Match Day Thread Tottenham Hotspur v Fulham

[PowerSpurs]

It depends on who is appointed. A club like Brighton has a clearly defined philosophy and style of play, with clear parameters defining their market strategy and this philosophy informs who they approach in the first place, which is why they can transition pretty seamlessly from one manager to the next.

I think we are living proof to the fact that it can often be an enormous tweak and that is if the club willingly opens the door to a radically different philosophy. The shift from Poch to Mourinho was disastrous and currently the shift from Conte to Ange has been extremely difficult and is yet to show any sort of consistent improvement.

United have had a similar experience, lurching from SAF to Moyes to LVG to Mourinho to Solksjaer to Ten Hag...all of them have very different interpretations of how the game should be played.

So I think you are fundamentally mistaken. The philosophy comes from the Club, not the manager. His role at interview is to demonstrate how he aligns with that philosophy and how he will implement it in reality to improve results. Because ultimately this is a results business wherein unlike other businesses which can and will absorb multiple terrible years running at a loss before hitting a growth stage, football moves far too quickly and under far too much scrutiny for that, so ultimately results are more important than philosophy.

The problem we've had imo is that Levy and the DoF haven't provided a unified coherent philosophy from the top down, while simultaneously not empowering managers to at least achieve results in their own way. Our treatment of Jose and Conte was akin to giving Lewis Hamilton a Fiat Punto with an iffy transmission and sacking him when he doesn't win the grand prix with it.

While I agree that football is a results business I definitely don't expect to get good results from a poor squad and I don't want the manager to get the sack if he doesn't achieve his ambitions. But what I've seen happen in every club is exactly that, except for the very rich ones where the managers get excess credit for the best players playing well.
I don't think we can say that any of our managers have over or under achieved. None of them has really departed from where we would expect to finish allowing for scatter and uncertainty. Even Poch's success could be attributed to accidentally inheriting a squad which was much better than the price we paid for it. He certainly hasn't done anything since leaving us that shows he has any special coaching talents.
If you remember Mourinho specifically said that he was very keen to work with the group of players we had. I reckon he basically told Levy that Poch had underachieved and he could do better. Hardly surprising that he didn't last long when he didn't achieve anything.
I think Levy has generally tried to get managers with an attacking philosophy, the exceptions being Mourinho (for the reasons stated above, I think Levy was seduced into hiring him) and Nuno/Conte which Levy clearly delegated to Paratici. I think sacking Jol and Poch early and those three hires were big mistakes.

 

[Citizen Kane.]

While I agree that football is a results business I definitely don't expect to get good results from a poor squad and I don't want the manager to get the sack if he doesn't achieve his ambitions. But what I've seen happen in every club is exactly that, except for the very rich ones where the managers get excess credit for the best players playing well.
I don't think we can say that any of our managers have over or under achieved. None of them has really departed from where we would expect to finish allowing for scatter and uncertainty. Even Poch's success could be attributed to accidentally inheriting a squad which was much better than the price we paid for it. He certainly hasn't done anything since leaving us that shows he has any special coaching talents.
If you remember Mourinho specifically said that he was very keen to work with the group of players we had. I reckon he basically told Levy that Poch had underachieved and he could do better. Hardly surprising that he didn't last long when he didn't achieve anything.
I think Levy has generally tried to get managers with an attacking philosophy, the exceptions being Mourinho (for the reasons stated above, I think Levy was seduced into hiring him) and Nuno/Conte which Levy clearly delegated to Paratici. I think sacking Jol and Poch early and those three hires were big mistakes.

Plus hiring AVB and then sacking him a few months after he set a new PL points record and lost the third best player in the world and was then totally ignored by a DoF on cocaine when he put forward his shortlist of who to reinvest the money in.

Plus hiring Sherwood for longer than an hour.

Plus hiring Santini when his DoF wanted Jol.

Plus hiring Ramos.

The mistakes vastly outnumber the successes. The buck stops with him and ultimately it seems that every mitigating excuse under the sun is cited in Levy's defence but our managers are not afforded the same luxury.

 

[Dier Hard]

Even Poch's success could be attributed to accidentally inheriting a squad which was much better than the price we paid for it. He certainly hasn't done anything since leaving us that shows he has any special coaching talents.
If you remember Mourinho specifically said that he was very keen to work with the group of players we had. I reckon he basically told Levy that Poch had underachieved and he could do better. Hardly surprising that he didn't last long when he didn't achieve anything.

I think Poch has done ok, he won a double in his second season at PSG and was then weirdly sacked by Chelsea after finally instilling his style of play on them, which Maresca has now inherited and utilised/ improved on.

I actually think Poch would be able to do far better with our current group of players than Ange but that's a debate for another day.

As for Jose, I think he done what a lot of those outside Spurs had done and scratch their heads as to how we went from CL finalists to midtable within about 5 months. The issue was that many from the outside didn't see how many Spurs players had been declining the previous season and that the CL final papered over huge cracks. Dier for instance was someone Jose wanted at Utd with a rumoured £50m bid but by the time he inherited Dier he would've barely been worth £5m. Likewise Vertonghen, Alderweireld and Rose who'd declined/ started to decline too. Wanyama's body was battered and Dele had lost his way. I doubt Jose at the time realised the issues we were facing and just saw "oh they have these great players, I'll make it work" but then after a short while realised what he'd walked into. He ended making a superb analysis of what was needed and was problematic which I think we saw a lot of on the Amazon Doc, he called about 95% of things correctly, the problem however was that some of his methods and antics exacerbated existing issues and it ended up just being a poor marriage between us.

 

[Spurf]

Agreed.

