Culture
The Briefing: Is Levy the problem at Tottenham and what can Man Utd learn from Brighton?
Welcome to The Briefing, where every Monday The Athletic discusses three of the biggest questions posed by the weekend’s Premier League action.
During this set of fixtures, Darwin Nunez rebooted his navigation software to lift Liverpool past Brentford, Arsenal gave up a late two-goal lead over Aston Villa to lose ground, Nottingham Forest continued to thrill, Manchester City romped back into the top four and the bottom three all lost (again).
But here, after another defeat at Everton, we will ask whether Tottenham’s biggest problem is their manager or the man who hired him, what Manchester United could learn from the most recent mid-table team to beat them and why Andoni Iraola is destined for a bigger stage than Bournemouth.
Surely, someone must go at Tottenham — but who?
We all know the answer to this one: football clubs cannot sack their players and firing the assistant-kit manager is unlikely to elicit the desired reaction.
So, despite winning three straight manager-of-the-month awards last season, returning Spurs to European competition and providing plenty of entertainment for neutrals over the last 18 months, Ange Postecoglou’s days as Tottenham boss look numbered.
A 3-2 defeat at Everton on Sunday, which was not as close as the scoreline suggests, means they have picked up only one point from their last six league games and remain stuck in 15th, one place and four points better off than their most recent conqueror but on track to match the club’s worst league finish for 31 years.
Given the fact that better returns did not keep Mauricio Pochettino, Nuno Espirito Santo and Antonio Conte in the job, Postecoglou cannot claim that speculation about his future is unfounded. And his pleas for patience are not helped by the fact Everton just demonstrated what a fresh(ish) face and change of voice can do for a squad low on confidence.
But is it really all Ange’s fault? Was it his predecessors’ fault, too?
Tottenham have had top-six revenues and wage bills for a quarter of a century but still only won one trophy, the 2008 League Cup, during that time.
Where they have led the way, though, is on executive pay. Year after year, Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy tops that ranking. The 62-year-old, who joined the board in December 2000, gave himself a pay package worth £6.5million ($7.9m) last season, including a £3m bonus.
Daniel Levy cuts a glum figure at Goodison Park (Michael Regan/Getty Images)
OK, during his reign, Tottenham have built a new training ground and the best stadium in the country, and the club now boast soaring revenues (mainly thanks to that stadium). But he has also burned through 11 permanent managers, run up record levels of debt, posted financial losses for the last four years and sparked rows with his most loyal customers about ticket prices and concessions.
Maybe the problem is not whoever is in the dugout, it’s the bloke who keeps hiring and firing them?
Chairmen do not sack themselves, of course, particularly when they own big stakes in the business. But Levy had a front-row seat in the directors’ box at Goodison Park so he cannot have missed the “Levy Out” chants from the away end.
Levy runs Tottenham because he owns a third of the investment firm, ENIC, which owns the club. But Joe Lewis, his partner at ENIC, is now 87 and has passed his shares in the business to a family trust. And, for the last year, the Lewis family, who have always been open to offers, have actively been looking for a buyer for their stake.
Perhaps it is time for Levy to realise it is time for him to cash in his chips and let someone else have a go, too.
GO DEEPER
Daniel Levy’s Tottenham are seeking on-field vindication and off-field change
Manchester United need to accept their place – and learn
As bad as Manchester United have been at times this season, they are very unlikely to be relegated.
So, no, Ruben Amorim, the team you have chosen to manage is not the worst in the club’s history — United have been relegated five times in their history, so that is at least five sides this lot are better than.
But we all know what Amorim is getting at, don’t we?
Three wins in their last 10 league games, four defeats in five at home, 13th in the table, seven points behind 10th-placed Fulham.
But what do we expect? That is exactly where you would expect to find a team that Brighton beat home and away, lose at West Ham and Wolves and get thumped, at home, by Bournemouth. They even lost to Spurs.
Ruben Amorim did not pull his punches on Manchester United after their latest defeat (Stu Forster/Getty Images)
Manchester United are bang average. Actually, Fulham are average, so they are not even that good.
Now we have cleared that up, let’s focus on how they might snap out of this slumber.
