LONDON, May 27 : Tottenham Hotspur chief executive Vinai Venkatesham says the club needs a complete reset and a return to prioritising the football part of the business after narrowly escaping relegation from the Premier League on Sunday.
Venkatesham was appointed just over a year ago having stepped down from a similar role at Arsenal and said some aspects of the club were ‘significantly worse’ than expected.
“It was very clear that this wasn’t some form of turnaround that was required of the club in quite a few areas. It was really a complete reset,” he was quoted as saying by the BBC.
Venkatesham was appointed by executive chairman Daniel Levy, who stood down last September after nearly 25 years at the club.
Under Levy’s reign Tottenham moved into a new state-of-the-art stadium in the same location as the original one while the club has a world-class training ground often used by England’s national team during international breaks.
Levy was blamed by many fans, however, for Tottenham’s decline on the pitch, accusing him of being more interested in increasing revenue from non-football activities.
In an apparent attack on Levy’s reign, Venkatesham said: “I would say on the non-football side of the club, in particular around stadium operations and commercial, that the club was and is really strong. If you look at the football side of the club, over a time frame of five years or so, there has just been an explosion in progress across the Premier League.
“I’m not saying that Tottenham didn’t improve in that period. But what I can tell you is that when you look at where Tottenham were in many of those areas, compared to where I believe other Premier League clubs are, there was a significant gap. In some areas really quite worryingly so.
“I don’t think that there was what I would call a relentless obsession with football success.”
Venkatesham also claimed Tottenham’s training headquarters lacked the feel of a high-performance environment.
FIVE-STAR HOTEL
“Our training centre is amazing, one of the best, if not the best in the world,” he said. “But when you look around, it looks more like a five-star hotel than it does a performance environment. That will change over the summer.
“I think there are many areas where the club hasn’t got the right level of expertise.”
With Levy now gone, Venkatesham, Tottenham’s Sports Director Johan Lange and owners ENIC have come under fire this season with results deteriorating and a first relegation since 1977 only avoided on the final day of the campaign.
The decision to sack Thomas Frank and replace him with interim manager Igor Tudor in February proved to be an almost calamitous error and only when Roberto De Zerbi took charge for the last seven games did the club’s fortunes change.
A small protest was held in the stands after the final whistle on Sunday and Venkatesham admits hiring the unheralded Tudor had been a big risk.
“He (Tudor) has a history of making an immediate impact,” Venkatesham said. “He has quite a different personality to Thomas and we felt like something different was needed. Of course we were aware he had no Premier League experience.”
De Zerbi, who took 11 points from his seven games in charge, said the club must not repeat the same mistakes.
“I love smart people. The smart people learn from the mistakes. If this season was like this, it’s because we made many mistakes. From the mistakes, you have to find the reason to improve,” he said on Tottenham’s website.
