Opinion: 10 of Daniel Levy’s most controversial moments at Tottenham

 

After 25 years as chairman, Daniel Levy has finally called time on his tenure at the helm of Tottenham Hotspur.

Over the last quarter of a century, Levy has transformed Tottenham into a global superpower off the pitch: a new, state-of-the-art 62,000-seater stadium, opened in 2019, arguably being the 63-year-old’s lasting legacy in North London, especially with the complete transformation of the local area that came with it.

But a great number of Tottenham supporters would argue that Levy has run his course. Just two major trophies in 25 years, the lowest trophy rate in the history of the club for a member of the so-called ‘Big Six’, which saw fans lose patience, with protests in abundance towards the end of his tenure despite the Europa League triumph in May.

During his time at the club, he developed a reputation for being a hard-nosed businessman, often prioritising the club as a business rather than as a genuine power on the pitch, or respecting some of the core values of the club and its supporters.

Levy is clearly a divisive figure, but let’s go through 10 of his most controversial moments in his reign as chairman in N17.

 

1.    1. Sacking Martin Jol at half-time

 

Back in 2007, Martin Jol, who had been Tottenham manager for three years and brought stability and the club’s highest Premier League finishes, was bizarrely sacked at half time of a UEFA Cup tie at home to Spanish side Getafe.

Spurs had started the league season poorly despite spending big in the summer, and rumours that Spurs were already tracking Juande Ramos – who ended up succeeding Jol as manager – did not help matters.

With Spurs losing at half-time, news broke during the game that Jol was due to be sacked, with news outlets even reporting before full-time that the decision had already been made, and sure enough, the club announced the decision at full-time.

This portrayed Levy and Spurs as dishonest and disorganised, especially when appointing Ramos as Jol’s successor shortly afterwards. Many fans felt that Levy had unnecessarily burnt bridges with the popular Jol despite him making genuine progress, signalling Levy’s cold, ruthless style.

 

2.    2. Trying to move Tottenham Hotspur to Stratford

 

Along with West Ham United, Tottenham were named as one of the two preferred bidders to take over the Olympic Stadium following the London 2012 games.

This was met with uproar by loyal supporters, with thousands of fans signing an online petition against the proposed move.

Speaking to TalkSport in an exclusive interview in early 2011, Levy iterated his strong desire to move Spurs six miles south-east to Stratford.

“I don’t want to go into too much detail here, because it’s a very complicated matter, but Stratford is where we want to go and I’m determined to do whatever it takes to get us there”, Levy said at the time.

Thankfully, that move did not materialise, with West Ham winning the rights to the ground, and Levy was forced to move to Plan B – the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Looking back now, it is incredible to think that the modern arena that Spurs now call home was treated as an afterthought by Levy at the time.

 

3.    3. Low-ball offers for players

Jack Grealish was one of many players Tottenham Hotspur failed to sign under Daniel Levy.

Levy’s reputation as a chairman who does not invest enough money in the transfer market or spend anywhere near as much as rivals on player wages, is emphasised by the constant reports of not offering clubs anywhere near enough for players – Levy was the transfer negotiator-in-chief during his tenure.

To name just a few players, Spurs reportedly missed out on numerous exciting talents over the past 25 years due to Levy’s attempts to pay less than they were worth, or to pay in instalments, most notable examples include Sergio Aguero, Joao Moutinho, Eden Hazard, Leandro Damiao and Jack Grealish.

Saido Berahino, who Spurs tried to bring to White Hart Lane following a good season at West Brom in 2015, recently shared details of Levy’s proposal to attempt to bring him to Spurs.

“Spurs’ payments were unacceptable. West Brom wanted 30 million, but Levy wanted to pay 1.5 million and the rest in instalments”, Berahino claimed on X.

However, it was another case of ‘it all worked out in the end’, as after missing out on Berahino, Levy turned his attention to a 22-year-old attacker from Bayer Leverkusen. His name? Heung-min Son.

 

4.     4. Not backing managers

 

Levy's reluctance to fully back managers frustrated his employees, especially Antonio Conte.

