Spurs Stay Up! | Charrington's Letter, De Zerbi's Impact & Tottenham's Future with Jack Pitt-Brooke

0:00Jack:This podcast is part of the Sports Social Podcast Network.

0:30Jack:and a splendid Kinski save later on.

0:33Jack Pitt-Brooke:A rare clean sheet and rare seeds of celebration for finishing 17th.

0:39Jack:Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Rule the Roos podcast. I did say if Spurs were going to stay up, I wouldn't be jubilant. It wouldn't be celebratory, but I can't help but feel a bit that way inclined. Jack Pitbrook, how are you, mate? How has this season been for you with your now adopted team, I'm sure, of Tottenham Hotspur?

1:00Jack Pitt-Brooke:Yeah, it's been a bizarre season. I think the most bizarre thing about it is that at the end of last season, I told myself, well, that was totally bonkers, but it can never happen again. There would never be a weird season like that where Spurs come 17th and then everybody's buzzing at the end of the season. And there we were yesterday afternoon. huge celebrations at the tottenham hotspur stadium you know fat um people close to tears amazing sense of unity and togetherness in the stadium and outside the stadium i thought the the coach welcome which i was actually part of accidentally was unbelievably good so incredible vibes like one of the best days of vibes since that stadium has been opened in 2019 yeah at the same time they also came 17th and i sat there and i started to think hold on a second this is the same as last year it's not exactly the same obviously because last season there was bill bow and a trophy and ang and stuff so like there's been different events along the way but the outcome is kind of the same right 17th place 17 league defeats everyone's delighted everyone loves the manager everyone feels together and happy and hugging and and i just thought like what why do we go through all that bollocks this season you know i don't like you know thomas frank daniel Levy um Igor Tudor like all the amount of nonsense that's happened at Spurs this season and we've ended up in the same place and I kind of thought about that for a minute and then I thought if I think about this for too long I am going to go insane uh so uh so yeah I am uh uh it's been it's been a kind of an emotional journey this season and uh I'm quite pleased that Tottenham aren't playing a competitive game until like the 15th of August or whatever it is considering how

2:40Jack:much I go on about Spurs week after week after week day after day really trying to sort of extrapolate my thoughts on this podcast I was genuinely surprised by the the almost physical weight I felt lifting off me as soon as the final whistle went that even as much as I tried to confront what was happening to Spurs head-on there was clearly so much of it that was just internalized or I don't know maybe it's just a general residual layer of stress but I mean I think like it's just what was so massive for me is that I completely understood the arguments that Spurs were still set up to be able to ride the storm of maybe getting relegated or whatever but I didn't really want to go into those uncharted waters like this there was such uncertainty and such high risk attached to a club of this magnitude because it's it's double-edged right isn't it jack wouldn't you say for a club of this size to go down as much as people will say well you generate all this money from non-match day events the overheads are so much bigger for a club like spurs that i really honestly think we could have been in real trouble had we gone

3:49Jack Pitt-Brooke:it would have been a disaster it would have been a complete disaster i don't buy that i just i never really brought this argument that it would have been anything else like i don't think the fact is like it would yeah like i suppose do make money through other means but they also have huge operating costs like my colleague chris weatherspoon has written about this at length in the athletic yeah you know it would have put a huge dent in obviously like premier league broadcasting revenues would have gone commercial would have taken a hit ticketing would have taken a hit it would have been terrible and i know and some people make this argument which is oh well what tottenham need is a big reset and a big clear out and the best way to do that is to go into the championship but then you can have a full reset and a full clear i'm sorry that's nonsense it's complete nonsense it's like that's not how football works it's not how life works like if you're it's not true to say that if you go into the championship you can start making like wise long-term strategic decisions uh and then you can like really get back to like first principles of what you're trying to do that's not true at all if you're in the championship you're thinking right we've got a 200 million pound hole in our finances how are we going to fill it we need to get back to the premier league what's the best way to do that as soon as possible if anything your thinking becomes more short term not more long term so the idea that spurs needed it as a reset it's just bollocks i'm sorry it's just bollocks it would have been a terrible thing if they've been relegated um it would have cost the club huge amounts of money and i'm you know we're not talking about i'm not talking about like the lewis family's back pocket here i'm talking about you know the job threat to actual people who live and who work for tottenham hotspur they would have been the ones impacted it's not about like the lewis family having to put money having to put money in it's about it's about jobs on the line um so yeah it would have been terrible and frankly i'm very pleased it's not happening

