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Management Vinai Venkatesham - CEO
- Thread starter SpiderSpurs
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Useless, gutless. Waster.
Guess many are too busy chucking round facile izms like "gooner cunt" and complaining about promises about warchests that were never made; but i'm suprised no-one honed in on the part of VV's letter where it notes that a couple of City Group blokes have been hired to plug into Lange's operations..........
In short; it seems to imply that they're doubling down on Lange, rather than gearing up to fire him.
It also depicts that Lange will sit above the new deal-maker in the hierarchy.
..................Has Paratici's imminent exit seen Lange get a by-proxy promotion????
In short; it seems to imply that they're doubling down on Lange, rather than gearing up to fire him.
It also depicts that Lange will sit above the new deal-maker in the hierarchy.
..................Has Paratici's imminent exit seen Lange get a by-proxy promotion????
That's how I interpreted it, yes.
Nicked from elsewhere
An interesting discussion from the podcast "Where's the money gone" with Adrian Goldberg & Charlie Methven (who was once an advisor to Levy; here is part of it that is relevant:
From Where's The Money Gone?: A Tale Of Two Managers: Oliver Glasner and Thomas Frank, 19 Jan 2026
Tottenham Dysfunction
I mean, Spurs is a really interesting case because under Daniel Levy, who was there a long, long time, 25 years, and I'm great believe that football clubs end up taking on the personality of their chief executive owner and sometimes their manager. Over time, rather like dogs and their owners, it ends up becoming a bit symbiotic.
Daniel Levy was very functional in some ways, which is that he had a very sharp business sense, tactical acumen, in terms of how to buy and sell players, negotiate in the market, but also strategically how to move the business forward in revenue terms. But he didn't do it in a classical functional way. He micromanaged everything, and he had a right-hand woman called Donna Cullen, who then if he wasn't available to micromanage something, then she would micromanage it.
It wasn't a classically functional organization where there was a lot of delegation and a lot of empowerment and a lot of growing of people through the ranks who could then look to take the top job and all that. It wasn't like that. It was not like that.
I was a consultant there for a while, and it was very, very Daniel-centric, and stuck with pile up on his desk or Donna's desk waiting for sign-off for weeks, but weeks at the time if they were busy, etc. So even very senior people in the organization couldn't make a decision. They couldn't say, well, actually, this is my era of the business.
This is what we're going to do. This is how we're going to do it. So effectively, you've got there for an organization which massively overachieved in certain areas where Daniel Levy's micromanagement effectively came in useful because he's such a capable person himself, but when he decided to micromanage the building of the stadium, of course, it ended up being a very good stadium.
But equally in other areas, which either he didn't have time to micromanage or else were not particularly in his skill set to micromanage, you were left with dysfunctionality. That dysfunctionality is not going to be turned around overnight and may take some time. When you remove somebody who is as big a figure than the organization as Daniel Levy, Daniel Levy was as influential in Spurs as Fergie was at Man U.
It's not just removing a chief executive; you're removing the person who decided and determined absolutely everything. They haven't, as I said, got those people who can step into those places. Now, what happened was around this time last year, they appointed a guy called Vinay Venkatesham, who had previously been the chief executive of Woolwich, ironically, or not ironically, oddly, I “guess you would say.
That was almost seen at the time as this is while Daniel was still in place. It was seen at the time almost as though Joe Lewis, the major shareholder in his family, was using this as a way of exerting a bit of control over Daniel Levy. Of course, in retrospect, he was basically being employed as the replacement.
There's a very different person. I mean, he's a corporate greasy pole climber. He just went into Woolwich as a young man in a mid-ranking job, worked his way up the political system at Woolwich, which is a very nice, greasy pole corporate ladder at Woolwich.
It's all sort of everything set and so it was in very establishment, et cetera, et cetera. The skills that you need to climb a greasy pole like Woolwich are very, very different from turning a club around. Very, very different.
You need to have entrepreneurial, get up and go to turn a club around and you don't learn that from getting four or five promotions in the same business by being nice to people, then hitting certain KPIs and all this type of stuff, et cetera. It requires a personality to come in and say, right, let's get a grip on this. Let's turn this round, inspiring people, motivating people.
I've got nothing, I don't think I've ever even met Vini. I'm sure he's absolutely fine. It just seemed a slightly odd appointment when you're looking at filling a hole, which is as big as the Daniel Levy hole, given that the Lewis family themselves plainly were not themselves going to get involved, they didn't even live in the country.
