Vinai Venkatesham has revealed what he was shocked by when he took over as Tottenham CEO last summer, and has explained the areas where the club needed to improve.
It was seen as a new era when Daniel Levy was let go by Tottenham last year, with Spurs promising to prioritise on-pitch success under their new leadership.
However, what we have witnessed is actually the club sliding down even further and almost getting relegated for the first time in 50 years.
In the end, the Tottenham top brass needed Roberto De Zerbi to rescue them from complete disaster, and the club’s CEO has now reflected on his first season at the helm.
Vinai Venkatesham says Tottenham needed a complete reset when he arrived
The Spurs chief admitted that while securing survival in the Premier League came as a huge relief to everyone at the club, a 17th-place finish is nowhere near good enough for a club of this stature.
Vinai Venkatesham told BBC Sport about staying up on the final day: “I think it was just a huge outpouring of relief. But obviously, feeling relief at the end of the season is nowhere near the standard of the football club.”
Venkatesham explained that while he walked into Tottenham with big ambitions last year, it became clear very quickly that the club were lagging behind their rivals in several areas.
The Spurs CEO said: “On my very first day, what I thought would be a realistic target for the men’s first team would be competing for European places.
“If you’d have asked me a few months after I joined, when I was no longer an outsider, I would have told you the club was in a significantly worse state in some places than I thought.
“That is absolutely not meant to be a criticism of anyone or anything. It was just what I found. It was very clear that this wasn’t some form of turnaround that was required of the club in quite a few areas. It was really a complete reset.”
Venkatesham claims other clubs have pushed ahead of Spurs in the footballing department
The Tottenham chief revealed that while everything from a commercial and stadium operations point of view was strong at Spurs, that was not the case on the footballing side.
He suggested that over recent years, many clubs in the Premier League have moved ahead of the Lilywhites when it comes to delivering high performance on the pitch.
Venkatesham added: “If I had to generalise, I would say on the non-football side of the club, in particular around stadium operations and commercial, that the club was and is really strong. I think if you look at the football side of the club, over a timeframe of five years or so, there has just been an explosion in progress across the Premier League.
“I’m not saying that Tottenham didn’t improve in that period. But what I can tell you is that when you look at where Tottenham were in many of those areas, compared to where I believe other Premier League clubs are, there was a significant gap. In some areas really quite worryingly so.
“I don’t think that there was what I would call a relentless obsession with football success. Our training centre is amazing, one of the best, if not the best in the world. But when you look around, it looks more like a five-star hotel than it does a performance environment. That will change over the summer. I think there are many areas where the club hasn’t got the right level of expertise.”
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