5:29Jack:do you get a sense jack given your sort of proximity to everything at spurs that that was fully appreciated because you know a lot of us down the months fans at least have ranted about the way in which the club has been run um we all have our sort of opinions we can get on to peter Sherrington's letter in a minute but we all have our sort of ideas as to what the Lewis family have done what Vinay or Johan Langer have done or haven't done if you like and it sort of felt like you know I think a lot of this comes down to Johan Langer saying we don't want to panic by in January and just seeing how basically everything was a total catastrophe from that point so do you think it's fair for fans outside at least from what you've picked up from people at the club that people at the club didn't fully grasp the danger that they were in?

6:18Jack:Because it seemed clear to everybody that Spurs was sinking massively at Christmas time.

6:23Jack Pitt-Brooke:Yeah, I mean, I guess it depends how you date it. I mean, I suppose some people might say, well, you know, I guess my view, which is probably in line with a lot of people, is that, well, a lot of Spurs fans knew, I think, as early as when they lost at home to Chelsea at home, a lot of fans thought this is really bad like this is really like miles worse than the table suggests they're not playing any football at all the players and fans are totally disengaged with this and it's going to go this is going to go really badly wrong it's already started to go badly wrong and i think clearly the club didn't see that with the exception of piratichi who did see that at the time um and it was piratichi who was really like the voice say internally say well well we should this guy's not this guy's not the right fit we should do something else i mean that's not to say pirachi is like massively off the hook because pirachi said oh yeah well have you guys considered eagle tudor uh i mean that turned out when they did get him in in uh in february um but no i mean i think i i think it's probably fair enough to say that if you look at the way they they stuck with thomas frank particularly after the west ham game where i think it i am sure i can't prove it but i'm sure that daniel levy would have made a change after that west ham game um that maybe they're a bit slow slow to make the change um and you know Igor Tudor obviously didn't work out but I can kind of see the logic at the time in a world where you can't get to Zerbi at that point and there's no other options equally there's like there's an alternative view on this which is well actually the club kind of did do things differently they did push the vote out like Conor Gallagher is Tottenham's best played player like they broke the wage structure to sign Conor Gallagher now you may or may not think that you know some people might have different views on how good Gallagher is but you can look at that as a sign that they did realize the severity of the situation equally to Zerby like Zerby's obviously on a very very healthy salary and again I suppose you could you could look at that and say well look they are they did realize they did realize how bad this was but I certainly think around that like November December January time I think it is in my mind like fair to say that they didn't quite grasp grasp the severity of the situation.

8:33Jack:I guess to your point though, as you say, they did go out and get to Zerbi. The big gamble that they have made has worked out because Tottenham's turnaround. I mean, I don't know how you felt, Jack, but I was pretty convinced after the Palace game back in March that it's going to happen. Spurs are gone. I just, I don't see where the fight is anymore. And I mean, Forrest in particular, after losing 3-0 at home to Forrest, I just thought, we're gone. like that's that's 100 % it and I know there's all the conversation about relegation fights and us not having been in that position and not understanding I think we probably have a better appreciation for it now how much things can change game by game but it just felt overall that there was no fight left in the squad it felt like there was it almost felt at times like there was no ability in the squad yet Roberto Dezerbi has if you look at some of the stats at least has turned Tottenham from one of the worst performing sides in the country into one of the not the best but still in the in the top half of clubs in the country by lots of metrics I think

9:39Jack Pitt-Brooke:yeah I think he's I think there is no praise is too high for the job that Deserby's done I think that I think the most important thing that he's done is fixing the mental block that the players had or that the players developed under both Frank and Tudor because over the over the course of Tudor's time, my overall impression was these guys' heads have completely gone. Like, look at, like, the way they collapsed in the first half of the Palace game, for example, or conceding four goals in, what, 24 minutes against Atletico Madrid, or even the Forest game, where they were, like, on top and dominant, and the crowd were behind them, and they collapsed and lose 3-0 at home.

