Credit: Rex Features
FOR the eighth wealthiest soccer club on Earth to go cap in hand to the Government for help in paying its employees may be viewed as a major PR blunder. However, for Tottenham’s chairman Daniel Levy to create this announcement on the day his own £7million annual earnings were printed makes for a quite staggering misreading of the national mood.
The arch ball-buster of White Hart Lane never moved into soccer to win popularity contests and today, more than ever, that’s just also. In addition to his £4m salary, Spurs’ newly-published accounts revealed Levy trousered a £3m bonus in the past financial year for the conclusion of a scene that opened eight months .
One year ago, you may recall, Premier League clubs have been squabbling over whether Spurs should be permitted to move into their new house in mid-season as it may undermine the integrity of the contest. Oh for such trivialities to be worried about now, since the coronavirus grips.
Spurs weren’t the first Premier League club to ask for Government money to pay non-football employees during the game’s lockdown. With magnificent predictability, Newcastle proprietor Mike Ashley made the exact same move 24 hours before.
Ashley has set all of Newcastle’s non-football employees on furlough and employed for the Government to cover 80 percent of the wages up to £2,500 per month. Nevertheless Levy, the league’s highest-paid executive, has been hot on the heels of the country’s least-favourite sportswear salesman.
He handed a 20 percent pay cut to all 550 of his club non-playing staff, utilising the nation’s furlough scheme to cover them ‘where appropriate’. Levy will require a 20 percent cut himself.
Although that £3m bonus could just keep the wolf out of the Spurs chairman’s door.It was a typically forthright and combative statement published by Levy yesterday. Levy said:”We expect the talks between the Premier League, PFA (players’ union) and LMA (supervisors’ union) will lead to coaches and players doing their bit for the soccer ecosystem.
“Although PFA chairman Gordon Taylor is known to be concerned that some clubs may use the health crisis as a convenient excuse to reduce wage bills in the long run.But players need to, and certainly will, do their bit.
Levy’s supporters claim yesterday’s announcement was a masterstroke, shaming managers and players into accepting the inevitable and accepting pay cuts or wage deferrals for the larger good of a match thrown into chaos by the lockdown.
Nonetheless, the salary of affected non-playing employees are small fry in the grand scheme of Premier League finances. A decent Picasso is worth around half £65m record-signing Tanguy Ndombele on the open market — and Jose Mourinho probably would not be so critical of older Pablo’s brushwork.
There was certainly an element of self-interest in Levy’s words — such as his effort to crush all move speculation at a time when his talisman, England captain Harry Kane, is publicly saying he wants to win prizes sooner rather than later. Levy said:”When I hear or read stories about participant transfers this summer like nothing has happened, people will need to wake up to the enormity of what is happening around us.”
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