Levy made a name for himself for being overly cautious with transfers, rarely fully granting a manager’s requests in the transfer market. He also developed a reputation for waiting until Deadline Day to make signings when players seemed to be available for lower fees, which often backfired.

Harry Redknapp, for example, famously requested the signings of Louis Saha and Gary Cahill in January 2012 – they joined Liverpool and Chelsea respectively – but, due to leaving the deals to Deadline Day, Levy was instead forced to bring in Louis Saha and Ryan Nelsen on free transfers. Instead of getting two of the league’s best young players, Levy signed a 35- and 33-year-old to arm Redknapp for the run-in. No wonder he left at the end of the season.

A notable example of a manager’s frustration with Levy at Spurs was undoubtedly Antonio Conte’s infamous press conference in 2023, his last act as Spurs boss. While Conte was given some talent, including Rodrigo Bentancur, Dejan Kulusevski and Cristian Romero, he was denied much-needed further signings. Conte eventually publicly lashed out: “The club needs to explain the strategy. If the club wants to continue this way, they can change the manager, not the players.

“Tottenham’s story is this. Twenty years there is the owner and they never won something. Why?"

 

5.     5. No signings for 18 months

 

Jack Clarke, signed in July 2019, was Tottenham's first signing for 18 months

When Lucas Moura arrived through the doors of Hotspur Way in January 2018, little did Spurs fans know that this would be the last time they would welcome a new signing until Jack Clarke was signed from Leeds in July 2019.

A key reason for this was that the club were in the middle of the construction of a new stadium – a 1.2-billion-pound project that a substantial loan was taken out for, and the playing staff was severely neglected for over a year.

This decision taken by the board led to dire consequences for Spurs. It was partly because of this that Tottenham’s league form in 2019 was so poor and eventually led to the dismissal of popular boss Mauricio Pochettino (more on that later). Injuries to key players such as Harry Kane exposed the squad, and the lack of squad depth helped to see the team’s form decline, and many argue this was the beginning of the decline of the Pochettino era.

 

6.     6. Sacking Mauricio Pochettino

It seemed deeply unfair at the time that popular manager Mauricio Pochettino was dismissed for poor results on the pitch, when it was clear that Tottenham were crying out for new signings, but the board were busy prioritising a new stadium over the playing staff. A depleted squad, lacking depth, suffered an incredibly poor league run in 2019 – yet, miraculously, qualified for a Champions League final.

Many felt that Levy did not give Pochettino enough time to rebuild after poor domestic results in 2019 – partly due to the lack of signings – and he was sacked just five months after the Champions League final defeat to Liverpool.

The squad at the time, including the likes of Kane, Dele, Christian Eriksen and Heung-min Son, had a strong relationship with Pochettino, and the sudden dismissal of their boss and the appointment of Jose Mourinho merely 12 hours after his sacking not only made it seem like Levy had been plotting behind the scenes, fuelling accusations of disloyalty, but unsettled the players at the same time.

Additionally, supporters who enjoyed Pochettino’s philosophy saw Mourinho as the complete opposite in culture and, especially, playing style.

 

7.     7. Furloughing club staff in 2020

 

Levy's decision to furlough his staff in 2020 was among his most unpopular decisions

Premier League football was suspended in March 2020 due to the Covid-19 outbreak. Clubs faced huge revenue losses with stadiums shut and matchday income gone.

The UK government introduced a furlough scheme, where employers could put staff on leave while the state covered 80% of wages (up to £2,500 per month), and employers could top this up to ensure full pay.

At the end of March 2020, Daniel Levy and Tottenham took the decision to furlough around 550 non-playing staff, including stadium, shop, and office employees. The club said they would top up the remaining 20%, so staff weren’t financially hit. Levy himself also announced a 20% pay cut for himself and other directors during the crisis.

