The Kelvin scale is one method of measuring temperature. Absolute zero is -273 degrees centigrade and pre-match that was how low I scored our chances of winning. This is the point where all molecular motion ceases, and therefore comes close to my assessment of some of our players.  

Like many of you, I hoped at least for some effort and application, and to be fair our first half was acceptable in that respect. The amount of pointing and shouting from the back three was noticeable from my position in the South Stand, implying that there was a plan and the players were committed to supporting each other to put it into action, again fair enough as the manager has only had a few days to work with this disorganised, undermotivated group.

Tudor prefers 5-3-2. For us, it meant playing a midfielder at centre back. Also, the midfield three allowed space for them to come down the wings and Saka drifted past our tackles with the ease of a slalom skier zipping past those poles. The lapse of concentration in not picking up Gyokeres did for us. They were not at their best and didn’t have to be. The whole club is streets ahead of us in the way they have allowed their manager to grow and backed him over several years to overcome bad transfer deals by spending big on high quality players. Exactly the opposite of the Tottenham Way, in other words. In the past on Tottenham On My Mind, I’ve written that they are streets head of us. I was wrong. It’s light years.

So welcome Igor Tudor. He has my very best wishes in handling the Herculean task ahead of keeping us in the Premier League. Handpicked by our hierarchy, which frankly is no recommendation given their record, he is apparently an expert in keeping teams up. I read he has never before lost his opening game after joining a club. Well, welcome to Tottenham.

The rest of season isn’t about yesterday’s performance. It’s about how we do against teams further down the league. Let’s call this Tudor’s pre-season: two weeks training, one practice match, then down to the real business. The best that can be said about yesterday is that he now has a fair idea of what he is up against.

We believe fondly in the positives of the new manager bounce, less so in the reality of the newcomer exposing the deep-rooted problems that characterise this Spurs side. We have been poor in the league for at least a year, arguably 18 months. Last season we finished 17^th because we deserved to. The supposed remedy for this – new manager, new club hierarchy, new players – has proved to be toxic rather than healing, and nothing has been done to cure the virus that will bring us to our knees, complacency. What truly hurts is that all of this is so avoidable.

For many years, the club hierarchy has been distant, aloof, all their entries channelled into self-preservation at the expense of the team and the fans, literally in the case of matchgoing supporters. Being average becomes acceptable, opportunities to build on success are allowed to pass by and they choose to look away when confronted with the requirements of creating a successful team, which after all is their stated aim. A life in football and they have learned nothing. Whether it be through the official channels of supporter feedback, through blogs like this one and podcasts or through protests outside and inside the ground, the hierarchy have been warned by the fans. We have seen it coming, they wrapped themselves in self-delusion. Supporters boo because they are not otherwise being heard.

This board have chosen a different route, to appoint several senior officers to manage all aspects of the club. However, they too have succumbed to this complacency. I have no idea what Venkatesham is doing to develop the club. He, the board and Lange (presumably, we don’t know) decided we didn’t need a short-term fix in January, when short-term, we were playing badly and decimated by injuries. They declined to spend money (Gallagher’s fee was offset by the sale of Johnson), when we know the club has funds. They chose not to make these available.

Lange and Frank are close. In fact, what we needed was a director of football (or whatever his job title is) at arm’s length, committed to the club but able to stand back with a degree of objectivity. So Frank stayed longer than he should have. Last week Heitinga left the club. He started work on or around January 15^th. That means, on January 15^th the plan remained that Frank should be supported to stay in post. 27 days later, he was sacked. This shows once more the disorganization and lack of planning at the highest level. It is disgraceful.

A long-held theory of mine is that the club hierarchy would behave differently if they mixed in the same circles as supporters. If they had to endure the stick Spurs fans are getting currently from all quarters, then they would perceive the situation very differently. Senior staff in business and commerce purposely isolate themselves as a form of self-protection. They think they know what’s going on, whereas in reality they fall victim to complacent group think. Apply that to your work if you are part of an organisation of any size. From my experience, being open and accountable is a strain but it’s essential to effective management. This is why the hierarchy’s distance from fans is a significant factor in our decline.  

And we fans are on the receiving end of constant ridicule. I wonder if they can imagine what young Spurs fans have had to put up with in the playground this morning. But they don’t care about that. They don’t care about that part of the Tottenham family.

