If Tottenham Hotspur come up short this season, there will be those who hold Daniel Levy, the chairman, responsible. They will alight on that moment during the summer transfer window when Harry Redknapp, the Tottenham manager, went to Levy and asked for the money to buy two players. Redknapp believed that the addition of England internationals David James and Matthew Upson could make Tottenham a Champions League club. Levy believed he had spent enough.
So James remained with Portsmouth and Upson with West Ham. Tottenham now have a major problem in central defence before the match with Manchester United this weekend, because Jonathan Woodgate and Michael Dawson are injured and Sebastien Bassong picked up a knock with Cameroon on international duty.
Ledley King is fit but cannot play two games in one week and is a breakdown waiting to happen. Meanwhile, goalkeeper Heurelho Gomes is injured (and he’s nobody’s idea of a Premier League goalkeeper anyway) while Redknapp is clearly unconvinced by his understudy, Carlo Cudicini.
Redknapp rarely fights shy of making his feelings public in these situations but even if the consequence is Tottenham’s first league defeat of the season, Levy should be applauded for his actions. He will at least be one chairman who is not surveying the wreckage of a club in financial turmoil, while blaming it on Redknapp’s uncanny powers of persuasion.
There is too much of that nonsense already. Redknapp’s transfer policy is said to have destroyed Portsmouth and brought West Ham United to the brink of collapse. Yet what of the business brains at those clubs? Did these men not have a tongue in their heads when Redknapp requested the finances for a transfer splurge? Managers do the football, owners the money. If a manager has lived beyond his means, it is because his behaviour has been encouraged at executive level.
I made this point in a column a short while ago and then bumped into Terence Brown, the former chairman of West Ham United, who attempted to take me to task. “I can’t believe you actually think that about Redknapp,” he said. I told him I was amazed that a man in charge of a company with turnover in the region of £40m could not refuse an employee. “It isn’t as simple as that,” he stumbled, as if Redknapp is football’s equivalent of mind magician Derren Brown.
But it is that simple, and Levy proved it. Whether he is right or not is another matter. It could be argued that Tottenham have the potential to be the surprise of the season and that the strengthening Redknapp required would make the difference.
The current injury problems in defence may be temporary, but no back four reliant on the fitness of King and Woodgate is going to remain strong for long. There will be trouble ahead, you can bank on that.
Levy, though, saw the bigger picture. Redknapp may know the game, but the chairman knows the numbers and, this time, they did not add up. It will not have been easy to say no, not least because Levy is a Tottenham fan too, but he did what was right. If a few more of his number had been as bold they would not be pointing fingers from the poor house.