Daniel Levy is not someone who speaks in public very often so when the Tottenham chairman finally sat down and answered questions for almost 45 minutes there was plenty to take from it.
The Spurs chief accepted the invite to head back to Cambridge University on March 14 to speak to those at his former place of study as well as meet those who made the step from the London Academy of Excellence, created within Tottenham's Lilywhite House headquarters, to be accepted to Cambridge.
Levy was quizzed on plenty of topics surrounding the club and he was not given an easy ride by an audience that contained a number of Spurs supporters. Here are 11 things we took from the long Q&A session and the rare chance to hear the chairman explain some of his decisions.
READ MORE: Every word Daniel Levy said on Tottenham fans, managers, transfers, takeover talk and Harry Kane
The need to communicate
For a man who has been the chairman of Tottenham Hotspur for more than two decades, you can probably pick the number of times Daniel Levy has spoken publicly on your two hands. To have spoken for as long as this is even rarer.
The problem for the 61-year-old is that while he may feel he is being "dignified", as he said at one point about his reluctance to speak publicly, his silence also might give the impression of someone sitting up in their tower looking down upon a disgruntled mob with complete disbelief at their complaints.
When asked how the average Spurs fan perceives him, he responded: "I'm not sure what an average Spurs fan is, but I would hope that they would perceive that I am always acting in the best interests of the club. I've given a large proportion of my working life to the club and I think that the club today, hopefully they will perceive it to be in a better place than when I first got involved."
Perhaps the most surprising thing about Levy is that for someone who is not keen on speaking publicly and actively avoids it, he's very confident when he must speak and he gets his points across.
It would do him the world of good to sit down once a year for a similar Q&A in front of Tottenham season ticket holders to explain a lot of his decisions and have it filmed in the same way for the rest of the fanbase to see.
Whether his calls have been right or wrong over the years, at least having some context and explanation of how those decisions were reached might go a long way to distinguishing between the man and the caricature.
Levy's distrust of media
Levy speaking to the media is a rarity. It has been suggested that when he last sat down for a group interview with some national journalists more than a decade ago he was left deeply unhappy at what he felt were misquotes from what he said being splashed across subsequent headlines.
From that point on media access was reduced to the odd press conference around a stadium or sponsorship event or the odd short interview every few years if it tied in with something the club was promoting.
During his Q&A session at Cambridge, the chairman was asked by one Spurs fan among the students just how often he is frustrated at not being able to explain his decisions, as his silence also frustrates the fans.
"Probably every day. The media often print stories that just aren't true," he said. "It's perceptions. An article gets printed, it's a story that then becomes a reality but I've remained dignified and I just won't comment."
The problem with that line of thinking is that it's a circle that feeds itself. If you never speak to the media and explain the decisions you make that upset the fans then how can you bemoan the media for printing others' versions of events?
There were plenty of good probing questions asked of Levy by the students at Cambridge but some of the answers needed the follow-up a journalist would likely provide.
He doesn't mind his reputation
One reputation Levy doesn't seem to mind is the one he has as a tough negotiator.
When it was put to him that it was said he was more painful to deal with than a hip replacement, he quickly replied: "Firstly that comment was from Alex Ferguson, who remains a friend. All I was doing was protecting the interests of my club. It shouldn't be seen as a negative the fact that I want to maximize the price for the benefit of the club because all the money goes back into reinvesting."
The follow-up question was whether he felt he was that painful to deal with. The answer came back with the slightest of smiles: "Maybe."
Harry Kane's future
Levy was quite bullish about Harry Kane having no need to move elsewhere to win trophies despite the lack of silverware at Spurs in recent decades.
"He can absolutely win a trophy at Spurs, but you know being a legend is also important. The fact that he's the top scorer for Tottenham Hotspur, he's making history. I hope one day there is a stature of Harry Kane outside our stadium," he said.
Perhaps even more telling about Tottenham's lack of interest in negotiating a transfer this summer for Kane, despite him reaching the final 12 months of his contract, was Levy's answer when asked about him as chairman being labelled as "special" in negotiating transfers out of the club and being so difficult to deal with.
