With the transfer window out of the way, the stadium issue is firmly back in the news with Daniel Levy urging Spurs fans to get behind the bid.
Speaking in the Evening Standard, Levy said: “I understand [fans’ concerns] because I have been a Spurs fan all my life. But our fans travel on average 40 miles to each game from all around London and the south east. If we have to move five miles down the road for the greater good of the club, then that’s what we have to do.”
“I believe the vast majority of fans support us if it means progressing and sometimes you have to make bold decisions. If you look across Europe we are the only major club to play in such a small stadium.”
More and more athletes are coming out of the woodwork to back West Ham’s bid. In the same article Kelly (Arsenal fan) Sotherton said: “The track and the stadium must stay, definitely. The stadium must not be demolished. How can you knock down an Olympic Stadium?”
Meanwhile Levy has also denied that the club will be sold if the Stratford move goes through. There have been rumours of interest from Qatar and the US.
“There is no truth whatsoever in any form of conversation with anybody about selling the club,” he said. “We haven’t put this amount of effort into building up Tottenham with the intention of moving it on to someone else. We want to see this project through. AEG have no interest in buying Tottenham Hotspur, or any other club for that matter, and they have made that clear.”
it will be interesting to find out what the split is, if it goes to a vote, certainly there are lots of people on both sides.
i’m a season ticket holder a shareholder and a lifelong yido. i pray we get the olympic stadium, it’ll be incredible and will push us forward immeasurably. Levy has been an incredible chairman and this would be a fabulous move for us.
I totally agree with you t3ach.
make that three, behind that all the way
Make it 5.
in the end the final decission will be made by some c*nt in a pink tie, as usual.
nevermind the heritage and history of the club.
all clubs should be opposed to what levy is up to. if he cannot afford quality players, wages or new stadium in TOTTENHAM, maybe Levy’s time is up and he should sell up to someone who can serve the club and what it is about. Hard times will come back at times, you’ll know what i mean by this point when your stuck in a souless concrete bowl.
Your name is incorrect. Even if we stay in Tottenham, it aint going to be called White Hart Lane or be on the same turf, so really what is the difference?? Alot of people seem to be missing this point, it isnt WHL vs Stratford. WHL is going one way or the other. Sad, yes, but you’d better get used to it.
all the tottenham wanderers are out today or you just the same guy with different usernames? if you want nice car parks, shops, gastro pubs near the ground, may i suggest you support that woolich lot down the road. no tottenham in stratford. you may win and end up supporting spurs fc or whatever your new club will be called. i wont.
bet you live no where near tottenham. Have you ever been to a game…not a very nice area is it?
bet i live within a mile of the ground and been to loads of games. bet you dont. tottenham from tottenham
And Hackney IS??
He cannot afford high wages etc. because we only have a 36000 seater stadium. That is the finanacial reality. With a 60000 seater we can compete with any club in the world financially.
so liverpool with 4000 more supprters inside their stadium can buy two top strikers and we bet £500.000 for phil neville. levy needs to sell up to someone who can deliever in the area.
What’s the real rush, it’s money over what we are.
In 40 years time what will people be saying. I’ll stop going if we become an east london club and will go watch Barnet or Orient.
good riddants
i believe Levy is correct, most spurs fans are behind it and can put emotion to one side to see what is best for the club. Polls that suggest otherwise are run on anti stratford blogs and are only being voted for by the same people who are writing and reading the blog. The majority are silent in this case waiting for the decision on who gets it.
Yes he does- Staying in Tottenham appears to be financial suicide. If want to compete we must have a bigger stadium & Olympic project is the most beneficial to the club- cost, access, resources, infra-structure, etc.
Didn’t Everton organise an official ballot amongst their fans to canvas opinion, when they were thinking of moving to Kirby?
Somehow I can’t imagine that Spurs fans will get the same opportunity, because they Levy and Co. know what the result would be if they gave that sort of vote to season ticket holders.
yeah everton fans didn’t want a move, and have you seen the financial mess they’re in now, all the fans want to sign players but there is no money to spend.
I’m so glad that all the comments have been pro-Levy and the move. It just shows that the media have been flogging to death the noisy minority and not relflecting the other side. I’m most annoyed with Levy for not running a good PR campaign and not shouting out the real facts – most spurs supporters don’t live in Tottenham, Only £90m worth of OS will be chucked, the Spurs bid is no risk to taxpayers etc etc.
Come on Levy sort it out!
does identity, heritage and history mean nothing to you? or is it just about shareholders, money and short term gain? at least leeds and newcastle still had all that when the good times ended
Oh yeah, I bet Leeds and Newcastle fans were thanking there lucky stars when it went t*ts up and all there dreams went up in smoke.
