The conspicuous efforts of The Lewis Family\u2122 to rebadge themselves as brand new custodians at Tottenham have been a tad see-through.<\/p>\n
They\u2019ve always been there, until now seemingly happy enough to operate quietly and unnoticed in the background and letting all the sh*t rain down on Daniel Levy\u2019s head.<\/p>\n
With Levy gone, so too has the lightning rod for any and all frustrations the fans might have<\/a>. We\u2019re already seeing the uncertainty about who to blame manifest in odd ways. We\u2019ve had fans booing Vicario, a manager and players pointedly at odds with the fans and a team that in general seems to be far happier playing away from home \u2013 where nobody has a better record \u2013 than at home \u2013 where only the bottom three are worse and only Wolves have fewer wins.<\/p>\n It\u2019s certainly a novel and confusing time at Spurs. There are winds of change everywhere you look. But The Lewis Family\u2122 are obviously not themselves new faces at Tottenham. Just more prominent and public-facing ones now than they were before.<\/p>\n The name alone isn\u2019t going to convince anyone Spurs are anything new. That will be achieved only by action. And by actions notably at odds with what has gone before.<\/p>\n One thing they could have reasonably done by now, for instance, is bin off Thomas Frank. It would be fair enough. They didn\u2019t \u2013 directly \u2013 appoint him. He was the last significant move of the old world and the old Lewis role.<\/p>\n But it would be a stretch to suggest \u2018sacking an underperforming manager and having to start again\u2019 would constitute a significant new direction for the club.<\/p>\n Accepting a \u00a335m offer for Brennan Johnson, though<\/a>? That is definitely new. That is something there is absolutely not one chance Levy would be considering before a transfer window had even begun.<\/p>\n And it is potentially an enormously encouraging development for Spurs. The caveats are legion; it will obviously depend largely on what happens next, on incomings being as swiftly sorted<\/a> as such a high-profile departure.<\/p>\n But it is new and it is different. We did make the suggestion back in the summer that a more sensible and clear-eyed club than Spurs might have welcomed interest in Johnson back in the summer<\/a> when it became clear he would no longer be first-choice.<\/p>\n That has not been the Spurs way. The Spurs way has been for players to sit gathering dust and clogging up squad places unless and until someone else proves daft enough to pay what Spurs had paid.<\/p>\n Levy\u2019s biggest failing during a Spurs reign that delivered vast and tangible success in many areas \u2013 and some of those were on-field whether we all care to admit it or not \u2013 was an often stubborn refusal to ever land on the \u2018wrong\u2019 side financially in any transfer deal. In or out.<\/p>\n It was a stubbornness that at times resulted in the cutting off of noses to spite faces. This is not to suggest just chucking cash or accepting every lowball around was the answer either, but that even a tiny shift towards the middleground might have ended up with, say, the mercurial talents of Jack Grealish being added to the squad at the very peak of its Pochettino power<\/a>.<\/p>\n And it might, in a roundabout way, have led to more rather than less incoming from sales. Levy\u2019s tendency to dig in those heels when it was Man City trying to sign Harry Kane was one thing, but he would so often treat perfectly acceptable offers for squad players the same way.<\/p>\n Players like Giovani Lo Celso or Tanguy Ndombele or Ryan Sessegnon or Bryan Gil or so many others were allowed to hang around depreciating in value or going out on endless loans as their contracts ran down. When the inevitable sale arrived years after it should have done there could be no suggestion Spurs had maximised their returns.<\/p>\n Spurs\u2019 squad has in recent years become overcrowded and underpowered. That wasn\u2019t entirely on Levy, but the extent of the logjam often was.<\/p>\n There are some distinctly Spursy elements to selling Johnson right now. It will mean, for instance, that none of the club\u2019s top scorers from the last three seasons will still be at the club, with Kane, Heung-min Son and now Johnson on their way out. Richarlison very likely makes that four out of four in the summer.<\/p>\n There is also something powerfully Spurs about waiting 17 years to win a trophy and then within half a season of finally doing it having moved on the manager, the winning goalscorer and the trophy-lifting captain.<\/p>\n But there is absolutely a cold and hard logic at work here. A definite sense that accepting a small financial hit for a player who paid back his transfer fee and more with one scuffed effort in Bilbao is well worth it.<\/p>\n He is a very limited footballer. He\u2019s not useless, as he showed again and again last season. He has a specific set of skills. If you set yourselves up to score goals from crosses that come in from one flank being converted from around six-to-12-yard distance by a late-arriving winger from the other, then Johnson is very useful indeed.<\/p>\n