From Crisis to Brighter Days with Alasdair Gold: De Zerbi's Rebuild, Fernandes, Tonali & Life on the Spurs Beat

29:24Jack:Do you think Daniel Levy lost sight of the fact that footballing success, it sounds stupid to say, but footballing success is actually important for a football club as well? Well, it seems that way, doesn't it? I think everything that we've kind of seen since, I think it kind of leads into that. I think, I don't know whether he, at the end of the day, I think he wanted Spurs to be successful. I don't think that can ever be kind of said against him that he didn't want that but what i do think about him was that i don't know whether he just got wrapped up in his whole levy what a businessman kind of persona thing i don't know where that just became almost this massive thing with him and i mean we saw it recently with the the the claim text that simon jordan was saying it got from about having their pants pulled down in the van hecker deal and all that and it kind of it's almost like yeah but that's exactly the kind of deal that might push Spurs to another level.

30:13And just because you're mocking it doesn't mean it's not the right thing to do. It just isn't the right thing for the balance sheet. But it might be, or I say it's like speculating to accumulate. That£52 million on Van Hecker with a year left might end up being the best transfer Spurs made this summer. It might be bigger than any of the more expensive ones because he is a deserving man and he's going to deliver exactly what he wants. So I think that was the thing with Levy. I don't think he ever truly understood what you needed to do to make a top club i think he looked to everyone else what they were doing and saying oh okay we'll take elements of that i can just see that it's a bit like when he's building the stadium he would go to you know like the one in minnesota the u.s bank stadium and he would tell yeah i want a bit so that and i think that's kind of what he did at clubs he would take people from like the city group and bring them in but never really give them the actual environment that they had at the city group it would be yeah do what you do but in the topnum bubble and that's a very different thing you know you see it with head coaches likes of conte marina they couldn't recreate what they were gonna do what chance has someone behind the scenes got so i do think that with him i think he was kind of operating on his business level rather than a football level and yeah i just don't think he ever other than poch punching above his weight and even poster cockley winning a trophy that actually didn't really go down well with the board as he was prioritizing that competition they were not happy with that and it's like if they'd had their way Spurs probably wouldn't have won that trophy but they would have finished higher in the league table um so yeah I absolutely absolutely do agree I don't think football was ever the the true priority under his kind of 24 years it's mad how long it was it's fun yeah I

31:51Jack:mean that is mental to be fair um I just I think the thing that really stands out for me and I guess really frustrated me at times about it is that it would always get wrapped up in this sort of I always felt like there was an air about it of like, well, of course, fans want to see big, shiny new signings. And of course, fans want to see the club trying to win the Premier League. But that's just not works in reality. You know, it's very difficult for, as I say, it's very difficult for Spurs to compete against the likes of City, against the likes of Chelsea. But simultaneously, you're then bragging about being one of the most profitable sporting entities on the face of the planet.

32:27Jack:You know, you're seeing us in Forbes lists and things alongside NFL teams, which is just almost unheard of. You know, you're seeing us up there punching with the likes of Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester United for profitability, for the scale of our commercial revenue and things. And you just think there's only so long that you can, like we say, haggle over a deal, something like Van Hecker, which would have never happened on Levy's watch. As we saw with the supposed comments to Simon Jordan, that's how he viewed that deal. But what he wasn't looking at was the, I guess, the overall health of the club, the overall vision of the club.

33:03Jack:Because I don't think it's good for any, I don't think it's good for the club to take a punt on saving 15 mil, say, try and get Van Hecker in January. When at that point, you know you're going to have a Liverpool or a City be like, oh, actually, we can get Van Hecker for 30 mil. Go on then. Same, exact same thing happened with Mark Gay. Exact same thing happened there. When City were like, actually, go on then. Yeah, go on. Let's add him to the bunch. because, you know, then Spurs are just short. Then we're, you know, playing with, look, we got Marcos Sanessi in, so it's probably not the most perfect example, but we're playing part of the season potentially with somebody like Radu Dragasin in our defence because we want to wait and see what happens.

33:45Jack:But look, I mean, we don't need to worry about that anymore because it's a new dawn, it's a new day. um i guess let's let's talk to you about you again alistair because i think it is interesting it's interesting that look i hope you don't mind me saying but you know you are now one of the most prominent faces in in the top top of media sphere now um what a face to be prominent as well how unfortunate you know like and i'm not saying this to embarrass you but you know we're talking about I've seen it on tour. You know, there's people asking for you to sign stuff for them and things. Like, it's...

