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"It is better to fail building a Sainsbury's in Stratford than to succeed building a new stadium that allows safe standing in North London. And we of Spurs have set our sights very high, so high in fact that even StubHub will have in it an echo of glory."
Surely this is what Daniel Levy would change Bill Nicholson's words to if he was able to use the proceeds of our sales to Real Madrid to buy a time machine and change history. You see, since ENIC purchased Tottenham as an investment we have clutched a viper to our chest. A viper named Daniel Levy. Oh some fans think that he's just a cruel, calculating businessman, but he is actually a monster whose regime is designed to hollow our beloved Tottenham Hotspur. In its place will just be an investment. But an investment into what? People have been blind to the true ambitions of Daniel Levy for too long.
Yes, Levy has tried to undermine the very fabric of English football by hiring Directors of Football, or what the Telegraph so astutely called a "meddlesome supernumerary put in place to undermine the manager's position and feed the chairman's ego" or what Americans so arrogantly call "something all our professional sports teams have, why do you guys get so worked up about this?" But what is his long game? What does he really want?
The clues begin with Sainsbury's. Spurs have long envied the new stadium that Arsenal have built mere miles from White Hart Lane. However a new stadium would never be enough for ENIC. Football was only the cornerstone upon which they sought to construct their true agenda. No one likes going to a supermarket. It's boring and dull and a chore. But what if their local Sainsbury's was staffed by Spurs legends like Ledley King? What if their supermarket was staffed by excellent professional footballers, footballers who played for Tottenham Hotspur? Why people would flock to that Sainsbury's! They'd come to see their heroes stocking the shelves! And then they'd buy Nutella! SO MUCH NUTELLA. Then they could build franchises across London in all sorts of neighborhoods. Neighborhoods like ... Stratford.
You see it was a carefully constructed plan, but of course the greed of Daniel Levy just couldn't resist the opportunity of the Olympic stadium. So he got ahead of himself. Why it was just sitting there at the half the price. Imagine the Sainsbury's he could build there? And with tube stops nearby, imagine how he could branch out! He'd have supermarkets all over London within years!
But is that it? Is Daniel Levy just a supermarket mogul gone mad in the world of football? Oh if only. You see, Daniel Levy is a covetous old sinner, one possessed of a greed that demands accumulation of wealth on a scale that would make Roman Abramovich blush. Sainsbury's is but the first link in this sinister chain that ties down the ambitions of Spurs. The next link is the Europa League.
No one wants to play in the Europa League. Except Daniel Levy. You see, the Europa League creates the perfect vicious cycle. It forces Spurs to play midweek, so on the weekend, they are exhausted from their trip to Eastern Belarus. During their league fixtures they have to take the field with their eyes heavy and their bellies full of poorly cooked borscht and attempt to find a way to beat Blackpool. Something which they'll inevitably fail to do. Thanks to the Europa league, they will miss the Champions League at season's end. Since this is unacceptable, the manager is fired, activating a secret clause in their contracts which forces them to pay the team 100 million pounds. It is an ingenious fool proof strategy. The only problem is what if the team makes the Champions League? Then Levy can't fire the manager. This is exactly what happened in 2011. However, Levy kept the cycle going by paying off the players of Bayern Munich. A payoff he was only able to afford by agreeing to a deal with Stub Hub. Unfortunately for the Spurs faithful, everything is going to according to Levy's plan.
The final link is our partnership with Real Madrid. We say the game is about glory but we all know for Daniel Levy it is about turning a profit which he won't reinvest in the team. So we take world class players forged in Tottenham and prostitute ourselves like a diseased woman of the night to Real Madrid. This bukkake style partnership is more sinister than it appears at first glance. It is not just designed to support Levy's bourgeois fantasy, but also to facilitate transfers to Arsenal. Transfers which keep us out of the Champions League. Which keeps managers from succeeding, which makes the team so much profit. The cruel carousel goes round and round. Stopping only at a chilling destination.
That destination is ENIC's dastardly end game. While a substantial portion of this money is directed to Levy's scandalous lifestyle, redolent with loose women, fancy houses, and fast cars, it is really going to fund the work of top behavioral control experts and the world's best sound engineers. Together they are working to build a machine designed to prevent entire crowds from singing. Using this nefarious technology they will remove all atmosphere from White Hart Lane, enabling them to create the world' most magnificent opera house in its place, pricing out football fans once and for all.
Levy is doing this to us because he hates us. He doesn't want to see us get what we want, which is a return to Tottenham's roots. Levy won't let us have a club that is run by a local church, plays in a marsh, uses an attacking WM formation, and is not allowed to pay players but does so illegally under the table. He doesn't understand that THIS is the heart of what makes our club great. He only wants to make money. So he can build an opera house. Where the crowd can't make any noise. Because he used profits from Sainsbury's franchises, firing managers, and selling players to Real Madrid to build a machine that prevents crowd noise. This is the disgusting, rotting face of modern football, consumed by profit and a love of opera. And to see it, we only need glance towards our director's box.
(Yes, this is satire.)
