Former Tottenham midfielder Jermaine Jenas has suggested that ENIC's “half-hearted" ownership of the club is costing them as they attempt to challenge the Premier League’s elite.
The North London club have appeared somewhat directionless since the sacking of Mauricio Pochettino in 2019.
Spurs endured a tumultuous relationship with Jose Mourinho before the Portuguese was also relieved of his duties to be replaced by Ryan Mason. A new manager is yet to be found after a failed move for former Chelsea boss Antonio Conte.
Spurs’ transfer policy under Levy has also been called into question on numerous occasions and Jenas has appealed to the club’s hierarchy to get their affairs in order if they want to challenge at the top of the league table.
He said: “Maybe there needs to be a mindset shift in the club now. I have always felt that as owners of the football club they have done a great job up until this point where it is, the stadium, the training ground, the visualisation of what Tottenham are.
“They are at a bit of a crossroads. I have always said you are going to have to make a decision at some point."
Whilst Jenas continually reserved praise for Daniel Levy’s ability to provide the club with a world-class playing facility, he wants to see far more ambition in the transfer market going forwards.
“Do you want to be part of the big boys that spend the money, pay the big wages and compete at the top level like Chelsea do, like Man City do, like Man United do, like Liverpool do? Do you want to be part of that?" he continued.
“Or are you going to half-heart it again for the next 10 years? Half-hearting it is showing you what you are right now. Financially there will be a really good model when that stadium kicks in but if they want to be part of the elite I would like to see them be part of the elite to the fans and go and compete at the top level for the best players.
“They let Bruno Fernandes go to Manchester United, he could have been a Spurs player if they had gone a bit deeper. There are loads of situations like that."
Jenas on ENIC
posted on 15/6/21
My frustrations with our ownership is the unwillingness to speculate to accumulate. I am not talking £250 splurge, just some quality where its needed. If we had gone big on a CB last summer then who knows where we'd be right now.....may be in the UCL which would have paid for the CB easily. We could not afford it so we end up with Rodon who has potential but this does not move us forward.
The logic at times seems very simple. Spend £45m on that Inter defender instead of £11m on Rodon. We get top 4 and this season earn £50m-£80m from it.
The trouble is that there is a long list of £40m+ players who have not delivered and made the desired impact and we have had our fair share of these. Levy certainly got his fingers burnt with the Bale 7 and now acts with even greater caution, that caution ramped up further by the stadium debt and now covid (understandably)
I do not believe ENIC/Levy take money from the club (other than his wages) and everything we earn is reinvested. I also believe that almost every owner, bar may be 2 in this league acts in the exact same way. but all with differing levels of budget.
Jenas is right about the need for a rethink. Buying potential and young only gets you so far. We need to make selective big purchases to move us forward , other wise we are just sat here waiting for the Rodons and Tanganga's of the squad to come good and they may never do so.
I suspect the stadium will allow us to operate in this way and we saw the start of it with some expensive signings in 2019/20. Coupled with this there seems to be a problem with our scouting and recruitment. People like Ndombele are quality but he really does not seem suited to this league. Doherty a very decent RWB at Wolves but we needed a RB. Sisokko purchased off the back of a decent World Cup.
Hopefully the DoF will bring greater focus to our recruitment and when the cash registers in the stadium finally start to ring, then we will have plenty of money to spend.
posted on 15/6/21
It's the transfer strategy that is the problem.
You have a budget and identify 4 'A' players to buy. If you end up achieving two of your targets, buy a 'B' player as the 3rd and use a youth player as the 4th temporary for one season then fine. (You never know what a youth player ends up doing).
Instead Levy's Strategy is to attempt to buy 4 'A' players and haggle all their prices. End up buying 4 'B' players, making the squad more average and blocking the pathway to youth progressing. Then when it comes to selling players it is difficult to then get rid.
posted on 15/6/21
If Levy had paid the money to sign Dias last summer we would of easily got top 4, it’s frustrating
posted on 15/6/21
comment by The Hybrid Doos (U10416)
posted 35 minutes ago
If Levy had paid the money to sign Dias last summer we would of easily got top 4, it’s frustrating
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You always have to take the other view though.
Did the club have that money to spend on one player? Maybe there were 2/3 players you wanted with an £80m budget for example. You also probably didn't even have that much available to you.
In Levy's defence, he can point to the Sanchez signing and say, £42m for this player and it hasn't worked out, so why would we now go and spend £50m+ on this guy here? From my point of view, it would take some convincing. We all know how good Dias is now, but I, like probably many others, were not sure how good he was before he moved to City and if he would adapt to the league along with other factors.
It's a tough position for yourselves really in terms of spending, you just have to go about your transfer strategy in the correct way.
posted on 15/6/21
comment by The Hybrid Doos (U10416)
posted 1 hour, 7 minutes ago
If Levy had paid the money to sign Dias last summer we would of easily got top 4, it’s frustrating
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That's easily said but he went to Man City and he will always make that choice over Spurs.
Its the Inter guy that stands out for me because we were seriously in for him and he went nowhere in the end.