34:24Well, yeah, that must be quite a mad feeling, mate. How is that? It's strange. It's strange. I'm very fortunate, I think is the best way to put it. Yeah, yeah. I'm very lucky that in a world where, you know, especially on social media, people can be quite unpleasant. I've been quite fortunate in that, yeah, people, whenever I kind of meet them out and about are always very very nice um and I don't know I just work hard and I just try and cover the club that's all I do um try and give my all I think you see the pain and the occasional joy kind of etched on my face as well and I'm just on the ride with everyone else and I just try and give them a little peek behind the curtain whether that's good or bad and yeah fortunately people like I say very nice and yes it is very weird the weirdest one was I think it was Singapore when somebody noticed that I was sitting at the back reporting on the on the friendly that Spurs were playing there and more and more people weren't I think it maybe it was just the culture I think it's just the culture there of just people being very nice they started to queue up to kind of either I know it's to talk to me or to get a whatever it was but they actually had to security had to come in and stop it happening and just for a moment i was like my goodness what is this what bizarre world do we live in where a guy that just writes about a football club is actually getting security to shut down the people that are like staying in front of them it makes no sense i don't deserve anything like that but yeah it's just it's a weird i think it's just this world we live in now maybe isn't it where there's um if your face is out there a little bit then yeah you become something far more than you actually are i'm just just a guy that enjoys writing about football well enjoy it most of the time some points of

36:14Jack:our season definitely not i think it was i think something like billy t was often running a tracker as in like i think spurs are finally broken gold i think they finally got him from some of your post-match streams and stuff you're still here but i guess i think you do yourself a bit of a disservice because i think i would i would look at you and i'd say you're somebody that's you've ridden that i guess you've you've weathered that rough patch of going from you know i think you won't mind me saying from being more of like an old school journalist that wrote like match reports and stuff to one that has segued into this all-encompassing social media digital media proposition that journalism is now i mean is that something you kind of you you were aware of or is it something that you just kind of went with as it was happening um i think there's two sides to this that there's there's a I always feel that you need to whatever job you're in you need to kind of diversify what you can do you know I think I think having different skill sets is always a good thing however having said that I do remember when I first started at Football London having no intention or wish or desire to ever want to do anything on video and I remember that really clearly as I'm not doing that not having this stupid face on camera I'm not I'm not doing that not comfortable standing in front of anything talking whatever this is not it and then they kind of made us do it we had no choice so people might remember all the way back in the day I would walk around the stadium just kind of chatting about the construction that was going on this was I actually got a reminder in my google photos it was nine years ago I was doing it and I just whatever happened in that moment I had to do it was facebook live back in the day that was kind of the main avenue of doing that yeah so I was walking around as they were constructing a little bit of white heart lane left um i just started to just talk waffle whatever you want to call it and i kind of started to realize yeah what it's actually a subject i know a little bit about so i am going to just be able to talk about it and it was becoming more and more comfortable and it was actually my youngest daughter she said why don't you do videos about spurs why don't you actually just do your own videos about spurs i was like i don't know if people would be that fussed about that it's a bit weird um and she was like you don't have to do anything just start sit on your sofa upstairs and that's exactly how it was all kind of born did that and then for some reason people started watching them and then so you had that as the companion to the writing and it all kind of fed each other because i think the more well known you become in the industry and the longer you cover a club the more people will come to you with stories so rather than you actually have a go and seek them out so yeah i think it just all goes back to that diversifying really if you can have different strings to your bow ultimately yeah it just opens a massively meshing and mixing all my metaphors together but it does open more doors for you to be able to do more stuff and uh yeah look yeah i'm not the youngest reporter out there on the on the beat absolutely not there's some young ones coming in that are fantastic and they're just going to get better and better but if you can yeah be able to kind of you know you're not going to see me dancing in the back of a tiktok or anything like that but as long as you can kind of uh although We saw Daniel Levy doing that, didn't we?

39:25Yeah, well, yeah. Yeah, as long as you can kind of keep up with the mediums of how people are getting their news, getting their information, then I think that's half of the battle, especially in an industry that is pretty brutal right now.

