There I’ve said it.
In the aftermath of Yoo-nii-ted’s Champions League mauling by Barca, there has been much talk in the press of Fergie coming in for our very own little Luka. I am not a seasoned observer of the Premiership Champions by any means, but from the personnel they do have in midfield there does seem to be a dearth of creativity there, and the press showing their usual lack of creativity have jumped on the Luka to United bandwagon. I’m not a United hater, they are the most London of all these Northern Clubs and I’ve always thought that if God had burdened me with the misfortune of being born in the black hole of misery and over-aching abject nothingness that is the North of England I’d have probably been a Man Utd fan, luckily God had mercy and made me a Londoner and Spurs but my condolences to those who haven’t been so lucky and are stuck living on Coronation Street. There can be no doubt that since the advent of the Premiership Yoo-nigh-ted’s star has risen the highest, whilst ours has been on the wane until recently. Unfortunately with the sales of Carrick and Berbatov in recent years Levy has shown a tendency to show that lining shareholders back pockets take precedence over the ambitions of the club and in that respect you can understand from Fergie’s perspective why Spurs may be regarded as fair game.
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It’s a ridiculous situation that Levy has cultivated. Levy has done a lot of good things whilst at the club but to an extent he is a bit like the Harry Redknapp of football chairmen. Good up to a certain stage but seemingly unwilling or more likely unable to take the extra risks that require the club to compete regularly at the highest level. Whilst in this day and age where a large number of football clubs sit on huge mountains of debt its a feather in our bow that we have prudent financial housekeeping but at the expense of glory I think not. In football you don’t get trophies for being well run financially and in many aspects Tottenham Hotspur is the biggest con in football today. The club custodians in many ways trade of the loyalty of their fanbase knowing that regardless of the product they shift out, the fans will continue to pay rising ticket prices(still amongst the top three in the land) for a club that shows little inclination to consistently compete at the upper echelons of football. They have their soundbites but it’s not good enough. We can blame the press for making these stories up but its the previous actions of the club’s owners that have given foundation to this speculation.We can trace the decline in the club’s ambitions back to 1991 when Spurs almost went bust because we owed £10 million to Midland Bank, now part of HSBC, it seems a pittance given today’s level of debt but our then chairman Irving Scholar’s vision of diversifying Totteham’s businesses had bought the club to the brink of extinction, we were forced to sell our idol Paul Gascoigne to appease our creditors and Alan Sugar and Terry Venables formed a consortium to buy the club. In 1993 Venables was sacked and a new age of pragmatism over glory was ushered in. For English football’s most glamorous football club, no longer was swagger and flamboyance the order of the day. The Tottenham Hotspur of the modern era was more akin to our loathed North London rivals Arsenal, a stagnant faceless club that would not take risks, comfortable trading on the loyalty of the fans whilst the shareholders made money from the huge fanbase. Little really changed when ENIC took over, nice little soundbites but ENIC’s custodianship of the club has always been viewed by me as one where they are content for the club to be an also ran with brief flirtations with glory. Even when we reached the holy grail of fourth, something that in our heyday lest we forget would have been viewed as failure, there was a suspicion that ENIC wouldn’t kick on and so it seems to have been proved.The ridiculous procrastination over the building of a new stadium doesn’t help. In 2001 when ENIC came in, they declared their desire to build a new stadium, ten years later we are no nearer to a conclusion. The preferred Northumberland Park Development is now declared unviable due to rising costs and the ridiculous pursuit of Stratford threatens to undermine our relationship with local government, the Mayor and the government whilst increasingly alienating the fan base.Added to that the increasing speculation over our best players and our manager. I’m no fan of Harry Redknapp as I’ve made increasingly obvious but there is another side to this, the acceptance that for a price everything at Spurs is for sale. That’s the impression that ENIC have cultivated. Now it seems that speculation is increasing over Modric. I have to say that I don’t fear Modric demanding a move but I do worry about Levy seeing the dollar signs in front of him. If he does his position as Chairman and ENIC’s as owners will be untenable. We are Tottenham Hotspur, not a feeder club for a bunch of Northerners. Levy has to show ambition that adheres to our club’s tradition and history.I’m not interested in having Berbatov back as a makeweight, I wouldn’t even want him back on a permanent deal after he refused to play for us. The dark day when we sold Berbatov to United and bought in Fraiser Campbell on loan was a dark day in Tottenham’s history, it was when I felt that Spurs had died, luckily we came back from the ashes but it seems Levy is doing his best to make sure that resurrection was merely fleeting.If Luka Modric is sold against the wishes of the fans I will boycott the club, I will not watch Spurs live ever again because Tottenham Hotspur as a club will be dead to me. Luka Modric is a symbol of Spurs, a throwback to our great playmakers such as Gascoigne, Hoddle and even further back to the likes of the late great Danny Blanchflower. He was born to be a Spurs player, allowing him to leave will rip the heartbeat of the club, especially if it means making a club in the same league even stronger, that is not what Spurs are about. Additional rumours like buying Brad Friedel and Berbatov don’t help.If Luka leaves, Tottenham Hotspur as a competitive club are dead, make no mistake. It is an admission by the custodians of the club that they can take the club no further and the only way to make sure that ENIC leave the club is to hit them where it hurts and that is to boycott Spurs until they sell up, unfortunately they have my season ticket money for this season but I am becoming increasingly disillusioned by ENIC’s ownership. Its time for them to state their ambitions, do they have the ability and vision to bring the club back where it should be, given the prices we pay to watch Spurs you would certainly hope so. If not its time for them to sell up and give somebody else the chance to restore the club to where it should be, at the very top of English football.
