Under-fire Ange Postecoglou sleepwalking towards Daniel Levy's axe: Tottenham's issues run far deeper than stubborn boss needing a Plan B - it's time for the chairman to decide what he wants Spurs to be

History is likely to look kindly on Levy and ENIC's ownership of Tottenham as a whole. And, despite these modern discrepancies, that would be fair. Spurs had wallowed towards the red line in both a financial sense and football sense prior to their 2001 takeover from Lord Sugar. The transformation into a 'Big Six' club boasting world-class infrastructure of their billion-pound stadium and Hotspur Way training ground has been hugely successful. It has, however, only taken them so far.

Tottenham left their old Spurs Lodge training complex in 2012. They've now spent five years in the new ground, seven years on from the demolition of White Hart Lane. Levy and Co. cannot dine on those off-field accomplishments any longer, particularly when the fortunes of the team are declining.

At times, it feels as if these state of the art facilities have given the club an over-inflated sense of worth. Those on the outside looking in seem to believe ranking high in Forbes and Deloitte lists is more of a priority than good finishes in the Premier League table and in the cups.

In terms of transfers (which will be discussed in detail later, don't you worry), Tottenham have spent a fair bit more in recent years. You'd hope that'd be the case given previous turnovers and recent hikes in ticket prices. The real sticking point comes to player wages. Little information on salaries is made public, but various sources rank Spurs as around seventh or eighth most-generous employers, dishing out pay-packets on a similar rate to Aston Villa, Newcastle and West Ham rather than their supposed 'Big Six' peers.

Tottenham fans' frustrations towards the ownership are not as widely documented as those of Manchester United or even Liverpool. This might be down to how the mainstream media report on Spurs compared to those two giants of the game, yet Sky Sports' Jamie Carragher didn't hold back with his public tearing down of the current regime.

After Sunday's loss to Chelsea, Carragher said: "They've changed so many managers. We talk about Daniel Levy a lot. What Daniel Levy's done here in terms of the training ground and and this for me, this is the best stadium in the world. And that's been Daniel Levy's strength in terms of a really stable football club. The stadium he's delivered. He's delivered the training ground.

"It's probably some time for somebody else to come in because to not win a trophy in that period of time, with the manager they've had. They've never really got out of the way in the transfer market, they've spent decent money without, you know, blowing other teams out the water. The wage bill is always one of the smallest. And you're never going to get the best players.

"So it might be a time for Daniel Levy - who I've been a supporter of because you look at the actual work that he's doing - but now that work's done, in terms of a stadium and a training ground, someone else needs to be in charge of this football club."

Tottenham Hotspur Stadium is a palace, and it's widely believed among fans that the move was ultimately right and the ground itself is without much flaw. There was a great irony on Sunday when the club-led light show paled in insignificance to the dominative tifo across the single-tier south stand, a fan initiative which took several months to sort.

Mauricio Pochettino warned that the stadium project could not be the end goal for Levy. Prior to the 2019 Champions League final - reminder, he led Spurs to a Champions League final - he said: "When you talk about Tottenham, everyone says you have an amazing house but you need to put in the furniture! If you want to have a lovely house maybe you need better furniture.

"And it depends on your budget if you are going to spend money. We need to be respectful with teams like Manchester City or Liverpool who spend a lot of money. We are brave, we are clever, we are creative.

"Now it's about creating another chapter and to have the clear idea of how we are going to build that new project. We need to rebuild. It's going to be painful."

Pochettino was sacked less than half a year later.

In Tottenham's Amazon Prime 'All or Nothing' documentary, Levy gave the simple reason for firing Pochettino and replacing him a day later with Jose Mourinho - he was one of the two best managers in world football.

It was an immediate red flag for the years ahead. Sure, Mourinho is one of the sport's best-ever coaches, but he was on the decline and nowhere near top two in 2019. Speculation arose over Levy's long-harboured ambition to bring in 'the Special One' having first approached him in 2007 after his first Chelsea exit and whether that had blindsided him.

Mourinho and Spurs never really clicked, which the former puts down to the pandemic and lockdown. He was given his marching orders in April 2021, just days before Spurs were due to meet Manchester City in the Carabao Cup final.

An extremely lengthy search for a replacement led Tottenham to Nuno Espirito Santo, who lasted only 17 games before his own dismissal. And then there was Antonio Conte.

