First and foremost, the Club needs to decide once and for all what its identity is. Our choices of managers and approach to transfers since Poch left reflects an almost all-encompassing confusion from top to bottom in this regard. As you've said, broadly speaking there are two types of club. 'Alpha' and 'Beta'. Alpha clubs are geared toward success at all costs. They will typically hire and fire managers pretty quickly, spend eye-watering sums in the market and will also sign their fair share of dross, simply because they are trawling with wide nets rather than targeted fishing to reel in very specific fish. Beta clubs prefer slow-burner projects, progressive and young coaches who are able to nurture young talent and create a whole greater than the sum of its parts. We appointed an alpha manager in Maureen but serviced him with two strongly beta transfer windows. We then appointed a beta manager (sixth in a long list of other beta managers) in Nuno and, weirdly, gave him something of an alpha window by bringing in Romero but not really selling anyone to raise funds. We then appointed another alpha manager in Conte and in his first window leaned towards treating him like an alpha, but then reverted back to beta in the summer. I had zero qualms with Levy's responses to the THST questions. He makes a very valid point: poor transfer policy in recent years has indeed created the illusion of "minimal investment", when in reality investment has been operating at unprecedented levels for a few years now, the issue is it has largely been spent on dross who we are now struggling to shift. What he says is true, but... Only if we are still a Beta club operating under Beta rules. A true alpha club goes through Ndombeles, Lo Celsos and Richarlisons like I go through pairs of socks. It's just part and parcel of the modus operandi being success at all costs. The clue is in the description. It is clear that we would rather achieve success at minimal or zero cost...that is very much Beta club thinking. That is the mind-space of a Brighton or a Dortmund, teams who accept the fact that they will routinuely be strip-mined by Alpha clubs, but will then reinvest those extortionate sums back into the team as part of the ongoing long-burner projects they are committed to. We've been sitting on the fence since the day Levy had that little fanboy chat with Mourinho in March 2018 after the Inter Legends friendly game to inaugurate the new stadium. He's been confused ever since.
The club need to stop charging alpha prices and pretending they’re an alpha club if they’re happy being beta though. This illusion that they want to become an alpha is wearing thin and fans are rightly questioning them more and more. ENIC need to dig deep financially or sell up to someone who will.
I think I'd place us in the bracket of being a high end Beta club. Pochettino though probably gave the board the illusion we were actually an Alpha club as it was under him where we dared to dream of league and continental success for a few seasons, we've not been in that situation since before I were born. That's why in the last few years Levy's seemingly forgotten we are still only a Beta club but has tried making Alpha appointments and it's resulted in a skewed mess with managers and signings largely not fitting with one another. I agree that there wasn't much to hate on in Levy's statement, albeit a fair bit felt was more or less cut and paste from the responses to the THST and that just felt lazy. Spending has massively improved, it's just largely gone on dross as you've said. We can't easily write off the Ndombele's, Lo Celso's and Richarlison's either yet and that's partly why we're still not in Alpha territory, because they'll likely need shifting before we can considerably spend large amounts again. We'll have to accept substantial losses on the first two but if those at the club have half a brain cell we'll cash in on Richarlison this summer where his stock will still be relatively high after his goals at the World Cup and we'd likely only make a small loss. We'll probably need to cash in on Kane too, so the summer rebuild should go to a manager who can do just that - rebuild - and Conte evidently can't do that.
I've been keeping a record of Spurs team goals scored and conceded against which individuals are on the pitch. Anyone want to guess which outfield player's presence leads to the most positive goal difference and which has the only negative goal difference (restricted to those with ten appearances).
So basically you want someone other than the fans to pay the costs of improving us. Other than for sports washing why should anyone do that?
I'm intrigued to know more about this, not that I'd read too much into it as there as so many factors at play game by game it is more than a bit reductive to draw causal links to specific players in either direction, but if I had to take a guess I'd probably go for one of Perisic or Hojbjerg as the outfield player connected to a negative GD.
Right so as I suspected, the data is skewed due to other variables. Bentancur is positive because he is by a distance our best CM. Dier is positive because he is the only natural option in that position so has played almost every game...and overall we have scored more than we have conceded. But that is not to say we wouldn't be doing much better with an upgrade on him at CCB. Sessegnon is atrocious but also hasn't started 10 games this season, he's started 8. Unless by appearances you meant even 5 minute cameos at the end of a game, which hardly seems like a fair data set.
What this calculation actually measures is whether we do badly when the player isn't playing. In Dier's case the only match he completely missed, we lost 2-0 and the other match he didn't start we were 2-1 down when he came on and we won 3-2. Sessegnon has played 795 minutes which seems enough to include him. Most of his substitute appearances have been quite long
I doubt it tells much. A bad player can be carried by good players and a good player can be brought down by bad ones, then opposition players playing well or not can also alter outcomes so it can easily give misleading data or potential false conclusions as to who is positively or negatively impacting games from a Spurs perspective. I think you just need to have a visual judgement on individuals to determine who we need more of and who we need less of. Kane, Bentancur and Hojbjerg have largely been great. Son, Dier and Sessegnon have largely been awful. The rest are either at a net zero impact in which they've done good and bad in pretty much equal measure, whereas others need more minutes to determine where they should be.
Don't suppose there's any chance of Conte having another minor op in the next couple of days? And then every week til the end of the the season?
Honestly, he shouldn't have been in charge yesterday as it felt like he was rushed back So no, it doesn't just apply to players...
Wanna get excited at seeing him here next season but know that if Conte’s still here, he’ll be getting the Djed Spence treatment.
...and if we employ Poch, prepare yourself for the return of Winks, N'Dombele and Lo Celso...who are also likely to get chances under any other fresh appointment (with a new DoF). Whatever we do next, I've no faith that it'll significantly improve our situation. It'll be half arsed, no matter what.
Think Poch would love Bissouma, pretty sure we looked at him as a Dembele heir during Poch’s reign too.