"Firstly I don't consider myself to be a special negotiator or anything like that. As I said, I'm just acting in the best interests of my club. I think when it comes to a transfer it depends on the balance of power. If you have a player that you really don't want to sell then you have every right to say no. You own the registration," he said.
"So it depends on the character of the player and whether you feel at the end you can keep the player because we're operating in a team sport and it's very important that we keep the team together. So every circumstance is different."
That question was not about Kane, but coupled with the earlier quotes about the striker, it sounded like another clear indication that anyone trying to prise away the England captain this summer is going to struggle.
Those expensive ticket prices
Despite their lack of success on the pitch with a dusty trophy cabinet, Spurs have some of the highest season ticket prices in the world of football.
This month the club decided against pushing through a rise in season ticket prices for next season, instead freezing them, and it was put to Levy how he could justify such high prices and whether young people were being alienated from becoming Tottenham fans of the future.
"Ticket pricing is a very complicated subject," he said. "Firstly there is a conflict between ticket pricing, having the best stadium in the world and also wanting to win on the pitch and pay high transfer fees and high salaries to get the best talent.
"In an ideal world you'd like to have very low ticket pricing and to have the best players in the world and the best facilities. Somehow we have to find the right balance.
"The way we try to do it, firstly we have concession pricing for a number of areas within the stadium for young adults and kids and the older generation. Also when it comes to cup games we try to price those very competitively so this year there have been lots of games at £20 or £25 and concession pricing on top."
Transfer blame game
One bone of contention among Tottenham fans over the years has been the perceived lack of big spending compared to rivals in the Premier League.
When asked about that at Cambridge, Levy rejected that notion and instead passed the blame on to those who have sought their most expensive signings over the years.
"My starting point is I don't agree with it because if you look at the amount of money Tottenham has spent on new players over the last five or 10 years and you compare it with certain other clubs in the Premier League, not only have we exceeded those clubs but actually some of those clubs may well have been more successful than us on the pitch," he said.
"There is not necessarily a direct link between the amount of money you spend and getting success on the pitch. Invariably it is what you spend it on and I could name, I won't name, but we could all name in here a number of players Tottenham has bought that have not been successful and we've lost an awful lot of money."
A lot of eggs in the FFP basket
Levy's statement accompanying this year's released financial results had plenty to say about UEFA's upcoming changes to the financial fair play rules and his comments at Cambridge made it very clear once again that the Spurs chairman is placing a lot of faith in the rule makers to help even up the competition.
"Firstly there are new laws coming into effect this season, UEFA rules, where sustainability is going to become much more paramount in people's minds so you'll be limited in the amount you can spend on wages and transfer fees, effectively the amortisation element. That's a percentage of your total turnover," he said.
"So it's starting off at 90% and over three years it's going down to 70%. The effect of that is effectively some sort of wage of control. So I think that although clubs have been spending very heavily, if you talk about someone like Chelsea, now the new rules come into effect this summer I think you'll find that regardless of who is the owner it's going to have quite a big impact on the financing of football."
When asked about smaller clubs gaining investment being important in also preventing the same old clubs reigning supreme, Levy said: "The answer to that is absolutely yes. In fact under the financial fair play rules you are able to make investments. I think the most important thing is to not get ourselves in a place where unlimited investment can be made and isn't sustainable when that investment suddenly stops or that owner suddenly goes and then the club disappears. That's why you have to find the right balance."
Levy will feel that the sustainable model Spurs have built with an ever-growing array of revenue streams from every conceivable sport and platform is the right way to build a football club, rather than the way others have done it. His faith in UEFA to prove that though is a big ask of a governing body that has often struggled to keep the big spenders in check.
Manager shelf life
For someone who is set to appoint his 13th permanent manager in just over two decades of chairmanship, it's no surprise that Levy pointed constantly to the more European style of hiring and firing coaches in quick succession.
"I think as far as the manager is concerned that when they come in to manage a football club it's just part of the game. It's not personal," he said. "We're in the business of winning and if they don't win enough games then they know that their job is on the line. They're paid very well for that so it's just how it is. It's not personal. All the managers that have left Tottenham I'm either still in contact with or they come back to games. it's not personal."
