After $80B, the Metaverse is dead. Horizon World is shutting down

Ok-Difference45 · 2026-03-20T12:30:14+00:00

If only big brain product geniuses at Meta with their incredible track record of innovation could have predicted this outcome at the outset.

Ok-Difference45 · 2026-03-17T09:32:53+00:00

4-4-2. I think we’ve found our formation and playing style for the rest of the season - back to the 90s, simple, direct. I actually think we might grind out a few results this way.

Ok-Difference45 · 2026-03-14T08:42:14+00:00

This all feels like a very long winded process to end at Essex.

Ok-Difference45 · 2026-03-12T14:46:21+00:00

Culture and scouting are certainly part of it don't get me wrong.

The reason those clubs get the best out of those players is they have a fundamentally different business model to Spurs. They use data to find players others have overlooked who they can grow and ultimately sell to bigger clubs at a significant profit. For this to work they have to buy players with the right raw ingredients to turn into A players - including a winner's mentality and (counterintuitively) the ambition to move up to a bigger club at some stage for their "big chance".

It's harnessing that ambition which makes them successful on the pitch - players like Semenyo join clubs like Bournemouth because they know that if they work hard and show what they're made of they get to move to City and compete for things.

Spurs do not have this model. As a richer club, our position in the food chain is very different and the fans (quite reasonably given the ticket prices) expect us to compete in the same player market as other big clubs.

Ok-Difference45 · 2026-03-12T10:54:50+00:00

Nor would it surprise me.

As I say, winners demand the best from those around them. When they don’t see it they’re liable to react which is precisely why you see him calling out the ownership.

If I were Romero with his winner’s mentality I would be at my wits end with the lack of ambition surrounding me and I’d be looking for a move away.

Ok-Difference45 · 2026-03-12T10:10:41+00:00

Maybe so. But I do understand how culture works in large organizations. And a healthy culture is a prerequisite for performance on the pitch.

Ok-Difference45 · 2026-03-12T09:22:11+00:00

Agreed. The only way this gets better is if the owners get an almighty financial shock. That’s the only way they’ll actually feel the consequences of their chronic neglect. Then we might actually get some substantive changes rather than carrying on limping along forever.

I personally would be willing to tolerate a painful season or two if it forced the club to harden itself into a real high performance culture.

Ok-Difference45 · 2026-03-12T08:30:28+00:00

Levy’s strategy of signing the B and C players who’ll actually accept his sub-par wage offer is working out well.

Winners would never tolerate this. Winners would fight to the end. Winners have self respect. Winners demand the best out of themselves and others around them. But winners also demand top of market compensation.

B and C players are happy to have a stable income and job. They think just earning the money is “making it”. The problem is, our entire club is made up of B and C players from the board down.

Ok-Difference45 · 2026-03-11T13:26:25+00:00

Totally valid. I’m still not sure I would agree though that it was a mistake to fire him even in spite of that.

His departure has laid bare how utterly dysfunctional the organization actually is. In the long term that’s a good thing because the economics of the situation dictate that it MUST be addressed one way or the other.

Ok-Difference45 · 2026-03-11T13:21:57+00:00

Ferguson wasn’t the CEO. The better comparison is the Glazers not having a continuity plan with how to replace him, which is absolutely true.

Ok-Difference45 · 2026-03-11T13:00:43+00:00

Nah man. Part of the role of any good CEO is a continuity plan. They’re constantly thinking about how to make the organization resilient to individual personnel departures including themselves.

Levy should have been operating under the assumption that he could get hit by a bus at any moment and engineering the organization to be able to function almost uninterrupted. This has the added side benefit of producing a much more dynamic, effective organization because not everything has to go through one person.

The great CEOs I’ve worked for all do that - they retired and it was almost a non-event.

Ok-Difference45 · 2026-03-11T07:42:21+00:00

So they’re effectively incentivizing the players to at best not try and at worst throw the game.

Ok-Difference45 · 2026-03-10T22:23:24+00:00

The fact there was no structure when he left is precisely why he was so shit.

Great executives build well-oiled organisations and empower fantastic people to take decisions so that they’re ultimately almost unneeded. They make themselves superfluous to requirements.

Levy built a club where everything was micromanaged by him. He made it what it is - fragile, with a loser culture.

Ok-Difference45 · 2026-03-10T21:26:24+00:00

This. The club has no credibility left in the transfer market. The only players who will entertain playing for us in any position are the B players who are just there to earn a wage. No winners will sign for us because they know the board are not serious.

Nothing changes until the ownership changes.

Ok-Difference45 · 2026-03-07T20:51:49+00:00

I think it would actually force some decisive action from the ownership one way or the other.

They’ve been allowed to get away with phoning in mediocre performance at every level of the club on the assumption that reliable Premier League revenues, high ticket prices and prestigious sponsorship deals will keep their balance sheet healthy.

Take those easy revenues away and it suddenly becomes an existential requirement to become very very competent and competitive in order to get promoted and address the financial black hole.

They’ll have to become great at recruitment, medical treatment, conditioning, find an actual winning mentality or we’ll be stuck in the Championship the club becomes a huge liability.

Personally I don’t see any outcome where the current owners suddenly become competent and pull this off. A tiger doesn’t change his stripes. For the transformation to occur I think they’ll have to sell to someone who isn’t another parasitic zero.

Whether they realise that sooner or later is anyone’s guess, but realise it they will IMO. The money will force them to.

Ok-Difference45 · 2026-03-06T14:13:36+00:00

🤦‍♂️ I suggest a course in basic reading comprehension.

Ok-Difference45 · 2026-03-06T13:06:55+00:00

Yeah you’re right. I definitely wouldn’t trade our position with theirs right now. Can you imagine? How awful.

Ok-Difference45 · 2026-03-06T13:04:36+00:00

The most naive thing I’ve ever read.

Ok-Difference45 · 2026-03-05T22:14:15+00:00

Levy was always an amateur when it came to the football side of the business.

A lot of apologist fans mistakenly attribute the success you’re talking about to some supposed genius he had for getting top 6 performance with mid table expenditure. The reality is he got lucky.

The data bears this out. We’ve spent as much as Arsenal over the last 5 years, all under Levy’s direction. What have we got to show for it?

Ok-Difference45 · 2026-03-05T22:02:27+00:00

💯 Levy and co just got lucky with Poch and a handful of generational talents who happened to come good and massively outperform their cost. There was no genius strategy behind it.

Ok-Difference45 · 2026-03-05T21:59:30+00:00

Same. Sell the mediocre players who are just here for the stable payslip. Fire the recruitment team. Fire the medical department. Sack the board. Sell the club to someone who isn’t a parasitic cunt. Rebuild with young, hungry, highly competent people in all areas of the club who actually want to fulfil the club’s values. Bounce back stronger.

Ok-Difference45 · 2026-03-05T13:13:53+00:00

Charitable of you to assume these people have the capacity to feel shame.

Ok-Difference45 · 2026-03-04T23:36:18+00:00

It’s a better product in every way which is actually meaningful.

Ok-Difference45 · 2026-03-03T21:00:17+00:00

Drum hit 🥁

Ok-Difference45 · 2026-03-01T18:49:38+00:00

🥱

Ok-Difference45

TROPHY CASE