10:16Jack Pitt-Brooke:Like, I thought their heads had totally gone, and De Zerbi seemed to realise that exactly right, like, he realised that fundamentally this was a psychological issue, and therefore we'd have to have a psychological solution and he got into the players heads and by doing that he had like that was the first thing he had to do that was the necessary first step before he could get into football with them uh it's not like they played like full deservedly ball is it they just played i think a fairly simple but very well organized and disciplined game under him lots of players who we know are good players went got back to playing at their top level again so i'm thinking Poro, Van der Fenn, Benton Kerr, Adoghi in particular.

10:52Jack Pitt-Brooke:Did Spurs play great football in the last few weeks? Not really. But I think they probably played as good a football as they could ever have dreamed of given the circumstances, given the injuries, given the limitations in the squad and given that De Zerbi, I think he took his first training session on like the 3rd of April or something. It's mad.

11:08Jack:And there were glimpses at times, weren't there, in some games when you saw some passing moves suddenly where you think, like this is quite mental but I haven't seen Tottenham knock a ball around like that since the early days of Ange like almost almost two years ago now

11:22Jack Pitt-Brooke:yeah there was one so I went to the Sunderland game his first game and after about 10 minutes I think about 10 minutes there was a move where like Romero because this is the game he got injured Romero it's like Kinski rolled out to Romero and Romero like zipped a forward pass to Solanke and Solanke showed for it like um uh trapped the ball laid it off to I think Benton who popped off to Colin Mawani like Solanke spins and runs in behind and then Colin Mawani knocks it down knocks it forward and Solanke runs on to the end of it and like they they didn't score anything but I watched and thought that's the best move I've seen Spurs put together all season and they're like 10 minutes into the Deserby era and then again like in the certainly in the there were moments in the I mean the Wolves game is pretty bad but the Brighton and the Villa games where he wouldn't be like it's not it was nothing kind of too radical but it was just they would move through they would move from kinsky into the opposition box without you know always with spurs players on the ball some of the play would be really good they were suddenly able to kind of get in and out of tight spaces or just the ability like having bentaker back in the team made such a difference because he would take the ball in a tight he would take the ball in a tight space and then he would just kind of pop it straight off to someone who was, you know, a few yards either side of him who could then drive forward.

12:43Jack Pitt-Brooke:And it was just nice watching, like, kind of properly coordinated, progressive attacking football where, you know, the ball is passed from one Tottenham shirt to another Tottenham shirt to another Tottenham shirt. Because, I mean, how much have we seen that this season? Even, like, Thomas Frank, even the good bits were just kind of corners or, like, Porro chipping the ball down the line to Kudas over and over and over and over again. So, and that is like, so like, think of the uplift that De Zerbi's had in Tottenham's football in a world where, yeah, there's no Kulusevski, Madison can only play 20 minutes.

13:16Jack Pitt-Brooke:There's no, you know, Solanke's been injured, Kudas has been injured, Odderbeer's been injured. There's like problems, there's so many problems in that squad. And yet he still managed to get them playing, I think, a pretty good level of football. And suddenly you watch that and you think, oh, actually, this guy, this guy really knows what he's talking about.

13:34Jack:I've been quite surprised by, and look, you know, I don't know the bloke and I've probably based my opinion on him before he signed off of a perception that he was hot-headed at Brighton and ended up falling out with them and left. see also Marseille and there may be sort of other factors I've gone into that I think the the stuff with Stellini on the on the touchline when he was Brighton manager probably you know gave me some sort of perception as to who he might be but I've actually been really struck by the emotional intelligence of the bloke is that something that you know given that you're in press conferences in with him a lot um is that something that you've you've noted I feel like he's been such a cool head pretty much throughout this entire thing yeah i think that's i completely

