I don’t think Gerrard would leave Rangers for anyone except Liverpool right now. Plus it’s the worst kept secret that he will be Klopp’s successor so you wouldn’t want that hanging over Spurs if they did go for him.
Not sure on Gerrard to be honest. Done a great job ending Celtic’s dominance and I think Rangers even went unbeaten in the league but that’s generally always been a two horse race league. Gerrard essentially had to fend off one main challenger as the rest are more or less a cakewalk for those sides. If he done what he done with Aberdeen or Hibernian for instance, different story.
I still have big questions over his management ability. Yes he won the league at a canter up here but Celtic have been beyond poor this season. Plus Rangers got dumped out of both domestic cups by St Johnstone and St Mirren and that shouldn’t be happening. Also out of 9 possible trophies, Gerrard has only won 1. Rodgers on the other hand won 7 out of 7 when he was up here
Jose chased Ruban Dias hard but didn’t get the backing, Portuguese and it was Jose...he would have easily tempted him to join us we were in for him well before City were for the newly crowned Writers POTY but Tottenham Hotspur got Levyed This is what I’m talking about...the man is sucking the soul out of the club, he has zero ****ing clue. Doesn’t really matter who we get in, he’s destined to fail
I wouldnt want Slipper Gerrard, he would be severely conflicted every time we played is beloved Pool, and would immediately jump ship as soon as the Dippers came calling for his services. Essentially, at Spurs we have an accountant overseeing the football affairs of a PL club, I have zero faith Levy will appoint the right man, and whoever it is, won`t be backed to the required levels.
What a load of grovelling bollocks. The ****er knows he's in big trouble. He's refused to get in suitable management to run a big business because he's a megalomaniac, obsessive, egomaniac and now, he's made a proper ****ing mess of running the football club. He can go **** himself. He'll never change. People don't. He has to go or we'll remain cursed by his meddling and lack of vision for another 20 years. Levy OUT!
I agree with you on this, and I think the key is having the DOF in place. Potter feels a little like another “Poch” type. Nothing wrong with that, IMO. But things were no where near as toxic when we brought Poch in (despite the failures of AVB and Sherwood), as they are now. The pressure on Potter could be immense, and because of this, one has to question whether he’s the right person at the moment, or whether we are even the right club for him right now. Kane hasn’t left yet, and we’ve still got Son. They are pretty much our only top quality players we have. But part of me wonders if we hire Potter it’ll be viewed by those players as a further lack of ambition at a crucial time despite the job he’s done at Brighton. levy said the announcement will be before the end of the season, so I guess we’ll be finding out very shortly. This has to be one of, if not the hardest decisions he’s made.
I don't think the stature of the new manager actually matters now if truth be told, mate. I think Kane would still want to leave even if we hired someone like Guardiola. I think his mind is made up already and it's more about the club's state than who the new manager will be. So I think we have to consider what a new manager can potentially do without Kane, and then if Kane does end up staying it's the biggest bonus possible. Ally Gold did mention a couple weeks back that Potter had admirers in our squad, knowing our luck it's Dier, Winks and Sissoko but there could be a possibility that someone like Son would be keen to work with him.
It's been that way for a decade, as they gazumped Negredo from under us by simply offering twice the wages we did (which also made it hard for them to move him on when he proved to be a dud, due to him earning twice the wages he was worth), yet for some reason people seem to think it's amBishUn that's the problem rather than a team playing with the cheat codes
It’s a difficult one regarding the stature. Despite Mourinho not working out for many different reasons discussed at length, from the players point of view (from the outset)cruet we’re still getting to work with someone who’d won everything. As a fan, I couldn’t stand him and haven’t rated his style or methods for a few years, but it was a statement of intent to get us over the “trophy line”. I don’t see Potter having that effect, personally. I may be completely wrong, but it’s almost conceding that we’re about to embark on another long term project from scratch with someone with little to no experience. - conceding that that’s the case may not bode well for some of the players we do actually want to keep hold of. whilst I agree we need to get rid of a fair number of players (so who gives a ****, right) I just think that we need to not be admitting defeat in the sense that we’re back to where we were in 2014ish. why can’t we have a balance? - Bring in the experienced DOF and a manager with a track record who will install belief that we haven’t got to go back in time to 6-7 years ago, and at the same time get rid of who we need to shift, whilst being able to attract the players we need by having an experienced manager who has actually coached at the top level and gives the players and fans some belief. So that’s kind of where I’m at with this up and coming decision. Go all out for those at the top to change the way our recruitment and squad is managed/handled.
I don't see that potentially effect working now though. Plus, there's only two players whose opinions actually matters and one wants out regardless. Son is professional enough to get his head down too. If anyone else in the squad wasn't happy with someone like Potter or another lesser name then it makes it easier for us to fob them off, they won't see any fans shed any tears that's for sure. I think we are back to where we were in 2014. At the beginning of Poch's tenure he had a squad of players that consisted of: Players who'd declined or downed tools. Players who were never good enough. Players who were signed for big money before hand and flopped. But he did have a few young prospects that he was able to utilise extremely effectively. That's literally what we have now. We've reached that full cycle point with this squad of players. Poch took over, improved us, peaked us, then saw us decline and then the cycle finished under Jose where the squad 'died'. Top managers likely won't want in here too, it'll be too risky for their reputation now. Many will want assurances over Kane (and maybe even Son) and we can't give that, while they won't be oblivious to the current relationship between fans and club. Levy's reputation has also taken a battering in the last 6-12 months and that too will potentially be a factor for a big name manager to basically say "nah I'm good". A lesser well known manager however would likely be excited to take the step up in management regardless of the current issues. They'll want to improve their standing in the game.