I think we still have to be realistic about our targets, saying we should have got Dias shows a level of delusion as to who we can compete with in this transfer market...it certainly aint Man City
posted on 15/6/21
comment by Hod idol (U5117)
posted 1 hour, 17 minutes ago
It's the transfer strategy that is the problem.
You have a budget and identify 4 'A' players to buy. If you end up achieving two of your targets, buy a 'B' player as the 3rd and use a youth player as the 4th temporary for one season then fine. (You never know what a youth player ends up doing).
Instead Levy's Strategy is to attempt to buy 4 'A' players and haggle all their prices. End up buying 4 'B' players, making the squad more average and blocking the pathway to youth progressing. Then when it comes to selling players it is difficult to then get rid.
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I'd say this is true to an extent. Every deal seems to have Levy's fingerprints all over it, gets dragged out, becomes a real haggle and sometimes fails as a result.
But this does not stop some good signings being made. Poch's squad was built on some superb value players. The team that took the pitch in the UCL final had Sisokko at £30m as the most expensive (& worst) player in the team, Son at £22m and the rest between £4m - £11m. The team cost £40m less than Liverpool keeper & CB.
The problem is Levy thinks he can do this over and over.
I think the strategy you set out is how we try and work and you can see in that summer we bought NDombele, he was our A player. We also wanted Fernandes but he was too expensive so our B option was LoCelso and they accepted a loan until we bought in the Jan. We also bought a couple of potential players one expensive (Sessegnon) and the other cheap (Clark).
This approach, to me, seems fine and most fans were happy with the signings at the time - non of them, about £120m worth, have really worked out in the way we expected, which just goes to show the risk in spending on transfers.
posted on 15/6/21
comment by Devonshirespur (U6316)
posted 3 hours, 14 minutes ago
comment by The Hybrid Doos (U10416)
posted 1 hour, 7 minutes ago
If Levy had paid the money to sign Dias last summer we would of easily got top 4, it’s frustrating
----------------------------------------------------------------------
That's easily said but he went to Man City and he will always make that choice over Spurs.
Its the Inter guy that stands out for me because we were seriously in for him and he went nowhere in the end.
I think we still have to be realistic about our targets, saying we should have got Dias shows a level of delusion as to who we can compete with in this transfer market...it certainly aint Man City
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Before City got involved Mendes had set up the deal and Dias had agreed a contract with us, just Levy wouldn't pay the fee.
The same with Bruno.
posted on 15/6/21
comment by Hod idol (U5117)
posted 4 hours, 58 minutes ago
It's the transfer strategy that is the problem.
You have a budget and identify 4 'A' players to buy. If you end up achieving two of your targets, buy a 'B' player as the 3rd and use a youth player as the 4th temporary for one season then fine. (You never know what a youth player ends up doing).
Instead Levy's Strategy is to attempt to buy 4 'A' players and haggle all their prices. End up buying 4 'B' players, making the squad more average and blocking the pathway to youth progressing. Then when it comes to selling players it is difficult to then get rid.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
This is an excellent post and succinctly summarises exactly what seems to happen a lot. However the one exception seems to be ndombele who was one of the hottest prospects in Europe at the time we signed him for a record fee.
For whatever reason he hasn’t really done the business on the pitch.
Historically our sweet spot seemed to be 8-20 mill pound players who were good but got better. Bale vdv lloris modric Berba palacios Defoe Wanyama Toby jan the list goes on and on. In today’s money maybe that’s now say 12-25mill
Purchases above this sweet spot have often been misses rather than hits
posted on 15/6/21
Take away all the penalty kicks, and Bruno Fernandes has been a fairly run of the mill signing for the money Penited paid. Not poor by any means, but if you remove all those undeserved spot kicks, he is not the all singing and dancing signing that the United loving media would have you believe.
That said, I would have still taken him at Spurs, even without scoring 20 penalties a season, he is better than our attacking midfielders.
posted on 15/6/21
comment by Devonshirespur (U6316)
posted 6 hours, 39 minutes ago
My frustrations with our ownership is the unwillingness to speculate to accumulate. I am not talking £250 splurge, just some quality where its needed. If we had gone big on a CB last summer then who knows where we'd be right now.....may be in the UCL which would have paid for the CB easily. We could not afford it so we end up with Rodon who has potential but this does not move us forward.
The logic at times seems very simple. Spend £45m on that Inter defender instead of £11m on Rodon. We get top 4 and this season earn £50m-£80m from it.
The trouble is that there is a long list of £40m+ players who have not delivered and made the desired impact and we have had our fair share of these. Levy certainly got his fingers burnt with the Bale 7 and now acts with even greater caution, that caution ramped up further by the stadium debt and now covid (understandably)
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Still years on I’m explaining this to people:
Soldado 52 apps bought 26m sold 10m
Lamela 177 apps bought 25.8m
Eriksen 226 apps bought 11m sold 10m
Capoue 24 apps bought 9.3m sold 6.3m
Chadli 88 apps bought 7m sold 13m
Paulinho 45 apps bought 16.9m sold 9.9m
Chiriches 27 apps bought 9.5m sold 4.5m
Total appearances between all players: 639
Total expediture: 105.5m
Total fees recouped: 53.7m
Total cost for 639 appearances 51.8m and we still have Lamela.
About the same amount City spent on Kyle Walker.