39:38Jack:When did you first start writing about Spurs? When did you become like a Spurs correspondent? So how this started was actually me being a bit cheeky. So what we're looking at, 2016, summer of 2016, I was the group sports editor of a big collection of local newspapers within the kind of reach brand all across hearts and Essex and I decided look I know we're covering we had some great kind of non-league clubs we also had Steubenage I think they were league two at the time and I said look on our patch we've got the Tottenham training ground why are we not covering Tottenham as well You know, there's local kind of news outlets that cover Tottenham.

40:23Why can't we do it too? And I said, and as we do Hertfordshire, we should do Watford as well. So the big bosses said, yeah, go on and go for it. And obviously being very selfish and greedy, I was like, I'll cover Tottenham. That'll be fine. I'll do that. And we had another reporter, Oliver Harbour, that did Watford at the time. And that was kind of how it started. And I was only doing that for perhaps four or five months. And the reaction to it was brilliant. It was really good. I was trying to find a different way to do it. And my way of doing it right from the off was, well, we're not just going to do first team.

40:54We're going to look at the academy. We're going to go to under 21s matches. We're going to do a bigger picture of it all. And it seemed to work. And then there just happened to be that January in 2017, they were starting up this thing called Football.London, which was going to be kind of like Reach's version of an online version of the evening standard, I suppose, back then. And one of the big bosses said, look, we like what you've done with Tottenham. do you want to come across and just cover tottenham instead of because i was in a reasonably high position as a group sports editor like do you want to come across and just write about tottenham every day and i was like oh dole um and that was it and that was the start of it here we are a decade or so later and somehow i'm still doing it and again very lucky to keep doing it because a lot of good people that have been covering that club and many clubs have found themselves out of of um the world of journalism because it is a tough one but yeah somehow i'm cleaning on by

41:47Jack:my fingertips well it's i don't want to say you do yourself a disservice because i don't want it to seem as though uh anybody else is deserving of it because i i definitely know what you mean a lot of the the media industry digital print everything is yeah it's very very competitive well done mate basically yeah oh yeah nicely done are you still you still enjoying it you know you You don't find that just writing about Spurs all the time sort of drags? I mean, how can it really? It's always changing and it's like the best soap opera going, Tottenham, but still. It is. It's an insane club. You know, I like my movies and it is.

42:26It's like a Hollywood script and it's not always got a happy ending at all. It is absolutely mad what happens with that club. And there are definitely times, look, I've covered now so many different head coaches. Absolutely, there's repetition sometimes in what you're doing. and I definitely found that I started off as this really bright-eyed innocent like oh this is wonderful oh what's Spurs are gonna do Spurs are gonna do this it's gonna be great and as the decades gone on I've been worn down I've become this bitter husk of a man kind of thing that always assumes that the worst is gonna happen um but yeah now I still enjoy it I didn't like parts of last season I didn't like how it was ending um there was definitely kind of a disillusionment in in in what the club were doing and the messes that they were getting themselves into absolutely um but no i still enjoy it i don't think i could cover another club at this point there were my wife i had some discussions a few years back about what if you're like i don't know you went to america and started like a new i went into miami we're starting up what would that be like to like start a club that was just being born and i just think i would have just missed the world of spurs too much because like you say nothing happens anywhere else like it happens at tottenham everything is like an explosion at tottenham whether it's good or bad it always feels like it's so much bigger than anywhere else even though you know they are a club that people will see is not as big as anyone else but for some reason they just they create earthquakes

43:50Jack:don't they constantly just absolutely mad exactly people don't stop talking about us at all ever you know never never never never um you turn on the darts you know everybody's singing about top them every every single opportunity so we're just we're massive Alistair you know I'll happily say it just massive we're the main event with the main event mate um how how did it feel I guess and this is this is a silly question really but how did it feel I guess both personally and professionally seeing Spurs finally get it over the line in Bilbao because I would assume you weren't covering well no I know you weren't covering just Spurs when we last won the the the league cup um it must have sort of felt like it was one of those because you know at the time you know i've been doing this pod for over a decade now and i remember having that realization before we did do the the europa league it's like i've recorded hundreds hundreds and hundreds of episodes on here probably tweeted thousands of times about spurs and not a single one of those words has been me uttering anything celebratory about top of actually winning something it must have been quite strange to to be in that moment must have been quite surreal was it to to be there and see tottenham get it over the line it was amazing honestly it was absolutely amazing because if you'd asked me before that like my favorite memories it would have been that night at ajax in amsterdam you know lucas moore was incredible it would have been the white heart lane finale and that was also absolutely incredible but but neither of those were like tangible things they They didn't result in like a success.

