Former Tottenham head of elite talent identification and development, David Webb, has revealed that Daniel Levy blocked several signings during the Mauricio Pochettino era, which could have pushed the club on to the next level.
Spurs came close to winning the biggest trophies in football during the Pochettino era, including the Premier League and Champions League titles, despite spending a fraction of some of their rivals.
There is a lingering disappointment among many Tottenham fans that the Argentine was not backed in the transfer market at a time when the team was on the cusp of greatness.
Webb has now revealed that there were several signings that did not go through due to Levy’s intervention.
He told talkSPORT: “There were cases when I was at Spurs we had players in the building that we should have potentially signed that would have helped Pochettino at that time, that didn’t go through for various aspects.
“There were questions being raised that sometimes if we had acquired that player at that certain time it could have steered Tottenham in a different direction.”
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Webb also confirmed that Levy took a ‘hands-on’ approach when it came to various footballing decisions, including ones regarding player transfers.
He added: “Daniel did like to have a hands-on role in that, when it came to that final phase he would like to know what was going on, he would like to have his say, he would like it to be at a certain price point.
“Yes, he had an opinion, and I think sometimes that could cause a conflict of interest.”
Over the last couple of years, the Tottenham chairman has taken a step back from footballing decisions, with David Ornstein explaining recently on Rio Ferdinand’s YouTube channel that the appointments of Fabio Paratici (who has now resigned) and Scott Munn were examples of the 61-year-old ceding power.
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Levy and the Spurs hierarchy clearly could have done more to back Pochettino from 2016 to 2018 but it is worth remembering that when the Argentine managed to get his top targets during the summer of 2019 (Ndombele, Lo Celso etc), the decisions proved to be disastrous.
In many ways, Spurs have not recovered from the mistakes they made that summer.
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