It was not exactly fire and brimstone. Daniel Levy utterances do not need to be to provoke the wrath of the supporters who will march against him once again before Tottenham Hotspur host Southampton on Sunday.
In the absence of Premier League football, an extended break has left many poring over Tottenham’s financial results for the year ending 30 June 2024, full of riveting revelations about “depreciation”, “amortisation” and the “maturity of our borrowings”.
“We cannot spend what we do not have,” Levy cautioned after revealing a £26.2m loss. “We will not compromise the financial stability of this club”.
His critics are left with one interpretation – that trophies will continue to be sacrificed on the altar of fiscal responsibility. Green-eyed, they have just watched as his counterpart Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the Newcastle United chair and face of the Saudis on Tyneside, paraded the Carabao Cup around Wembley.
That sight is not one towards which any fan should aspire. Although there will be supporters who do not care who their owners are, or whether their area and football club are being used to gloss over human rights abuses.
There have long been links to a Qatari takeover, based largely on Levy’s friendship with Nasser Al-Khelaifi, the chairman of Qatar Sports Investments and president of PSG, alongside whom he sits on the board of the European Club Association. Those rumours have never translated into a concrete bid.
So how does this end? The fans who protest against Enic do so because of an admirable, lifelong commitment to wanting what they believe is best for their club. Many concede that marching is unlikely to change anything. All they can do is voice their anger at 17 years without silverware, a collapse from nearly men to nowhere men.
Many, too, accept that they do not know what a viable alternative would look like. It is not necessarily incumbent on them to say. Thanks to the new stadium, Spurs are worth in excess of £2bn and could ask for up to £3bn.
Would a new owner really be better?
Outside nation states, who exactly are the interested parties? Who is to say whether they would run the club any differently? Where are the guarantees that it would translate to success on the pitch?
For now it is all academic; there is no indication that Enic’s exit is forthcoming. While Joe Lewis remains the owner, Levy will be at the helm – only when the time arrives, part of any responsible stewardship of a club means passing the baton on to the right owners.
So imagine, for a moment, this “Owner X”. The local businessman made good, with the funds and inclination to revolutionise his boyhood side. Tottenham’s answer, perhaps, to Manchester United’s minority owner and all-round good guy, Mr Petrochemicals, ready to seize control of “football operations” with a Muskian efficiency drive that slashes hundreds of jobs.
What incentive would there be to abandon, or at least deprioritise, the 30 non-football events per year that are now taking place at the stadium?
Fans have a right to make it known that this is their church, a sanctuary spanning generations of their families. They have experienced enough Mayhem over the past 12 months before hearing it from the mouth of Lady Gaga.
It can all be dressed up in the language of footballing ambition, but barring a Europa League triumph this season is a write-off. With a dozen injuries to an already creaking squad, it could not have been any other way. That is why around 2,000 gathered before the Manchester United match on 16 February, just the fifth league game Spurs had won at home all season.
The ninth-richest club in the world have spent £700m net on players since 2019, the accounts reiterated. Nevertheless so little of the revenue goes on wages that they struggle to compete for transfer targets.
We know that people are angry. By insisting that “spending must be sustainable”, we also know that Levy’s approach is not going to change this summer, and nor will the slogans echoing from the terraces. Get out of our club. Built a business, killed a football club. Profits before glory. Our game is about glory, Levy’s game is about greed. Love Tottenham, Hate Enic.
The international break offered a quiet no-man’s land for the participants in this unhappy civil war. It descends into its latest battle with no end in sight.
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