Daniel Levy's Tottenham are seeking on-field vindication and off-field change (2024)

When Daniel Levy became Tottenham Hotspur chairman in February 2001, he would attend Premier League meetings and find himself surrounded by men almost twice his age. Peter Hill-Wood from Arsenal, Doug Ellis from Aston Villa, Martin Edwards from Manchester United, David Moores from Liverpool, Freddy Shepherd from Newcastle United, and Rupert Lowe from Southampton; this was the old guard of English football at the turn of the last century.

We are now in a very different era. Premier League meetings are made up of executives from all over the globe — not least from the U.S. and the Gulf — and yet Levy stands alone as the link between the old world and the new. He has been chairing Tottenham Hotspur for over 23 years now. More than Edwards did at Manchester United, nearly as much as Moores did at Liverpool. (To match Hill-Wood’s remarkable 41 years at Arsenal, he would have to stay on until 2042, when he will be 80.)

But as Levy prepares for his 24th full season at the helm of Tottenham, fans will naturally start to wonder where this season will take them. Will the positive mood of last season hold? Will there finally be a trophy to vindicate the steady building of the whole Levy era? Off the pitch, will the club receive some much-needed external investment? Ultimately, will this be the year that anything changes, or will Spurs fans be having the same conversations again in the summer of 2025?

In many ways, this has been a routine summer at Tottenham. None of the clean-slate thrills of last summer, when Spurs brought in a radical new manager, drawing a line under four years of negative football, and then promptly signed four first-team players to make it work. Instead, this has been a summer in which Levy, Ange Postecoglou and Johan Lange, the technical director, have tried to continue the progress of the past two windows, strengthening the squad so that it can compete on more fronts.

So far — and there are still three weeks left until the window closes — it has looked like many other Tottenham summer windows in recent memory. A strong start, with Archie Gray signed from Leeds United amid fierce competition, and Timo Werner taken on loan from RB Leipzig for another season. Then a period that has required fans to be patient, as Spurs have steadily moved on their fringe players, with no other big targets coming in yet.

All window, Tottenham have wanted a central midfielder and a top centre-forward, and only when it shuts will we know whether they have been successful. Levy may well be accused of not backing his managers but it should not be forgotten how much Spurs did last summer, buying half of a new first team as well as turning the Pedro Porro and Dejan Kulusevski loans permanent — a spend that is not easy to replicate summer after summer.

Postecoglou was very clear at the end of last season how much change he wanted in the squad. He has publicly called for patience, not saying anything to increase the pressure that already exists on his employer. The contrast with Antonio Conte, who became a different person in public whenever there was a transfer window on the horizon, is there for all to see.

It will be clear soon enough whether Spurs have the players they need for this season. On September 26, their eight-game Europa League group-stage campaign will begin. From that point on, the Spurs squad will be stretched further than they were in last year’s 41-game season. Postecoglou explained in Korea the importance of adding extra depth this season: “My thinking is we’ve got to go beyond just building a team, we’ve got to build a squad to compete.”

Postecoglou does have a new generation of exciting young players to use this season— not just Gray but 18-year-old midfielder Lucas Bergvall, winger Mikey Moore, who turns 17 on Sunday, and others from the academy — and the mood this season will depend in part whether his new-look squad is up to competing on multiple fronts.

Because last season — at least until the very end — was a strikingly positive one at Spurs. If 2022-23 was marked by fans’ anger at Levy as the season unravelled, then 2023-24 was all about collective enthusiasm for the Postecoglou era and his style of play. A lot of the public anger about the direction of the club was neutralised by the appointment of a manager who was in tune with the club’s traditions and the expectations of the fans.

If ‘Levy Out’ had always been a fringe concern, the toxic end of the Conte era saw more fans questioning the decisions that had taken Spurs to that point. It took the arrival of Postecoglou to bring unity back to Tottenham and to reset the mood. By pivoting away from the big-name ‘win-now’ managers and drawing a line under the previous four years, it could yet be one of the most far-sighted appointments of the Levy era.