We are in real trouble. Two wins at home all season, 9 games without any win. The players look demoralised and physically tired. Most of the injured players won’t be back until at least next month, and even then it will take time to become match fit. In the meantime, we’ve let the youngsters with lower league experience out on loan, so are left with a bench full of 17 years old to fight a relegation battle, then to support a period of playing three games in seven or eight days when we’re back in the CL. Our rivals Forest and Wham are not playing well, but they are already set up to be organised and fight (Forest have a new man but his tactics won’t be significantly different from Dyche), whereas we have no pattern to fall back on.

Tudor seems up for it. I just hope the players believe there’s something worth battling for, that the badge genuinely means something to them, or would they rather spend time on the phone to their agents, searching for an escape route. Romero could be a bellwether here. He’s a fighter, a leader, if he’s in the right frame of mind.

If the negative tone of this and recent pieces grates, well, I’m writing from the heart and being honest. We are in a terrible mess and I’m pessimistic about our chances. But there’s potential for change here – if they are up for it. Good luck Mr Tudor, good luck.

The Spurs Way. Attacking football on the front foot. Played with style and a flourish, not sitting back waiting for the others to die of boredom. It’s a familiar precept for Spurs fans that invests meaning and purpose in our passion.

We all need something like this, if only because watching 22 players kick a ball around is essentially hollow and futile without it. It’s been important for Spurs fans in my lifetime, initially because it characterised our approach to the game and latterly as an ambition to cherish during long periods of mediocrity.

It’s live – Tuesday night, first half, centre circle, Bissouma in space, opts to pass back. Hardly the most serious error in a season filled with catastrophe but the South Stand roared in anger. Thomas Frank, all season, doesn’t get it, can’t handle it, out of his depth to the point where even our board can see it. Out the door 6 weeks too late.

I believe in the Spurs Way but realise it has another function in masking the reality of a parallel truth, that Tottenham in modern times are a club with a history of failure, embedded in poor organisation and owners bereft of the capacity to efficiently and effectively run the club. Sum up the last forty years in a couple of pithy phrases: missed opportunities and unfilled potential. There are three fundamental elements to running a successful football club at any level: the coach or manager, recruitment and finance. Those in charge have never consistently shown the will, ambition, structure or capacity that enables this triumvirate to function smoothly together, united in direction and resolve. In short, this is who we are, and this is why we have ended up in the damned mess we are in, near the bottom of the table and staring at the abyss below.

This dates back to the early 1980s, when the club under chairman Irving Scholar put themselves in the vanguard of a new commercialism. The drive to maximise income, in Spurs’ case through floating on the Stock Exchange, non-football manufacturing, the new West Stand with executive boxes, merchandising and television advertising, was intended to generate funds for transfers and wages. In fact, it had two related consequences, in that the expenditure incurred led to mounting debts, so increasing income became an end in itself for club survival.

Keith Burkinshaw’s wonderful team sustained and entertained us into the middle of the decade. Scholar’s predecessors, the Wale family, were perceived as amongst the fusty blazers holding back the development of the game in England, out of touch and highly protective of their own status. Yet their old-school approach led to Burkinshaw’s promotion within the club and allowed him several years following relegation to rebuild, with money spent firstly on the midfield with Ossie and Ricky, then later up front with Crooks and Archibald. Burkinshaw’s famous passing shot ‘there used to be a football club over there’ was probably written by a journalist but it accurately expressed his views, seen here in this post-match interview from 1982 where this normally taciturn man, complete with de rigueur managerial sheepskin, calmly articulates the problems of the contemporary English game, truly ahead of his time.

The warning signs slowly became apparent. Off the pitch, executive boxes displaced the mighty Shelf, while on the field, the skilful teams built by Pleat then Venables began to take shape only for stars to be sold and replaced with frankly inferior footballers. We build again only for the cycle to be repeated. Stars like Sheringham and Klinsmann were never supported by a squad of sufficient talent, or as Colin Calderwood famously put it, “we’ve got the Famous Five [attackers], what about the shit six?”

Sugar, then Levy and ENIC, but the same pattern. The choice of manager unsuited to the club and in many cases to the task as well. Managers never adequately supported in the transfer market. Promises made to fans as the prices went up that were never kept. Pochettino is the outlier in terms of his suitability but the board’s failure to fully support him in the market remains an era-defining error.

