Spurs CEO: “We had a PLAN for Relegation” | Vinai Venkatesham EXCLUSIVE | The Sports Agents - The Sports Agents

0:00This is a global production. It's just been embarrassing. It's just not where this club can ever, ever be again. Well, that was Tottenham's CEO, Vinay Venkatasham, delivering a damning assessment of his own football club. One of the biggest and wealthiest clubs in the world. They've spent hundreds of millions of pounds on players, but they've also had two 17th place finishers. And now he's doing what he calls a complete football reset. But how do you rebuild a club that has spent so much money but achieved so little? So today Vinay takes us inside the Spurs boardroom, their money, the managers and the decisions that could determine Tottenham's future. Welcome to the Sports Agents. Before we get to Vinay,

1:00a quick reminder that you can now listen to the Sports Agents ad-free for £2.99. All you've got to do is head to Global Player and search for the pod or you could head over to youtube and click the join button and then you won't hear Mark and I delivering our ads we would love it if you also would hit follow or subscribe wherever you listen to the pod and please rate us and leave us a review as well Vinay thank you very much for for joining us um in our intro saying you seem to be quite a proactive chief exec at the moment in in that you're you're wanting to talk and wanting to be interviewed so why well listen i think i think that it's important right there's just so much uh information out there all the time about what is happening in sport

1:48and in particular what's happening in football. Some of the information is right, some of that information is not right. So I think one of the sort of obligations and responsibilities for people in jobs like me is to do our best to communicate. We all know that the head coach is the primary person that does the communication in press conferences. But I think it's also important to hear from other voices as well, just to help our supporters understand what is happening at the club that they love. I guess it's different in England. So if we were in Germany, it's really common to hear from what people now call the club, whether that is the chief executive or the sporting director. In Germany, they would never really even ask the head coach about transfers. They just direct all that stuff to the sporting director in germany they would never really even ask the head coach about transfers they just direct all that stuff to the sporting director so i think there's

2:29different cultures and different markets and listen i think in england it will it will start to change i think the sort of demand from from supporters to hear from more people mean that i think there's a bit of a responsibility at the right times uh i hope you're right i hope you're right because as we can see with issues going on with manchester united for example at the right times. I hope you're right. I hope you're right because as we can see with issues going on with Manchester United, for example, at the moment, when there's a vacuum, people will fill it. And you coming out and chatting and talking candidly helps that communication piece enormously. So let's get down to it and talk a little bit about some of the things

3:00you've said about Spurs when you arrived and needing a complete football reset and what what else you found and I'm interested to know the state of the club if you like compared to that which you arrived at Arsenal. Yeah so I think whenever I talk about this I'm really keen to not be seen to be critical of what's gone before because when I joined the club has got amazing foundations and people have worked really hard for many years to get Spurs in the position that it was and maybe the two best examples of that are the fabulous training ground and the outstanding stadium the club had so the club had extraordinary foundations but I guess what I found was that the sport has moved on so significantly in particular over the last five years.

3:50And there were quite a few areas where I would say Tottenham had fallen behind. And if we didn't address those quickly and urgently, we wouldn't be able to achieve what our long term ambitions are. And if I had to summarise it, it probably came into sort of three main areas. I don't think the club was organised in a very sort of modern and professional way in terms of the structure of how it was organised. I don't think the club had the hearts and the feelings of the supporters in mind all the time when making the biggest decisions. And I think on the sporting side, both on the men's side and the women's side, there was a bit of a revolution that needed to happen to change our fortune. So in the last year or so, it's been pretty extraordinary what's happened at the club. You know, we've had our

4:34owners come out very clearly with their ambition for the club. They're very clear that we're here to win and to be successful on the pitch. We've had a new director of football operations, a completely new medical team. Martin Ho, our head coach for Spurs women, is relatively new. Obviously, Roberto's relatively new. Their coaching staff is relatively new. Vested in the academy. And if you think about what's happened in the last few transfer windows, we've had two very big transfer windows for Spurs women in January and in the summer. And the men's window last year was really pretty extraordinary. I think the window is open for, I think it's 78 days. And we did, if you include renewals, loans, signings and exits,

