‘Daniel Levy, after all this time, still does not appreciate the culture of Tottenham’
Tottenham Hotspur author, football industry insider and former Premier League mastermind Alex Fynn on Enic and Daniel Levy’s mixed record, prospects of a sale and his new book.
Even by Premier League standards, the relationship between Tottenham Hotspur supporters and the club’s owners is a complicated one. In 22 years, Enic Group has turned Spurs into one of the sport’s financial powerhouses, with a stadium and training ground the envy of world football. On the other hand, on-field success has remained elusive, gleaning just one trophy — the League Cup — and that was 15 years ago.
Few people can talk about Tottenham’s history and the development of modern football better than Alex Fynn. The former Saatchi & Saatchi executive worked for the club under former chairman Irving Scholar, helping to create the first advertising campaign for an English football club and then devising the blueprint for what would become the Premier League. As a consultant to the Football Association, Fynn later persuaded the FA to back the breakaway, changing the landscape of the game irrevocably.
Fynn’s inside knowledge informed the acclaimed 1996 book on Tottenham ‘Dream On: A Year in the Life of a Premier League Club’, which he co-authored. This year he co-wrote a follow-up, the equally insightful ‘Still Dreaming: Another Year in the Life of a Premier League Club’, which delivers a frank assessment on the role of Enic and Spurs chairman Daniel Levy in Spurs’ evolution.
In Fynn’s opinion, Tottenham’s mixed fortunes and managerial missteps derive in part from being too quick to cut ties with important figures from their more glorious past.
“From the start of the 80s, they went to Wembley seven times, they won the FA Cup a couple of times, they won the League Cup, they won the Uefa Cup – they were a successful team. Since then, Tottenham have been marking time,” Fynn tells City A.M.
“So we’ve got these Tottenham legends, people like Pat Jennings, Martin Chivers, Gary Mabbutt. And whilst they are still working for the club in one capacity or another, they have been marginalised, to people like Jermaine Defoe and Michael Dawson.
“Why? Because of youth, and because I think Daniel Levy still, after all this time, does not really appreciate the culture of Tottenham. If he had done, how could he have appointed [Jose] Mourinho? How could he have appointed Nuno Espirito Santo? And then how could he have appointed Antonio Conte?”
A common accusation levelled at Enic and Levy, who has since conceded Mourinho and Conte were “mistakes”, is that they are more concerned with balance sheets than league tables.
Critics point to their reticence to commit big transfer fees despite being the most profitable club in the Premier League era. The owners would argue that sound financial management, including deals to stage regular American football games and a Formula 1 themed attraction at their stadium, has given them an adequate platform to compete.
“Levy has said, ‘I’m a fan first and an investor second’. I don’t believe that,” Fynn says. “I believe it is an investment. And you’ve only got to look at what is happening today. I think their definition is not of a football club, but of a sporting empire, of which they want an NFL franchise to be at the heart of it. I think their heart is in trying to make it a sporting empire and then selling it.”
Enic’s ownership appeared to be plunged into uncertainty in July when its founder, British billionaire Joe Lewis, was arrested in the US on charges of “orchestrating a brazen insider trading scheme”. The transfer of Lewis’s majority stake in Enic to a trust belonging to his family in 2022, however, means that Tottenham are unaffected, the club have said. Fynn does not believe the legal proceedings will hasten a mooted sale of Spurs.
“He [Lewis] is a man in his mid-80s. He knew that he’d have to find some form of succession. And his daughter Vivienne is much more apparent at Tottenham. So they did create a trust, of which Tottenham is a part. And his daughter is a key player in that trust. He was always an absentee landlord and Daniel Levy was the man who was running Tottenham. So the situation hasn’t really changed.”
Spurs remain open to offers, however, as Levy himself told Bloomberg in September, altough he stressed that he was not seeking an exit. It came a few months after Qatari sources said its Paris Saint-Germain-owning sport investment fund, QSI, had discussed a minority investment with Levy. Tottenham denied the talks. Interest in football acquisitions is booming, meanwhile, with Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s proposed investment in Manchester United valuing the club at more than £5bn.
“I think Tottenham are prepared to sell at the right price. And their price is upwards of £4bn,” Fynn says. “When you look at Manchester United, Tottenham are in a better shape in some ways. They’ve got a better stadium, they’ve got a better team. They’re earning more money on a matchday basis, although United because of their head start are still the bigger club.”
Whether Tottenham’s boardroom reflects the club’s historic culture may be debatable, but in the dugout new manager Ange Postecoglou has quickly struck a chord with supporters. It helped that the Australian former Celtic boss began with a table-topping 10-game unbeaten run, but even though Spurs have now lost three in a row, a degree of optimism reigns in N17 again.
“They were very fortunate to get Postecoglou. And what has he done? He has won over the crowd in next to no time by just representing his values, which coincidentally are Spurs’ heritage and tradition, for the first time since maybe early [Mauricio] Pochettino,” says Fynn.
While off-field scepticism lingers, could Postecoglou be the man to end the silverware drought on-field? League Cup hopes have already been extinguished and talk of a Premier League title challenge is fading by the week, but Fynn believes that history shows a first trophy, however minor, can give a team a taste that carries them far.
“Brian Clough won the European Cup with Nottingham Forest two years running. His success started by winning this minor trophy [Anglo Scottish Cup], and the players and the club getting accustomed to what winning a trophy was all about,” he says.
“And I think it’s a great pity that they [Spurs] are out of the League Cup. I think that there’s still a chance in the FA Cup, particularly because the other clubs are playing in Europe.”
‘Still Dreaming: Another Year in the Life of a Premier League Club’ by Alex Fynn and Martin Cloake is published by Hawksmoor Publishing.