Well, for starters, they could take a good hard look at Brighton, a team that have spent most of their history in the third tier of English football but have recently become part of the Premier League furniture thanks to clear leadership, targeted investment and smart recruitment.
Obviously, Manchester United should have greater ambitions than a comfortable existence in English football’s top tier but some humility would not go amiss at the moment, which means acknowledging that the likes of Brighton are better than them right now, on and off the pitch.
Amorim is not to blame for this state of affairs but he is partly responsible for fixing it. He needs help from above, of course, and it is at that level where the improvement is most needed. Sir Jim Ratcliffe may only have been in overall control for a year but so far the gap between mission statements and tangible results is stark.
In contrast, Brighton’s owner Tony Bloom barely says a word publicly. He does not need to, we can all see the results.
Anyone know where an underperforming giant might find their next coach?
I know this one!
In fact, so does everyone else who has been paying attention to what has been happening 90 miles west of Brighton for the last season and a half.
When Bournemouth’s new owner Bill Foley replaced the popular Gary O’Neil with Andoni Iraola in the summer of 2023, the consensus view was “what are you doing?”
O’Neil led Bournemouth to Premier League survival on the back of five wins in seven games, including crucial victories over the club’s relegation rivals.
But having made his fortune in financial services, Foley is an underlying numbers guy. He knew that the unheralded guy who had made unfashionable Rayo Vallecano a tough opponent for every team in La Liga was a better bet.
Nine winless league games into last season, that bet looked like a bust. But then Bournemouth beat Burnley and everything started to make sense. By the end of the season, Bournemouth had 12 more league wins and had climbed to 12th, with a record points haul.
That record is unlikely to last long, though, as Bournemouth’s 4-1 win over Newcastle United on Saturday was their 10th in 22 league games and took them to seventh in the table. But this was no ordinary away win.
Newcastle went into the game as favourites. One, they had won nine straight games. Two, in Alexander Isak they had the hottest striker in the country. And three, Bournemouth were missing 10 players through injury.
Faced with those odds, Iraola laughed and said words to the effect of “we attack at dawn” (almost literally, as the coaches taking Bournemouth’s fans on the 350-mile trip north left at 2am).
Andoni Iraola is a coveted coaching talent (George Wood/Getty Images)
With nine youngsters on the bench and central midfielder Lewis Cook at right-back, Iraola told his players to stick to their hard-running, high-pressing, up-tempo game and blitz Newcastle from the off. By the time Justin Kluivert scored the first of his three goals in the sixth minute, they should have been two up already.
Kluivert, whose famous dad Patrick once played for Newcastle, obviously got most of the post-match plaudits, but Ryan Christie and David Brooks were immense in midfield, Dean Huijsen and Illia Zabarnyi faultless in the heart of defence and what a player left-back Milos Kerkez is.
Earlier this season, I passed on some praise to Foley from a director of football at a rival club. The latter had said Bournemouth were worrying him “because they look like they know what they’re doing”.
“I’d rather they think we don’t know what we’re doing,” replied Foley.
Sorry, Bill, the secret is out. Iraola, and many of your players, are brilliant.
Coming up this week
- We complete this weekend’s menu with a game between two sides badly in need of points but for very different reasons. Chelsea, the hosts, have not won in the league for a month and have been sucked into a scrap for Champions League football next season, while Wolves are fighting for league survival.
- After a month on a diet of domestic games only, European competition returns on Tuesday, with big helpings of Champions League and Europa League football. Top-of-the-table Liverpool host Lille on Tuesday, with Aston Villa visiting Monaco.
- The pick of Wednesday’s fare is Paris Saint-Germain versus Manchester City but not for the reason most would have predicted a few months ago, as this game is between the 25th and 22nd best teams in the Champions League so far this season. A defeat for either would leave that team with major Fear Of Missing Out. Arsenal, third in the rankings, have no such concerns ahead of the visit of Dinamo Zagreb.
- Thursday, as everyone knows, is Europa League day, but this week’s best game is no afterthought as it is a “Battle of Britain” between Manchester United and Rangers. Tottenham will travel in hope to Hoffenheim. And if cross-border clashes, with a North American flavour, are your thing, there is a cracker in League One: Wrexham v Birmingham City.