The question for this season is whether that new optimistic balance can hold. As ever, it will be determined by what happens on the pitch. If Spurs start well and build on their progress from last year, there is no reason that Tottenham Hotspur Stadium should not be a happy place again. If they can stick with last season’s entertaining style of play but sustain it over a whole season — like in Mauricio Pochettino’s second season in 2015-16 — then it could be the best whole season the stadium has ever seen. And if it ends at Wembley or in Bilbao in nine months with a trophy — Spurs’ first in 17 years — then it will feel as if all the hard work has finally paid off. It would be the moment that makes the entire journey worthwhile.

Of course, there is always another possibility and what we do not know is how this season will play out if Spurs struggle. If results are bad then the unity of last year may start to fray. And if the constituent elements of the club — players, manager, board and fans — start to come apart, it will be a question of who stays loyal to whom. No one knows whether the discord of 2021 or 2023 will return. As ever, one week before the start of a season, there is a vast delta between success and failure.

Whatever the ups and downs of the football season, and all the little dramas along the way, there is another set of questions for Tottenham and Levy over the next 12 months. And that concerns the future shareholding of the club. (At present, ENIC owns 86.58 per cent of the club, and 70.12 per cent of ENIC’s share capital is owned by “a discretionary trust of which certain members of Mr (Joe) Lewis’s family are potential beneficiaries”, according to the club’s website. The rest is owned by discretionary trusts of which “Mr D Levy and certain members of his family are potential beneficiaries”.)

Speculation about a sale is nothing new. It has been there in the background almost since the moment that ENIC bought Alan Sugar’s stake in 2000. Back then, the club was valued at £80m. Now, after almost a quarter-century of Levy’s stewardship, it is valued at £4billion ($5bn), or 50 times that initial valuation. It has arguably the best training ground in the country and the best modern stadium too, one that is integral to the club’s self-sustaining business model. The news last week that Haringey Council have lifted the cap on major non-football events the stadium can hold, from 16 per year to 30, will allow them to host more concerts by the likes of Beyonce and Lady Gaga in future, making millions of pounds for the club in the process. The stadium, the London location, the international brand, and the global clout of the Premier League all make this an attractive package.

There is very little prospect of a full sale any time soon, and no real likelihood of the ENIC era coming to an end. What is on the cards, however, is the sale of a stake in the club. Tottenham have been frank about their openness to new investment. Four months ago, when the club released their accounts for the 2022-23 season, there was an accompanying statement. “To capitalise on our long-term potential, to continue to invest in the teams and undertake future capital projects, the club requires a significant increase in its equity base,” it said towards the end. “The board and its advisors, Rothschild & Co, are in discussions with prospective investors.”

Talking about this in public was a new step for Spurs. If they could sell, for example, a 10 per cent stake in the club for £400m it would be a serious equity injection for Tottenham while not necessarily disrupting the operations of the club. The question is finding the right person to take the other side of that deal.

So far this summer, there has been plenty of speculation about Amanda Staveley potentially becoming a minority partner at Tottenham after her departure from Newcastle United. She told The Athletic last month that it was time to “move on to other projects”, which could involve buying a stake in another team. Tottenham have been linked. But whether Tottenham would want such a high-profile minority partner, given how quietly and discreetly they try to run things, is another matter.

Even in the event of an investment, whatever the size, it does not feel likely that Levy’s position will change. Investors have looked at the example of Chelsea, where the new ownership paid £2.5billion to buy the club in 2022 and have since had six managers (including caretaker Bruno Saltor), managing league finishes of 12th and sixth. There is an acceptance of how hard it is to keep a Premier League club running smoothly. Tottenham’s stability is not unattractive.

Ultimately, it is hard to envisage the circ*mstances under which Levy will not still be in place at the end of the season, as he nears the quarter-century of his involvement with the club. But it could still be a season of change at Tottenham if a stake is sold. And with success on the pitch, it could end up as a season of vindication too.

(Top photo: Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images)

Jack Pitt-Brooke is a football journalist for The Athletic based in London. He joined in 2019 after nine years at The Independent.