14:23Jack Pitt-Brooke:agree with you i think that's the most that's probably the thing that surprised me the most actually is that his reputation is kind of this is it's a bit unfair but bear with me i think his reputation is a bit like conte but with more passing like conte but with like more more more progressive football um and somebody did say to me actually the other day that there may in fact be a degree of xenophobia in the way that people talk about to deserve in the sense that like because he's italian people think ah you know another hot-headed italian um and i don't doubt that he is passionate but i also i do think there is clearly an emotional intelligence there and i think that's massively brought out by if you look at his approach all the way up until this week basically all the way up until after the chelsea game um his approach was basically build up the players like kind of support the players cheer on the players tell the world how good the players are remind the players of how good they used to be you know these stories about like making a compilation of like colin miwani's best moments and sitting down with it and trying to remind him that he's actually a really good footballer all that kind of stuff like i i didn't you know i wasn't like a huge expert on to zerby and obviously watches brighton teams a bit but i didn't know i'd be lying if i said i knew a lot about his methods and this stuff has really taken me by surprised i genuinely didn't know that he was he was so good at this stuff but i think it's been a complete masterclass right like it's like this has been a job about sort of psychology and motivation more than anything else and i think that on that psychology and motivation he has been absolutely brilliant like just listen to the way the spurs players talked yesterday after the game about deserve it like it's clear that they absolutely they absolutely adore him and i think it's been it's been so impressive in in that sense and i just hope that he gets i hope he gets the credit from like people outside of spurs world for the job that he's done i know that some of the chat this week has been like oh of course we're gonna stay up the top now i think that's bollocks like anybody who watched spurs in march particularly we were dead mate we were dead so gone their heads were so gone like they just watch anyone who watched like there's two things that i keep coming back to it's like the palette conceding three goals in 10 minutes at home against palace and conceding four goals in 20 minutes away at Atletico.

16:34Jack Pitt-Brooke:Like that was a team who were gone. Like they were completely mentally finished. And so for him to fix that and then get that team with a front line of like Tel, Richarlis and Conor Mewany to get that team to get 11 points in his last five games or whatever it was and say in the Premier League, that is an unbelievable piece of management.

16:51Jack:Were you there for what it was with him? I think it was Tom Olnutt. He was having that funny thing with him yesterday. What was that about?

16:59Jack Pitt-Brooke:oh so he was like having been in the room when it happened it was definitely i think it was jokier than it may look on clips but he at the start of the press conference when he came in he started joking around saying oh where's the guy i think i've come i can't remember exactly what he said it was something like oh where's the guy who always asks the negative questions where is he and it turned out that he meant tom all night and then we were like looking at each

17:21Jack:other like i hope he didn't mean me you know like when they stand up at the front like

17:24Jack Pitt-Brooke:points at somebody in the crowd uh and then someone said uh i think another journalist said are you here to oh um tom's just watched tottenham for a long time and then does everybody said no no i don't want to fight i'm not here to i'm not here to fight i just want to say i just want to shake hands and then he came in and they like shook hands and had a laugh i think it was it was genuinely just it might have looked a bit odd on the clip but it was kind i think it was as would say it was just banter it was it was just him wanting to have a laugh because he knows that you know a lot uh i think i'm right in saying that after he said after the brighton game where he said oh we can win five games in a row which i mean we can come back to this but i think that is like the turning point in the whole season i think like i think in a subsequent press conference tom will not ask him a question and deserve he read that as like a challenge to whether or not right they could they could win the five games so i think he i think he just wanted to like have a have a laugh with tom about like oh you know maybe i was right about this one but it's not like having been in the room it wasn't a confrontation it was more of a kind of it was more of a laugh basically that's a bit of a climb down because i

18:31Jack:ranted and raved about romero in my in my midweek pod it feels as though it you know i think maybe the the player should have should have known a bit better but it also feels like the club maybe inadvertently green lit him going and didn't really think about the optics of that is that is that the sort of the impression you've had from it because look whatever it is I'm glad he came back yesterday and I think it was the right thing for him to do um and I think he deserves yeah that that's swallowing your pride that's coming back and doing it because everybody's moaning at you he could have very easily just said forget about it I'm gonna leave this summer but he came back and he was there with his team um and Belgrano won the league as well unfortunately for him but well happily for him I'm sure but do you have much of a read on sort of