Which is precisely why we need to go back to being shrewd operators in the market. Leicester and West Ham are the flag-bearers of this approach at the moment, bringing in half a dozen excellent players each for decent fees. We seem to be caught in a halfway house of wanting to act like a big club but not (yet) having the actual clout to do so. Hence we'll spend 90% of a transfer window effectively wasting time pursuing the likes of Dybala or Fernandes which are lovely and flattering names to be linked with, but we don't have the money to punch through the multiple complications that inevitably arise when aiming for lovely, flattering names. And so we end up spending A-grade money on B-grade players (Sanchez, Lo Celso, Ndombele) thinking ourselves so clever because we pinched them from under the noses of bigger rivals who weren't all that interested anyway and bought better and often less expensive options instead.
I think there are several major differences between now and 2014, despite the similarities: - New stadium + consecutive years of CL football + actual title challenges = significantly higher expectations than we had in 2014, when the disappointment was centered around dropping out of the CL after one season there. As far as I remember, lack of trophies wasn't really spoken about in 2014 but has now understandably become a huge issue. - Back then we had actively disruptive members of the senior squad who Poch ultimately rooted out. I don't think that is the case now. Now it seems we have a group of players who are simply indifferent. And I'm not sure which I prefer. - The crop of youngsters coming through in 2014 was on a different level to what we have today. The likes of Kane, Townsend, Mason, Bentaleb, Rose, Davies and Walker were all significantly further along their career paths than all of our current crop save perhaps for Skipp and Sess. Poch turned that group into the nucleus of his first squad, saving a fortune in his first few windows and guaranteeing fan enthusiasm and - more importantly - patience with his approach. So it wasn't just a 'few prospects', it was a chunk of his match day squad. Kyle Walker featured least from that batch and he still managed 21 games in 2014/15. - Levy's personal mishandling of the furlough and ESL debacles have seriously dented his support among even the most loyal fans. Yes there was criticism in 2014, but much of it ricocheted off of 'Teflon Dan' onto Baldini, AVB, disruptive players, sheer fluke (Chelsea) etc. This time round it is sticking.
I agree, it’s a rebuild in a whole different way. Having the fans back yesterday was mismanaged across the board and you only have to look at the shambles of the players not knowing if they should be going back out to applaud the fans or not to see the complete ****show that this club has become. AFAIK (please correct if I’m wrong) the whole squad didn’t even come out in the end even after a 40-min wait during which time the fans were left to leave. Spurs seemingly haven’t been able to put out any pitch side social media stuff either because of fans booing and chanting in the background. Not a good look. The feel-good factor of having Mason manage the team and win a few games playing decent football is rapidly diminishing, as the results don’t always come right and the off-pitch situation worsens. The club is looking absolutely rotten from the outside.
The club stature and expectations have definitely changed but the playing personnel are somewhat a carbon copy from those in 2014. It was full of players who weren't good enough, expensive duds or those on the decline and it's more or less the same for the group we have now. That team also finished 6th at the end of the 13/14 season under AVB/ Tim, this team is on course to finish no higher than 6th whilst we could finish as low as 9th. After Lloris' interview after the Zagreb game I wouldn't be too sure about not having disruptive members of the squad. Back when Poch took over many didn't see Rose, Walker or Mason going on to having the impacts they did, with hindsight it was a great bunch but at the time we didn't expect much from some of those, Mason especially was completely written off as he was about 22 and had barely played for us. Right now we have high expectations of Tanganga, Skipp, Sess and Scarlett whilst there's a couple others who could come out of the blue under a new manager.
Don’t forget Troy Parrott when it comes to young players, he’s had a difficult loan season but there’s a proper player in there. Further down the line there’s the likes of Alfie Devine too, though he’s only 16. Top talent though and looks like he has a bit of devil in him which is always important.
The obvious problem with us taking the moneyball approach is that it's guaranteed to be met with the usual screeching of Levy being a cheapskate and the club not showing amBisHuN in the transfer market, so we're damned if we do and damned if we don't It also has to be said that installing a DoF won't get us back on track in that regard when you look at our track record Arnesen - knew what he was doing and brought in the right players for both Jol and Santini, the latter being remarkable as Santini didn't seem to like the idea of people playing this "football" game Comolli - was more interested in playing Football Manager on Levy's dime than following his brief, with him ignoring Jol's requests (Jol reportedly had to go over his head and ask Levy directly to sign Berbatov) and having so little nous in the transfer market he overspent consistently Baldini - saw the amount of money he had to spend first rather than his brief, if he ever actually looked at his brief, grossly overspending and inflating our wage bill in a matter of weeks on a legacy of signing seven players yet four of them were binned off within two seasons There's a balance somewhere, which is what the DoF should be providing as that's their job, but the issue is we're either in one camp or the other when we need to have one eye on canny signings and one on adding genuine quality if it fits into our financial structures
Played quite a lot for Ipswich off the striker or on the left, which isn't ideal right now, but could work out well in the future. If Scarlett or Donlan turn out to be any good, then we might be able to use them together at U23 level.