(Top photo: Getty Images)
Whatever you do, don’t think of a bird.
Now: What kind of bird are you not thinking about? A pigeon? A bald eagle? Something more poetic, like a skylark or a nightingale? In any case, would you say that this bird you aren’t thinking about is real?
Before you answer, read this poem, which is quite literally about not thinking of a bird.
Human consciousness is full of riddles. Neuroscientists, philosophers and dorm-room stoners argue continually about what it is and whether it even exists. For Wallace Stevens, the experience of having a mind was a perpetual source of wonder, puzzlement and delight — perfectly ordinary and utterly transcendent at the same time. He explored the mysteries and pleasures of consciousness in countless poems over the course of his long poetic career. It was arguably his great theme.
Stevens was born in 1879 and published his first book, “Harmonium,” in 1923, making him something of a late bloomer among American modernists. For much of his adult life, he worked as an executive for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, rising to the rank of vice president. He viewed insurance less as a day job to support his poetry than as a parallel vocation. He pursued both activities with quiet diligence, spending his days at the office and composing poems in his head as he walked to and from work.
As a young man, Stevens dreamed of traveling to Europe, though he never crossed the Atlantic. In middle age he made regular trips to Florida, and his poems are frequently infused with ideas of Paris and Rome and memories of Key West. Others partake of the stringent beauty of New England. But the landscapes he explores, wintry or tropical, provincial or cosmopolitan, are above all mental landscapes, created by and in the imagination.
Are those worlds real?
Let’s return to the palm tree and its avian inhabitant, in that tranquil Key West sunset of the mind.
Until then, we find consolation in fangles.
When the director Rob Reiner cast his leads in the 1986 film “Stand by Me,” he looked for young actors who were as close as possible to the personalities of the four children they’d be playing. There was the wise beyond his years kid from a rough family (River Phoenix), the slightly dim worrywart (Jerry O’Connell), the cutup with a temper (Corey Feldman) and the sensitive, bookish boy.
Wil Wheaton was perfect for that last one, Gordie Lachance, a doe-eyed child who is ignored by his family in favor of his late older brother. Now, 40 years later, he’s traveling the country to attend anniversary screenings of the film, alongside O’Connell and Feldman, which has thrown him back into the turmoil that he felt as an adolescent.
Wheaton has channeled those emotions and his on-set memories into his latest project: narrating a new audiobook version of “The Body,” the 1982 Stephen King novella on which the film was based.
A few years ago, Wheaton started to float the idea of returning to the story that gave him his big break — that of a quartet of boys in 1959 Oregon, in their last days before high school, setting out to find a classmate’s dead body. “I’ve been telling the story of ‘Stand By Me’ since I was 12 years old,” he said.
But this time was different. Wheaton, who has narrated dozens of audiobooks, including Andy Weir’s “The Martian” and Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One,” says he has come to enjoy narration more than screen acting. “I’m safe, I’m in the booth, nobody’s looking at me and I can just tell you a story.”
The fact that he, an older man looking back on his younger years, is narrating a story about an older man looking back on his younger years, is not lost on Wheaton. King’s original story is bathed in nostalgia. Coming to terms with death and loss is one of its primary themes.
Two days after appearing on stage at the Academy Awards as part of a tribute to Reiner — who was murdered in 2025 alongside his wife, Michele — Wheaton got on the phone to talk about recording the audiobook, reliving his favorite scenes from the film and reexamining a quintessential story of childhood loss through the lens of his own.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
“I felt really close to him, and my memory of him.”
Wheaton on channeling a co-star’s performance.
There’s this wonderful scene in “Stand By Me.” Gordie and Chris are walking down the tracks talking about junior high. Chris is telling Gordie, “I wish to hell I was your dad, because I care about you, and he obviously doesn’t.”
It’s just so honest and direct, in a way that kids talk to each other that adults don’t. And I think that one of the reasons that really sticks with people, and that piece really lands on a lot of audiences, and has for 40 years, is, just too many people have been Gordie in that scene.
