|
It has been a confused week at Spurs, with the position of head coach Martin Jol being called publicly into question. Sevilla's Juanda Ramos was spotted meeting Spurs officials and revealed Spurs had made an offer which he had rejected, only to retract the claim later. One senior Spurs executive hinted that the board's mistake was one of timing rather than judgement. 'If you look at the continent, you tend to find that the average tenure of a coach is two seasons. It's not a big deal when the coach comes and goes. Clearly the best time to change a coach is always in the summer, when you have the biggest selection of coaches available.' The underlying issue is the pressure from the Spurs board and fans to achieve Champions League status. But this is not easy given the gap in revenues between the top four clubs and the rest. Can clubs outside the elite, with long-term business plans for growth, ever get there? Or is the only path the one laid by Chelsea, which got there through the £350m investment of Roman Abramovich? A key for Spurs is to either build a new stadium or expand the existing one at White Hart Lane with its 36,000 capacity, given that there is a season ticket waiting list of 20,000. On Friday, Enic International, the vehicle owned by Mr Levy and Joe Lewis, the Bahamas-based currency trader increased its stake in the club to 68 per cent.
|