45:22And yeah, that night it was a dreadful game really, but it had its moments. Obviously, Brennan's did, he didn't, he swears to me every time I asked him that he definitely touched the ball. So I'm going to give it to him, but also the Mickey clearance off the line and stuff like that. And yeah, I mean, it's just, it was incredibly special. And again, I go back to being fortunate to be able to be a fan of the club and enjoy it in that moment, writing everything i've got a stupid grin on my face as i'm writing away in the press box in bilbao and then being able to go down and ask mickey as i remember asking him like that must have hurt that look it hurt it was oh my god it hurts so much when he hit the uh the base of the ground after that kick the the acrobatic kick and stuff like that it's yeah it was incredibly fortunate incredible night and just all the days afterwards i think i talk about being kind of innocent to begin with and cynical at the end I do think I regressed a bit I kind of became like they can't call us Spursy anymore that's that done they can't do this they can't do that little did I know that you know within three weeks Spurs were gonna ditch Postacoglu and bring in a guy that was just the nice guy worst possible fit for what Tottenham were trying to do um and yeah they kind of essentially ripped up a lot of the good feeling that had come before which was such a shame but in that moment on that night yeah one that will live with me forever just yeah it's just it's been so

46:48Jack:strange isn't it sort of talking about the last couple of years because i keep talking about how miserable the last couple of years are and i often get reminded by so well we won the bloody europa league just a year and a bit again it's like well yeah that's just a little bubble though wasn't it that was a very nice little bubble in in a big sea of awful things um honestly i was still walking to the stadium for the next three months to the start of the season with uh listen to the Shakira song and all my walk from Northumberland Park that was like my last little bit of games at stadium like yeah get me in the mood and then what was served up was like completely opposite of any good feeling but yeah it just it was incredible it was um I just just while we've been recording Fabrizio Romano's dropped as a nice uh Luka Vescovic on on his way out of the club to brighton apparently for 46 mil um well i what i wanted to ask you is not you know is this true or not but i guess that the noises around vuscovic the noises around burgvalov we're talking about kind of deserve be having a cultural reset and all of the positive things about deserve be um i think many people would look at perhaps his sacrificing of some of these younger stars as a negative.

48:06Jack:Right now, I'll be brutally honest, right now I'm in the position where he saved us from relegation. I'm happy to give him the keys to the castle. If he feels this is what needs to be done, then it needs to be done. But am I being too kind? I'm somewhere in the middle. I get it and I get it. I think that was the thing about bringing him in when he did, because he did not want to come. He wasn't desperate to throw himself into a battle at a club that was, you know could have gone down he could have been a championship manager and he would have had to have a lot of assurances a lot of money as well but also a lot of assurances and very much it would be giving him the keys to the kingdom and as part of that he's going to want to be a guy that challenges this season he was going to be a one to be right up there in a table and you know he could have probably picked many of the clubs that would have been looking for managers this this summer and part of that is the collateral damage is you're going to use lose young players and you know Vyscovic, Bergwahl, Gray I do worry about what happens to Gray and Bergwahl.

