Daniel Levy likely to relax Tottenham wage structure following Spurs success

Pay gap: Harry Kane, in action against Stoke last week, picks up £50,000 per week, which is some way off the League’s top earners
Gareth Copley/Getty Images
Tom Collomosse25 April 2016

As Daniel Levy looks ahead to Tottenham’s meeting with West Brom tonight, he might reflect that the club’s success this season will present his greatest challenge.

Victory will reduce League leaders Leicester’s advantage to five points with three games remaining but just as significantly, two more wins will ensure that Spurs finish at least second this season. That would mean a place in the group stages of the 2016-17 Champions League.

One of Levy’s smartest tricks in his 15 years as Tottenham chairman has been to keep wages relatively low. Nobody at Spurs earns £100,000 a week, with the best-rewarded players — Hugo Lloris, Erik Lamela and Mousa Dembele — in the £70,000-£80,000 a week bracket.

If Spurs finish second — or even win the title — will it be possible for Levy to keep salaries at this level? Nobody is suggesting that Tottenham’s players are mercenaries. But if any worker, in any job, knows they are outperforming better-paid competitors, it is natural to ask questions of their employer.

Harry Kane, the top scorer in the League, earns about £50,000 per week. Dele Alli, the PFA Young Player of the Year, collects about half of that. Eric Dier and Christian Eriksen, key men this season, come in around the £30,000 mark, Jan Vertonghen closer to £40,000. Both Eriksen and Vertonghen are in talks over new deals.

These are tremendously wealthy young men but a glance around the Premier League is instructive.

Raheem Sterling’s wages at Manchester City are £180,000 a week, while Theo Walcott is paid about £130,000 weekly by Arsenal. There are many more examples of footballers who do not provide the value for money that Tottenham’s have this season.

Will Levy relax his wage structure, both when discussing contracts with current players and possible signings? And what impact might that have on Spurs’s excellent squad spirit, if some players are extravagantly rewarded, while others are left behind? It is quite a conundrum, especially when Levy is also working to secure the future of his head coach. Mauricio Pochettino has been offered a new deal worth about £5million plus bonuses.

It is worth pointing out that while Levy is not always popular with Tottenham supporters, he deserves credit for what has happened this season. Two years ago, Levy moved quicker than others to hire a fine head coach in Pochettino. He has overseen an improved transfer policy and kept his club in a healthy financial position — all the while attempting to deliver a fiendishly difficult stadium project, at a cost of £400m.

Tottenham hope to be in their new 61,000-capacity ground at the start of the 2018/19 campaign and are optimistic they will be able to play at least some of their home fixtures in the 2017/18 season at Wembley, as work on the new venue is completed. Levy has made plenty of wise calls since May 2014 and if he can make a few more, Spurs can be Champions League regulars by the time they move into the new stadium.

Pochettino said: “At Stoke last Monday [where Spurs won 4-0], I knew before the game that we would win. You could feel it from the players.

“When you achieve that, it’s great and that’s the objective. We need to fight now not to lose that feeling. Have we had it before? We’ve had different feelings in different games and you always try to feel that. But it was very obvious last Monday that the team were feeling good.”

Spurs might feel that the key game is at Chelsea, in seven days’ time. Yet they have beaten West Brom at home only once in five attempts. This is no time to take their eyes off the prize.

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