Former Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp has lavished praise on Spurs chairman Daniel Levy for the “amazing job” he has done at the club over the last 20 years. Redknapp managed Spurs between 2008 and 2012, securing two top-four finishes in the Premier League, reaching the Champions League quarter-finals in 2011 and finishing as runner-up in the League Cup in 2008/09. He was full of praise for the Spurs chairman, who is the longest-serving in the Premier League.
Harry Redknapp said “Well obviously [it is] a massive contribution. When you look, he’s delivered an incredible new stadium, the training ground would be as good as anything in the country. Massive steps forward since he arrived and obviously they are now a team. People forget, when I was at West Ham we finished above Tottenham three years running. And West Ham may well do it again, but you look at where Tottenham have gone in the last few years, 10 years, whatever: Champions League football, always pushing for top four. Daniel has done an amazing job there. He runs the club, he’s hands on, he’s there every day. Look where the club is, look at the fantastic facilities they’ve got now as a football club. Look where they are. Look at the playing squad. They’ve got an amazing playing squad there, a squad that they’ll be disappointed if they don’t make the top four this year. With that squad they certainly should. They’ve got a chance to win a cup this year, so what he’s done over the 20-year tenure has been fantastic really. Let’s hope he gets another 20 years.”
Tottenham are currently seventh in the Premier League, five points adrift of Chelsea in fourth place, after picking up three wins in succession. Jose Mourinho’s side face Dinamo Zagreb in the first leg of their last-16 Europa League quarter-final on Thursday before the north London derby against Arsenal on Sunday.
Levy became Spurs chairman on March 9, 2001, after Lord Alan Sugar sold his controlling stake in Tottenham for £22m to ENIC Group. The 59-year-old businessman has at times polarised opinion among Spurs fans, with Levy’s role as chief negotiator in transfers seeing him cultivate the persona of someone who drives a hard bargain. However, his work in achieving commercial deals for the club and in building the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and the Hotspur Way training ground in recent years have attracted plaudits.
