Daniel Levy Exits Tottenham: Does His Legacy Deserve Respect?

Two major trophies, a Champions League final, and a billion-pound stadium. For many, those accomplishments embody the progress Tottenham Hotspur has made over the course of Daniel Levy's 24-year tenure at the club. On September 4th, 2025, when Spurs announced his departure, the official statement referred to "succession plans" and "governance refreshes." However, few believed it. The consensus was that ENIC, the holding company backed by Tavistock Group, had finally sacked its controversial executive.

If you want a case study in what happens when a capital allocator becomes the day-to-day boss, I would contend that Spurs represent the exception rather than the rule. Levy's resume was immaculate for a boardroom: a Cambridge degree in economics and land economy, and experience as managing director at ENIC by the mid-90s. When ENIC took control of Spurs in 2001, he shifted from the investor side to the football side. This is where the lines blurred, and where many fans' frustrations come from. Investors decide where money goes; operators decide how a business runs. When those jobs merge in a footballing front office, history shows us that clubs often struggle to compete in the long term.   

That said, plenty of the ledger glows green. Hotspur Way, which opened in 2012, remains ranked among the world's top training facilities. Furthermore, the 62-thousand capacity stadium, which opened in 2019, is undoubtedly a financial juggernaut. Matchday revenues alone hit nearly seven million, and the retractable NFL field and concert program have turned the place into a year-round venue that will only drive in more money going forward. The club's 2017-18 accounts showed a profit of $152 million, the largest ever recorded by a football club at the time. On the dashboards that matter to genuine decision makers at the top level, Levy's performance could hardly be better.

Yet if you ask the fans, most of their focus was never on the inputs, but rather on the ends. Thirteen permanent managers in 24 years tells you about the churn. Developmental managers and super coaches came and went—Harry Redknapp, Mauricio Pochettino, José Mourinho, and Antonio Conte—but broad strategy, transfers, and direction always seemed to be strictly controlled by Levy. Ticket prices climbed faster than most other clubs in England. The club's brief sign-up to the European Super League in 2021 alienated supporters. And two trophies in a quarter-century, a Carling Cup in 2008 after finishing 11th and a Europa League in 2025 after finishing 17th, is a thin return against rising prices and rhetoric about competing with the "Big Six." 

This is the danger of a single point of failure. Levy's toughness in negotiations is folklore. Sir Alex Ferguson once said dealing with him was "more painful than a hip replacement." Pep Guardiola dubbed him "the master of negotiations" when Harry Kane was desperately clamoring for a move in 2021. The caricature sells because there is truth in it. Tottenham often took business down to the last hour, and deals that were brilliant value on price sometimes missed the right player at the right time. When you centralize that much power in a club's front office in the hands of a businessman, accountability typically only arrives when the bottom line is touched. Who holds the owner's man to account when the owner's man is also running the shop?

That is the core critique of Daniel Levy: a man who is a master of capital allocation tasked with operating a footballing project, with too much of a focus on the former to the absence of the latter. The parallel to Ed Woodward at Manchester United is striking. A banker who structured a leveraged buyout was elevated to the executive vice-chair role. Revenues and sponsorships exploded over the next decade. Yet on the pitch, the club did nothing but lurch and stall while being milked for all it was worth through yearly dividends and predatory loans. The bottom line for the Glazer family was consistent year-on-year, so who cared about the footballing product? This is the same criticism Levy receives from Spurs supporters. For all of the progress, stadiums do not lift trophies, and spreadsheets do not inspire.

This is not to say Levy should be mentioned in the same breath as Ed Woodward—the latter's incompetence makes Levy seem like the greatest chairman of all time. While critiquing his role as chairman is valid, the claim that he delivered no on-field progress is reductive. In the nine seasons before Levy's arrival, Tottenham's average league position was 10.6, ranking them eighth among English clubs. They were a mid-table outfit that earned 30 to 60 percent less than the league's top clubs and spent less on wages than teams with similar reputations at the time, like West Ham and Everton.

Between 2001 and 2009, the Spurs achieved the sixth-best performance in the league, with an average finish of 8.9. This was during the "Big Four" era, when over 90% of the top-four places went to Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea, and Liverpool. From 2010 through the next eight years, the club rose again to fifth-best with an average finish of 4.3. That was ahead of Liverpool's average of six, despite Liverpool spending almost 60 percent more on their wage bill. Over that period, Tottenham were just behind United's average of 3.5, while United spent 107 percent more. These statistics tell a tale of sustained overperformance relative to the club's resources.

The final eight years were weaker, with an average league position of 6.8, albeit still sixth-best in England. By then, Tottenham's gap to the richest clubs had narrowed from 60 percent to just about 20 percent. This commercial climb did not happen without the football product also improving. Prize money, sponsorships, and ticket income all track sporting results to some extent. The idea that Levy built only off-field success ignores this obvious feedback loop: win and you grow, but grow and you can win more often too.

The trophy argument also needs a modern context. Between the 1960s and the 1980s, approximately 20 English clubs won a major trophy in a decade. In the 2000s and 2010s, it was fewer than 10. The accelerated concentration of wealth that we have witnessed over the past few decades has altered the odds in favor of those who already have wealth. When Leicester or Wigan lifted silverware, it was rightly treated as a shock to the system. While Spurs fans can and should demand more than two major trophies, they should also recognize that structural inequality in the sport makes that climb steeper than history suggests.

So what's the fair verdict? Levy was an imperfect chairman: a businessman in a footballing role who often behaved like one. He helped create an extremely lucrative stadium and an elite training ground while keeping wages and fees sustainable. He made difficult calls, such as the sacking of Mauricio Pochettino, and some of them were wrong. Yet he also oversaw the clear elevation of Tottenham's competitive reputation from a mid-table outfit to a consistent top-six presence, with long stretches at a top-four standard, including a Champions League Final appearance. Independent of oil money or a transparent sportswashing project, Levy should get his flowers for managing to do this, as the league around him has gotten richer and more ruthless. Levy's reign was frustrating, flawed, and sometimes tone-deaf, but also transformational. He made Tottenham bigger, richer, and more competitive than at any point in the modern era. For a square, businessmen peg in a round, football-shaped hole, that's a record that necessitates grudging admiration.