The Levy/ENIC debate rages, brilliant analagy SP


THE LEVY AND ENIC DEBATE RAGES


It is a passionate subject, we are all passionate about our Spurs and we all, I assume, want a hole stack of trophies, which is what we are trying to grow the club and squad for. fans need to loom beyond the current season in my view and see the bigger picture, this season is just a part of that bigger picture.

BabsYid on Twitter tells me she has been waiting 40 years to see trophies, I am fortunate enough to have enjoyed our successes from 1967 onwards. Within 20 yars football had turned into a business and the advent of the Premier League saw money really take over. The days when anyone could win were gone, it has happened once since 1991, Leicester City and the FA Cup has gone to sides with more money than us.

Money = trophies, thus we must have more money. We'll only get that by growing, which we have been doing since Daniel Levy arrived with sound business practices. We lost a final, lost an FA Cup semi-final and have challenged for two Premier League titles in 3 years, we are clearly improving as a team and that improvement will continue.

we are not suddenly going to abandon what has brought us here to gamble by paying wages we can't afford to pay. That isn't penny pinching, it is sound business management, our percentage wages to income ratio is in line with UEFA guidelines. Increasing that ratio places other areas of the business at risk. A failure to qualify for the UEFA Champions League for two seasons would seriously damage our income which would mean us having to cut costs, which means sell our best players.

The game is littered with clubs who have tried this at various levels such as clubs paying unsustainable wages to try to stay in the Premier League. The Wigan chairman admitted this and they are now in League One, they haven't recovered from it yet. Wigan are held up as winning a trophy, great, where are they now!

That isn't the model for us to follow. Newcastle United, Aston Villa, two clubs who have not grown with us, Villa finished above us when Levy joined, where are the two clubs now? Which one has been better managed, which one is more likely to win a Premier League title or an FA Cup or indeed qualify for the UEFA Champions League, you have to be in it to win it.

Enough from me for the moment, let's bring in the contributors form the previous article where an anti-Levy driven supporter suggested we should spend more in wages than we actually get in in revenue.

Anti-Levy Logic

P.S. I would draw your attention to the SP SP analogy, explains the situation very well. remember 49/50 trophies won by clubs with more money than us, money = trophies, so we need to earn more money.

P.P.S. A huge thanks to Joe Smith, make sure you read his levy pro-con comments. This is exactly the sort of well thought out argument that we rarely see. I have been calling for years for someone to give me a plan of the way forward without ENIC or Levy, to tell me exactly what their vision to run our club is, but nobody has come up with anything, so I'll ask once again, who is going to buy us and what should they do.

Joe Smith and SP SP would jointly get my top post ratings for their comments.

Right, on to the comments from the article spend more in wages than we actually get in in revenue article. Take a read and then let's hear your view.

Absolutely amazing. Is this guy really Gordon Brown in disguise? Spend, spend, spend and then discover that it was just an artificially sustained, longer boom followed by an enormous bust.

Does this contributor remember Peter Risdale? Or maybe voidhelix99 was his financial adviser back in the days when Leeds United were in the Champions League and ended up in today's League 1?

There is only one common sense conclusion to this person's post.... this person is actually an Arsenal supporter who is posing as the supporter of a superior club, the demand that we spend more than the club can earn can only come from someone that hates our club!

Levi is a finance whizz, Sugar got us out of the red, after a board of crooks, along side Scholar bled the club dry unfortunately his sidekick elTel was also caught with fingers in the till.
We are now at a different level because of Levi and his astute business wheeling and dealing.
What he's achieved with a maximum gate of 36,000 ( that's the same as Villa, Leeds and some other struggling sides) is amazing.
The down side is until we get every thing in order it's inevitable we occasionally have to cash in on players.
We have a state of the art training ground, one of the best stadiums in Europe under construction and a young ambitious manager with a gift of improving players.
The futures bright the futures Tottenham.

SPOT ON ROY MOST DONT REMEMBER HOW CLOSE WE CAME TO THE MIDLAND BANK SHUTTING US DOWN

good one Ron, I have been using the Scholar/terrible turks saga as an example when I speak with spurs fans who just want to crucify Levy about his business methods. This club was a fag paper away from liquidation back then, before Sugar took over and stabilised our club. He sold Thfc onto Lewis/Levy knowing they would continue the good work while also improving the club. To many short term memories among some spurs fans unfortunately. Football is no longer a sport it is a FULL TIME BUSINESS, and we have the businessmen for the job and long may it continue. But human nature being what it is, common sense will not convince those fans intent on a hate vendetta against our chairman and board. Fortunately they are a minority, and long may that continue also.

