“I don’t care about Levy; he don’t care about me; all I care about is … Kulusevski.” That chant summed up what a substantial element of Tottenham Hotspur’s following felt about Daniel Levy. They didn’t care about the board-room, only the dressing-room. Love the team, dislike the regime was the theme. So how much of a part did dissenting Spurs fans play in the defenestration of Levy at Tottenham Hotspur? The protests of February 16 before and during the home game with Manchester United were vociferous and widely reported. But how much did they resonate with the club’s real powerbrokers?
After everyone regained their breath at the shock of Levy’s departure what became clear was that he was eased out. The majority owners, ENIC, wanted more wins and more trophies, and Spurs won only two in Levy’s 24 years in charge, the League Cup in 2008 and Europa League this season. For a club that had lifted 14 trophies – and four Charity Shields - in the preceding 40 years, the Levy era has felt barren. The game is about glory, and there was insufficient under Levy. Tottenham’s majority owners, the ENIC group, and particularly its driving force, Joe Lewis’ family, clearly wanted “more wins, more often” and a new leadership group. The arrival of Vinai Venkatesham as chief executive signalled that. A new era has now followed.
The Lewis family must have seen something in Venkatesham’s character and career that brought qualities perceived to be lacking in Levy’s personality and tenure. Venkatesham wears his enormous intellect lightly; he’s super bright but he’s friendly, engaging and ready to talk to fans and listen to them. Levy was far less communicative whether through shyness or concern about the response he might get, and of course the longer the sound of silence stretched the worse it became.
Levy spoke occasionally, unimpressively at the Cambridge Union (although not as unimpressively as when I spoke there and noticed a student nodding off), but rarely to Spurs fans. When he did open up, as to Gary Neville on The Overlap, Levy actually came across well, partly because it was like hearing referees for the first time – hello, they are human. Levy’s passion for Tottenham was unmistakeable, especially when he described how his weekend would be destroyed by defeat. He spoke like a fan. Levy may one day look back and reflect he should have engaged more with supporters as well as with Neville.
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But was it really dissenting voices in the stands and outside the ground, hanging their banners on the railings opposite, that cost Levy his job? Do major clubs respond to that? There are fans’ protest groups allied to assorted clubs across the Premier League which will look at events at Spurs and conclude that banners, chants and marches do work. Only Lewis, his children and associates will know how much the Spurs fans’ protests, including the February 16 action, contributed to Levy’s demise.