And Brighton have been a huge example in recent seasons of ensuring the manager is the right fit for the team and ethos. The transitions from Potter to De Zerbi to Hurzeler have been seemless. Slot's so far taking over and actually improving on what Klopp was doing last season too. Many clubs across Europe have similar success like Dortmund/ Ajax/ Salzburg etc.

It's not to say I or anyone wants Ange sacked, far from it but as long as you hire managers with similar principles, the success (or failure) should be relatively the same. The biggest difference is the quality of player they get to inherit or buy - the latter's what Ange needs here if he's to truly succeed.

Having one direction and sticking with it, as Brighton have done is what we should have done. Instead we played the names game without considering what style of football the potential manager played. We have literally turned our football on its head by taking Ange on, and I am pleased we have, but you cannot expect to improve with such a non strategy. There is almost a pattern of switching with each succesive mangerial appointment from progressive to defensive and back again. It all smacks of management by committee.

By now ENIC should know that Spurs fans will not tolerate ultra defensive for long, certainly not without winnning anything, but already some fans are getting restless with our inconsitency. If we go for what I would call progressive football then we will not be so consistent. The PL is like that at the moment, with most teams being inconsistent, and the games, as a spectator sport, are better for it. If we could put 3 or 4 wins in a row it would transform all our perceptions, but right now I wouldn't want to put money on any Spurs game.

 

[PowerSpurs]

Plus hiring AVB and then sacking him a few months after he set a new PL points record and lost the third best player in the world and was then totally ignored by a DoF on cocaine when he put forward his shortlist of who to reinvest the money in.

Plus hiring Sherwood for longer than an hour.

Plus hiring Santini when his DoF wanted Jol.

Plus hiring Ramos.

The mistakes vastly outnumber the successes. The buck stops with him and ultimately it seems that every mitigating excuse under the sun is cited in Levy's defence but our managers are not afforded the same luxury.

Managers are generally overpaid with little skill and don't deserve to last very long. But they don't do much harm. A poor chairman can destroy the club. The risk reward in changing a chairman and a manager is entirely different.

 

[Spurf]

We are expecting Yang Min-hyeok in Jan. Our latest South Korean player. We have millions of supporters in S.Korea now thanks to Son. No doubt we were keen to find a new player from there to hold the interest of all those fans. Was Ange employed to also raise interest in Spurs in both Japan and Australia? These are all factors in football nowadays.

 

[Dier Hard]

Having one direction and sticking with it, as Brighton have done is what we should have done. Instead we played the names game without considering what style of football the potential manager played. We have literally turned our football on its head by taking Ange on, and I am pleased we have, but you cannot expect to improve with such a non strategy. There is almost a pattern of switching with each succesive mangerial appointment from progressive to defensive and back again. It all smacks of management by committee.

By now ENIC should know that Spurs fans will not tolerate ultra defensive for long, certainly not without winnning anything, but already some fans are getting restless with our inconsitency. If we go for what I would call progressive football then we will not be so consistent. The PL is like that at the moment, with most teams being inconsistent, and the games, as a spectator sport, are better for it. If we could put 3 or 4 wins in a row it would transform all our perceptions, but right now I wouldn't want to put money on any Spurs game.

I think counter attacking football from a solid defence can be excellent to watch when done right, we done it a bit under both Jose and Conte but then things went pair shaped.

In general I do agree though that for Spurs' philosophy/ ethos we need managers with the intent to attack and develop players and so long as we persist with hiring as such there should at some stage be something fruitful.

I think fans - like myself if I'm honest - are restless mainly with the club more so than manager, I don't think we as a club are ambitious enough on the pitch. We have grand plans for everything outside it but I'm often underwhelmed with decisions for on the pitch, which frankly is all I and the majority of fans care about. The summer gone for instance was one of our worst windows in a while in my opinion and I called it from the start that I thought Ange was going to be in for a season of struggle because of it, which so far it has been. I don't think Ange himself has helped matters though and the inconsistency in our play has to fall on his shoulders but I genuinely don't know what the club were expecting of him or the team after the window they gave him. We'd just scraped 5th last season after losing 5 of our final 6 games and decided to then sign just one player to go straight into our XI and whilst Solanke's a marginal upgrade on Richarlison he isn't the level of player that's made any game changing impact. We needed 3 or 4 Solanke's to have made a genuine difference.

 

[The RDBD]

I expect that Levy knows that less than two years of Data is entirely insufficient

Close to 40 years.

< pay attention >

 

[The RDBD]

The second season is very much crucial for managers here, any danger of no European football and they're gone.

IMHO the UEFA land stuff is coincidental
(qualification implies on-pitch performance of some kind) .


"The three best managers we've had in Levy's tenure all had great second seasons:
Jol got 5th (robbed of 4th due to lasagna-gate)
Redknapp got 4th
Pochettino got 3rd"

More importantly as supporters, did you ENJOY
watching the football they brought at/after that time ??


"Almost everyone else was sacked for being around 7th or below with a few weeks/ months left of the season,
Conte the exception who was 4th albeit it was almost a certainty we weren't going to finish there."

Re above, their football was dire, irrespective of position.
On Conte, I am on record as being charitable on the demise of
his second season (but do acknowledge that citing his
second season at Chelsky would be "fair comment" ) .


"It's why I've maintained in Ange's case that if by late Jan/ Feb we're still around 8th,
Levy will almost certainly get twitchy fingers."

Also factor the EL performance to that point into it.

As I recently said, the projections based on performance
to date should/could see Ange gone, but with serious
(never seen ??) "outlier" stats.

 

[Tilly'sowner]

Pochettino got 3rd"

Is this when we came third in a two horse race?

 

[KingHotspur]

Managers are generally overpaid with little skill and don't deserve to last very long. But they don't do much harm

Completely disagree.