Tottenham chief executive Venkatesham says complete reset required

LONDON, May 27 : Tottenham Hotspur chief executive Vinai Venkatesham says the club needs a complete reset and a return to prioritising the football part of the business after narrowly escaping relegation from the Premier League on Sunday.

Venkatesham was appointed just over a year ago having stepped down from a similar role at Arsenal and said some aspects of the club were 'significantly worse' than expected.

"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," he was quoted as saying by the BBC.

Venkatesham was appointed by executive chairman Daniel Levy, who stood down last September after nearly 25 years at the club.

Under Levy's reign Tottenham moved into a new state-of-the-art stadium in the same location as the original one while the club has a world-class training ground often used by England's national team during international breaks.

Levy was blamed by many fans, however, for Tottenham's decline on the pitch, accusing him of being more interested in increasing revenue from non-football activities.

In an apparent attack on Levy's reign, Venkatesham said: "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. If you look at the football side of the club, over a time frame 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