5:1435 transactions. Crikey. We're trying to change the culture. So there's so much that's happening. I'm not sure there's another sports organisation on the planet that has gone through as much change as we have. You see, every one of those things that you said, we could probably do an hour on. How long have we got? Yeah, well, I'm going to push it for as long as possible. Can I just ask about all those different people that you brought in then? Which is, when I was doing a Masters, one of the things they talked about with, if you want to set your culture, you probably need to bring your own people in. Is that why you did it? So the people that you have brought in, and that may be from Hohen, Deserby to your chief marketing officer,

5:59are they all aligned to you? We want everybody absolutely relentlessly focused on winning, whatever their job is. So we want people to be performance first. That's what we really want people to be. Whether you're a player or whether you're a ground staff or whether you work in head office, what am I doing today to help the club win? We're a people organisation. We run through people so we want to be people always always thinking about how do we get the best people how do we develop the best people how do we create an environment where people can thrive and because we work in I think the most competitive sports league in the world maybe one of the most competitive industries in the world you can never pause to take breath

6:44you always need to look forward so we also want to never settle be one of the most competitive industries in the world you can never pause to take breath you always need to look forward so we also want to never settle so that's kind of where we're trying to get to can we talk about the manager and that role within this setup because some premier league clubs and we've just talked about the communication piece for managers and how much is put upon them and but they do represent the club more than anybody else, perhaps, in terms of their interviews, their style of engagement. And for some clubs, that seems to be a dispensable role. And managers move on very quickly. You gave Mikel Arteta time when you were at Arsenal

7:17to really help you presumably change that culture and to get Arsenal back into Europe and to get Arsenal into the Champions League and get Arsenal in a position where they could challenge for the title seriously. Is that possible in this landscape? You said football's changed so much. Do you feel the patience that fans have, that, you know, people around the club, the noise, the media exhibit, do you think that's become even harder to manage uh yes so i think that i think ultimately football is a is a bit of a reflection of um modern society right so people are more impatient um people um desire change sometimes more quickly and that's fine you know that you know football is a reflection of modern society and football is also, I always say, you know, football is people's passion.

8:06So you become a football fan, not to be rational, you know, it's an emotional attachment that people have with their club. So I think that these roles are really demanding. And I think what we have seen over the last few years is the tenure of head coaches getting shorter and shorter and shorter. I can't remember the number off the top of my head, but I think we went into this season with, I think Roberto being something like the 11th longest standing Premier League, which is absolutely wild. So, you know, my belief is, and it's not a big surprise, is that I think to build something, you need to give people time. And if you give people time and you have a plan and you can be patient, you are more likely to achieve long-term success of course that doesn't always work but that that that has to

8:51be the objective and that's absolutely what we want to do with with Roberto he's a what so what happened last year though and how difficult was that for I know everything's going much better now but I'm fascinated bearing in mind what can be said about how much time arteta was was given i'm interested in you personally and how difficult you found it sitting down opposite thomas frank i'm assuming it was you that did it or ego tudor i'm going we've got to get rid of you it's really tough because um you form a relationship with people obviously Igor wasn't the coach for long but Thomas we we worked together really really really closely went through some really difficult times and and listen you both know

9:37Thomas he's a he's a he's a fabulous fantastic human being so you know it is tough but this is a brutal industry right and you don't become head coach of a club like Tottenham thinking that um it's going to be plain sailing you know that it's going to be challenging and you know there's going to be pressure and of course when you take the job you know that that is one of the outcomes that might happen. Can you remember how you couched it to him did he was he in your office what did you? Yeah, listen, I think I want to sort of, you know, respect the privacy of that conversation with Thomas. But what I can say is that he was the complete gentleman that you would think he would be. And we continue to have a really good, good relationship.

10:18How much communication do you have in general with the manager? It depends on what's going on. So I always say the role of the chief executive is to spend their time where the problems are. So it depends on what's going on. It depends on what's going on. You could have played centre half last season. Then we really would be in trouble. So it also depends on what's going on. So, you know, when it's the transfer window, as an example, I will spend much more time at the training centre because there is a lot going on. When you have a new coach that joins, I will spend much more time there to help them kind of settle in. But, you know, I'm not technical. I'm not going to help Roberto in phase one of build-up.

