Ditching Daniel Levy would be suicide

Supporters who base their opinions on hindsight and start petitions without the faintest idea of how to run a major organisation should be winning the lottery every week.

With hindsight they know what the numbers are, they should be winning every week.

To get rid of Daniel Levy now would be suicide. I must admit I had though yesterday's article would be lambasted by many but it was welcome to see that majority understand the realities of life at Tottenham and I thank those of an opposing view for their lucid comments.

We all want the same thing, we all want success on the field, to be winning trophies and playing beautiful football. I argue we are on the cusp. To throw that away now, to ditch the person who has taken us there is in my view crazy.

Ditching Daniel Levy would be suicide
Ditching Daniel Levy would be suicide

Let me take you back to the start of the Ande Villas-Boas time. Supporters were happy, we had a good team, but a team with no future. Now before some of you shout we should not have got rid of Harry Redknapp, thee are several reasons why we should.

Firstly is tax evasion, which to the man in the street he was guilty of, but legality is based on technicalities. Apparently the man hadn't learnt to write yet. That may or may not be true but Daniel Levy will know the answer and if the answer is as we all suspect it is then that is not someone you employ on a fat salary, especially when he then turns round and says I want to go and manage England..

That shouts I am not building this clubs future which is typical Harry Redknapp anyway. He was and is about buying old players to do a short term job and then buying more old players to replace them, Gallas, Saha, Nelson spring to mind. Harry is all about now and the club need to build a sustainable future.

If you look at all the signing during that period there are a lot of temporary signings and signing of players who are no longer at the club.

The players very quickly wanted shot of AVB at Chelsea. As part of his leaving deal he couldn't join another Premier League club until June so off he went to Brazil and round the world on scouting missions to look first-hand at players he had identified as suitable for his system.

Thus in June he joined us armed with all his data, Daniel Levy had got a top quality coach who was going to build the future of the club within the business model set out by the board. The fans were perfectly happy, a few dissenting voices but by and large massively behind the new man, feeling he was the right man for the job, the right appointment.

After just 3 games alarm bells were ringing. They weren't ringing for you guys but they were ringing loud and clear to me and so I wrote an article on Facebook about how the tactics we were employing were wrong.

That article centered around two things. One a chalkboard tactic that simply played into the opposition hands and invited trouble, which it got and the second the misuse of Gareth Bale.

It took two positional movements for Gareth Bale to finally blossom and his talent to shine. He had agreed to give us one extra year, he had wanted to leave the previous season for those with short memories, and promptly carried us through it.

Initially he starting position was tucked in where he was easily nullified and couldn't use his pace out wide or put in the crosses across the 6 yard box that we had nobody to convert, we of course now have Soldado who would thrive on them, but no longer have the crosses.

Bale's starting position after around a dozen games was slightly adjusted to start wider and higher up the pitch, finally of course he was then given free reign to go and do whatever he wanted, wherever he wanted. You have to praise AVB for that, just as he transformed Hulk and brought Porto a windfall, he transformed Bale and brought us an £86 million windfall.

Gareth Bale of course having given the club an extra year and with no Champions League football simply refused to wear the Tottenham shirt anymore. Daniel Levy has made that perfectly clear and that he was left with no choice but to sell the player he didn't want to. Modric was doing similar, he gave us an extra year, Berbatov refused to play and then went through the motions.

The Bale situation in no way compares to that of Luis Suarez at Liverpool. Bale refused to train, refused to be seen in Spurs colours, refused to play and we were fed the fake injury reports which very quickly were seen through.

But the main problem at the start of the AVB era was the tactic which I felt would cost us Champions League football and did cost us Champions League football. Taking off pace, usually Defoe and Lennon and replacing attacking pace with defenders or defensive midfielders to protect a lead.

That tactic stopped us counter attacking, gave the ball to the opposition and invited them to attack us. Our defence simply dropped back from the high line they were supposed to be playing and the inevitable keep happening game after game, we conceded goals and lost points.

The Manchester City game away on TV we were winning. e employed this flawed tactic again and ended up with 7 defensive plus a keeper on the field, utter madness. Of course they scored 2 goals and we lost.

It took an eternity and a stack of dropped points before he realised the error of his ways and stopped doing it. That and not the failure to buy a striker in January cost us Champions League football, AVB cost us Champions League football, not Daniel Levy. Buying a striker does not equate to guaranteed goals, Roberto Soldado, undoubtedly a quality finisher, is a case in point.

During the second half of the season it was clear Bale was carrying us.

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The summer then saw us buy a bunch of new players to fit into a 4-3-3 system, a system we have never really employed. We have been putting square pegs in round holes which isn't fair on the players really. AVB alienated his own assistant, sends high earner to train with kids, which is insulting, ships out our bets left-back, annoys all the staff behind the scenes and effectively shoves two fingers up to the chairman by refusing to do as he is told, stop the stubborn streak with our highest earner.

AVB signed his own exit papers. No boss can allow that sort of behaviour from an employee in any industry. No company simply allows one man to waste £100,000 a week and devalue an asset. If you had a team performing or showing signs of improving then you could try and justify it, if you are going backwards and being thrashed by your rivals to show you are light years behind them you have no chance.

The new signings had had plenty of chance to settle, that was no longer an excuse. On 2nd September 2012 I wrote, 'Perhaps there is something in what the Chelsea fans have been telling me. He is going to screw you up.'

No hindsight involved.

Daniel Levy had backed his manager in the way he had backed no other. He would have discussed all transfers with AVB from the start and the appointment of a Technical Director. AVB wanted Franco Baldini, he got him a year later along with £100 million to spend which he splashed out on mediocrity.

