Forward Planning For A Time Without Joe Lewis At Tottenham

“Always look on the dark side of life…”

Forward Planning

Joe Lewis with Daniel Levy [Photo: Alan Hill]When I wrote last week expressing my gratitude for the support Tottenham Hotspur has received from Joe Lewis, I started to think about a future without him, which must inevitably arrive one day.

In football, just like in life, unless you are happy to slip back you have to keep moving forward. That involves forward planning, including succession planning. There are exceptions brought about by windfalls, lottery wins, stock market runs and crashes but generally you become successful by planning ahead, anticipating problems and opportunities and positioning yourself to take advantage of them in advance. It never ceases to amaze me how many people go through life without realising that. With good forward planning, you can keep at or near the top of your chosen profession; you can engineer a comfortable retirement for when you have had enough after a lifetime of graft. The trick is to know what it is you really want and then what obstacles are likely to hold you up and what options there are to overcome them. You can choose when to step back and enjoy the fruits of your efforts, having chosen someone to carry the torch. Massive disasters like the sub-prime loan crisis and interest rate crashes can scupper even the plans of governments but generally if you have a plan and a backup plan, you will do better than your competitors, even in difficult times.

OK you say. Enough already. We get the message but what is all this cod philosophy doing in a football blog?  I’ll tell you why (SIGH, WELL GET ON WITH IT THEN). Be honest, we are excited at the prospects for Tottenham after all these international signings. Anticipating success, Champions League football at least. So it is precisely at this point that we (the club) should be making plans for what happens if it doesn’t work out.

“Look on the black side”

Look on the black side and have a plan for what you are going to do if things go pear shaped. That means you have to think about the unthinkable even if you hope with all your heart it isn’t going to happen. For example, Andre Villas-Boas. He had offers from major clubs during the summer. He stayed, saying he owed Spurs for giving him a chance following the Chelsea situation and he kept his word this summer, staying to see his loyalty rewarded by the appointment of Baldini and the fantastic summer signings.

Looking on the black side though, that’s very much like what Gareth Bale said and now he has gone. Gareth said how well he got on with AVB and blessed his new baby daughter with AVB’s initials. That seems like an odd thing to do if he was then going to walk out on him and us with no prospect of them linking up again. No prospect? I wonder. Madrid are not known for hanging on to their managers for very long, particularly if they do not win the Champions League. Carlo Ancelotti is not averse to moving from one club to another after a short spell of success. Some managers (I was one of them at my own medium civil service level) need to move to new challenges after a few years to avoid complacency and to maintain their own enthusiasm and performance levels.

If I was the Real Madrid president, I would already be looking at AVB as his replacement. He has the potential to bring the success that Guardiola brought to Barcelona. In another year’s time he may feel he has repaid his debt to Tottenham. What I sincerely hope is that in doing so, he will have led us to winning a trophy and re-entry into the Champions League. I hope that means he will want to stay and we can achieve long term success with him leading us into our new stadium as one of the top clubs in Europe.

However, an example of the sort of forward planning I am talking about is that Daniel Levy should be planning now for what to do if and when AVB goes. Like all plans, it has to be a flexible plan, adjusted up to the last minute, depending on who might be available as a replacement. If, God forbid, some of our new signings get long term injuries (Etienne Capoue is already looking a worry), others do not cope with the speed and pressure of English football and a Bale less Spurs do not have the anticipated success, you can just imagine how uncomfortable AVB’s position would be made, first by the press and then some fans.

This is where we fans can step in and help. First off, we are used to disappointment and being philosophical about it. It is still worth hanging on to that attitude. We need to be hugely supportive to the team as the new players try for success. We need to face the fact that because they are all so new it may not come this season. We need to recognise that it may take a season for the instant gelling we are all hoping for to happen. If that turns out to be the case, we need to make the players with potential who are clearly giving their all feel comfortable about staying on so that they and the team can develop further next year. The dream of course, is of instant success but stay calm about the fact it may not happen…yet.

Joe Lewis

This need for long term plans goes even higher than the manager and the best players. Is there, I wonder, a succession plan at ownership level? Now that would be really unusual in English football. The most common approach of private owners in this situation seems to be “it’s my ball and I’ll do what I like with it” as they walk off into the sunset having stripped the club of its assets. I don’t think Joe Lewis is that type. I hope and choose to believe that he would like to see Spurs develop into a national institution, like Real Madrid in Spain and Bayern Munich in Germany. We are not far off. We have a long, glorious history and a dedicated community fan base. Mr. Lewis could go a long way to ensuring that.  Whatever his achievements in business, it would secure his place in history. It would really be giving something major back to the community. It would probably involve having a massive, well designed trust fund that genuinely protects the clubs assets and funds in perpetuity. I would love to think he has already set something like that up. It’s what I would do in his position. He will know from his business experience, the crucial decisions in this would be in choosing trusted, skilled people who have proved to have the club’s interests at heart to be the trustees and run it.

I’d love to think he has already done it. If not, in my wildest dreams I’d like to think someone shoves this blog under his nose and he gives it some thought. It would be the Spurs equivalent of Bill Gates allocating so much of his fortune to charities at the suggestion of his wife, as he has apparently done in recent years. After all, you can’t take it with you and wouldn’t it be great to think you will be remembered with gratitude and affection down the ages by hundreds of thousands of people?