19:17Jack Pitt-Brooke:what happened there it seems like such a mess yeah i don't i mean it's slightly complicated by the the fact like the medical treatment that he needs to get ready for the world cup and i think i'm right in saying he's been working with the argentina um doctors who who he worked with last season i think when he was coming back from that remember that quad injury that he got in the chelsea game in the middle of last season um which he then came back from in like february i think february march um and he worked with the argentina doctors then so yeah it's a bit it's a bit complicated i don't want to i mean look the fact is i don't know the ins and outs of the conversations that romero and his team have had with tottenham about what exactly he was allowed to do or not uh i'm pleased he came back i think it would have been you know i'm pleased that he experienced that occasion it's a bit of a i mean he obviously got booed by some fans when he got shown up on the big screen at the end which i think was probably to be expected um uh but yeah it's it's a slightly thorny one but without knowing without knowing the ins and outs of those conversations i don't really want i don't know if i can kind of uh judge on it too much

20:24Jack:it seems though just i guess from the from the bits we've heard both him and mickey van der ven who have both seemingly had one foot out the door whether or not it's just them trying to cash in on a bit of a goodwill out of the back of yesterday it feels as though at least anyway from mickey especially the tone has shifted considerably since roberto de serbi has come in is that a feeling you've gotten from the players in general madison as well was talking about this yesterday in the in the mix zone wasn't he just about pretty much how amazing de serbi's been for the transformation of the spirit and everything around the club yeah i think the two most

21:01Jack Pitt-Brooke:interesting players on this are deservey sorry the two of vander fenn and poro because these were guys who i thought played pretty badly for the first sort of two-thirds of the season um who often looked a bit grumpy who had rows with fans like vander fenn had that row with fans of bournemouth poro it's often kind of you know was like there was clearly like a bit of antagonism between him and him and some and some fans here that is instant with bergval at the end of the fulham home game i think um in the middle of the pitch like at the end of the game yesterday or when van defends relationship with the crowd seems to be completely repaired both those two have been so good the last few weeks i think it's been a bit of a reminder that just because they were playing badly doesn't mean they're bad players there's always a lot of spurs fans who say poros shit he's not shit he's actually really no he's not he's really good like i thought he was my player of the season for last season he works really hard he's always fit he's never injured he runs all day his delivery is pretty good he's not like the best defensive right back I've ever seen but I think he's good enough to be in the Spain squad uh he might have a world cup winner's medal in two months time and I I think he in the last few weeks he's reminded people how good he is like his competitiveness he wins like he goes for every 50 50 he never stops running and I think that I think the way those two players have turned it around in the last few weeks does show you just how much buy-in there is to the new manager because the fact is like a lot of these players i don't just mean romero and so i don't just mean porin van de ven here a lot of players they join tottenham kind of in the hope that they will get to play like big club football like if you join tottenham it's not really because you you're convinced you're not going to get paid the most money and you're not actually going to win that many trophies really like if you want to uh but you join tottenham i think because it's a big club which has a certain way of playing and you want to play for a good manager and play like on the front foot attacking football.

22:54Jack Pitt-Brooke:And I think a lot of players will fall into that category. And I think that having Deserby in there, my view on this is that a lot of those players are like, yes, this is the kind of football that I want to play. This is the sort of football that I hope to play when I join Tottenham. And so I think that that is really central to a lot of players, not just those two, but like, you know, older and younger players as well. Really kind of... kind of clicking with what Spurs, with what De Zerbi's wanted them to do in the last few weeks?