10:59I'm not going to help him decide who wants to play at left-back. So I'm there to be supportive, to help him, to help him navigate who wants to play at left back so i'm there to be supportive uh to help to help him uh to help him navigate you know difficult challenges and and to show him support some support that doesn't mean i need to be there every hour of every day um that's really for our sporting director and our technical team and roberto's coaches that are in the in the day-to-day but you know i will spend you know a decent amount of time with him every week. So take us into a transfer deal then this summer. If I was to pick Mateus Fernandes, you don't have to necessarily go into the specifics of this deal,

11:35but who comes to you and says, we want Mateus Fernandes. Do you then go, fine, no problem. What am I writing a cheque for for do you try and work out a valuation with your sporting director or your head coach how does it work because transfers feel like the wild west to me yeah and sometimes i think who the hell sits there sticks their finger in the air goes tell you what 85 85 million pounds that's that's absolutely fine, we'll pay that. In your head, what are you doing through a transfer deal? So the transfer window is something that's planned a very, very, very long time in advance. So we already have an idea of the positions that we want to strengthen in the summer window next year. And those ideas will change during the season because

12:25players will come back from injury hopefully players won't get injured but we know that that might happen players surprise when the upside player surprise when the downside so you've always got a plan around what you want to do in the summer window the reason i talk about the summer window is that's the predominant window where you can really trade so going into the window you have a plan around what are the positions you'd like to strengthen, who are the players you'd like to sell. And obviously, in this circumstance, we're talking about Mateus, we'd identified or technical staff had identified that we wanted to strengthen midfield. And by technical staff, that's really a combination of Roberto.

12:58But of course, Roberto was informed by his coaches and the sporting director, Johan Lange. And he's obviously supported by his team as well. And they have continual discussions during the year. So in this particular example, everybody was aligned we wanted to strengthen this position and then everybody was aligned that Mateusz was absolutely the number one target. And when we're looking for players, we're really looking at three lenses. Quality, how good is the player today and how good might he be? Character, is this the type of person we want in our dressing room and can they be a leader today or in the future and physical robustness can they stand up to the demands of the premier league either today or can we develop them

13:36to be able to do that so maters was uh the number one target and then through negotiations with him and his agent and with um west ham in this case, we agreed a deal. And we had a lot to do this summer. And I think the reason why we achieved so much of what we wanted to achieve, probably if I'm honest, we achieved more than we thought we might do. And that was really because so many of our number one targets we were able to land. Because if we weren't going to get our number one targets, weren't going to settle going back to never settling um we were able to do more and i think it was because we were well planned well organized and whenever you get into a transfer you always get to a critical moment where i think you need to be decisive to get the deal done and

14:21we had fantastic support from the lew Lewis family our ownership which enabled us at the right moments to be decisive. You spent more in this window than ever before and I think over your three transfer windows there's a net spend of over 300 million pounds so when you then have the start to the season that you had and found yourself at the first international break hovering around the relegation zone how much pressure did you personally feel because you're the one that effectively takes those kind of big decisions to the lewis family to sign off and and what's their communication like with you at that point i think that, I think this job is just completely full of pressure. So I'm not sure I would say that that put any more pressure. I'm not sure I put any more pressure,

15:11just because I think I'm always at the maximum, if you sort of see what I mean. Because, you know, the expectations rightly from our supporters is really high. The scrutiny from the media is so significant. And also I put a lot of pressure on myself. I know how lucky and how privileged I am to be in this job. And it's a responsibility. The start of the season, what would I say? So it was frustrating. It was frustrating because... Were you worried? I wasn't worried but I was definitely frustrated and the reason I was frustrated was because, listen, did we think we were going to make this many changes and everything would gel straight away? Of course we didn't. But did we think we'd be hovering