Do you seriously think fans won’t care about identity, heritage or history 5 miles down the road. Very naive.
Money and short term gain for me. It is about the team not where it is based. And I like the idea of making history – In 40 years time if the team does move to Strattford it will not lessen the tottenham roots it will be part of the history forever. I support my team, and in this day and age, financial clout will prevail. You are no supporter of my team if you want us to remain in the dark ages
“I believe the vast majority of fans support us if it means progressing and sometimes you have to make bold decisions. If you look across Europe we are the only major club to play in such a small stadium.”
Bit of a loaded statement that. Of course if Stratford is the only way to be successful or progress (whatever that means) then we will all support it. We all see the need for a bigger stadium I assume. But only a couple of months ago the club had what they said was a wonderful scheme for a bigger stadium in Tottenham. Personally I’d prefer that.
iain – that plan is no longer viable because the costs have risen and the council are trying to fleece the club into paying for things they should have done. If it means we get another £100m on players then thats the difference between long-term success and not. And you know those anti-Stratfords will be the first to protest when we don’t continue to move forward.
levy out!
I have to say, Levy’s comments, and some of the suspicious comments on this site do not tally with ANY Spurs fans I know.
Not a single one of them.
Exactly, if Levy is so confident, why dont we have poll? Didnt Mubarak win the last election by 93%?
Excuse an Arsenal fan having a take on this issue, but be under no illusions about the implications of this decision.
1) You won’t be a North London Club anymore, and there’s no way you can pretend to be, you’ll be an East London Club.
2) Our rivalry will just become historical as time goes by. They’ll be no NLD. Your local rivals will be West Ham and we’ll probably focus on Chelsea. You may want to pretend differently but it takes two to tango, and as far as Arsenal fans are concerned you’ll have given up.
3) We managed to rebuild from Highbury, and yes has cost a lot requiring years of financial restraint. But it hasn’t exactly killed us has it? Are you just going to give up on building up your club in Tottenham because a cheaper option has been found elsewhere? If so then you’re just turning yourselves into the franchise.
3) Rivalry isn’t just about 22 men on the field with a football – it’s about territory, history and culture. If you are bought off by Levy’s promises based on Stratford then frankly you are mugs.
exactly. you are all mugs
Know you’re history gooner. Do you reckon Arsenal fans had the same conversation in 1913 when you moved to Highbury from SOUTH LONDON – you’re original home.
You are kidding yourself if you think we care about our relationship with the Gooners when considering the long-term success of our club. There’t wont be rivalry in 10 years time anyway coz when Wenger leaves you’ll go back to mid-table mediocrity
and we’re from north london
Oh dear, a predictable response I suppose. Do you really think I don’t know about club’s history and origins? I certainly know a lot more than you and am not trying to take any more high ground, but that’s hardly relevant to what’s happening today. What we did took place 3 generations ago and was for the people who were alive then to sort out. As I had no say or opinion on it at the time, it’s not something I need to defend.
If you don’t care about local rivalry, that fine by me.
Your last point proves your just a mug anyway.
sorry, but i actually agree with you zack. it’s the tottenham wanderers who i disagree with. you see the more you listen to them, the more you realise why they hate arsenal so much. they want to leave their original home too and experience what it’s like to move into someone elses area and to a different part of london, so they can be in a respectable area, where they have pretty shops, cafes, restaurants and shopping malls and stufffffff.
To behonest I don’t care a **** whether you stay or go, although to move right out of Tottenham would change the dynamics of our rivalry despite what some may say. All I would add is that your ‘wanderers’ appear to swallow everything Levy is saying about the impossibility of staying put. Well, I can tell you that there were exactly the same planning and infrstructure issues and cost with the Emirates. It was all frustrating at the time but at least the club stuck with it and found a way through. Levy is just using the fear factor with you fans (can’t compete’ and many seem to be falling for it.
I loved the plans for redevelopment of WHL but the problem’s the council, they want us to pay to upgrade the transport lniks and we’d have huge problems acquiring the adjacent properties. It would really help to have the backing of the local council.
Unfortunately we’re faced with little chioce but to consider the Olympics site. Levy is a finance guy. We need a bigger stadium. FACT. We only have 2 options. One is currently viable, the other isn’t
why not just move spurs to bristol or sheffield or amsterdam or somewhere in the states? if it worked out better finacially, why not?
Where have all these vermin run out from?
AEG talk about Stratford as an attraction for ‘visitors’!
Levy and his American pals are serious about closing down THFC and opening up a franchise in east London. Even if they call it THFC it will, and can never be THFC.
