How Dumb is Daniel Levy?

Article by Jon Lewis

When my kids were little they indulged the misapprehension that to be rich, that to get rich, you had to be smart. As a college professor it’s not exactly the sort of thinking I encouraged, and fortunately Donald Trump, the states’ high profile rich idiot came into their orbit in time. They know better now. Jerry Jones, the idiot owner of the Dallas Cowboys helped make a second lesson stick … that hands-on billionaire team owners generally make a mess of things (over and over again – because they can).

Jose Mourinho said after the City game that "It's better to lose 6-0 once than 1-0 six times." But the addendum I guess is that you get to lose that badly once, but twice gets you canned. The team probably was going in the wrong direction, but the players need to take the blame -- ya, the high line never worked – no one seemed comfortable with the 4-3-3 (or the 4-2-3-1) but guys talented enough to play in the EPL should be able to play any system. My son's college team changes formation and strategy all the time and the kids adapt.

So where are we now? AVB walks with appr. $1.8 million – he's taking a battering in the press and (though it’s all for the best) he may never get a job in England again. On ESPNFC Ian Darke said AVB was "clearly out of his depth," which I don't think is fair -- and Craig Burley suggested that AVB was too intellectual and remote, which is probably true – but the real culprit is Levy, who hired AVB knowing exactly what he was getting and then, because he’s rich, because he can, tossed AVB to the curb for another new model.

The names getting kicked around to succeed AVB are interesting; good thing, because that may be all we have to talk about this season. Capello won Champions League way back when but didn’t he do a crappy job coaching England? Laudrup’s team was great last year – but not so good this year -- so now we want to hire him? Klinsmann (who just this week signed a 4 year deal with the USMNT) is a great coach I think, but I understand he really likes living in SoCal where it never rains -- and there’s Pochettino, the guy who had such a nice start with Southampton (they’re fading, though the good news for them is that they play Spurs next). De Boer, Tuchel, Yakin all have jobs they might not want to lose (especially since Levy tends to tire of toys fast).

So what’s Plan B (besides finishing 7th)?

I’ve seen enough of Tim Sherwood already. Against an awful West Ham team he played a mostly pre-AVB team that looked bright for maybe 30 minutes but in the end did the one thing AVB’s teams haven’t done in a long time – blown a lead. He played two players (Rose and Adebayor) who had no chance of playing 90 minutes, so when things went south (and Townsend pulled up lame) he was fucked.

The firing is boneheaded because we’ve traded one inexperienced coach for another with even less experience. I’m frankly tired of hearing about Levy’s business savvy and we can’t kick him to the curb now can we.

I’m writing this in anger (I just watched the Cup loss). First we lost Modric and then we lost Bale. Levy is blaming AVB but the failure to hold on to our two best players is what's wrong with Spurs and that's on Levy. AVB has had some pretty awful luck (Spurs’ luck) -- having to go into the game against Liverpool without Vertongen, Chiriches and Rose and then Sandro gets hurt 10 minutes in ... Sandro’s injury last year – what other coach could have finished with a record points total playing Scottie P and Huddlestone in the middle all year. Ya, Bale was great … but we were in all those games he won for us -- Levy failed to hold on to Bale. Suarez is still playing for Liverpool. I rest my case.

I'm thinking we finish 7th and maybe lose Walker and Sandro (or God help me, Vertongen) in the summer -- we're in worst case scenario-ville. Good luck getting a coach to sign on for this.

© e-Spurs 2013 All rights reserved no part of this document or this website may be reproduced without consent of e-Spurs

Share on Google Plus