All absolutely correct, I lived through those years. But they will just literally never understand.

I had one the other day making the traditional complaint that he should just stop being a tight-arse and pay a bit more to get a deal over the line a bit earlier. So I broke it down for him, using a hypothetical situation. If Spurs sold five players a season and Levy accepted a million less per player "just to get the deal over the line" that would be a £5 million deficit. If, at the sand time five players were bought and Levy paid an extra million "just to get the deal over the line" that would be another £5million defecit. Put together that is a £10 million drfevit for the season. Or £50 million over five years, £100 million over ten years. So the club that is run via revenues generated, the best run club in the division, all of a sudden has a £100 million debt. And his response? "You talk rubbish, eff-off" 😂

Just to put this into perspective, I can remember Spurs fans blaming Levy for the whole Berbatov debacle and saying he should have just accepted United's deliberately low-ball bid at the start of the summer - that was made that way to deliberately unsettle Berbatov so he would sulk his way out of Spurs for considerably less than market value. The difference between United's opening low-ball offer and the eventual price ? £11 million - ELEVEN MILLION POUNDS. They said exactly the same about the Modric deal, should have accepted original offer just to get deal done and have more time for replacements. The difference this time was £6 million - SIX MILLION POUNDS. That is a £17 million loss to the club that is only the sixth best financed club in the league and run on revenues it generates. But they can't see anything incongruous in this because they have accepted the media myth of Levy and really do just believe all the money made from transfers is being leached directly into the pockets of Levy and Lewis. They will not or cannot understand the model, as explained below, whereby ENIC will make a profit by selling the club. They believe that £17 million, and any other defecits resulting from their ludicrous notion of player trading "just to get it over the line", is just money going straight into Levy and Lewis's pockets. The reality is, this is money that is being used to run and improve the club - and that improvement is evident. But they will not see that, either, because they just t fall back on the complaint that we "haven't won anything. It is round and round in circles and banging your head against a brick wall.

And a wage structure that has to controlled


Abramovich era kid. If we pay one player £250k, Then H, Dele, Toby, Hugo, will all gently tap the managers door with a question or two. £850 million grounds tend to pay for themselves after 6 months too. Yes, he owns part of the club, and until the latest ticket debacle, I think almost everything he has done for the club has been in it's best interests (Stubhub apart, although I get the reasoning). I am one on the waiting list who refused to be blackmailed into a season ticket. I feel that the pricing is now ridiculous. Even US fans with the money have bought seats that they have no intention of using. Wembley will be like a funeral, and as for the new ground, it will be Olympic stadium 2. I sat next to proper more Spursy dickheads than you, at the Finale, and the new fans, some of which have never even attended a game, will kill the atmosphere. I predict fighting amongst each other, and all sorts of issues. 18450 additional season tickets, that took the entire 60000 waiting list to sell. You got the money, you get yourself in. No appreciation of loyalty, time spent on list, or who actually goes to games. Got the cash, welcome aboard. My kids joined last year, so i could take them to the Gillingham game before she got knocked down, they were number 53K. Now 43k, and offered tickets. Any member joining a week before the cut off date could grab season tickets. Money, greed, pure and simple. Lost me and many others now. The amount of income relating to tickets is hardly anything in comparison to TV and prize money. Take care of the fans first, without us, your product is dead. Income up 40 - 50m in one season, still gotta screw the supporters. Daniel Levy could have left behind a legacy. Instead, he will be remembered as the greedy cunt who destroyed the soul of the club. Gonna be Emirates Library Mk II. But fuck, we still in budget. The amount of people who have taken out tickets have no real idea of the commitment, and the prices will be extortionate. In 4 years, there will be no waiting list, and tickets dumped on the exchange en masse. Levy had a chance to do the right thing, create an incredible futuristic ground with an unbelievable atmosphere. Unfortunately, he misread the situation, and went in guns blazing after massive money from the fans, who are not prepared to pay it. Big mistake I think, but time will tell. I certainly have zero intention of attending Wembley, or the new ground now. Maybe it would be best left as I remember it, when football mattered a bit, and all that mattered was a proper good day out, win lose or draw, getting behind the team, and cheering on the boys from The Park Lane. Yesteryear now.

Levys only interest is increasing profit for himself Lewis and Enic.