Glory hunting at the cost of losing the club many have supported through thick and thin is shameful.
Tottenham has no business in east London.
thank you!
Why is everyone convinced that Stratford is our only chance to progress? We can have it all by staying and taking the NDP forward. Admit it ..Stratford is simply a slighlty cheaper, more convenient option…end of. Levy has spinned this to convince the waverers that we have no choice…hes lying. Make your choice by all means but base it on the facts and not the spin.
If the NDP was perfectly viable 6 weeks ago why is it not now? Ask yourselves that FFS
You either have a very short memory or are only just a Spurs fan but I remember 5-10 years Spurs looking into moving (wasn’t it Alexandra Palace?) and couldn’t because of finances and permission. You seem to think that finding a new ground within 2 miles of where we currently are is the easiest thing in the world but its not and we have been looking for years. The opportunity is now or maybe not at all………
Every one of my Spurs mates agrees that moving to the Olympic Site wouldn’t bother them in the slightest. Yes, we all love WHL. But it is going to change and as none of us live in the area anymore (and I’ve never lived in Tottenham – I just used to visit my family there and go to games) the sentimentality for Tottenham the area has gone.
tottenham hotspur fc from white hart lane – you represent the vocal minority. Count the people posting here in favour of a move and then count the number of posts you have made to try and shout them down.
and Zack. We don’t really care about Arsenal. When the “stand up if you hate Arsenal” song reverberates around WHL me and my mates sing “sit down if you hate Arsenal” because we don’t actually give a sh…
i guess i should have left every single comment here with a different username.
I have been going to WHL for over 40 years. I will be sad to leave. I could live with staying where we are with what we have got. What i object to most strongly however, is the idea of incurring debt to fund a new stadium at the levels talked about for the Northumberland park. If we get a rich new owner who does not care about profit then it can work; although there are the new fair play rules re finacials and frankly if I were a Chelsea or Man City fan I would be somewhat anxious about what the future holds when the play thing of the play boy is no longer of interest. So stay where we are and stay as what we are or move. As I say, i can live with either, but having spent a career in finance I have never understood the new stadium plan without the sugar daddy. People do not realise how close to great finacial difficulty Arsenal came and how the lasagnagate went a long way to maintaining their health finacially; dropping out of the champions league with that debt would have been a disater. Just as Gazza’s injury in the 1991 final almost broke Spurs. The transfer fee from Lazio went from 7.5 mill to 4 mill and friends who worked for the banks to who the club owed large amounts (by the standards of the day) and who were Spurs fans were very worried. Think what you will about Sugar, we actually needed him. All this talk of history and legacy and tradition; well I am convinced that incurring the debt for the Northunberland Park project represents a much bigger threat to those things than Stratford does, it threatens the very survival of the club. And as for promises, well seb coe has broken those to the british public about what it would all cost, by several bill. He should worry about those promises before he woories about a few suits on some international athletics cttee, even if the latter can keep giving him nice jobs with nice perks, sanctimonious bastard is all that man is.
have a poll, all season ticket holders and all those who pay to be on the list. 90 percent in favour of a move is my guess, but i might be in the ten percent, i really do not know
All this stuff about the stadium being cheaper and where it’s located is all gumph anyway. The real problem is transport. Straftord is being designed as a transport hub whereas WHL is effectively a dead-end.
How has the NDP become totally non-viable in three months? Blaming Haringey council, who are penniless, for Levy’s decision to make more money in Stratford is idiocy.
You’re willing to sacrifice 100+ years of history and traditions to support a new club in east London, just for a shot at winning some metal cups in competitions that more or less come down to who has the most money.
You’re all f*!king mental!
Levy has done a reasonable job up until now, but by actively seeking to shut down THFC and open up a corporate theme park in east London for his and AEG’s financial self interest has made his job ‘non-viable’.
LEVY OUT!
New plans can be drawn up by new owners to build on the existing site at a much lower cost. Who cares what the outside or under the terraces of the stadium look like? Make it bigger, but make it in TOTTENHAM.
LEVY OUT!
That’s right ” tottenham hotspur fc from white hart lane” – it’s all a conspiracy; they’re out to get you…
Most Spurs fans who haven’t clue about their history, no heart, clueless about the prospect of regenerating a poor area of Haringey from the Wingate estate to WHL, who are only bothered about time and money and not being faithful to the area will support the Stratford stadium.