49:07Bergwahl at the moment I think with both Gray and Bergwahl they're trying to to stop any indication that they're going to leave the club trying to assure them of the future. Easier for Gray because of his versatility not so much for Bergwahl I do think he's going to struggle for for minutes unless there's injuries well it is Tottenham so it could be but Vyscovic is just it is utterly ridiculous it's a player that's never played a competitive game for tottenham widely viewed as one of the best young defenders in the world and is going to be world-class some question marks over his pace acceleration little things like that but ultimately and i know this you know is just such a cliche but it's true when brighton see a young player if they're willing to spend up to 50 million on him they know he's going to be incredible and it's almost like but why are tottenham not harnessing that why i know they're probably thinking in their head well we get 50 million that can go towards tonali and stuff like that and they are going to have to sell this summer but that's my only fear with it all is that you're building a present but you're kind of burning your future in one respect but they could quite rightly argue that well maybe the future actually ends up becoming brighter um because you know fernandez comes in he's 21 if tonali comes in what is he 26 it's not like these players are old biddies that are going to be kind of giving you a year and then you know then they're heading off so yeah i mean difficult decisions and if a player is incredibly unhappy and they just want to go which i mean fuscovic liking tweets about bids for him and stuff isn't always the greatest look in the world but it's just frustrating it's almost like well bother than other than the finance of just signing it you're kind of almost becoming a bit like a chelsea aren't you just signing these young players just to sell them on for bigger money down the line but never ever making them feel like they were part of your club just feels a bit mercenary to me i don't really like that side of football no i i don't even i think one of the things i've been struck with is like look spurs fans are passionate they love

51:04Jack:their club right as all football fans love their clubs but i see quite a lot of people taking it quite personally that buscovich has as you say been liking tweets and stuff and i think sometimes it's important to remember that like he's a teenager you know he's a young guy he's yes it is what it is. I think, look, if he's gone, if he has gone to Brighton, fair play. Fair play to him. Go on and do your thing. And like you say, there's no guarantee that he would have gone on to be an amazing player. One of my main sort of takes on it is when I've been watching him in the World Cup, you can see where De Zerbe's coming from.

51:37Jack:If there's talk that he thinks he's three or four years off of being sort of Premier League ready. I do look at him. I think, you know, he did look like he was struggling against England, for example. And he's 19. he's 19 years old if he is three or four years off it being a 23 year old defender in the Premier League you're still very young it's fun I think that do you know the one thing that gives me kind of pause on this Alistair is that Brighton Brighton spending like 50 mil just short of on a player I'm suddenly like oh no oh no you know how much do they think he's going to be worth in a few years if they're going to spend 50 mil on him well it's a straight swap it's a straight swap for Van Hecker that's what it's become yeah pretty much which look we'll see we'll see what happens um i guess before i before i let you go alicia i did just i just wanted to ask because i find this quite interesting as somebody that is a big film buff myself i'm a big lover of movies to to see i look i know you haven't been able to to do it much lately but still gold goes to the movies um can you tell us a bit about your love of what is it just like a an escape from spurs because that's that's what i guess i'd find to a degree but outside of that i just I love movies.

52:48Jack:I always have done. Is that something for you? It's just been a thing that's always been there in my life. It was always, it was football and movies. They were the two things. Someone once asked me, and I didn't end up doing it, of doing like a combined podcast of football and movies. I don't even know how that would have worked. But it was, they are, they're my two loves, I suppose, other than obviously family stuff and all of that. And yeah, I don't know. just as a kid i had to think likes a spielberg just enraptured me everything he did as a kid i would just consume it like mad and i remember my i think it was a friend of the family even though i was only probably about 11 years old giving me for one of my birthdays the vhs of lethal weapon which was so inappropriate at that time for a kid of 10 or 11 and just things i think i just entered this world it's exactly like you said it's an escape i don't think it's an escape from spurs so much i think i don't even know if i'd go as far as escape from life but it is definitely is just this little kind of happy place you can go to and you can just be in another world for a little while and just experience this this other other world and uh i do i adore movies i absolutely do and um yeah i haven't been i haven't been too well in the last couple of months i haven't been able to get out too much until finally got to see toy story 5 the other day um but hopefully i'm on the mend now so um i would definitely be trying to get out there and see more but yeah girl goes to movie it was just a little thing it was just it was almost sounds really kind of weird to say but it's almost for me it was just an avenue just to have a little chat about films and what i'd seen and and what i enjoyed and uh i have enjoyed doing those and there has been this little pause and it will come back um because i think we're gonna have some good summer movies and a couple i still need to go back and i didn't even go to see disclosure day which i was gutted about us that's as a big i even wrote a dissertation at university on spielberg george lucas and how blockbusters changed uh hollywood and all that sort of stuff so that's very much my lane and my avenue um but yeah yeah movies and movies are great maybe that's why i picked spurs maybe maybe it is because it is a club that is so full of drama it's it is like any kind of movie you'd see out there actually even the most awful hollywood script writers probably wouldn't write some of things that happen at Spurs but uh you know I'm a movie fan I love things I don't want to get too trite about it but I do think there's something because you know with Spurs being so big and I've said this before on the pod like Spurs being so big in America I do think there is something in what you're saying that appeals to the American psyche and to a degree the the Hollywood arc the narrative that Spurs do have following you know I'm sure you've seen as well there's been a few examples of Americans who are falling in love with football over the course of the World Cup and they want to choose a Premier League team and I think a couple two or three of them I've seen they've ended up choosing Spurs when they've had all the different options delivered to them and it just it just makes sense because we are I think we are that team that glory that level of glory is is kind of within our grasp but not quite it makes it if we were to you know had we had we in 2019 got on that Champions League over the line, that would have, I would have been happy for life, you know?