The controversy behind this was fuelled by critics pointing out that Spurs had just reported record revenues (£460m in 2019) and a world-class new stadium worth over £1 billion, and a wealthy Premier League club shouldn’t be taking taxpayer money meant for struggling small businesses. This also caused a player/staff pay divide – the players were still paid their full salaries, with some earning hundreds of thousands of pounds per week, while low-paid staff relied on being bailed out by the government.

 

 

8.     8. Trying to join the European Super League

 

2021 was a year where Daniel Levy took plenty of decisions that angered Tottenham Hotspur fans, none more so than trying to join the ill-fated European Super League.

Spurs were announced as one of the 12 founding clubs of the new Super League, with Levy claiming that the ESL would help ‘secure the game’s future’ and ‘provide financial stability’.

No supporters, players or staff were consulted, with Jose Mourinho sacked the same week, and Spurs were accused of hypocrisy, having joined an elite football league despite having then won just one trophy during Levy’s tenure.

The ESL was considered a money-grabbing project, and fans staged protests against the proposal. Levy eventually pulled Spurs out of the proposal after 48 hours, as did all Premier League clubs, with Levy saying ‘We regret the anxiety and upset caused by the proposal. We felt it was important to participate in the development of a possible new structure … we should have been more mindful of how it was received.’

This damaged Levy’s reputation, confirming many fans’ perception that he was very much ‘business-first’, and his role in signing Spurs up without consultation deepened mistrust between him and the fanbase.

 

9.     9. The home match with Aston Villa in May 2021

 

Not often is a single match considered as one of a chairman’s most controversial moments, and many Spurs fans may be oblivious to the facts surrounding the defeat to Aston Villa at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium as Spurs’ final home game of the 2020/21 season, but there is no greater show of fans’ discontent than the events of this game, which, from an outsider critiquing the board, was a disgrace.

This final home game took place when supporters were allowed back into stadiums following the Covid pandemic, but with a smaller attendance to allow for social distancing measures in place.

On the pitch, Spurs were in turmoil, with Mourinho dismissed the month before and rookie boss Ryan Mason was in interim charge. Memories of the ESL were raw, and the club were on their way to their worst Premier League finish since 2009.

Astonishingly, the few thousand fans allowed back into the ground were forced to take their seats in the upper tier of the stadium, to allow for advertising banners covering seats in the lower tier to take centre stage and were picked up by television cameras, instead of the symbol of the match being the return of fans to grounds after over a year.

Levy taking his seat not in the director’s box, but high up in the back row of the ground, showed that he seemed to have been hiding from supporter discontent – with chants of ‘We want Levy out’ prevalent – Levy had charged the returning supporters £60 a ticket for a match against mid-table Aston Villa. At the time, Spurs had the most expensive season tickets in Europe.

An on-pitch Spurs collapse, with Sergio Reguilon scoring a bizarre own goal, did not help matters as Spurs lost 2-1. Boos greeted the players at full-time, and fans inside the ground were confused as players did not take part in their customary end-of-season lap of honour, but rather only four players, Harry Kane (who many fans believed was pulling on a Spurs shirt for the final time as he sought a move away from the club), Dele, Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg and club captain Hugo Lloris showed any appreciation to fans.

This match was a symbol of how far Spurs had fallen over the previous few years since the Champions League final, with questionable board decisions taking centre stage.

 

10. The ongoing ticket price row

 

In March 2024, Tottenham announced a 6% increase in price in the already extortionately-priced season tickets, and planned to scrap the Seniors concessions band from the 2025/26 season.

Fans, who had already started being priced out of watching their team play, were incensed by this, especially the abolition of seniors’ prices, with many supporters rightly saying that the senior supporters deserve recognition for their many years of following the club.

Supporters organised protests against this, including turning their backs on the 65^th minute of matches, and the #SaveOurSeniors movement gathered momentum. This gained solidarity from supporters of other clubs, but Levy and Tottenham defended their decision, citing the need to manage the financial sustainability of the club, especially considering the costs associated with the new stadium and other operational expense.

This is despite the fact that fans are being priced out of watching their football team more and more as they come to terms with the modern-day inflation.