An interesting discussion from the podcast "Where's the money gone" with Adrian Goldberg & Charlie Methven (who was once an advisor to Levy; here is part of it that is relevant:
From Where's The Money Gone?: A Tale Of Two Managers: Oliver Glasner and Thomas Frank, 19 Jan 2026
Tottenham Dysfunction
I mean, Spurs is a really interesting case because under Daniel Levy, who was there a long, long time, 25 years, and I'm great believe that football clubs end up taking on the personality of their chief executive owner and sometimes their manager. Over time, rather like dogs and their owners, it ends up becoming a bit symbiotic.
Daniel Levy was very functional in some ways, which is that he had a very sharp business sense, tactical acumen, in terms of how to buy and sell players, negotiate in the market, but also strategically how to move the business forward in revenue terms. But he didn't do it in a classical functional way. He micromanaged everything, and he had a right-hand woman called Donna Cullen, who then if he wasn't available to micromanage something, then she would micromanage it.
It wasn't a classically functional organization where there was a lot of delegation and a lot of empowerment and a lot of growing of people through the ranks who could then look to take the top job and all that. It wasn't like that. It was not like that.
I was a consultant there for a while, and it was very, very Daniel-centric, and stuck with pile up on his desk or Donna's desk waiting for sign-off for weeks, but weeks at the time if they were busy, etc. So even very senior people in the organization couldn't make a decision. They couldn't say, well, actually, this is my era of the business.
This is what we're going to do. This is how we're going to do it. So effectively, you've got there for an organization which massively overachieved in certain areas where Daniel Levy's micromanagement effectively came in useful because he's such a capable person himself, but when he decided to micromanage the building of the stadium, of course, it ended up being a very good stadium.
But equally in other areas, which either he didn't have time to micromanage or else were not particularly in his skill set to micromanage, you were left with dysfunctionality. That dysfunctionality is not going to be turned around overnight and may take some time. When you remove somebody who is as big a figure than the organization as Daniel Levy, Daniel Levy was as influential in Spurs as Fergie was at Man U.
It's not just removing a chief executive; you're removing the person who decided and determined absolutely everything. They haven't, as I said, got those people who can step into those places. Now, what happened was around this time last year, they appointed a guy called Vinay Venkatesham, who had previously been the chief executive of Woolwich, ironically, or not ironically, oddly, I “guess you would say.
That was almost seen at the time as this is while Daniel was still in place. It was seen at the time almost as though Joe Lewis, the major shareholder in his family, was using this as a way of exerting a bit of control over Daniel Levy. Of course, in retrospect, he was basically being employed as the replacement.
There's a very different person. I mean, he's a corporate greasy pole climber. He just went into Woolwich as a young man in a mid-ranking job, worked his way up the political system at Woolwich, which is a very nice, greasy pole corporate ladder at Woolwich.
It's all sort of everything set and so it was in very establishment, et cetera, et cetera. The skills that you need to climb a greasy pole like Woolwich are very, very different from turning a club around. Very, very different.
You need to have entrepreneurial, get up and go to turn a club around and you don't learn that from getting four or five promotions in the same business by being nice to people, then hitting certain KPIs and all this type of stuff, et cetera. It requires a personality to come in and say, right, let's get a grip on this. Let's turn this round, inspiring people, motivating people.
I've got nothing, I don't think I've ever even met Vini. I'm sure he's absolutely fine. It just seemed a slightly odd appointment when you're looking at filling a hole, which is as big as the Daniel Levy hole, given that the Lewis family themselves plainly were not themselves going to get involved, they didn't even live in the country.
Sack him first
This Gooner cunt should never have been allowed to come here.
The longer he’s here the more we’re fucked.
The longer he’s here the more we’re fucked.
Part of being a good leader is admitting when you’ve made an error, instead of doubling down on stupid.
Sack Frank to show you have brains!
Is impossible any management will think Frank has what it takes to turn things around.
Is impossible any management will think Frank has what it takes to turn things around.
Off the skywalk
The fucking Manson family would be preferable at this point.
It was being discussed the other day, hiring Frank, and the now infamous 30 candidates / 10 criteria bullshit
Its been on my mind ever since
For ME, theres no objective success with Frank as our manager this year. Some will argue the CL run, but all the fundamentals with him are just wrong.
Left me wondering - what about for THEM? What is it they want to see? Could they get to May and be happy he really is making progress?
Hard to imagine, but this is Vinai...
There was no criteria really, Vinai just wanted his Arteta, Frank is the Temu version of him.
Theres 4 hours left of the window.
Its possible we do the £100m+ on some quality moves between now and then (
) but even with that possibility I feel like this isnt a premature post.
From the moment the summer window shut, we should have been working on targets for January.
Of course, over the course of the season priorities can shift, opportunities can arise etc, but even so - we should have had a concrete list of targets ready to go BEFORE Jan 1st.