And here we are again. New board, new supposedly vaunted backroom staff, same old problems. The search for a manager last summer produced a man unsuited to the club in so many ways, leaving the bloke out of his depth and no intention of throwing him a lifebelt. He’s gone now, but not for the first time, I’m left to ask the question, what were those in charge of the club seeing when Spurs played? Apparently not the shapeless, tactically deficient football we all saw. What in Frank’s approach did they see that gave them cause to believe he could turn things around when we fans saw nothing of the sort? Why wait this long – do they have access to another Premier League table in a parallel universe, because their inaction is that absurd.

Lange in charge of recruitment knows his up and coming players but we needed some experience too. He says they didn’t want a quick fix. Except we need a quick fix. And if we can’t get our top targets, where is the list of players next in line, and where is the sense that we recruit to fill gaps and create a coherent team rather than be opportunistic?

Ventkatesham schmoozes the fans at a meeting and writes some corporate rubbish in the programme. He says the culture needs to change, right, but he needs to start that, because that’s his job. And where has the £150m funding injection from the board gone? Not on players, because we sold our top goalscorer in order to fund Gallagher’s purchase.

Spurs are sleepwalking towards relegation. Lousy form, shattered confidence, no structure. I hear that the squad is more than capable of staying up. It is, except half of them are injured. Players who thought they would be competing for honours are not ready for a relegation fight. The current hierarchy is riven with complacency. It could spell disaster.

As I write, Spurs have appointed Igor Tudor as a temp until the end of the season. Good luck – he has my best wishes. I only know what you know after your frantic googling, same as me. I quote Wikipedia: “On 13 February 2026, Tudor agreed a deal to become Tottenham interim head coach until they get relegated from the premier league in the 2025/26 season.” David Ornstein, a reliable source, says that the process was led by Ventkatesham and Lange. That does not fill me with confidence.

On Tuesday night, the booing at full-time was full of righteous fury. What received less attention, but is just as telling, was that as many fans, if not more, shrugged and wandered silently home. Perhaps I’m over-interpreting, but I’ve seldom heard as many non-football conversations going on around me during and after a game, given that stakes were high and despite being excruciatingly bad, we were never more than a goal down. Injury time, ball in their box, there was no excitement in the stands, no tension or jeopardy, and for the first time this season, the players looked utterly dejected as yet another aimless cross went weakly by.

This has been going on for years and we are drained of enthusiasm. Watching Spurs is joyless. It’s the ultimate criticism as far as we fans go. If Spurs can stagger through to the end of the season and avoid relegation, that’s all I care about. But the long-term problems are structural and chronic, and they won’t go away.

In evaluating the career of Daniel Levy as Tottenham Hotspur chairman, only one thing can be said with any degree of certainty. If someone reaches a straightforward conclusion, they’re wrong.

Although he took his time, he has undoubtedly transformed the club. White Hart Lane is one of the eternal loves of my life, but it couldn’t cope with Spurs’ popularity, the paint was peeling, the tea undrinkable to the point where I swear it took off a layer of sink enamel when you chucked it away and as often as not, our pre-game ritual included clearing the caked pigeon crap from our seats. Now, we’re amongst the highest earning clubs in the world with a global profile, the stadium is packed for every league game and, finally, we have a European trophy.  

Yet the majority of his time as chairman has seen consistent, albeit not universal, disquiet within the fanbase about the quality of his leadership and the direction in which he appeared to be steering the club. This has taken many forms, from grumbling into our beers in the Antwerp to social media whinging and protests inside and outside the ground. Spurs fans have a long and my view proud history of active protest, dating back to complaints in the early 1960s about ticket allocation led by women fans, through to Left On the Shelf, TISA and the AGM protests. Since 2001, as well as ‘Levy Out’ protests with varying degrees of support, we have We Are N17, the superleague, Save Our Seniors, Stop Exploiting Loyalty and last season’s marches, banners and chanting in the ground. For a leader who in some quarters is currently being held up as an exemplary football club chair, that’s some achievement.

