Team first. Stadium second

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not about to question Daniel Levy’s commitment to or love of Spurs. And it would be churlish in the extreme not to acknowledge the massive steps forward we have made under his stewardship. I also happen to believe that his stand against the want-away Luca Modric a couple of seasons ago was little short of heroic. A contract is a commitment by two parties, not one.

For me, the problem with Daniel Levy seems to be his love of ‘the deal’.  Year on year he holds out for the last minute bargain, convinced that the Club he’s negotiating with will blink first. It worked with VDV, but, as a strategy, it’s been little short of calamitous since. The Damiao saga is a perfect case in point. Over and over we go in for a man who clearly doesn’t want to come to WHL. Levy plays his usual waiting game, but to no avail. Instead of refocussing and looking for an alternative player, he carries on hoping things will change. They don’t. The clock runs out and we finish outside the CL spot. Again.

Every Spurs fan (and I include Levy as one of our own), has known that we’ve needed at least one new striker since Berbatov departed. Back then goals from Van Der Vaart and Bale papered over the cracks but, when they got injured, the erratic impotence of Crouch, Defoe, Pavlyuchenko and subsequently Adebayor (surely Britain’s laziest so-called striker) was cruelly exposed.

The team needs investment in this area now. Mr Levy doesn’t seem to understand that it’s great teams that build great stadia. Not the other way round. The dreaded Arsenal built their ground off the back of league and cup success. Look at the half empty Emirates now the team have faltered.  So instead of adopting the ‘if you build it, they will come’ approach, Mr Levy now needs to stop believing that player prices will drop if he waits them out. The market is way too competitive nowadays. He needs to be forceful and decisive. I’m not saying don’t haggle, but surely if a player like Soldado can’t be got for less than £25 million, then maybe we should pay £25 million, simply because his 20+ goals a season will put us in contention for something more than a slim chance of fourth place. Yes, I am naive enough to believe that with reasonable investment (we do have players to sell after all) we could mount a genuine challenge for the title. The sort of challenge that puts bums on seats; that makes the Villas, Damiaos and Huntelaars long to come to White Hart Lane and, equally importantly,  stops the commentators saying “how long can Spurs hang onto him?” every time we find ourselves with a half decent player on our books.

If you build the team first, everything else will come.