23:27Jack:I'm not sure which way to go first on this, Jack, because I want to kind of, I want to look ahead to sort of the future that Spurs could have with Roberto De Zerbi because I don't think it's too bullish to say that it is exciting, despite the fact we've just had two 17th place finishes. there is it's exciting right um but i guess no let's let's go with let's go with the ownership first because look if if there's going to be a bottleneck on tottenham's ambition it's always going to be the owners and the ownership model as it is with any football club this isn't a uniquely tottenham problem um peter cherrington the non-executive chairman has today written his his letter to the fans i know people were very upset with the fact that nobody had written anything in the in the program yesterday to fans um i can kind of understand it if i'm going to be honest because i think the tone of said letter shifts so drastically um dependent on the result yesterday and dependent on what happens but obviously peter charrington has outlaid the fact that number one the club is not for sale um that they are invested in the essentially the the model that they've put in um and is in progress right now um that there's going to be more hires and stuff or people to arrive in the summer or everything like that the fact they are going to continue to invest in the first team in the academy in the women's team that they have a commitment to essentially reclaiming some of Tottenham's soul they've they've obviously been doing their research I don't know whether they've been listening to pods or reading tweets or reading blogs or whatever but they they certainly seem to have a good temperature check on what the fan base has been saying that the club has lost sight of the footballing operation and lost sight of its soul now they've made a lot of big promises and these sort of promises have been made previously but maybe I'm just a sucker it to me it feels like this might be and maybe it's wishful

25:34Jack Pitt-Brooke:thinking this might be a bit different this time yeah i i think it's all i think he's kind of said the right things in this letter for me the most interesting part of this letter is i think it's the most that we've heard like justifying the decision to sack daniel leaving so there has not been you know like over the course of this season vilay van katesham has generally spoken on behalf of the ownership but he has he has not in his public communications he has not really spoken a lot about the decision to sack Daniel Levy there was that one the fab meeting in March he did lay out some findings on the issues with the running of the club in recent years which is clearly read I think as like this is the things that Daniel Levy got wrong but that was you know that was to the fans advisory board that wasn't really in public but in this case when Peter Charrington who's obviously like a long-term advisor to the Lewis family was placed onto the board in march of last year by the lewis family before he became non-exec chair in september after levy sacking when he talks about um uh we recognize that something seismic had to change spurs the lewis family stepped in and authorized a full reset like that's the that's really the most detail we've heard from anyone on like the question of why why did the lewis family sack daniel levy last september so i thought that was really interesting for me um i think the stuff on what they the stuff on what the ownership like where they where they want to go next where they want to take spurs for me this is the biggest question right because they've you know they have now got through this season i didn't think they would uh there was definitely points where i thought they were like spurs were going to go down and that would obviously be a huge issue for the ownership that hasn't happened but i think that now that they've stayed up the big question is well what next like what is your right lewis family what's your strategy from here what are you what you're trying to do with spurs where you're trying to take them and there's a bit here where in the letter where charrington says um we will build we will build a squad led by roberto's head coach with the right blend of experience youth and leadership to compete at the highest levels of premier league and european football now i guess the big question is like underpinning that line in that letter like what is what is going to be their approach to well recruitment are they going to go younger players are they going to go older players are they going to go are they going to look in the premier league are they going to look around the world are they going to buy from france are they going to buy young players are they going to buy players with resale value you know they're going to go for loans and frees those are the big strategic questions i don't really know i think i've got we've got learning a little bit about what they're going to do on this you know the fact that they bought gallagher um on a big salary in january suggests that like they are going to aim a bit higher in terms of salaries for experienced players but for me those are the big questions that I've got right is I kind of I see what they want I see like in outline what the ownership say they want in terms of the football strategy but underneath that there will be lots of specific questions about what they're going to try and do um and I guess that will really be the story of the summer as well particularly when it comes down to recruitment and particularly it comes down to you know to what extent does does Deserby get what he wants does he is he going to become a kind of like eddie howe una emery type figure at spurs that is like a good old-fashioned all-powerful manager who gets what he wants um so though um obviously like they you know they love to serbi there's a very positive letter about the deservey uh you know charrington writes deserve he signed as men's head coach for five years a reflection of our belief in his ability and our commitment to build back to where we need to be he is passionate committed and positive in everything he does and represents the kind of football and ambition the Tottenham Hotspur should stand for like clearly they love this guy right because he saved their Premier League status he saved them a sort of 200 300 million pounds hole in the finances but I guess there's I guess every fan will read that and think well how exactly like what exactly is the plan in fine detail for this summer how exactly is it going to work out and the one the one other thing that a few people have said to me today about the letter I think like like I said I think it's good it's good that they have sort of owned the decision to sack Daniel Levy in a bit more detail but what there isn't necessarily is accountability for the stuff you mentioned earlier right like why did they not move why were they not aggressive enough in january window why did they leave thomas frank in charge until february why did they get igor tudor in for six games when the ship was clearly taking on water those sort of things so there's definitely a few there's a few points in there where fans might say well what about the other you know what about the other mistakes that you made it's not as simple as it's not as simple as saying oh well you know we inherited a bad mess from Daniel Levy like obviously things have things have gone wrong since Daniel Levy sacking um but yeah that's that's broadly what I think about the about the

