Daniel Levy, your £3m bonus is obscene while you price out loyal fans, writes PAUL NEWMAN – a lifelong Tottenham supporter and season ticket holder
The timing, as it always seems to be for 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 the highest paid administrator in English football has just seen his huge salary rise from £3.3 to £3. 6 million.
And listen, Levy also received a £3 million bonus last year, which even my ‘O’ Level maths tells me is almost exactly the same amount that Spurs will recoup next season by getting rid of long-suffering supporters, whose many just can’t afford to go anymore. Really, you couldn’t make it up. Really, it’s despicable.
What exactly was the pay increase and bonus intended for? Spurs’ financial results released on Wednesday also showed the club made a loss of £86.8 million last year. Did Levy get a bonus for that?
Or was it because he gave that chancellor Antonio Conte £15m a year to produce the worst football we’ve seen in years, completely denigrated the club and then planted a metaphorical bomb under the whole operation before driving 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, the price of Tottenham season tickets will increase by six percent next season
Levy is the highest paid administrator in English football, and his decision to increase his wages is despicable
Everything went so well this season too. Levy, by luck or judgement, eventually landed on the right man to lead our club in the excellent Ange Postecoglou and what he has achieved this year, regardless of our final league position, is almost a miracle.
The supporters are once again fully behind the manager and his style of football. The whole club seems to be moving in the same direction, from the academy to a women’s team that has reached the semi-finals of the FA Cup and plays the same attacking football.
What does Levy do? He’s doing his level best to screw it all up again, not just with the price rises but with the even more controversial decision to phase out concessions for senior supporters, the people who have paid good money all their lives to support Spurs to purchase.
That’s what’s really despicable. It is essentially an attempt to drive out ‘legacy’ fans and replace them with the ever-increasing breed of ‘tourist’ supporters who come for one match and spend far more in the club’s megastore each time than we ever will.
Let’s make one thing clear. I have no problem seeing this new generation of supporters take the trip of a lifetime to our beautiful stadium (to be fair, that stadium is all thanks to Levy). Especially the ever-increasing number of Korean fans, who clearly watch Son Heung-Min more than the team, is a delight.
Our manager was a tourist fan and, as a huge hockey fan, I was one myself 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 match against Luton in the 65th minute last weekend to protest the removal of discounted season tickets for OAPs
Tottenham have an inspiring moment on the pitch, but subsequent seasons could become out of reach for ‘legacy fans’
But as Oliver Holt put it so brilliantly on these pages this week: those fans cannot come at the expense of people for whom our club is in their blood. Otherwise there is no passion, no soul and no atmosphere on our site. Above all, there will be no community in which our football differs from the American experience.
For example, I can’t imagine that we will see so many of those Korean fans once Son moves away. Nor the two Americans, decked out in full Spurs kit, who sat behind us at the Luton game last weekend and tapped my son on the shoulder after Son’s late winner, pointed at the big screen and said ‘what does ‘COYS mean’ ?’
Yes, Daniel Levy has done so much good for our club and in fact the problems that others have with the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules should be his crowning achievement. His insistence on playing everything by the book, on being sustainable when everyone around us has splashed the cash, is gloriously justified.
Yet he always finds a way to throw a stone into the calm water. And he is always richly rewarded for this.