When the true fans stop going and the MK Dons like fans move in, it won’t fill all those empty seats! Long live Tottenham of North London, the spirit of Tottenham is more important than the ease of access or being by the new shopping centres surrounding the stadium. If you look at the location of the Nou Camp, it’s in a real dive of Barcelona but it remains in the Catalan area. The legacy of leaving Tottenham will mean a bad day for the area of Haringey. But then if you’re kind of fan that don’t give a flying fcuk for your history, then go ahead and support Stratford Nomads!
Every single poll, has Spurs fans oppposed to Stratford. Sky News could not find a single fan to interview in favour of the move except for Alan Sugar (he saud this himself). We have been in Tottenham for 129 years. This “silent majority” stuff that is being spouted by the pro-Stratford camp is nonsense. Very easy to say, isn’t it, but actions speak louder than words and the fact is there are thousands of us match going fans completely opposed to the move. We are a north London club and we should stay in north London at all cost. Say No to Stratford. Levy out.
WHY AFTER 2 YRS OF CONSULTION HAS WHL NOT BECOME VIABLE AND STATFORDAEG/CANARYWHARF CORPORATE HAS .
FUNNY THAT CPO HAVE ALL READY BEEN AGREED FOR PLACES LOTS OF MONEY HAS BEEN BRANDED ABOUT
200M-O2 TO 450MM FOR WHL SO DOES THE 450 M INCLUDE HOTEL AND SAINSBURYS YES IT DOES SO NEW AT AEG-O2 WILL COST 200M SAY THERE IS 50M FOR THE OTHER 2 DUMP THEM LEAVES 200M FOR WHAT A WHL EXACTLY SAME STADIUM SO PEOPLE ,ANY YOU PRATS ENGINEERS OR JUST MONEY MEN IF YOU ARE THE LATTER 200M ON GROUND WORK OOPS SORRY ITS COMPLETE B******KS THINGS DO NOT ADD UP WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE .
ALSO DOSEN`T MEAN WE WILL HAVE 200 M ON PLAYERS IN YOUR DREAMS BE PAYING LESS THATS ALL
WE ARE ALREADY IN TOP 20 RICH LIST, WE ALREADY HAVE SOME OF THE BEST PLAYERS SO NOT ATTRACTING THEM IS CRAP
WHL MIGHT BE A DUMP BUT I STILL GO EVERY SECOND WEEK PLUS CUP GAMES 48YRS AND I HAVE NO REASON TO WANT TO GO TO EAST LONDON-AEG
WE HAVE BETTER OUTLETS TO THE MOTORWAYS THAN MOST ALSO 4TRAIN STATIONS DOES HIGHBURY,CHELSKI OR WESTSPAM 1BLOODY STATION EACH
SO DONT COME BACK WITH TRANSPORT CRAP EITHER
100% agreed! Has everyone gone mad? East london? Tottenham (yes TOTTENHAM) hotspur. NOT FRANCHISE HOTSPUR, NOT STRATFORD HOTSPUR AND NOT AEG HOTSPUR. I honestly dont THINK any of the pro stratford lot ever actually go to the lane….
Some of you are short sighted fools. The same ones that are talking about heritage and tradition are the ones who will moan when we keep watching teams like Arsenal, man Utd, etc pulling away from us. i am fed up of Spurs being a club whose magic moments are beating our rivals occasionally and the odd cup run. I want a team competing at the highest level and challenging for major honours. If Levy feels that the Olympic stadium can help to achieve this, then I back him 100% Enic have been fantastic to us and have bankrolled some great players for us. With them we have reached the champions league, many of us never thought we would. We need to push on now and start challenging and we need to get behind levy. Whether you traditionalists like it or not, many of us don’t or would never live in Tottenham. WHL would always be part of our history, let the Olympic park be the future.
Tell me exactly how much money ENIC have ‘bankrolled’ without return? I’ll give you a guess, it starts with a 0.
“Average of 40 miles” is a load of cobblers.
If some come from Birmingham say, then that skews the results. Anyone who knows statistics (mean, median, mode) knows that the “average” can be easily misleading when you have a lot of low samples and fewer extremely larger samples.
You will find that the highest proportion of season ticket holders live in Enfield – i.e a couple of miles away.
That is the important stat. Securing the future of the club is placing the club in the heartland of its support. A club is NOTHING without its guaranteed support. Stratford is gambling with that. Move the stadium if need be, but not in a West Ham area please. North London forever.
how will i find out where they come from? will the company tell me where they post the season tickets to? how many pick them up in person? if you work in the ticket office your statement has some credibility. what is most frustrating in all of this are the endless statements that could just be made up as nothing is offered to support. in my post above above about how close spurs were to bankruptcy in ’91 i pointed out that friends, spurs supporters, who worked for the banks who were getting ready to foreclose, told me. i happen to believe them, as i knew them well and they were very depressed. so please tell me how we know where people come from? did the club say 40 miles there and 40 back or 40 total?