15:43around the position of the league that we were in the international break? of course we didn't but did we think we'd be hovering around the position of the league that we were in the international break of course we didn't either the reason i was frustrated was our technical team do a lot of an analysis of our underlying performance and other than our first game against brentford which you know there's probably no polite words to say about the performance for the first game other than the first game we had performed pretty well and our performances were growing and we knew that our results were behind our performances so that was frustrating when you don't feel like you're getting the points out of your performances

16:12at a time where you just feel if there was ever a time you want to be able to get the results out of your performances it was that time so it was frustrating but we also knew that we were on the right track so it wasn't the time to change course obviously it wasn't the time for panic if we stay calm we felt the results would come and obviously at the time of recording we've you know we've got three premier league wins in a row but listen i also know that in the difficult moments um i always say you're never as bad as everybody says you are but equally in the good moments you're never as good as everyone says you are and you know we know that this is a transition season and we know this is the season where we are

16:49building and what does transition season mean to you bearing in mind your earlier answer was about winning how do you how do you balance winning and transition listen i when i sort of say transition that doesn't mean that i think our ambition for the season is capped. It's absolutely not. But I think we need to recognise that there's been so much change. When you make so much change and you bring so many people in, not just players but also staff, it is unrealistic to think that everybody is going to be achieving 100% of their individual potential from day one or that individuals will become a team from day one that's not just the players that's everybody so it's going to take some time for us to see

17:29the potential of what we of what we've done but this doesn't mean that we're not ambitious for this season we're absolutely are ambitious for this season but i think there will be some times this season where we'll get a result or a few results and we'll think maybe we're there maybe we're a bit and we and we just need to make sure we don't get carried away, don't get too far ahead. And I think there will be some times where it's the other way and we don't have to think, oh my God, this is not working, this is broken. I think we just need to be a bit calm and a bit patient. There were times last season where Spurs were down to the bare bones in terms of actual players to put on the pitch because of injuries.

18:04And Christian Romero voiced his concerns back in February about that, the bare bones in terms of actual players to put on the pitch because of injuries and you know christian romero voiced his concerns back in february about that when i think there were about 11 out for your players left and when you came in what did you find in the medical department and how important was that in your footballing reset yeah so uh i think it's fair to say um that we found that there were some significant improvements that we felt that we could make to the medical team um and we felt that for a variety of reasons but i think you know it's pretty public to look at how many injuries that we've we've had for a long period and you get feedback as well the challenge is what you

18:43can't do is you can't just click your fingers and have a new medical team in place especially during the course of the season because it takes time to bring people in i guess the sort of frustration is you identify this challenge in day one but if you want to properly fix it and by properly fix it i mean get the best person and the best people that can deliver for the long term it takes some time to sort of make those changes so i think the the the the challenge always in football is rightly there is a desire for immediate short-term fixes um and improvements and that that is absolutely fine there should be that desire but you also know that if you want to sort of fix something for the long term it takes a bit of time

19:28to kind of get it right you could use the same analogy for the january transfer window last year so you know um of course we could have done more in the january transfer window last year and if you look at back of it with the benefit of all hindsight if we did would that have meant that the second half of last season would have been less stressful less stressful um possibly but would that mean we would have had the right players that we really want going forward for this season no it was a it a dicey gamble though, wasn't it? Going down to the final. Yeah, I mean, it was, you know, really challenging. A really, really, really challenging period for the club. Had you started to make plans in case you were relegated?

20:17Yeah, you have to. I mean, you can't not. I mean, to not make that plan would have been irresponsible. And, you know, when I look back at that period, listen, I think there's a lot to take from it. But I take probably two things. I think one is I think our supporters were unbelievable. So the last six or seven games, when they had faced probably the worst season they've ever faced, they got completely behind the team and completely behind the head coach and sort of dragged us over the line. This is not normal. It is not normal when you've had a season like the season we've had to have supporters unconditionally backing the team for the 90 minutes so i think that's one thing and i think the second thing is you know sometimes going through something as traumatic as we went through last season um

21:11bonds people a little bit and also puts even more fire in everybody's belly to make sure that something like that can can never happen again so in jan January, and this, God knows what will happen in this league season with everything that's going on. You're fourth, let's say, and you're within a few points of the top of the table, but you still maybe need a striker. Do you push go on it in January? Because what a window of opportunity you've got. And the reason, I can give an example. So my NFL team have just, in Chicago, have gone, my God, we've got a chance here. And they've just kind of thrown the house at it and brought a player in and sacrificed draft picks and so on and so forth. And the buzz and the energy is unbelievable at the moment.