Levy Apologists will make any excuses to protect him for not spending.

Constantly announcing profits, new sponsorship deals improved TV and Competition money yet basically nothing put back into the team.

Levy has seen the profit to be made in the Prem and has used Spurs as a cash cow. Now the new Stadium is just a larger money making vessel for him to get his grubby little fingers on.

Howe many of these Apologists cheer the fact were ran on a shoe string budget? If that's your barometer thenot ito understandable you don't care about not winning trophies and being fleeced at the same time.

When will you people understand? How many times does this need to be explained?

Levy and Lewis invest in assets, use the revenues generated by that asset to improve that asset and then sell the asset for more than they paid for it. It's simple, really. They aren't bleeding anything out of the club because all of the revenues generated by the club are going back into the club. I will give you an analogy, it may help to make you see the truth. A restauranteur buys a run-down, cockroach invested, failing dive of a restaurant for £200,000, uses only any money generated by the restaurant, turns it into a Michelin 3 star establishment via the application of his nous, skill and hard work, and sells it for £20 million. Not a single penny that it generates leaves the restaurant into the pockets of the restauranteur. Can you see how the restaurant has been massively improved? Can you see how the restaurant has had all of the money it generated reinvested back into the restaurant to facilitate that improvement? Can you understand that the restauranteur has used his nous, skill and hard work along with the revenues generated by the restaurant, to vastly increase the value of the restaurant? And, finally, can you see how the restauranteur has turned £200,000 into £20 million without actually taking any money generated by the restaurant out of it?

That is what ENIC are doing with Spurs. They aren't leaching money out of the club. They bought the club and will make their money if/when they sell it for more than they paid for it. It really is that simple.

Frankly, if folk just tried looking at it rationally they would see how ludicrous it is. Tottenham is the sixth biggest club in England going by revenues generated. In the last eight seasons they have finished fifth or higher in all but one season, a sixth placed finish after losing Bale, trying to crow-bar six new overseas players into the first team, while AVB lost interest and focus and then Sherwood happened. That is one season at par and seven seasons above par. Three fifth place finishes, two fourth place finishes, a third place finish and a second place finish. Four top four finishes. All against clubs with much greater resources. And things are getting better and not worse. Frankly, if they could improve performances to that degree and be leaching money out of the club it would be a minor miracle. I would consider asking them to manage my personal finances even knowing they were going to leach money out of it, if they were going to improve the returns so dramatically 😂 The constant sniping, complaints, whingeing, moaning and accusations just literally don't make any sense at all.

i would sooner have the club at the end of the day keeping its head above water playing good football and trying not buying a cup or league with here today gone tomorrow money grabbers

More psychobabble from the great unwashed again.
Show us the data to support your claims?
If you bothered to look at this link (Clive referred to it in his post on our lack of European TV revenue) http://swissramble.blogspot.fr/ you will see financial data on all the EPL clubs, none of whom make the great profits that you would appear to think are available.
No, the basis of your argument, I suspect, is that you feel Joe Lewis should be acting as a ‘sugar daddy’ and simply plow his personal wealth back into THFC.
Well that ain’t going to happen although it would not surprise me if JL has had to guarantee a portion of those bank loans given their size and relative paucity of our current turnover.
The continuous unsubstantiated bleatings of you and your ilk are quite frankly boring so, why don’t you piss off to ‘Harry Hotspur’ where you can wallow contentedly in ignorance.

I think it is critical to differentiate between Daniel Levy's involvement with ENIC as opposed to Joe Lewis's. As far as I am aware Daniel has a 15% stake in ENIC, which makes him very much the junior partner and as such and in his capacity as chairman of THFC, merely the executor of Lewis's master plan for his investment vehicle (ENIC) and for the club (THFC).

By extrapolation therefore, it can be postulated that Levy does not set financial policy for the club nor indeed determine the long term strategic goals of ENIC, or THFC. He merely executes, to the best of his ability, the responsibilities entrusted to him by Joe Lewis.

Given this rather more narrow remit and the exact scope of his responsibilities, I think that Daniel has done a very astute job as chairman and the figures bear that out. THFC have consistently had the 6th largest income stream and profit margin of clubs in the EPL over the past 5 years and the 6th largest wage bill. Yet, we have punched above our weight performance wise continually over that time period. During which time we have also had the lowest net spend in the whole of the EPL and actually, a substantial (60 million profit) from transfer dealings. All those combined statistics would point to the fact that DL is the most financially astute chairman in the EPL. So far so good.