The question is: do you know what average means?
Ok so a lot of fans live in Enfield. Just because they live closer does not make them bigger fans.
I would be careful for what you so called die-hards wish for. If you exclude genuine fans based on the fact that they live further than a mile from the ground WHL will become a very quiet place.
You need to understand you are a not a bigger fan just because you live in sh*thole
There will be hardcore fans who will not go to Stratford.
Are they the noisy minority? Who knows? But even if they are, it’s that noisy minority who start the songs and chants which make the atmosphere in WHL one of the best. Lose them and Stratford Hotspur will be a soulless money making exercise on a lifeless Olympic site. If you’re really against this move, there’s really no way you can support Levy any longer.
Do you really believe that the noisy minority would stop supporting spurs because they move 5 miles down the road. If they did, they are incredibly narrow minded and I would personally question the validity of their ‘support’. Did they also stop supporting the club when we had 2 points after 8 games. No they didn’t. It is the same club that we support and we do that through thick and thin. If there is a minority that would stop supporting spurs through a move to improve themselves, quite frankly I think we can do without them
5 miles down the road down arse! Has levy actual tried driving in rush hour or what would be a 60000 match day from north london. More like nearly 2hrs down the road once u make ur way round stratford and park the car. Transport links? Do you know what a nightmare it is just getting to the bloody spammers away game?Levy is a fool! Have lost all respect I had for him. Why dont the club have a vote if the majority of fans are behind him. He has no idea
If I were pro-Stratford, I would be disappointed with fellow fans had they NOT protested. It shows a passion for the club.
It is an extreme move – out of Haringey, out of North London, into East London, past Leyton Orient (which will be closer to Tottenham than “Tottenham” will be), and into West Ham’s borough and manor. We are already losing a lot of fans to Arsenal in North London (starting to win ’em back), and moving to Stratford would make it easier to get to Arsenal and support them as opposed to Tottenham – despite the “transport links”. As a Spurs fan, I would become scared of wearing my shirt in the area of my club for fear of being attacked by disgruntled Hammer fans… It would be a crime to leave the area that made it what it is today. Why aren’t pro-Stratford people willing to accept that all this CAN happen in North London?
It is a noisy minority when the petition has less than 8,000 (out of a target of 100k) and the FB page has less than 3k! Yet Sky and all the papers cover them all the time.
It’s simple, redeveloping WHL could put the club in financial jeopardy whereas moving will see us have more resources to build the club. Not everyone can do an Arsenal and move, spend no money on players and still qualify for CL. If we didn’t qualify for one year we would be screwed. Those people that think they are being the best fans by being most against it are being naive at best and stupid at worst.
re-posting a comment left above as a reply, took so long to type i bet no one read. or maybe they read and thought too boring. in summary, i agree, if we build out in n17 we have more chance of destroying the legacy by bankruptcy then weakiening by moving, in my view. so stay as we are , where we are or move.
” I have been going to WHL for over 40 years. I will be sad to leave. I could live with staying where we are with what we have got. What i object to most strongly however, is the idea of incurring debt to fund a new stadium at the levels talked about for the Northumberland park. If we get a rich new owner who does not care about profit then it can work; although there are the new fair play rules re finacials and frankly if I were a Chelsea or Man City fan I would be somewhat anxious about what the future holds when the play thing of the play boy is no longer of interest. So stay where we are and stay as what we are or move. As I say, i can live with either, but having spent a career in finance I have never understood the new stadium plan without the sugar daddy. People do not realise how close to great finacial difficulty Arsenal came and how the lasagnagate went a long way to maintaining their health finacially; dropping out of the champions league with that debt would have been a disater. Just as Gazza’s injury in the 1991 final almost broke Spurs. The transfer fee from Lazio went from 7.5 mill to 4 mill and friends who worked for the banks to who the club owed large amounts (by the standards of the day) and who were Spurs fans were very worried. Think what you will about Sugar, we actually needed him. All this talk of history and legacy and tradition; well I am convinced that incurring the debt for the Northunberland Park project represents a much bigger threat to those things than Stratford does, it threatens the very survival of the club. And as for promises, well seb coe has broken those to the british public about what it would all cost, by several bill. He should worry about those promises before he woories about a few suits on some international athletics cttee, even if the latter can keep giving him nice jobs with nice perks, sanctimonious bastard is all that man is.
have a poll, all season ticket holders and all those who pay to be on the list. 90 percent in favour of a move is my guess, but i might be in the ten percent, ui really do not know”
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