In fairness to the Italian, he did oversee the most successful period that Spurs have really had post-Pochettino, building a solid team of grafters that pipped Arsenal to a Champions League spot in style down the stretch of 2021-22. That work was then reversed by a poor 2022-23 and an infamous ten-minute rant in which he essentially called his players crap and the club losers. Yeah, you don't really come back from those.

This sequence of events wasn't a coincidence. Tottenham thought they had done the difficult thing by building under Pochettino and they could fast-track their way to tangible success from there, though that wasn't the case. That just isn't how football works.

In 2023, Levy admitted he was wrong to hire the high-profile duo: "I made a mistake. They were great managers, they were just not right for Tottenham... the way they want to win is different for how we need to win."

The insinuation is Mourinho and Conte wanted win-now transfer strategies, while the club preferred to plan for the long term. The truth is somewhere in the middle - Spurs can't compete for the superstars of today, yet they shouldn't leave themselves short in squad building for the present either.

Postecoglou, for all his faults, has managed to reignite the burning flame in the Tottenham faithful during his time in north London. They were treading on the path to revolt and apathy by the time he was appointed as head coach.

With the Australian came the promise of change, and he has sought to deliver that in every sense. Spurs have one of the most recognisable and entertaining styles in world football, which was much craved following on from the conservative philosophies of his predecessors. His gift of the gab and ability to perfectly articulate his vision for a better tomorrow would make him an excellent propagandist in another life, his every word hung on and believed, the will to run through brick walls for him only strengthened.

The unavoidable downside has been results, particularly those since the end of Tottenham's purple patch to begin 2023-24. Postecoglou has lost 19 of his 56 Premier League matches and is averaging 1.62 points a game, which translates to 61.6 per season - usually a tally seen among sides finishing sixth to eighth.

This comes back to Pochettino's prior warning, one that Spurs fans have become all too familiar with in the years after his departure. The painful rebuild. It's a term Postecoglou himself has paraphrased, stressing projects don't come to fruition overnight.

The club took that a little too literally over the summer, however. Postecoglou's only additions were teenagers Archie Gray, Wilson Odobert and January recruit Lucas Bergvall, plus the renewal of Timo Werner's loan and the club-record £65m acquisition of Dominic Solanke.

The makeup of their business matters a lot, particularly as the club insisted they want to compete immediately and not only in the future. Heading into the summer, most of Postecoglou's key targets were in the Solanke mould of Premier League-ready players who would improve the team, though weren't beyond the club's stature by any means or the 30-something year olds that Mourinho and Conte wanted.

Conor Gallagher had been earmarked since last summer, but Chelsea agreed to sell him at a lower rate to Atletico Madrid instead. Out wide, Pedro Neto and Eberechi Eze were the 'dribbly wingers' who were more ideal tactical fits than Spurs' other wide-men, though deals weren't agreed for either. Tottenham also needed homegrown backups in defence, with free agents Tosin Adarabioyo and Lloyd Kelly first touted a year ago. They chose to join Chelsea and Newcastle respectively.

Postecoglou has been tasked with putting together an unready team incapable of matching the physical or tactical demands of his philosophy week after week, and so Spurs are riddled with consistency. Of course, the manager is responsible for tactical decisions and selections - for starters, they shouldn't be giving up chances at a rate as if they're handing them out like free samples - but the club's new footballing structure, headed by chief football officer Scott Munn and sporting director Johan Lange, have indeed left him short.

Tottenham aren't quite stuck with Postecoglou, but they would face an immense challenge to replace him. They sifted through around 500 candidates (give or take) to secure new managers in 2021 and 2023, and the job probably isn't as desirable now as it was at either of those junctures.

Levy has appointed 12 permanent and six other acting or caretaker managers across 23 years of power, averaging over one every two seasons. The chairman himself cannot afford for Postecoglou to be deemed a failure, at risk of his own tenure falling into that bracket if another of his plans goes awry. It is a relationship that works two ways and the head coach should too be looking inward in search of solutions to stop the bleeding on the pitch. He retains the support of the players and the fanbase, with his name still regularly sung at matches, and any exit would leave many supporters feeling hopeless about what the world would look like after him.

The good news for Postecoglou is various reports on Monday claimed he is safe for now and the club do want to help him succeed. That last part shouldn't count for a lot considering they should have wanted all of their managers to have succeeded. If the hierarchy don't view this as the time to put their money where their mouth is, they never will.