22:00Could you have that conflict of interest of long-term planning? But my God, we may have a window here. Let's push the button. I'm not sure I really see if it's a conflict, ultimately. I just think, I guess I'm always trying to balance short-term and long-term, but I don't see the conflict with that and our supporters. So right now, to Mark's point, would you have scouts and people looking for January potentially to bring somebody in, a striker in, that you may or may not press the button on? How kind of flexible are you in that recruitment process? If I sort of go back to what I was saying earlier is we we always have a a plan around what we want to do in a summer transfer window so right now i'm afraid i'm not going to tell you

22:52right now we know what are the positions that we would all things being equal like to improve in the summer and when we get to the summer we may want to do something different because things might change but we've always got a plan and we've always got an eye on what we want to do. And that's just part of being a responsible, well-planned, well-organized club. And the reason I always talk about that summer is that is the window which enables you to have usually the most strategic decisions and enables you to get the highest quality players. But not always. Sometimes inuary um something comes up so i always see the january window as one that is a bit more just a little bit more opportunistic sometimes it's opportunistic

23:32because a club suffers a couple of injuries and just sort of has to do something and sometimes it's opportunistic because a player that you didn't think would become available becomes available because of a chain of circumstances and maybe that's a player that you would be interested in in the summer and you know what you might be able to bring forward in January. Harry Kane says I've won the Ballon d'Or, I want to go chase down Alan Shearer's Premier League goal scoring record I'm coming home. I think I saw on the way in that he'd renewed his contract with Bayern Munich with a Spurs... But on that, the Harry Kane points is an interesting one. So how do you view your academy? Is your academy to provide players

24:10for the men's first team or is it to make a profit for the club? It's both. Because we want our academy to make players for a men's first team. And we want that because... Well, A, the boring answer the boring answer economically it's important with the financial fair play rules and how everything works having players that come through the academy is important uh but also just the connection that supporters feel with players that have come through the academy is really special so we had luca williams barnett come on for five minutes at the end of our last game and the reception he got from our supporters when he made his Premier League debut was really special. And actually after that game, everyone was talking about Luka,

24:48which is fantastic, and that shows an example of the power of a player coming through the academy. So that's really important. So what do your supporters tell you about the decision to sell Will Lancashire to Middlesbrough? It's difficult to go around individual decisions, but ultimately, you know, the reason I say we're both is because we all know that every single player in our academy is not going to make it to the men's first team it's just it's just impossible we know there's a very small amount of players that do and for the players that don't we want to provide them a sporting future for them and also um we want to make sure that it works for us economically so we can continue to invest in the club it's it's highly likely if he continues scoring at the rate he is though

25:29he is going to be swooped on by somebody else in in the premier league if not you know go there with middlesbrough so when that happens what's the frustration like for you that you know within a year he could be he could be sold on for for even more and look like a premier league prospect so i think isn't i i wouldn't talk about will specifically but what i would say generally is these all in all of these decisions are difficult right so it's a difficult decision around what players you sign and what players you sell and that and they're always they're always judgment calls so sometimes you decide not to go that extra mile to sign a player and you think, oh, you know, maybe this is going to be a player

26:09that's going to go on to do something. And sometimes you sell a player and you think, oh, well, you know, what's going to happen? But, you know, when you are selling a player, you can try and protect yourself a little bit economically, whether that is through a sell-on, the right to buy the player back and all those types of things. So we will, in these types of deals, look to put in the right types of protections. But there is also circumstances where players do go on and they do go on to have really successful careers, but maybe if they'd have stayed, they wouldn't have had that positive future because they wouldn't have had the chance. So it's really difficult. And we always have to think about when we've got a player coming through

