of overhaul.
Permanent deals have been confirmed for loan signings Kevin Danso and Mathys Tel, both of which are handy deals but neither of which feels transformative. The long-agreed arrival of the terrifyingly enormous Croatian child Luka Vuskovic has potential to prove a fantastic coup but one that can’t reasonably be expected to have a vast impact this season.
And then there’s Mohammed Kudus, which is a genuinely exciting bit of work if Spurs can get him back to anything like his 23/24 levels after a disappointing 24/25 in a team that was underperforming and lost its sense of self and direction. You can write your own joke here, if you like.
In similarly familiar style, Spurs have failed to move on their unwanted players with anything like the speed or financial outcome they would like. While fans might be more likely to lament Spurs’ inability or unwillingness to go around and spend like Chelsea, the more pertinent question might be why can’t they sell like Chelsea.
Levy made his ambitions very clear early this summer in both word and deed. He looks like, yet again, failing to deliver his side of the bargain.
If you need to win the league, then you need to accept what that looks like. What that involves.
To reach the end of July with something this close to the squad that finished last season one place above the relegation zone is ludicrous when six weeks earlier you set out such a lofty goal.
There is still time for Spurs to change the tone of this summer, but it feels increasingly unlikely. That giddy 24 hours when they signed Kudus and from nowhere appeared to have sealed the deal for Gibbs-White with further talk of Adam Wharton maybe to follow all feels a long, long time ago.
And the harsh reality is that Spurs aren’t just currently having the worst summer of the old Big Six, but doing it in the worst possible summer.
The golden ticket Spurs got to the Champions League from that night in Bilbao gave them the unexpected chance to spend this summer acting like a Champions League team. They looked like they were doing so for maybe one day.
This isn’t even really about Gibbs-White. That incident is just a perfectly none-more-Spurs encapsulation of them. Spurs aren’t the only club to find themselves mugged off with the rug pulled out from under them in the murky world of transfer dealings.
But they are the ones who could least afford this kind of slapstick calamity in this particular summer. Who knows what other opportunities Spurs may have missed out on while trying to sort out the Gibbs-White mess. They had been linked with Xavi Simons and Eberechi Eze, for instance, yet have now surely missed the boat on both.
Levy was right that the way to maximise the Europa League win was to make it the start of a new era. The fact the club shop instantly began selling ‘Spursy’ and ‘Lads it’s Tottenham’ merchandise is and was very funny, but it was also symbolic. Spurs had a chance to redefine and reclaim this stuff.
Levy’s ‘We need to win the Premier League’ quote is really just a less poetic and elegantly evocative version of Danny Blanchflower’s ‘echo of glory’ quote.
‘It is better to fail aiming high than to succeed aiming low. And we of Spurs have set our sights very high, so high in fact that even failure will have in it an echo of glory.’
Levy has set his sights very high. Yet his hubristic failure has only echoes of banter.