These positions appear inconsistent. In fact, they expose the fundamentally contradictory essence of Levy’s time as Spurs chair. If there is anything exemplary about his reign, it is as a model of the nature of contemporary football. Spurs are inextricably involved in a game increasingly dominated by the imperative to generate the level of income required to compete, both on a national and global level. As fans, we can’t avoid engaging in this, but for all the benefits, there are costs too. Levy’s financial acumen placed Spurs in an enviable position competitively but at one and the same time was the chief reason behind both our failure to achieve consistent success on the field and to understand the full impact for loyal supporters.

In the early 1980s, Irving Scholar took over as Spurs chairman, a man on a mission to drag the club kicking and screaming into the modern era by maximising income not only from ticket sales but also from other commercial activities. We had to wait another 30 years before that vision translated into reality. Under Levy’s stewardship, commercial growth improved from £13.6m in 1999-00 to £244.7m in 23-24 (source: the Athletic). Today, the ground is full every week and each matchday generates an estimated £5m. This doesn’t include TV revenue. There is a substantial income stream from boxing, NFL and concerts.

The new stadium, financed within our means, is a fine place to watch football, with stands close to the pitch and excellent sightlines. The seating encourages fans to lean in, be a part of the game, even if like me you’re towards the back of the stands. Also, and the designers don’t get sufficient praise for this, it’s convivial through the simple expedient of being able to walk round the concourse to most parts of the ground, impossible in the old Lane, to meet friends.

Frankly, it is unlikely that the ground will be named the Daniel Levy Stadium, but he deserves full credit for all this. The question remains, though, what was the purpose? Many years ago, I wrote a piece asking the question, what is a football club for? Pretty basic, but seldom made explicit. My answer would be something about aiming for success on the field and at the same time paying due respect to the club’s supporters. I have intentionally chosen the word ‘aiming’. I don’t carry an entitlement to success. What I want is for us to be contenders, to be clear-minded about what it takes to build and sustain club challenging for honours.  

Finding the answer was beyond Daniel Levy’s capabilities. Perhaps he never understood the question. Having established a solid, essential foundation in terms of financial stability, he was largely incapable of building upon it. If there is a phrase to characterise his tenure, it’s ‘opportunities missed’. There are many examples. Creating a coach/director of football structure then continually changing manager, then not supporting managers in the market. Doing well in the table, on the up, need a striker, so it’s Frazer Campbell on loan, or Saha on a free, or successive windows without buying anyone. While I realise Pochettino was resistant to change in the squad, not reinforcing the team at that point was an era-defining error. More recently, the low income to salaries ratio and the apparent reluctance to free up money for the wages to snag top quality players.

More than just about the money, it is failure of organisation. Any football at any level revolves around the interaction between three elements, namely coaching, recruitment and finance. The chair’s primary responsibility is to make that interaction functions smoothly and with purpose, that is to do well on the pitch. That’s what CEOs, MDs whatever you call them, do in the commercial world. They take the decisions that enable other people, specialists in their field, to do their job to the best of their ability and Levy was largely unable to achieve this.

This has unfortunately been a consistent feature of his time in charge. Coaches not being given the players they needed. Recruitment at odds with the coach (‘a club signing’) or being marginalised, such as Paul Mitchell being head hunted then leaving. There’s a long list here that could take a blog piece in itself so I won’t go on, except to say that in the last 18 months Levy made efforts to sort this out yet again. It remains to be seen if that forms part of his legacy.

What has always puzzled me is that the opportunities I describe as being missed were themselves created by Levy’s decisions. At successive points, say, under Redknapp or Poch, a couple of judicious purchases could have elevated the team into real contenders. I’m not talking about chucking money at the problem. I’m talking about, for instance, a classy midfielder and striker that we had the means to pay for. After all, in Levy’s terms as a businessman, such purchases become an investment to be repaid through CL and PL revenue.

As fans, we saw this all too clearly, and I’ve never grasped why he or the rest of the board could not. I can only conclude that he is cautious man, and there’s nothing wrong with that, who does not fully understand the game even after 25 years in charge. He never quite understood how to achieve success on the pitch. The appointment of two managers, Mourinho and Conte, unsuited to the club’s needs, to the organization and financial situation that he created, because they had the reputation of being winners, is another example.