What however I do not accept and where I believe we have failed to capitalise on Levy's's astute financial management, lies in the failure of Lewis, as owner, to show any real ambition towards actually winning trophies.

To wit: The 60 million GBP profit, accrued from DL's astute transfer dealings, could easily have been parlayed into a couple of world class signings, at anytime in the last 5 years, which would have genuinely increased our chances of winning some silverware.

Lewis himself, if he had harboured genuine ambitions of playing success, rather than purely focusing on investment return, could have invested a small percentage of his 4.5 billion GBP fortune, say 100 million pounds, into a further couple of genuinely world class signings that could have propelled this team toward title glory.

This he has failed to do and once again, in this transfer window, we appear to be content merely to bank profits and maintain our financial 'status quo' rather than showing real ambition to improve on the playing front and close the gap on Chelsea.

In summary I would defend Daniel Levy, especially from the bile laden bletherings of intemperate sociopaths like 'Harry Hotspur'. I like him and think he has done an excellent job for THFC.

I am much less enamoured however with Joe Lewis's role in ENIC and what I perceive to be the use of our club merely as an investment vehicle to facillitate profits for ENIC and its shareholders, with scant regard for the ambition of the club and it's supporters for success on the field. The two are NOT mutually exclusive concepts.

Thank you, a sensible reasoned argument that I can appreciate and applaud. My only point would be that you have forgotten the effect of paying these superstars their wages. Everyone else would then have wanted wages increases and our revenue couldn't sustain that. Once you have increased everyone's wages, a lack of success means Joe Lewis has to keep propping it up or we have to sell our assets (the players) and try to financially recover.
Once again, thanks for the time and trouble taken to give us your take on the situation.

Excellent post Joe but I need to defend JL somewhat and here’s my first line of that defense…
http://www.tavistock.com/about/
Take a look at ‘Investment Criteria’…
So, when the great unwashed jump on their bandwagons they fail to realise that ENIC is simply a subsidiary of Tavistock, created from the sale of other investments I might add, to support the ownership of THFC and, more probably to comply with the UEFA ownership rules and ease UK (sic Inland Revenue) reporting procedures.
My point is thus; we are not dealing with an individual ’sugar daddy’ here. Behind THFC there is a group of private investors whose capital is tied up in a myriad of projects and investments which is a very different situation from your ‘average sheik’ who simply sits on his arse and whose income is tied solely to the price of oil.
So what this means is that when the Forbes Rich List states that JL is worth $4.5b that doesn’t necessarily mean that he can LEND ENIC $250m per annum to buy overrated, overpaid football players.

you got that in one

A well made point Hibbemi and a helpful elucidation as to the corporate investment structure behind THFC.

As a professional investor and money manager I can fully appreciate that the principal tenet of prudent investment or money management is mitigation of risk, as opposed to pursuit of profit.

I also understand, as a corporate investor, given the myriad of individual private investors and/or private corporate entities investing in ENIC/Tavistock, that Lewis has a fiduciary duty to said investors and additionally is governed by certain financial rules and stipulations regarding corporate investment protocol.

From a conservative investment standpoint, I can fully appreciate that Joe Lewis has done and is continuing to do a very sound job of financial stewardship in discharging his fiduciary duty as the 'de facto' owner of THFC. Peter Ridsdale he is not! I also fully understand that he is not an individual 'sugar daddy', a la Roman Abramovich, or the oil sheik who owns Man City.

Notwithstanding the above however, I would contend that an EPL football club or indeed certain other major sporting 'franchises', to incorporate the American sports ownership model, are a unique form of business investment which don't wholly conform to all the traditional business/investment metrics with which Lewis may have been involved in the past.

To wit, there is no doubt that success on the field of play, as a football club, has a direct effect on both corporate advertising revenues and the attraction of new global support, with its attendant merchandising potential. The greater the success the more exponential the growth, as the recent success of two inherently smaller clubs than THFC, Chelsea and City, have demonstrated.

By extrapolation therefore, a greater investment in the on-field success of the team, would see a further exponential growth in corporate revenues and an increasingly high global profile for the club, which from ENIC/Tavistock's perspective would significantly increase shareholder value. The old principle of 'speculate to accumulate'.

In summation, I would have liked to have seen a rather more aggressive approach to on-field success, which I believe would have been and still is entirely possible, without jeopardising ENIC's prudent business management model or its financial and fiscal integrity.

So what is your view?

COYS

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