That scene is virtually word for word taken from the text of the book. And when I was narrating that, I made a deliberate choice to do my best to recreate what River did in that scene.
“You’re just a kid,
Gordie–”
“I wish to fuck
I was your father!”
he said angrily.
“You wouldn’t go around
talking about takin those stupid shop courses if I was!
It’s like
God gave you something,
all those stories
you can make up, and He said:
This is what we got for you, kid.
Try not to lose it.
But kids lose everything
unless somebody looks out for them and if your folks
are too fucked up to do it
then maybe I ought to.”
I watched that scene a couple of times because I really wanted — I don’t know why it was so important to me to — well, I know: because I loved him, and I miss him. And I wanted to bring him into this as best as I could, right?
So I was reading that scene, and the words are identical to the script. And I had this very powerful flashback to being on the train tracks that day in Cottage Grove, Oregon. And I could see River standing next to them. They’re shooting my side of the scene and there’s River, right next to the camera, doing his off-camera dialogue, and there’s the sound guy, and there’s the boom operator. There’s my key light.
I could hear and feel it. It was the weirdest thing. It’s like I was right back there.
I was able to really take in the emotional memory of being Gordie in all of those scenes. So when I was narrating him and I’m me and I’m old with all of this experience, I just drew on what I remembered from being that little boy and what I remember of those friendships and what they meant to me and what they mean to me today.
“Rob gave me a gift. Rob gave me a career.”
Wheaton recalls the “Stand By Me” director’s way with kids on set, as well as his recent Oscars tribute.
Rob really encouraged us to be kids.
Jerry tells the most amazing story about that scene, where we were all sitting around, and doing our bit, and he improvised. He was just goofing around — we were just playing — and he said something about spitting water at the fat kid.
We get to the end of the scene, and he hears Rob. Rob comes around from behind the thing, and he goes, “Jerry!” And Jerry thinks, “Oh no, I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble because I improvised, and I’m not supposed to improvise.”
The context for Jerry is that he had been told by the adults in his life, “Sit on your hands and shut up. Stop trying to be a cutup. Stop trying to be funny. Stop disrupting people. Just be quiet.” And Jerry thinks, “Oh my God. I didn’t shut up. I’m in trouble. I’m gonna get fired.”
Rob leans in to all of us, and Rob says, “Hey, guys, do you see that? More of that. Do that!”
The whole time when you’re a kid actor, you’re just around all these adults who are constantly telling you to grow up. They’re mad that you’re being a kid. Rob just created an environment where not only was it supported that we would be kids — and have fun, and follow those kid instincts and do what was natural — it was expected. It was encouraged. We were supposed to do it.
They chanted together:
“I don’t shut up,
I grow up.
And when I look at you I throw up.”
“Then your mother goes around the corner
and licks it up,”
I said, and hauled ass out of there,
giving them the finger over my shoulder as I went.
I never had any friends later on
like the ones I had when I was twelve.
Jesus, did you?
When we were at the Oscars, I looked at Jerry. And we looked at this remarkable assemblage of the most amazingly talented, beautiful artists and storytellers. We looked around, and Jerry leans down, and he said, “We all got our start with Rob Reiner. He trusted every single one of us.”
And to stand there for him, when I really thought that I would be standing with him to talk about this stuff — it was a lot.
“I was really really really excited — like jumping up and down.”
The scene Wheaton was most looking forward to narrating: the tale of Lard Ass Hogan.
I was so excited to narrate it. It’s a great story! It’s a funny story. It’s such a lovely break — it’s an emotional and tonal shift from what’s happening in the movie.
I know this as a writer: You work to increase and release tension throughout a narrative, and Stephen King uses humor really effectively to release that tension. But it also raises the stakes, because we have these moments of joy and these moments of things being very silly in the midst of a lot of intensity.
That’s why the story of Lard Ass Hogan is so fun for me to tell. Because in the middle of that, we stop to do something that’s very, very fun, and very silly and very celebratory.
“Will you shut up and let him tell it?”
Teddy hollered.
Vern blinked.
“Sure. Yeah.
Okay.”
“Go on, Gordie,”
Chris said. “It’s not really much—”
“Naw,
we don’t expect much from a wet end like you,”
Teddy said,
“but tell it anyway.”
