Hello and welcome to The View from the Lane, our Tottenham Hotspur podcast from The Athletic.

My name is Jack Pitbrook and I'm joined again today by Charlie Eccleshare and James Moore.

Obviously there hasn't been any football at Tottenham Hotspur this week, but there has been big news with the statement coming out on Monday afternoon that Spurs have U-turned on their decision to furlough club staff in April and May

and no longer used the coronavirus job retention scheme,

which had proven so popular with Tottenham fans as we heard on our podcast last week.

Charlie, what's happened here?

Yeah, well, you touched on it there, actually.

The response from the fans was a really important factor from what people

I've spoken to have said that coupled with the wider reaction you know spurs became

i think one source put it like a pantomime villain almost they really became a lightning rod for all

the criticism um the football was taking.

And I think it took a lot of people by surprise.

Like Levy, his expectation was that, yeah, there'd be a lot of criticism,

but that all other clubs would follow suit probably anyway.

And since other much wealthier corporations were using the fellow staff,

he thought broadly once that initial hostility

had worn off people would ease off a bit and their focus would move elsewhere now obviously

other clubs didn't follow suit partly because they saw the kind of ferocity of the backlash

tottenham got.

So with all of those things taken into account,

you know, Levy and the club's decision makers realized that they needed to change their minds and do what Liverpool did.

But obviously, where Liverpool did it, like, I think it was within two days.

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