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The long-serving former Tottenham Hotspur chairman is no longer a decision maker at the club and one of his ex-coaches has been speaking about him
Gus Poyet believes it's impossible to know whether Daniel Levy would have prevented the current mess at Tottenham because the long-serving ex-chairman was so unpredictable.
Levy was pushed out of Spurs last year after almost a quarter of a century at the helm after an in-depth club review instigated by the owners, the Lewis family. However, matters have not improved in the months since at the north London club with Tottenham now at risk of relegation with seven games of the Premier League remaining.
Poyet played for the club for three years and then was assistant manager to Juande Ramos, the last person to win a trophy at Spurs before Ange Postecoglou lifted the Europa League last year. Both managers were sacked by Levy afterwards due to performances in the Premier League. So would Levy have acted more swiftly to try to arrest the club's decline this season under Thomas Frank and now Igor Tudor?
"Difficult to know because Daniel was always, always - and I mean always - unpredictable," the Uruguayan told football.london. "When I was an assistant coach in the summer after winning the League Cup with Juande Ramos, we had a big issue with [Dimitar] Berbatov until the last minute of the transfer window.
"He [Levy] didn't want to sell him until the last minute of the transfer window. If Berba was going to go, then go, but we wanted to settle down and then play. But then Berba left, but he didn't play with us in August, we couldn't win a game and then we were sacked. How much of that was the reason? I don't know, I'm not going to blame anyone but it didn't help."
Poyet believes Levy's departure ended up being perfectly timed for the 64-year-old.
"He's very intelligent about leaving at the right time. Maybe he saw it coming. You know when people talk about when Alex Ferguson stepped down and what happened after? These kinds of people at the highest level, I think they know when is the right time to go," said the former Spurs and Chelsea midfielder.
"They don't stay there when everything is falling apart, you know? They leave just in time and that's a quality because he left in the worst Tottenham year in the Premier League for a long time, 17th, but won a trophy. He left as a winner."
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Poyet said that Levy's managerial sackings were brutal, not least the one that saw him heading out a hotel and into a waiting taxi.
"Listen, he sacked Mourinho one week before the final when the idea of signing Mourinho was about winning a trophy. So, what can I say about Daniel? He was a chairman that was very unpredictable," he said. "We got sacked the night before our game when we were in the hotel.
"Tottenham were playing Sunday in a home game, we went to the hotel to sleep overnight with the whole squad. Myself, Juande Ramos and Marcos Alvarez, we got sacked at 10pm, the night before the game. [What's] more unpredictable than that? There were not even rumours.
"I was waiting for much of the day in my room and I got a phone call telling me to come down. I went down and we got sacked. We walked out of the hotel with the luggage and got a taxi home. That's what I mean. I don't know. When you change a coach, I think that was the idea of the owners, it's to see a reaction and that didn't happen. The main reason for changing a coach, it didn't work for Spurs for whatever reason, so it's a problem."
Poyet believes that the issues at Spurs have stretched beyond this current season and he is worried about his old side as they sit one point above London rivals West Ham, who lie in the drop zone in the Premier League.
"I disagree with people that say 'this season'. This is not an accident, Tottenham finished 17th last season, and today, they are 17th. I think the characteristics of the players Tottenham have signed, they are more suitable for European competition, which is a completely different game, and not for the English Premier League," he explained.
"The Premier League, a little bit last season, 100% this season, has become more physical, man-to-man, set-pieces, and the strongest wins. Spurs, with all the injuries they have, and those players performing at a certain level in Europe but not being able to replicate that in the Premier League, when you start losing, it is difficult to recover.
"You need more than a change in coach; you need a bit of luck, you need players to come back, you need responsibility. They are in danger, I promise you. I was worried when I was at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium watching the Arsenal game live, I left that stadium thinking, 'aye, aye, aye'. That was three or four weeks ago. After watching Forest, [I'm] more [worried]. Careful."
The Uruguayan is worried for Spurs with their next trip on April 12 to one of the clubs he used to manage, Sunderland.
"Now they go to Sunderland. All the best going to the Stadium of Light at this moment of time after they won the derby," he said. "It's not just about playing football; it's about running, it's about fighting, it's about competing, it's about dealing with the pressure when a team is coming and coming and the supporters are supporting.
"You need to be spot on in that game. It's going to be tough. The most important thing, the only thing I can think, it didn't happen with me when I was at Sunderland, it's in your hands. It depends on you. If you win the same amount of games as West Ham, then you stay up. Then, we'll see what happens in the next couple of games."
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