He added: "I think every chairman dreams that [managers will stay for 10 years]. I think it's very, very difficult in the competitive nature of football today that you have continuity of a manager over a long period of time.
"If you look on the continent, it's so difficult to how it is in England. In England we all dream of having managers for five, six, seven or eight years. In Europe, in other countries, coaches are appointed for two years. They are far less important, the media attention is not on the coach, it's much more about the club. It's a cultural thing we have in England. The manager is almost bigger than the club when in reality he isn't."
It would be easy to suggest that comment might be pointed towards Antonio Conte, or perhaps even Mauricio Pochettino after recent games in which the crowd have sung for the former Spurs boss to return.
When quizzed specifically about hiring serial winners before they came to Tottenham in Jose Mourinho and Conte, Levy said: "I think whenever you appoint a coach you're employing someone because you think they're going to make you win. You don't appoint them with the intention that it's only going to be for one year or two years. You hope it will be long term.
"All I would make the observation is that in Europe coaches are only appointed for one or two years whereas in this country we're obsessed with when someone is appointed they only have a two year contract, how do you expect him to succeed if he's only got two years."
Levy is a big fan of the director of football model to provide the continuity regardless of the coach, but his biggest problem is that his sporting directors rarely stay much longer than the managers.
Pochettino's book
One first from the Q&A session was Levy being asked about Pochettino's book 'Brave New World', which was released in 2017.
Some Tottenham fans have suggested over the years that the Argentine's laying bare of his time at the club through a diary format while still the current manager and talking about current players was the beginning of the end for that era of Spurs.
Levy was asked whether he sanctioned the book coming out when it did.
"The answer is we did know about it. It was his choice to do it," he said. "Some people would say it was a good thing, some people would say it was a bad thing, but it was his choice and we clearly didn't stop it."
It certainly wasn't the most ringing endorsement for the book.
Takeover talk
For those Tottenham fans who chant at matches for Levy to depart, his comments on the potential of a takeover at the club will not have provided them with much hope.
"I answer this question in the way I've answered it for the past 22 years. ENIC owns approximately 87 per cent of the club. We have 30,000 shareholders and most of them are fans who own the shares," he said.
"We have a duty to consider any proposal anyone wants to make. All I would say is we are not in negotiations with anybody, nor have we been in recent months. All the stuff that has been in the newspapers is completely untrue."
A lack of accountability
While Levy spoke confidently and answered every question to a certain degree, one thing was lacking from his Q&A session and it's something that has often been absent from any public address the chairman has made - accountability.
The Tottenham chairman will often speak of the lack of silverware and point to everyone else as the reason behind that and speak about the many good things he has achieved and he appeared to do so again at Cambridge.
He said of the managers he has hired that "we're in the business of winning and if they don't win enough games then they know that their job is on the line".
That only leads to the question over what exactly Levy's chairmanship is judged upon and whether he is in the business of winning? Is it trophies, is it the raised profile of the club or even the regeneration of the stadium and the surrounding area? Many Tottenham fans will only judge his tenure on the former.
Levy made it very clear that he was distinguishable from some other chairman and owners because he was always a Spurs fan, but he chose to become the decision-maker at the club because he would also think like the investor he was.
"Firstly when you're a fan and you're also an investor I think you have a much more balanced view as to the decisions that need to be take in running the club. It's very easy, trust me, if you're emotionally connected but not financially connected to make some very bad decisions or rash decisions.
"As much as we all love our clubs, they are also businesses where you have to make sure the income is sufficient to match the costs and it's very easy to get into trouble. So I realised quite early on that if we wanted to make Tottenham successful that it would be beneficial that if someone who was involved in running the club was not only a fan but also an investor."
This felt as much a message to the fans as it was explaining why he took the job in the first place.
While reading Levy's entire Q&A session provides far more context than the soundbites snatched from it, it's still difficult to see where the Spurs chairman takes any responsibility for the decisions he has made at the very top that have gone wrong and for hiring those he has appointed to make the calls he clearly is now unimpressed by.
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