If you don't have a vision of the future you don't do that and you don't get rid of a manager unless there is good reason to so clearly there was. The full extent of what had happened behind the scenes is not public knowledge but the whispers of it all being sour were an indication that away from the playing field all was not well.

AVB had himself started to make excuses which tells you he was buckling under the pressure, he was not experienced enough to handle the situation. To start blaming supporters for your own inadequacies is not a sensible option.

Daniel Levy had to take a bold step and look to who else may be able to take us forward. Louis Van Gaal was highlighted as that man and lined up. He plays a 4-3-3 system which is what we have bought players to play in and he is a proven top quality manager, it makes sense. A strategy is in place.

We needed an interim manager just to wait for then. As expected Glenn Hoddle was never going to be given the chance to be interim boss, if he made a good job of it Levy may have had to keep him and that was not the plan, thus it had to be someone from within.

The logical fan knew at that point the season was over, it has finished. It was a case of muddle through to the end of the season as best we can. Results wouldn't all go our way, yes Sherwood with no experience was the wrong man but he is only an interim and it is only until the end of the season so it won't have much effect.

Short-term pain for long-term gain. We were resigning ourselves to not achieving Champions League to build under Louis Van Gaal.

Time of course does not equate to success. It can but it is not guaranteed. With a new manager you have to be able to see progress, you have to be able to see that what is being put together works. If you don't see that you have to start questioning the managers ability and let's not forget there are different qualities of manager just as there are players.

You have a choice to make. Does this guy have quality and why is it not yet being shown within the team as it should be. Should we put an error right or should we let me have time and possibly mess us up for years to come?

No supporter predicted the players would turn as they have, they look back, make hindsight judgements and knee-jerk petitions. It shouts a lack of understanding, it shouts Harry Redkapp now thinking as opposed to long term cohesive strategy thinking.

Spurs are on the cusp, we are searching for the elusive manager with that added extra piece of quality to take players who are not all top 4 quality and drag them over the line. There are managers who can do that and there are managers who can't.

You bring one in and assess whether he has that added extra quality, if he doesn't then you try someone else while still maintaining your position as the 5th best team in the land.

Interim Tim has backfired spectacularly, so what. There are only 6 games to go. We were clearly not going to get top 4 in January, being miles behind the quality required, so not getting it now is not an issue. The top teams knew then that we couldn't hurt them, simply wait for an opportunity and pick us off, game over.

Everything might look like a mess and it is but there is a plan, there is a strategy. What is more it is the right one. The club has had an upward direction, the next step is the largest one and we have to keep taking that step until we achieve it not setting fire to the place and rebuilding the whole club from scratch.

That of course is on the field which is all most fans care about, but to sustainable have on field success to have to have the structure in place off the field as well.

Tottenham were relegated, Tottenham were bankrupt, Tottenham were mid-table at best.

Tottenham are not financially stable, one of the top 15 clubs in the world, all be it in the most expensive league in the world for wages, Tottenham have a state of the art world class training facility, Tottenham have the plans for a new stadium to challenge the big boys and simply need to put the finances in place.

And what of the youth set up that has been put in place? Some fans may not be able to see it but Nabil Bentaleb is a talent and he gives his all for the team while so called better players give nothing. Our Development were sweeping all before them last season even after half of them were loaned out in January to gain first team experience. Quite why the final was at Old Trafford and not White Hart Lane where it should have been who knows.

We have talent in the wings, we have brought through players who can play Premier League football, if not for us then for other clubs who pay us a transfer fee for our troubles. Thus it all becomes self sufficient, self funding.

When you introduce a culture within the club, you introduce it throughout the club at all ages. Thus when a player moves up a grade he knows exactly what his role is and his new team mates know he will know his role thus instilling further confidence. Arsenal have been doing it this way for years and season after season it pays off with Champions League football, even if they don't usually then spend that money to win anything.

Our youth is starting to show signs of breaking through but it is the coming years when we will see the benefit. Throwing it all out the window to begin another vision under another chairman is a staggering idea. What he need is someone at the helm of the playing side who is comfortable working with youth and has a track record of winning with youth. Oh hang on Louis Van Gaal has that, why don't we get him, that would be putting a logical and sensible strategy into practice. If only Daniel Levy had the foresight to go and speak with him!

The club have a long term strategy of how to get to where they want to be. Finding the right manager is the next step and yes that means some wrong ones along the way. The art is realising you have a wrong one and doing something about it. We have tried the cheaper alternatives, we have tried the up and coming, we have determined to go for top quality proven winner.

That shouts backing, that shouts strategy, that shouts moving forward in a structured manner, not clicking fingers, waving a magic wand and trusting to hope. Think back to where we were and look at where we are.

"We have come far in the last decade – we have raised our expectations from a club aiming to be in the top half of the table to competing in Europe each season – to the point at which we find ourselves disappointed if we don't make Champions League," Daniel Levy.

That simply statement is a cold hard fact. It is called progress, it is not called mismanagement. If you don't think it is progress, go sign the petition.

Vote for suicide and tearing the club apart or take a step back see the bigger picture, understand the difficulties, understand how football actually works and not how you'd like it to work, understand the realities, understand players and agents, understand the advancement Spurs has made and be patient.

Breaking into the top 4 is not like buying the new gadget you want. You don't whip out a card and buy it on credit. The 'do away with class and base it on material wealth' culture has a lot to answer for, it's why we have the buy it now culture, it why we have I want it now fans.