Levy reiterates no player sold without Pochettino blessing

According to ESPN Daniel Levy has again reiterated that the club will not sell any players that manager Mauricio Pochettino wants to keep, insisting Spurs are a different club than in the past.

Our chairman met with The Tottenham Hotspur Supporters’ Trust (THST) in which Levy described Pochettino as the best manager the club has had in his 16-year tenure and said the pair “see eye to eye in terms of strategy.”

We’ve often been labelled a selling club after Michael Carrick, Dimitar Berbatov, Luka Modric and Gareth Bale left between 2006 and 2013, but, of Pochettino’s main body of stars, only Kyle Walker has been sold and the club have insisted he joined Manchester City with Pochettino’s blessing.

It’s been well publicised that Toby Alderweireld is the latest key player to be linked with a Tottenham exit after a source told ESPN FC that contract talks with the Belgian centre-back broke down last month.

He wants to triple his current £50,000-a-week salary but the club are reluctant to break their wage structure for a player who turns 29 next week and has had major injuries in the last two seasons.

The article goes on to say that that policy could also be tested by two-time Premier League Golden Boot winner Harry Kane, with former manager Andre Villas-Boas suggesting that Kane would need to leave Spurs in order to achieve further success.

“If he has a hunger for trophies and for notoriety, he would have to leave Spurs,” Villas-Boas told PA Sport at an event in Monaco. “If he has no hunger for that, but [wants] recognition and stability, he would stay at Spurs.”

It goes on to say that Levy was asked if the rise in gate receipts from this season’s Champions League matches at temporary home Wembley Stadium, placement money for the Premier League and the new television broadcast deal would provide more leeway for wages, however the chairman was non-committal but suggested the club spends around 50 percent of all income on players without maintaining a fixed ratio.

It adds that Levy also admitted that the club’s new stadium project had increased in cost and hit a minor delay but said he expected it to be ready for the start of next season as planned.

It was thought that the roof would go on in January or early February, but according to the minutes from the meeting, Levy said that the “compression ring had been completed last weekend and the roof lift was scheduled to be completed in the next fortnight.” Levy cited bad weather and high winds as the reason for the delay, but the club are still expected to be playing in the new stadium next season “and would be extremely disappointed were this not the case.”

The originally price of the new stadium was at around £400 million but that figure has more than doubled to closer to £850m and according to the minutes, the chairman said he couldn’t put an “exact figure” on the stadium cost but confirmed that it was higher than expected “for a variety of reasons.” He said that additional debt might also need to be raised beyond the original £400m loan to help pay for the stadium.

The club also confirmed they remain in discussions with naming rights partners but said the stadium would be called the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium until a satisfactory agreement is reached.

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