Which leaves the question that has dogged his regime. The ‘I’ in ENIC stands for investment, and a club they bought for around £25m is now worth £3 or 4 billon. Nice work if you can get it. Undoubtedly, increasing the return on their investment is a core aim and buying players or indeed lowering ticket prices can be seen as detracting from that. Again though, given the sums of money involved, I’ve never fully understood why they could not find a compromise, that is earn vast profits while still freeing up relatively small sums to buy more players or limit ticket prices. I’m deliberately expressing this in straightforward terms – this isn’t about nuance, it’s about basic questions on how to run a football club.

I don’t believe it is naïve to suggest a better set of decisions in this respect were available and the board opted to go in a different direction. All this exposes the flaw of Levy’s lack of ambition. He seems to be content to participate in tournaments rather than go out to win them, the superleague being another example. Lloris’s story of Levy presenting the players with watches, paid for not by the club but by a sponsor, to congratulate players for reaching the CL says so much. Levy wanted to be at the top table but was at pains not to offend his hosts, by the effrontery of actually winning something.

And what is a club for if not for the fans? Unequivocally, the stadium in N17 is major and lasting achievement. But that’s not the whole story. I do not want to forget, as many media articles this week have, how we got there, with Daniel Levy leading on advanced plans to move the club to Stratford and in the process demolish an Olympic Stadium that for a couple of years at least was a symbol of something that brought the nation warmth and happiness. He speaks of the club’s heritage, yet at that point was prepared to jettison that for the economic benefits of moving to east London.

Neither do I forget that ticket prices are among the highest in Europe. It’s up to me and you if we wish to pay them, but being a fan is about something fundamental to our identity and sense of self. It is about who we are. This is why we keep coming back. Two trophies in 25 years, there are no gloryhunters at Spurs yet up to 250,000 people come into the streets on  a working day to celebrate.

The club do not fully appreciate what Spurs mean to their fans. Worse, they think they do but they don’t. I don’t believe they look after us as well as they could. The prices deter many longstanding fans from coming and exclude many others altogether. Our football wins two trophies in 25 years. We hear about the Spurs family, which excludes many young fans, prevents season ticket holders from using spares to introduce family members to our great club and limits the amount of senior tickets available, pricing out fans who have been going for decades. Our chairman was paid £6m in a year when we won nothing and the stadium was 18 months late.

My own research shows that many supporters, while remaining loyal, are becoming disaffected. In particular they feel the club has a poor relationship with the fans. They treat fans in an impersonal way – we are not individuals but are customer numbers, whose needs could be easily accommodated but the club chooses to look away.  For example, the allocation of tickets in the new ground gave insufficient value to longstanding supporters and split up long established family and friends groups. High prices mean fans feel their loyalty is a commodity, to be exploited. Premium seating blocks exclude many fans and do not contribute to the best possible atmosphere.

The impact on supporters of these aspects of being a Spurs fan is given insufficient weight. These things matter. They also result from decisions taken by the club. Other options were available, are available, but discounted. These things are the way the board wanted them to be. Plus, on top of which we contend with other parts of the modern game, such as TV dominated fixture schedules, late changes to fixtures and policing in the ground.

In my view, and I’ve never met the man although I know many who have, Levy is a genuine supporter and wants the best for Spurs. However, he was never able to be sure about what that means, and that has held us back. So much promise, so many opportunities, some successes, so many unfulfilled. Rather than entering into interaction and dialogue, he and the board retreated and put up barriers. They fell into a form of groupthink without taking advice from outside. I doubt he has the emotional intelligence to be confident in himself, see how he presented to others and to take on board constructive criticism.

History will continue to explore these contradictions but without, I suspect, ever fully resolving them, because these are the contradictions of the modern game and being a fan. Generate income, find success on the field, but why should that be at the expense of loyalty? The questions remain and in that sense truly, Daniel Levy is a chair of our times.

It was all going to be so straightforward. This article I mean. Been busy, in hospital tomorrow for another knee replacement, Tottenham On My Mind will limp into a new season all in good time, if you can hang on a bit.

But it’s Spurs. Nothing is ever straightforward.

Eze is on. Delays, but sorted. Palace canny – hang on until they get him for two important matches at the start of the season. Eze is happy to Join Spurs. Or not.

Hardly a JFK moment, but I can remember where I heard the news. 7.45pm, listening to a podcast recorded earlier that day where a well-connected, non-sensationalist AFC supporting pundit confirmed he had heard his club like Eze but not at that price and had long since moved on. 8pm – 62 Whatsapp messages.