30:16Jack:latter I think the main thing I guess just to sort of qualify my perhaps pathetic misguided optimism about it all is that I think it's the first time I've heard an official communication from the club that directly says they want to challenge at the top of the league again they want to challenge for the top European honours. They want the club to be a success because it always felt that Levy's chairman's notes were just, it was a bit like Thomas Frank saying, you know, one thing is for sure, we are going to lose games. Levy always kind of carried with him this edge of, we're going to try, but it's always going to be difficult for Spurs to be successful because it's so competitive out there, which I think after a certain point just didn't really wash anymore.

31:02Jack:I don't think you can sit there in a stadium like Spurs have and charge the amount of money like Spurs do and try and plead poverty, really, which I think was sort of Levy's shtick a lot of the time. Yeah, it's weird. It just got tiresome.

31:19Jack Pitt-Brooke:I kind of, when Levy was in charge, I never really, I didn't massively buy the argument that they should be more focused on football and less focused on Lady Gaga playing at the stadium and NFL, all that stuff. But I think over time, I'm kind of coming around to that viewpoint. I'm kind of coming around to the viewpoint that there was insufficient focus on trying to win. Because I think at the time, I was maybe a bit too sympathetic to the kind of Levy argument, which was actually like, we're working really hard on a budget to be competitive. Teams have got a lot more money than us. And we're having to do things our own way.

31:53Jack Pitt-Brooke:We're having to build our own stadium. We're having to make money through the stadium. And so my view was like, well, they're trying to do things differently. they don't have an Abramovich or Sheik Mansoor or anything like that but I think over time I'm starting to think well actually maybe there was a validity in that criticism the idea that under the Daniel Levy era they weren't that interested in they weren't or they weren't sufficiently interested in like how can we be the best team that we can be so I'm kind of coming around to

32:20Jack:it a bit I do feel that like I just think one of the main things I think of Levy's tenure and whether it's him whether it was Cullen whether it's the whole group he had around him it feels like there was no sense of needing to nurture something it's almost like I think they sort of bucketed things off as in like we have a huge fan base that's really engaged that always fills up the stadium check that's done we don't need to care for that anymore it's like they couldn't really multitask they couldn't really spin plates um and and I sort of say this because I look at the careers of the Tottenham careers of Harry Kane and Son Hyun Min or even just that Pochettino team the 16-17 Pochettino team that I always hark back to.

33:04Jack:Agency's points brother. Well mate it never felt like there was a sense of this is a really incredibly unique thing we have here not unique but it for Tottenham it is like we actually have a Tottenham side at least the nucleus of a Tottenham side that actually could win the lot here if we if we and that's really rare and that's really really hard to get and i just kind of felt like he never really grasped that and i feel like you know you you you look at you look at arsenal right and you look at kind of everything that they've sort of done over the past few years the the way in which they've tried to continue to engage with their fan base and it's you know it's paid dividends and i think my other hot take is as well if i'm being brutally honest i also feel that like levy and everyone didn't really appreciate actually how much sporting success is a huge commercial gateway as well i think they kind of felt really that winning stuff is just a nice to have for fans and what actually matters about a club is having all this stable infrastructure whereas like again i've got to say arsenal have completely proved that to be just incorrect um yeah it's kind of depressing to

34:16Jack Pitt-Brooke:think it's not that's the right word it's basically like i think the first few years of potch at spurs and the first years of arteta arsenal like there's a lot of similarities of continuities there in terms of the type of manager the type of squad what they had to do

34:30Jack:and stuff and and the progression of said exactly and the trajectory you know uh is really really