56:02Jack:But there's that little bit of me that sort of thinks somewhere, just in the back of my mind, I'm like, we might get there again one day. We might. We're not Liverpool. We're never going to be that sort of team that's there every two, three years or whatever in the Champions League final. But if it's every 20 years, then, you know, maybe. Maybe we'll have that one last little grab at it. But how was Toy Story 5, by the way? Because I sort of, I was interested to, because Toy Story 3 was so great it was such a nice trilogy and then 4 was like oh and then I was I was I didn't even know there was a fifth one coming out until I saw it on billboards everywhere it's uh it's nice it's nice it's um yeah it's what they are you know they are a kind of a higher level of animated movie aren't they they've just got so much heart to them it's it was surprising in some ways some of the without giving anything away some of the main characters are maybe not the main characters that you would previously think of in a toy story film um there's definitely a lot of giving other people their moments which is is great um and yeah it's just uh it's a happy experience you know you yeah my wife was uh was blubbing away but kind of happy tears throughout it and again that's what you want from a movie isn't it i know there's there are some brilliant movies that are dark and sad and depressing and all that sort of stuff but often you just want to go to cinema and just come out thinking yeah you just kind of want to come out feeling a little bit better about everything in the world and it is one of those films that kind of does that yeah obviously with a baby in the house i don't really get to cinema much at the moment but i did i did sneak out to see project hail mary and that that was exactly that i loved it just a nice life-affirming lighting really happy film and not in a not really in a twee or cloying way either it's done it's done really brilliantly look yeah go go out and watch any films that you want to but still maybe i don't know maybe i'm just getting old and sensitive alice john i need to i'm a horror buff normally i really like my horror films but i've just yeah i've not been i haven't seen i haven't seen back rooms i haven't seen obsession yet i know there's so many i want to see it's it's it's ridiculous even i know i'm a bit mad that even if there's something that other people are kind of moaning about like supergirl i'd still want to see it i want to get a take have my own opinion on it i don't want to just be said by other people so uh yeah i need to get back out there or get in there in the cinema and start watching them again alissa what can we uh what can we expect from you in the coming days weeks have you got have you got any pieces or anything coming out that people should be aware of uh nothing at the moment obviously and kind of uh we're seeing what happens with tonali and we'll kind of dive into that and as soon as if that happens which we all hope it does it's kind of what next isn't it it's where do they go from here they've kind of built the defense they've built the midfield there's only one place to then start looking at those attacking slots so it's kind of uh seeing what exactly he wants to do i do think there's some players within that in the club that people forget that how big they could be next season i did a little piece yesterday on like kudis you know kudis could be amazing under deserbi deserbi said he's like a crucial player for him madison we only saw him for like a handful of minutes at end of the season kudasiewski please come back because he would be just incredible even players like doggy sankey i think sankey is going to be if he gets a manager that says oh do you know what maybe it's a good idea to give you the ball in the penalty area because he just hasn't had that spurs he just gets so much flack for two seasons where he's either unfortunately had the spurs injury curse or he hasn't had the ball in the box as much as he wanted he's still got 24 goal involvement since first season but i i think in the deserve system he could be massive and deserve he really likes him um so yeah it'll be looking everything focusing out to the attack i think if they can get that done that tonali deal i'll estimate it's been an absolute pleasure thanks very much for joining me i loved it honestly great fun a nice wide range of questions i always love that as well you know sometimes you you're going to pop and obviously it'll be about the moments about what's happening now so i did really enjoy kind of just going over everything having a good chat about everything else.