26:49Do we keep the player to play on our first team? Do we put the player out on loan or do we sell the player and we've also got to always remember is the player Will always have a point of view as well. So actually sometimes the player will have a point of view around what they want if we um if we widen it out to away from spurs but just the general state of premier league football at the moment when you sit in meetings with fellow chief execs is everything in rude health is it is it because of everything that's going on with manchester city is there a element of well all hell could break loose here what where do you think the state of the premier league is at when you sit in meetings with your

27:40fellow chief exec um i think that the the well firstly on city um isn't everybody has obviously seen the the verdict of the independent commission but you know we've seen the statements from the premier league we've seen the statements from manchester city which obviously tells us all that there is a legal process that's being gone through so i can't talk about that today which you won't be surprised to hear but i think listen in terms of um the premier league the the the first thing i would say is actually the interpersonal relationships between the chairman and the interpersonal relationships between the chief executives across the league are generally really really really good um we are do you see me have you got little little sub whatsapp groups have you got those which you're

28:26naturally more aligned to than others i mean listen the the number of whatsapp groups and football is just absolutely absolutely insane uh football is run almost completely on whatsapp by the way you know there's hardly any emails that happen everything everything everything is on whatsapp so the interpersonal relationships are generally pretty good and i think listen we are obviously fierce competitors but also we are also shareholders of the same company, the Premier League. Do you trust everybody you sit in meetings with? What do you mean by trust? I mean, do you believe that everybody is doing everything for the good of the competition? Well, listen, it's a balance, right? Because you are a shareholder of the competition well listen it's it's a balance right because you are a shareholder of

29:05the premier league so you you are you have an obligation to do things that are right for the league but you're also a director of your company so you have an obligation to do something of your company which in this case is obviously your club so you know you kind of have to look on both of both of those things and so do you believe everything that you get told in those meetings? Yeah, I don't have a reason to think people are being untruthful in the meetings. I think the way I generally describe it is you've got 20 clubs that are all completely different. They've got different fan bases which demand different things. They've got different history and heritage. They've got different values. They've got different owners. Owners have got different time horizons. They've got different values. They've got different owners.

29:45Owners have got different time horizons. Some people think they're here forever. Sometimes some others might think they're here for the next few months. So when you go around the table, whilst I might not agree with everybody's point of view, I do generally think that people are being logical based on the chair that they're sitting in because their club is different and their sitting in because of their club is different and their perspective's different and their view's different um so i think people are are logical in those meetings and i think the disagreements that we have naturally are because clubs are in different positions facing different challenges rather than necessarily something ideological but

30:21it is a bit of a balance how do you look out for what's absolutely the best thing for the league but also you know you also have to think about what's the best thing for your club and it it's a bit of a balance but the interpersonal relationships i think generally between people are good but i think the thing that has changed really significantly is there's been a lot of change in personnel ownership groups have changed chairman of change in personnel. Ownership groups have changed. Chairman have changed. Chief executive have changed. When I started in football, it was a very stable environment. The people were the same people every time. There's some good things about that. And it means that there's a bit more shared experience and a bit more, I guess, trust maybe is the right word.

30:59Just because when you know people longer, you maybe feel a bit more trustful. But then, you know, change is also good because it means there's more new ideas that are coming to the table as well a lot of us who work in sports-based podcasts but were sweating uh when they heard that villa had threatened legal action and jamie carragher after his comments about them the club and the fans um do you understand why they had that response and is it something that you think spurs would do in similar circumstances i haven't i i don't think we're going to be suing either of you after this podcast so far so far but i'm absolutely absolutely reserving my rights um so i might be coming after both of you um i actually i actually didn't sort of study in detail what was said by jamie and

31:43the stuff from villa but i think listen i think the sort of challenge in in in this chair and it goes back to the question you asked the start chappers is that there is a lot of misinformation out there and it can get really frustrating it can get really frustrating where you feel like you're making all the right decisions for all the right reasons and then there is a narrative out there that the club has done something for this reason and it's just not and it's just not true and i think in today's world because there is so much coverage of premier league football which we love right i love the fact that there's so much there's now blogs and podcasts because people want to people want to consume the content and they can find the analyst or the podcast

