Spurs rip up Levy blueprint by buying high and selling low
Spurs rip up Levy blueprint by buying high and selling low
Matt LawSat, August 22, 2026 at 7:00 AM UTC
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Daniel Levy was known to be a stubborn negotiator during his near 25-year reign as executive chairman of Tottenham Hotspur - Andrew Matthews/PA
There will be no blaming Daniel Levy if things go wrong this time, given Tottenham Hotspur have ripped up the blueprint of their former chairman in an effort to prove themselves a “big-six” club again.
Fingers were pointed in Levy’s direction by some of those now responsible for running Spurs as the club hurtled towards relegation from the Premier League last season. It felt a cheap shot then, but it is an excuse that no longer carries any merit.
Spurs’ success or failure will purely be on chief executive Vinai Venkatesham, sporting director Johan Lange and head coach Roberto De Zerbi, following a summer in which Spurs have broken the bank.
Nobody can fault their ambition, or the backing given to them by the Lewis family, who have delivered on their promises and must now expect those in charge of the football to deliver on theirs.
Spurs have agreed a deal worth £85m with Manchester City for Savinho, with the club hoping Omar Marmoush will follow. Savinho will take Spurs’ spending past the £300m mark, following the arrivals of Sandro Tonali (£100m from Newcastle United), Mateus Fernandes (£85m from West Ham United) and Jan Paul van Hecke (£52m from Brighton). There have also been the free-transfer signings of Marcos Senesi and Andrew Robertson.
“They [the board] kept their word, they kept [to] what they said before I came in March,” De Zerbi said. “I’m very happy. But what we are doing is not for the coach. It’s for the club, for the fans, for the history of the club, for the pride of the club and for the level of the club.”
There is pressure on Johan Lange (left) and Vinai Venkatesham for Spurs to perform this season - Vince Mignott/Getty Images
A return to European football must be the minimum requirement for Spurs, with Champions League qualification the big goal. The club qualified for Europe 18 out of the 20 seasons that Levy was at the helm, but Spurs are trying to get there very differently this time around.
“I think this moment is crucial for this club,” De Zerbi said. “Because after two seasons like we did, we have to change the mood, completely change it, give a boost.
“And then, I think when we have finished in this transfer market, for a long time we don’t need many things and we can work all together in the right condition, in the right direction, to build step by step something special, to compete for the top of the table. Not maybe now, or maybe yes, I don’t know. But we have the squad enough to play in every stadium in the right way.”
This, without question, is no longer Levy’s Spurs following a summer in which the club have almost wilfully done the complete opposite to what earned him his reputation as one of the most stubborn negotiators in the game.
Whether Levy retains a significant financial investment in the club is a source of confusion after the claims in June that he had sold the majority of his stake to Eight Sports Capital.
Spurs are still yet to receive any regulatory notice of a change to the identity of the club’s shareholders. Levy missed a deadline to take part in a share issue after the Lewis family’s latest £100m cash injection, which means his stake in Spurs’ parent company Enic has shrunk to 27.38 per cent – down from 29.88 per cent.
Levy would have been required to invest in the region of £50m to keep his stake at the same level and it remains to be seen whether it ever formally passes over to the mysterious Eight Sports Capital, which – along with Levy – is yet to respond to requests for clarification from Telegraph Sport.
Maybe Levy simply did not trust those inside Spurs with his cash, given the way in which they have thrown out “Levynomics” – as some supporters christened his approach.
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The theory behind “Levynomics” was supposedly to buy low and sell high. Although in practice, it too often meant to barely buy or sell at all thanks to valuations and asking prices put on transfer targets and players the club needed to offload.
Former managers Mauricio Pochettino, José Mourinho, Antonio Conte and Ange Postecoglou will all be scratching their heads about Spurs’ change of strategy in the club’s first post-Levy summer.
It was Postecoglou who publicly shared his belief that Spurs would never spend £100m on a player and yet, just over a year after his departure, the club splashed out exactly that on midfielder Tonali.
Whereas Postecoglou and his predecessors often had to answer questions over Spurs’ perceived profligacy, De Zerbi has been able to tease fans with promises of “bomba” signings.
Roberto De Zerbi has benefited from a transfer strategy previous Spurs managers were not familiar with - Hollie Adams/Reuters
The Tonali deal came just a few days after Spurs had smashed their transfer record for the first time this summer by spending £85m on Fernandes – a fee so large that Manchester United backed away from the bidding.
But it was the signing of defender Van Hecke that was said to have triggered Levy. Spurs paid Brighton £52m for a player in the final year of his contract and agreed to a 20 per cent sell-on clause.
During an appearance on Talksport, Simon Jordan broadcast Levy’s supposed thoughts on the Van Hecke deal to the nation during a conversation with former England goalkeeper Ben Foster.
Foster claimed that Jordan had received a message from Levy, which prompted Jordan to say: “I was showing him a fact about the Brighton deal and how Brighton have pulled Spurs’ pants down on a player who was out of contract in a year’s time, that didn’t want to sign a new contract and was the fifth most expensive soon-to-be-non-contract player that has ever been signed. That is what Daniel was pointing out to some extent.”
It is not just some of the fees that Spurs are paying, either, with new players and some existing squad members profiting from a new wage structure. “Some of the wages being paid are eye-watering,” one source said. “You wouldn’t have believed Spurs would pay players this kind of money a year or so ago.”
Quite what Levy has made of the outgoings has not been made public by Jordan or anybody else, but sources around the club have been surprised by Spurs’ willingness to sell some of their wantaway players for relatively modest fees.
The club collected a combined £64m for defenders Cristian Romero and Djed Spence, which prompted one source to tell Telegraph Sport: “That’s low in this market. Romero had previously been valued well over £50m, while Spence is coming off the back of a really positive World Cup.”
Djed Spence joined Inter this month after four years at Spurs - Eston Parker/Getty Images
Another source believes the deals show that Spurs’ main focus is now on football. He said: “They’ve probably prioritised the dressing room and avoiding any sort of disruption. Both players wanted to leave, so the club decided to move them on rather than hanging on for the biggest possible fees.”
Goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario and defender Radu Dragusin have been loaned out, with De Zerbi saying: “If you don’t want to stay anymore in Tottenham, in a big club, you have to leave.”
There has been one big-money exit, with Spurs negotiating a package worth a potential £50m for Luka Vuskovic to join Brighton, despite the fact he had never made a competitive appearance for Spurs.
That may have been more in-keeping with his approach, but Levy’s fingerprints have been scrubbed from this Spurs squad. Whether the club have “had their pants pulled down” is something we are about to find out.
Source: “AOL Money”