Heck, we could even have had a deal done - look at City with Semenyo, that was basically ready to go before the window opened.
Similarly, we could have set up a bunch of players to leave to make way for new signings.
What has actually followed has so far been embarrasing
Souza looks like a propely scouted buy, but is a kid and wont be any good to us until next season (or later, if ever)
Took half the window to finalise
Gallagher looks like pure opportunism for a long standing club target who arguably isnt even the profile we needed (even if I do like him)
And thats it, 02 Feb, 15:00pm.
I appreciate the turmoil at the club since September when Levy was fired. Ive seen all the commentators/pundits/journalists emphasising that after 24 years Levy leaving means whole structures need replacing.
But the complete lack of preparedness, lack of decision, lack of action here - fucking criminal.
Ill say the same of persisting with Frank as well
Vinai and co are paralised when it comes to any decision making, its embarrasing
I think even a complete rank amateur would have done a better job. I think any poster here, with access to what the club has access to - could have lined the window up in a weeks worth of work.
Its possible we do the £100m+ on some quality moves between now and then (
) but even with that possibility I feel like this isnt a premature post.From the moment the summer window shut, we should have been working on targets for January.
Of course, over the course of the season priorities can shift, opportunities can arise etc, but even so - we should have had a concrete list of targets ready to go BEFORE Jan 1st.
Heck, we could even have had a deal done - look at City with Semenyo, that was basically ready to go before the window opened.
Similarly, we could have set up a bunch of players to leave to make way for new signings.
What has actually followed has so far been embarrasing
Souza looks like a propely scouted buy, but is a kid and wont be any good to us until next season (or later, if ever)
Took half the window to finalise
Gallagher looks like pure opportunism for a long standing club target who arguably isnt even the profile we needed (even if I do like him)
And thats it, 02 Feb, 15:00pm.
I appreciate the turmoil at the club since September when Levy was fired. Ive seen all the commentators/pundits/journalists emphasising that after 24 years Levy leaving means whole structures need replacing.
But the complete lack of preparedness, lack of decision, lack of action here - fucking criminal.
Ill say the same of persisting with Frank as well
Vinai and co are paralised when it comes to any decision making, its embarrasing
I think even a complete rank amateur would have done a better job. I think any poster here, with access to what the club has access to - could have lined the window up in a weeks worth of work.
Who would you have wanted us to sign before the window shut?Theres 4 hours left of the window.
Its possible we do the £100m+ on some quality moves between now and then (
From the moment the summer window shut, we should have been working on targets for January.
Of course, over the course of the season priorities can shift, opportunities can arise etc, but even so - we should have had a concrete list of targets ready to go BEFORE Jan 1st.
Heck, we could even have had a deal done - look at City with Semenyo, that was basically ready to go before the window opened.
Similarly, we could have set up a bunch of players to leave to make way for new signings.
What has actually followed has so far been embarrasing
Souza looks like a propely scouted buy, but is a kid and wont be any good to us until next season (or later, if ever)
Took half the window to finalise
Gallagher looks like pure opportunism for a long standing club target who arguably isnt even the profile we needed (even if I do like him)
And thats it, 02 Feb, 15:00pm.
I appreciate the turmoil at the club since September when Levy was fired. Ive seen all the commentators/pundits/journalists emphasising that after 24 years Levy leaving means whole structures need replacing.
But the complete lack of preparedness, lack of decision, lack of action here - fucking criminal.
Ill say the same of persisting with Frank as well
Vinai and co are paralised when it comes to any decision making, its embarrasing
I think even a complete rank amateur would have done a better job. I think any poster here, with access to what the club has access to - could have lined the window up in a weeks worth of work.
For me, the last thing I want is more shit panic buys that we end up lumbered with and regretting. The signings I want are quality players that improve our first team. Main issue is LW but I just don't see a club wanting to part with a player of that calibre midway through the season.
I hate ENIC and think Vinai is a gooner twat but I can't think of much that they could have done transferwise.
Before the window started we clearly needed the right profile midfielder, a team ready LB and a forward. If not a striker, someone versatile to play across the front positions
There should have been a list of options available for this back in early December (at the latest)
Outside of the key positions, theres room for opportunism
I agree with you - last thing I want is bad and desperate buys clogging up the squad - but with proper preparedness that need not be the case
I don't agree that Daniel Levy had "tactical acumen, in terms of how to buy and sell players, negotiate in the market"
The last few years (at least) that he was here, he became a huge problem for THFC in his dealings in the transfer market. Admittedly, he did well over Kane, making sure we cashed in, but was pretty disastrous overall.
SIGN
SOME
PLAYERS
SOME
PLAYERS