32:26which suits their niche and they can go really deep. I think it's brilliant, but it does mean that there is a lot of misinformation out there that can be frustrating. And we're hearing, aren't we, players, and we see this in the Manchester United case, actually speaking out a little bit more, or they certainly have done in that case, about, in Lissandra Martinez's case, board you know and people above the head coach and that's obviously a nightmare actually for for a board to be kind of singled out in that scenario in terms of comms I imagine that's not what you want and you talk about kind of being unified and everybody being on the same page do you feel there's a connectedness now which you know perhaps wasn't

33:05there before between the players the ownership and and the direction of travel at the club so if i'm isn't if i'm really honest i would i would say that you know you talked a little bit i think you asked earlier you know what was the culture like previous and i sort of struggled a bit to answer the question it's hard to put culture into words but But I would say that we were a club that was disconnected. And what I mean by disconnected is I didn't feel this great connection between the supporters and the club. I didn't feel this great connection between maybe the players and the club. And I just felt we were all a little bit disconnected. By that, I don't mean things were toxic or people weren't talking to each other or anything like that,

33:49but I just think for a football club to be successful, ultimately, you want everybody, as best as you can be, together. Supporters, players, coach, executives. You want everybody feeling like they're part of the same family and there's this shared journey and we're going to get there together um and we didn't quite have that before and i think we are getting much closer to that you can't just overnight flick a switch and get your culture from where it was to where it wants to be but i think we're getting much closer to that and i think that connection that we all feel is getting stronger and stronger and stronger uh every day And listen, I know I'm sort of sitting here and we've had three sort of better results in a row,

34:30but there is nothing here today where we think, oh, we've cracked it. We are right at the start of this journey of where we're going to and there's going to be good moments this season and bad moments this season. But I firmly believe that we're absolutely on the right track to get to where we want to get to. So question because i i know you need to go if you were to sit with us in three years time which first of all is putting a lot of faith on us still being commissioned in three years time but that's after this legal case after you've seen us we've maybe got maybe would you do you have targets for say three years time and in your sort of interest in the interest of your culture and openness do you do you put those targets out to the fans as you sit here now

35:17do you keep them internally or because sport also requires an awful lot of luck, can you not set on-field targets? So, listen, this is a sort of super fascinating industry because your performance is completely relative to everybody else's. So over the next three years, we could get 50% better every year. If everybody else gets 51% better, we've moved backwards. So, you know, which makes it really fun and really interesting. But ultimately, I guess the best way to answer that question is, what are we here for? We're here to win, right? The people that we've attracted to the football club, that long list of people that I said that came in, everybody's here to win. People have turned down other opportunities, left other clubs.

36:03People have done that because they're here to win. That's what everybody's here to do. And if you work for Tottenham, when we talk about being here to win, that means we're here to win the Premier League. That's what this football club wants to do. It wants to win the Premier League and it wants to be consistent in the Champions League and it wants to ultimately win the Champions League. Can I tell you what year that's going to happen in? Obviously I can't, but that's what we're aiming for. And that's what I want every single person that works for this club to think about every single day. What can I do to get there? I want them to never settle. And I want us to be completely relentless in that pursuit

36:36because that's the only way you get there. And we are going to suffer along that journey. And we're going to have some good moments along that journey. But we have to be completely focused on it because that's what we're here to do and that ultimately is what our supporters expect of us. Vinay thank you very much it's been it's been fascinating chatting you've got a big North London derby coming up in a few weeks time I don't think we've got time to get into that but I imagine a win in that would would certainly give Spurs fans a real hope and belief that the club is going in the right direction. Thanks, Kevin. Thanks to Vinay for joining us. That's it for today. If you want to listen back to any of our past episodes,

37:11then they're all available on our YouTube channel. And of course, while you're there, why don't you hit the Join button and then you can listen to the sports agents ad-free. If you've got a question for us or you want to have your say, the email is thesportsagents at global.com. You can find us at thesports sports agents on our social media channels subscribe follow maybe even leave us a review as well and we'll see you on monday this has been a global production