Daniel Levy jokes that he has told James Maddison he cannot come to Hotspur Way in a red car, due to the rivalry between Tottenham and Arsenal.
Tottenham had quite a busy summer transfer window, with several new faces coming through the door and plenty of players leaving at the start of the Ange Postecoglou era.
Maddison was arguably the most high-profile addition of the window and the attacking midfielder has more than lived up to his reputation so far, winning the Premier League Player of the Month award for August.
(Photo by Chloe Knott – Danehouse/Getty Images)
Levy admitted at the Fan Forum held at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Tuesday (via Football.London) that the final few days of the transfer window were ‘very stressful’.
When asked about Maddison, he joked: “James needs to learn that he can’t come to the training ground in a red car. I’ve told him. He’ll learn.”
Levy also reflected on the six years that have lapsed between the last fan forum and the one held on Tuesday, with the Tottenham supremo admitting that the pandemic was quite difficult for the club to negotiate as it hit right after they had moved into the new stadium.
Daniel Levy reflects on a big six years for Tottenham
The 61-year-old added: “First off it’s hard to believe it’s been six years since we were last together. In that six years we’ve opened the stadium, we had the pandemic, we got into the final of the Champions League, unfortunately, we didn’t win it. Then we came back here, we got Ange, lots of things have happened.
“I think people will never really appreciate how difficult [the pandemic] was for us. We had just opened the stadium. We had at that time and still do have more debt than any other club in Europe, luckily it was all long-term finance, but all of a sudden we didn’t have any income.
“The whole financing of the stadium was predicated on having income and it just stopped. Luckily for us, we were very highly regarded in financial markets and we managed to get some assistance that enabled us to keep going.
“It was a very, very stressful period and luckily the institutions that originally helped us, they refinanced the debt and we repaid the Bank of England. It was a cost of about £200million.”
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It is fair to say that had Spurs not been in as healthy a financial position when the pandemic hit, it could have ended quite badly for the club, given that the timing could not have been any worse since we had just opened the new stadium.
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