A couple of years ago, I wrote about the myth that Levy is a master deal-maker. His approach rested on how he used his power – the power of being a PL club with funds available -to exploit clubs, usually lower down the pyramid, who needed the money. It can still work, witness Archie Gray’s deal when Spurs could move quickly to trump Brentford’s offer, with Leeds keen to take the cash.

But football has moved on, as it tends to do, without, apparently, Levy noticing. Like the low block, these tactics can work but are ineffective over time if you want to be consistently successful at the top level. Our indecision in the market has serious consequences. We are crying out for a creative, passing midfielder but it seems that our deal-making undermines the imperative to be successful on the pitch. Staggered payments, add-ons – I completely understand that few transfer fees, if any, are paid in full up front, but our approach leads to hesitancy and creates opportunities for others, just at the point where the team needs a decisive approach, committed to buying high quality footballers who can lift our squad from promising to being proper contenders.

We dodged a bullet with Saido Berahinho but I recall him saying subsequently, (I paraphrase) ‘we agreed £20m then Levy said, right, that’s £1.5m up front and rest in instalments.’ Willian, Petit, Grealish, all were on the way but never appeared. Nothing has significantly changed. Pre-season, Levy and new CEO Vinai Venkatesham indulged in a PR offensive. We’re going for the title and the Champions League, blah blah. To achieve this, fundamental change is required, and so far, I’m not seeing it.

But back to the Eze (non) deal. Thinking about this last night, this so-called late hi-jacking of the deal smelt a bit whiffy. There is no way that a complex multi-million pound deal could have been sorted in a couple of hours, as this version of the transfer suggests. In contrast to Spurs, AFC moved decisively when the time came but sure enough, this piece in the Independent by Miguel Delaney, a responsible journalist, confirms our neighbours, Eze and Palace were in on the deal. It was in all their interests. Palace hung on to get two more games plus the possibility of more cash, they got their man, the player is where he wants to be. Spurs have been utterly played, undone by complacency in the face of a labyrinthine plot concocted by the villains of the piece.

So this is how business is done. To be fair to Spurs, they have been lied to by all parties, consistently over a period of time and with intent, but if they had not prevaricated, this would have forced the hand of the poker faced conspirators. Also, mendacity is hardly unknown in business and finance.

One line in Delaney’s piece is worthy of note, that Steve Parish has a good relationship with an AFC board member. Conversely, Levy apparently makes little attempt to build such relationships. Indeed his tactics have hacked off many clubs. The powerful don’t have to worry unduly about how they get on with others when it comes to a deal. However, lose that power and there’s nothing left. Long-term, Levy’s approach creates unwelcome antipathy that is and always has been counter to the best interests of the club.

We’re left with more questions than answers. How much is our chairman prepared to delegate to his increasingly large and expensive recruitment team and senior club officers? This must change – the system is not running smoothly or effectively. How can we get a top class creative player in so short a time before the window closes? If we can, we’ll have to pay over the odds.

Also, how much money do we have to continue with this essential squad rebuild? We’re ok with PSR as I understand it. However, there were a couple of articles from football finance journos suggesting that we may have increased our income from the stadium and TV but are cash poor, that is, we don’t have as much cash available this season because of interest payments and in particular because several of the so-called canny instalment deals we’ve agreed in the past have to be paid up now.

There is one addition to my list of might-have-beens’ (you may have others, I’m relying on my increasingly unreliable memory). I recall that an exciting midfielder was on his way to the Lane, ready to step up from the Championship. The deal was done and goodbyes were said. He played for QPR and his name was Eberechi Eze. There’s something remarkable in such an achievement. These days it’s the only Double we’re capable of.

Anyway, the rest of the original piece, preserved for posterity:

• Thomas Frank a sound choice. Brings organisation without fundamental negativity
• It’s a step up for him, and we share his ambition for bigger and better things
• Decent motivator – history of getting the best from players, important for the fit as we develop players
• Looking forward to seeing what transpires, and let’s give him some time
• The board must invest in PL ready players to fill the squad gaps, specifically CB cover, centre forward and creativity in midfield
• Buy Eze

Maybe I should have left it at that. See you with a new knee. The morphine will dull the pain, handy right now, and sincere thanks to everyone who takes the time and trouble to comment, more frequently than I write.