Simon Jordan questions Tottenham chiefs as Spurs warned to ‘be frightened’

Simon Jordan has questioned Tottenham CEO Vinai Venkatesham and owners the Lewis Family for placing blame on Daniel Levy.

Venkatesham admitted that the club was in a ‘significantly worse state’ than he thought when he joined in April 2025.

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The former Arsenal chief appeared to shift some blame for Spurs’ nightmare season, which saw them narrowly avoid relegation on the final day, onto those in charge before he arrived.

And Jordan believes that the owners, the Lewis family, and CEO Venkatesham should be taking responsibility too, rather than piling onto the heavily-criticised former chairman Levy, who left in September.

Jordan slammed the senior figures at Tottenham on talkSPORT, saying: “We’ve seen how they run it though, haven’t we?

“So, whilst I’m appearing to defend Daniel Levy, I’m not his PR, I’m just giving a balanced view that I don’t think these guys are up to much and that we’ll see what they do.

“It’s very, very easy, and anyone with a brain that isn’t biased should look at that and read the room and go, ‘Well, what about you lot? Because you aren’t much better either.’

“I don’t like bullies, I don’t like people who gang up on people who aren’t there to defend themselves, so if Daniel wanted to defend himself, he should.

“But the fact is, is that they are part of it and if they suggest that they’re not, it’s just silly, and to suggest they can just lay it at the door…”

A scathing Jordan continued: “If that’s your leader, be frightened, be very frightened because that’s not leadership, that’s cowardice, that’s running with the hare and hunting with the hounds.

“I realise we can’t all be revolutionaries, but to be so spineless and to be so ingenious… it makes you want to see these guys get served up.

“How have they got the audacity to say that ultimately everything is in someone else’s camp when they’ve presided over 12 months?”

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What did Venkatesham say?

Jordan’s issue with Venkatesham stemmed from the Spurs chief’s interview with BBC Sport, which was published on Wednesday.

He revealed: “On my very first day, what I thought would be a realistic target for the men’s first team would be competing for European places.

“If you’d have asked me a few months after I joined, when I was no longer an outsider, I would have told you the club was in a significantly worse state in some places than I thought.

“That is absolutely not meant to be a criticism of anyone or anything. It was just what I found.

“It was very clear that this wasn’t some form of turnaround that was required of the club in quite a few areas. It was really a complete reset.”

Venkatesham added: “If I had to generalise, I would say on the non-football side of the club, in particular around stadium operations and commercial, that the club was and is really strong.

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“I think if you look at the football side of the club, over a timeframe of five years or so, there has just been an explosion in progress across the Premier League.

“I’m not saying that Tottenham didn’t improve in that period. But what I can tell you is that when you look at where Tottenham were in many of those areas, compared to where I believe other Premier League clubs are, there was a significant gap.

“In some areas really quite worryingly so. I don’t think that there was what I would call a relentless obsession with football success.

“Our training centre is amazing, one of the best, if not the best in the world.

“But when you look around, it looks more like a five-star hotel than it does a performance environment. That will change over the summer.

“I think there are many areas where the club hasn’t got the right level of expertise.”

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‘How can you trust a word they’ve said?’

talkSPORT’s Inside Spurs panel have also questioned the words coming from the club’s leadership following their poor campaign.

As well as Venkatesham, the Lewis Family have spoken out and seemingly hinted at troubles caused by Levy.

Their statement included: “Our approach to running the Club is, and has been, to trust the experts to do that, while backing them to be successful. The problems we found were deeper than we realised and were allowed to build over the last few years.

“We know that has eroded trust and we have to win that back. As owners, we take ultimate responsibility for the situation in which the Club finds itself.”

They also pledged to rebuild the club this summer, making sure ‘football comes first’ with investment coming in all areas.

However, Inside Spurs host Abbi Summers, along with the rest of the panel, admitted that they are having a tough time believing things will change.

Summers said: “Me personally, I never had any trust in them to begin with.

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“They’ve never done anything on the pitch, yes, off the pitch in terms of building the infrastructure for Tottenham to compete, but as a football team, I’ve never had that trust.”

Tottenham podcaster Ricky Sacks then commented: “They have hired the best PR team in the last four or five years!

“I’m not quite sure who’s buying that. They’ve got some season tickets to resell, don’t forget that, they were being put on hold.

“How can you really trust a word they’ve said?”