Daniel Levy says he never saw Tottenham slipping into a relegation battle during his time as chairman, saying “not in a million years” did he imagine the club would be fighting near the bottom of the Premier League table. Levy spoke on Wednesday at an investiture ceremony at Windsor Castle, where he was also made a CBE by the Prince of Wales.
The former Tottenham chairman stepped down in September after almost 25 years in the role and said he would keep going to matches. Asked about the club’s current position, he described “emptiness” but added that he remained optimistic Tottenham would stay up.
That optimism comes at a difficult moment for the club. Tottenham were two points clear of the drop zone, with 38 points from 36 games, and had not won a league match until 25 April in 2026. Levy said relegation was not something he considered while overseeing the building of the £1billion Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in 2019.
Levy’s comments underline how far the club has drifted from the ambitions he said he held when he took charge. He said he had hoped to win the Premier League and the Champions League in his time in charge, but instead left after 24 years with fans accusing him of putting business interests ahead of success on the pitch.
The honour from William recognized his work beyond football, including services to charity and the community in Tottenham, support for education, health and social inclusion, and the jobs created through the stadium project. Levy also said he thanked William for allowing Tottenham to beat Aston Villa a few weeks earlier, and said the prince wished the club luck for the rest of the season and hoped it would survive in the Premier League.
For a chairman who became the league’s longest-serving in the post, the contrast is stark: a stadium built to mark Tottenham’s rise, and a club still looking over its shoulder. Levy’s belief that the team will remain up may prove right, but his words showed just how unlikely this fight once seemed from the executive box.
