The timing, as it always seems to be with Daniel Levy’s Spurs, couldn’t be worse.
Just as we’re told that one of football’s most expensive season tickets will rise by six per cent next year, comes news that English football’s highest-paid manager has just seen his huge salary rise from £3.3 to £3.6 million.
And, get this, Levy also received a £3m bonus last year, which even my ‘O’ level calculations tell me is virtually the same amount Spurs will recoup next season by fleecing their long-suffering fans, many of which they simply cannot afford to go. not anymore. In truth, you couldn’t make up for it. In truth, it is despicable.
What exactly was that salary increase and bonus for? It was also revealed in Spurs’ financial results published on Wednesday that the club made a loss of £86.8 million last year. Did Levy get a bonus for that?
Or was it for giving that chancellor Antonio Conte £15 million a year to produce the worst football we’ve seen in years, completely denigrate the club and then plant a metaphorical bomb under the entire operation before rushing back to Italy with his loot?
Daniel Levy has seen his huge salary rise from £3.3m to £3.6m after the club reported a loss of £86.8m last year.
At the same time, Tottenham’s season ticket price will increase by six percent next season.
Levy is the highest paid administrator in English football and his decision to increase his salary is despicable
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Everything was going very well this season too. Levy, whether by luck or good judgement, finally found the right man to lead our club in the outstanding Ange Postecoglou and what he has achieved this year, regardless of our final league position, is close to a miracle.
The fans once again fully support the coach and his style of football. The whole club seems to be heading in the same direction, from the academy to a women’s team that has reached the semi-finals of the FA Cup playing the same attacking football.
So what does Levy do? He does everything he can to ruin everything again, not only with price increases but with the even more controversial decision to phase out concessions for longtime fans, those who have paid a lot of money to support the Spurs all their lives. .
That’s what’s really despicable. It’s basically an attempt to drive out the “legacy” fans and replace them with the ever-growing breed of “tourist” fans who will come to a game and spend a lot more each time at the club’s megastore than we do.
Let’s make one thing clear. I have no problem seeing this new generation of fans making the trip of a lifetime to our wonderful stadium (to be fair, that stadium is because of Levy). In particular, the increasing number of Korean fans, clearly there to watch Son Heung-Min more than the team, is a delight.
Our manager was a tourist fan and I, as a huge ice hockey enthusiast, was too in October when I traveled to Pittsburgh with my son to see the Penguins in NHL action.
Spurs fans turned their backs on Tottenham’s game against Luton last weekend in the 65th minute to protest the removal of discount season tickets for retirees
Tottenham are enjoying an inspiring time on the pitch, but subsequent seasons could be out of reach for ‘traditional fans’.
But, as Oliver Holt so brilliantly put it in these pages this week, those fans cannot come at the expense of people who have our club in their blood. Otherwise there will be no passion, no soul, no atmosphere on our grounds. Above all, there will be no community in which our soccer differs from the American experience.
I can’t imagine, for example, that we’ll see so many of those Korean fans once Son moves on. Not even the two Americans, decked out in full Spurs kit, sitting behind us at the Luton game last weekend, who tapped my son on the shoulder after Son’s final goal, pointed to the big screen and said : “What does “COYS” mean?”
Yes, Daniel Levy has done a lot of good for our club and, really, the problems others are having with the Premier League’s sustainability and profit rules should be his crowning glory. His insistence on playing by the rules, on being sustainable while everyone around us has wasted money, is being gloriously vindicated.
However, he always finds a way to throw a stone into calm water. And he’s also being handsomely rewarded for doing so.