I cleared my throat. “So anyway.
It’s Pioneer Days,
and on the last night
they have these three big events.
There’s an egg-roll for the little kids and a sack-race for kids that are like eight or nine,
and then there’s the pie-eating contest.
And the main guy of the story
is this fat kid nobody likes
named Davie Hogan.”
When I narrate this story — whenever there is a moment of levity or humor, whenever there are those brief little moments that are the seasoning of the meal that makes it all so real and relatable — yes, it was very important to me to capture those moments.
I’m shifting in my chair, so I can feel each of those characters. It’s something that doesn’t exist in live action. It doesn’t exist in any other media.
“I feel the loss.”
Wheaton remembers River Phoenix.
The novella “The Body” is very much about Gordie remembering Chris. It’s darker, and it’s more painful, than the movie is.
I’ve been watching the movie on this tour and seeing River a lot. I remember him as a 14- and 15-year-old kid who just seemed so much older, and so much more experienced and so much wiser than me, and I’m only a year younger than him.
What hurts me now, and what I really felt when I was narrating this, is knowing what River was going through then. We didn’t know. I still don’t know the extent of how he was mistreated, but I know that he was. I know that adults failed him. That he should have been protected in every way that matters. And he just wasn’t.
And I, like Gordie, remember a boy who was loving. So loving, and generous and cared deeply about everyone around him, all the time. Who deserved to live a full life. Who had so much to offer the world. And it’s so unfair that he’s gone and taken from us. I had to go through a decades-long grieving process to come to terms with him dying.
Near the end
of 1971,
Chris
went into a Chicken Delight in Portland
to get a three-piece Snack Bucket.
Just ahead of him,
two men started arguing
about which one had been first in line. One of them pulled a knife.
Chris,
who had always been the best of us
at making peace,
stepped between them and was stabbed in the throat.
The man with the knife had spent time in four different institutions;
he had been released from Shawshank State Prison
only the week before.
Chris died almost instantly.
It is a privilege that I was allowed to tell this story. I get to tell Gordie Lachance’s story as originally imagined by Stephen King, with all of the experience of having lived my whole adult life with the memory of spending three months in Gordie Lachance’s skin.
Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about printed works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions and more. This week’s challenge highlights offbeat television shows that began as comic books. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the comics and their screen versions.
Trump jokes, rants, talks price of pens as Iran war enters fifth week
High school softball top 20 rankings for the Southland
Access Error
US diplomat Marco Rubio denounces settler violence, tolls in Hormuz strait
Iran-linked hackers have breached FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal emails | CNN Politics
Florida High School Football Rankings: Top 25 teams – Oct. 21
How old is Bo Nix? What to know about Oregon quarterback ahead of 2024 NFL Draft
Cleary's 21 help Le Moyne down Central Connecticut State 69-64 in OT
99th annual Pony Swim held in Virginia
Indiana Members Credit Union announced as new anchor tenant at Bottleworks District
US diplomat Marco Rubio denounces settler violence, tolls in Hormuz strait
Iran-linked hackers have breached FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal emails | CNN Politics
Live: CPAC 2026 Day 2
Video: Will ICE Change Under Its New Leader?
DHS shutdown breakthrough comes at cost for Republicans as funding fights nears end
-
Detroit, MI1 week agoDrummer Brian Pastoria, longtime Detroit music advocate, dies at 68
-
Movie Reviews1 week ago‘Youth’ Twitter review: Ken Karunaas impresses audiences; Suraj Venjaramoodu adds charm; music wins praise | – The Times of India
-
Sports6 days agoIOC addresses execution of 19-year-old Iranian wrestler Saleh Mohammadi
-
New Mexico5 days agoClovis shooting leaves one dead, four injured
-
Business1 week agoDisney’s new CEO says his focus is on storytelling and creativity
-
Technology5 days agoYouTube job scam text: How to spot it fast
-
Tennessee4 days agoTennessee Police Investigating Alleged Assault Involving ‘Reacher’ Star Alan Ritchson
-
Texas1 week agoHow to buy Houston vs. Texas A&M 2026 March Madness tickets