We've had 8 managers in 10 yrs. from Santini in 2004 through to pochettino in 2014. Ain't many would be successful clubs can match that - or even come close. The answer to the first bit would be anybody who knows more about football than the average club chairman - which would probably include most of us!
Not counting caretakers I reckon Chelsea have one more and City one fewer since Levy started in 2001. We'd be relegated in two seasons if any of the posters on here took charge of the club - almost everyone completely underestimates how hard football jobs are to do well.
Well, picking managerial failures seems easy enough. Levy strikes gold almost every time.,.. As I said, 8 managers in 10 years - ridiculous.
Just to pop some nationalistic bubbles re. spelling and "Americanisation": The current British English rule is that "ise" and "ize" suffixes are both usable and correct. The simpler, and therefore superior, American rule is that it just has to be "ize". All American spelling changes come from a trend to make English less of a mess and make spelling more logical and less elitist. Dyslexia is much more of a problem in UK than in Spain and Italy not because it's less prevelant in those places but because the written language is so much less phonetic and confusing in the UK to begin with. Americanization of spelling is just a good thing. No need to get all Little Englander about having to insert unnecessary "u"s all over the place! Anyway - have we signed Damiao yet? Also it's funny how the concensus has gone from the pre-season "give Lamela one more season" / "His undoubted talent was starting to come to the fore" to a general acceptance that he should go. What a difference 3 games of actually watching him play can make!
I very much doubt Levy hires a manager based on his judgement of who will be suitable, I suspect he will have a selection of advisor's that he calls on and possibly David Pleat is one of them. Levy I'm sure has other interests, he isn't just sat around in an office thinking about us, thats why he will need advisors, but if you want to discuss Levy and him hiring managers, you really need to talk about who he goes to for advice, which really is just guesswork. But when he hired Pochettino, do you think he was watching MOTD every week and taking notes of this "great young manager". I'm sure he takes an interest in football to a certain degree, but I don't believe for a second he has ever hired a manager without getting advice, as I doubt he believes his knowledge of football would allow him to make such a decision. My take on this, is that there are people on the board and people on levys contact list that are helping make decisions, yet as fans we look to Levy as he's the chairman and he ultimately makes the final decision.
How cherry-picked are those two examples, though? I mean both clubs had the hugely destabilizing transitions due to mega-money coming in. They're basket-case examples. Anyway - agree with you re. transfers in a way. 2/6 is probably about what we can expect to succeed (I remember going on about this two years ago to temper people's excitement about The Malignant Seven). Is that ratio particularly bad? I reckon most clubs would have a similar sort of success/failure rate. Either way, you would have to compare Spurs' success ratio with other clubs - not with some imagined situation where 100% of transfers should succeed. The latter never comes close to happening for anyone ever.
I can't agree that two thirds of your transfer buys are going to be failures - I don't believe that's 'normal'. For us recently, yes, and high profile ones too. Soldado, Lamela, Paulinho, all bought and sold within 2 yrs at a considerable loss. This is assuming Lamela is off back to Italy, which looks highly likely.
Of course he gets lots of advice - there was that one member of the board who had been pushing for Redknapp for a while before he came. Of course the worry is the bit where you say "...possibly David Pleat is one of them."
Thats why I mentioned it David Pleat talked up Baldini before he arrived and I remember listening to this clip (worth a listen) Pleat on how Franco Baldini can take Tottenham to the next level http://talksport.com/radio/weekend-...-baldini-can-take-tottenham-next-level-200180 I'm convinced he played a role in recommending Baldini to Levy. He strikes me as having this arrogance and and sounds very bitter with comments such as "only stupid managers".
If we have a below average transfer ability then our squad should be below average for the amount we spend on it. You also claim that we've had a succession of managerial failures. So exactly what is causing us to finish routinely one place above the level our resources would suggest? There are only three possibilities I can see: something we are not discussing is more important than the manager and players, it's a miracle (because being lucky 6 seasons running is very unlikely); or we're doing more things right than you think....
If these managers were so hot, why were they all fired then? I would have thought it was self explanatory!..the only two successes Levy got by accident. Jol after he had to fire Santini. And Redknapp in a panic, after he ****ed up, yet again, with Ramos
Go have a look at other teams' transfer records and find out what's normal - I'll bet that 50% success rate is very high. Ours has been low of late but the scatter-gun approach seems to go hand-in-hand with a DOF system. I think the players we signed under Harry were more likely to affect the first team positively than those before or since. (Before and since Harry we've been more interested in speculating and making money rather than buying players for the team). But even then I think you'll find that over half of Harry's signings were in the Kyle Naughton end of things rather than the Kyle Walker.
Not at all really - the only examples I can find of someone having a lot fewer managers than us are the three in an earlier post - Man U, Arsenal and Everton everyone else I've checked has about the same number as us.
No nonsense midfielder, unfortunately. Although I can fill in it at left back so with Chadli I could help bring back those great right footed, left side partnerships that we had with Tainio, Malbranque, Young Pyo Lee and Stalteri.
If have to look. But I think we actually made a profit on Naughton - who we constantly played out of position anyway. I'm no Harry apologist, but his signings made a hell of a lot more sense than most we've made since.
A brief look at our transfer history over the past 7-8 years reveals one thing so clearly it's lunacy Levy keeps flirting with the experiment: The DOF set-up simply doesn't work. Even applying the most lenient of benchmarks and disregarding cost completely by just asking: was this player a success and did they contribute noticeably to the club? Reveals the following: 14-15 (Baldini): A little too early but apparently not to already be able to label 2 of the 7 signed last season as great big 'nopes'. 13-14 (Baldini): 7 signed, 2 success, 5 nopes. 12-13 (No DOF): 8 signed, 2 success, 3 maybe, 3 nope. 11-12 (No DOF): 4 signed, 2 success, 2 nope 10-11 (No DOF): 5 signed, 3 success, 2 nope 09-10 (No DOF): 6 signed, 5 success, 1 nope 08-09 (Comolli): 11 signed, 4 success, 1 maybe, 6 nope 07-08 (Comolli): 8 signed, 3 success, 5 nope. In other words, if you want your 'nope' level to drop below 50% of the transfers made, get rid of the DOF!
Our managers have been just above average as far as I can see. They got fired for not being well above average which is what we need to get to the next level. I approve of Levy's strategy here - you give them enough time to see if they can make a real difference and fire them if not. And if something rally bad happnes you have to act quickly which is what Levy did with Ramos
