Tottenham sit 11th in the Premier League table and results have not been good enough, but that goes beyond the manager and his players

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The cold and frosty animosity from Tottenham supporters towards the club's ownership has bubbled away over the last half-decade or so. It's now starting to reach a boiling point.

It's no longer only a social media phenomena limited to those donning purple and gold colours in their handles and bios – 'purple and gold until ENIC have sold' for those unaware of the trend. Chants demanding Daniel Levy's exit have been a common theme of home losses.

Sunday's 4-3 defeat to Chelsea was the nadir of the Ange Postecoglou era. Spurs have come up with some extraordinary big-game performances this season, notably thrashing both Manchester United and Manchester City on their travels, but this was a step too far up against the closest title challengers to Premier League leaders Liverpool. The very best and very worst of Postecoglou's Tottenham was on full display, with the hosts scintillating early on and then in small bursts, but ultimately too fragile to maintain the two-goal lead they built after 11 minutes.

The Australian manager cannot be absolved of blame and his tactics need adjusting, but Spurs' position of 11th in the table is on those upstairs at the club more so than any one person in the dugout or on the pitch.

Follow GOAL on WhatsApp! 🟢📱Getty Images SportThe stadium excuse

History is likely to look kindly on Levy and ENIC's ownership of Tottenham as a whole. And, despite these modern discrepancies, that would be fair. Spurs had wallowed towards the red line in both a financial sense and football sense prior to their 2001 takeover from Lord Sugar. The transformation into a 'Big Six' club boasting world-class infrastructure of their billion-pound stadium and Hotspur Way training ground has been hugely successful. It has, however, only taken them so far.

Tottenham left their old Spurs Lodge training complex in 2012. They've now spent five years in the new ground, seven years on from the demolition of White Hart Lane. Levy and Co. cannot dine on those off-field accomplishments any longer, particularly when the fortunes of the team are declining.

At times, it feels as if these state of the art facilities have given the club an over-inflated sense of worth. Those on the outside looking in seem to believe ranking high in Forbes and Deloitte lists is more of a priority than good finishes in the Premier League table and in the cups.

In terms of transfers (which will be discussed in detail later, don't you worry), Tottenham have spent a fair bit more in recent years. You'd hope that'd be the case given previous turnovers and recent hikes in ticket prices. The real sticking point comes to player wages. Little information on salaries is made public, but various sources rank Spurs as around seventh or eighth most-generous employers, dishing out pay-packets on a similar rate to Aston Villa, Newcastle and West Ham rather than their supposed 'Big Six' peers.

AdvertisementGetty Images SportLevy losing media support

Tottenham fans' frustrations towards the ownership are not as widely documented as those of Manchester United or even Liverpool. This might be down to how the mainstream media report on Spurs compared to those two giants of the game, yet Sky Sports' Jamie Carragher didn't hold back with his public tearing down of the current regime.

After Sunday's loss to Chelsea, Carragher said: "They've changed so many managers. We talk about Daniel Levy a lot. What Daniel Levy's done here in terms of the training ground and and this for me, this is the best stadium in the world. And that's been Daniel Levy's strength in terms of a really stable football club. The stadium he's delivered. He's delivered the training ground.

"It's probably some time for somebody else to come in because to not win a trophy in that period of time, with the manager they've had. They've never really got out of the way in the transfer market, they've spent decent money without, you know, blowing other teams out the water. The wage bill is always one of the smallest. And you're never going to get the best players.

"So it might be a time for Daniel Levy – who I've been a supporter of because you look at the actual work that he's doing – but now that work's done, in terms of a stadium and a training ground, someone else needs to be in charge of this football club."

AFPFurniture doesn't match the house

Tottenham Hotspur Stadium is a palace, and it's widely believed among fans that the move was ultimately right and the ground itself is without much flaw. There was a great irony on Sunday when the club-led light show paled in insignificance to the dominative tifo across the single-tier south stand, a fan initiative which took several months to sort.

Mauricio Pochettino warned that the stadium project could not be the end goal for Levy. Prior to the 2019 Champions League final – reminder, he led to a – he said: "When you talk about Tottenham, everyone says you have an amazing house but you need to put in the furniture! If you want to have a lovely house maybe you need better furniture.

"And it depends on your budget if you are going to spend money. We need to be respectful with teams like Manchester City or Liverpool who spend a lot of money. We are brave, we are clever, we are creative.

"Now it's about creating another chapter and to have the clear idea of how we are going to build that new project. We need to rebuild. It's going to be painful."

Pochettino was sacked less than half a year later.

Getty ImagesMourinho, Conte and delusions of grandeur

In Tottenham's Amazon Prime 'All or Nothing' documentary, Levy gave the simple reason for firing Pochettino and replacing him a day later with Jose Mourinho – he was one of the two best managers in world football.

It was an immediate red flag for the years ahead. Sure, Mourinho is one of the sport's best-ever coaches, but he was on the decline and nowhere near top two in 2019. Speculation arose over Levy's long-harboured ambition to bring in 'the Special One' having first approached him in 2007 after his first Chelsea exit and whether that had blindsided him.

Mourinho and Spurs never really clicked, which the former puts down to the pandemic and lockdown. He was given his marching orders in April 2021, just days before Spurs were due to meet Manchester City in the Carabao Cup final.

An extremely lengthy search for a replacement led Tottenham to Nuno Espirito Santo, who lasted only 17 games before his own dismissal. And then there was Antonio Conte.

In fairness to the Italian, he did oversee the most successful period that Spurs have really had post-Pochettino, building a solid team of grafters that pipped Arsenal to a Champions League spot in style down the stretch of 2021-22. That work was then reversed by a poor 2022-23 and an infamous ten-minute rant in which he essentially called his players crap and the club losers. Yeah, you don't really come back from those.

This sequence of events wasn't a coincidence. Tottenham thought they had done the difficult thing by building under Pochettino and they could fast-track their way to tangible success from there, though that wasn't the case. That just isn't how football works.

In 2023, Levy admitted he was wrong to hire the high-profile duo: "I made a mistake. They were great managers, they were just not right for Tottenham… the way they want to win is different for how we need to win."

The insinuation is Mourinho and Conte wanted win-now transfer strategies, while the club preferred to plan for the long term. The truth is somewhere in the middle – Spurs can't compete for the superstars of today, yet they shouldn't leave themselves short in squad building for the present either.