The problem is we have a manager with a history of quickly running out of patience with his clubs employed by a chairman with a history of exhausting everybody's patience quickly. It doesn't look like the recipe for a long stay. Not to be overly optimistic.
January is huge for Spurs. Have to be proactive and back Conte. He’s already shown why he’s an elite manager and if he walks then I genuinely have no idea where the club would go or what would be next to stop Spurs sliding into obscurity
The big issue for me is there's a lot of viable January targets locked in a game of chicken not just with their clubs, but also prospective clubs Kessie is the perfect example: he's turned down contract offer after contract offer at Milan so at this point Milan have to weigh up cashing in while they can or getting the most out of an asset that will be moving on at the end of the season, yet at the same time there's been talk of him wanting £150k a week to move in January which is almost double what Milan are paying him which, coupled with his entourage having this weird Tourettes where they keep blurting out "PSG" at random intervals makes it look like the plan all along is to get a fat signing fee in July
Even if there are reasons for doubting it will happen, it's a tremendous opportunity. It makes a lot more sense to invest in building a winner now than to throw money around trying to right a sinking ship, which is what was happening before Conte got here, and is all too likely to happen again after he leaves.
The recent steps of the Welsh and Scottish in relation to crowds at sporting events isn't good news for us. At the first possible sign of any potentially bad news regarding income, Daniel's going to be even more circumspect than normal regarding transfer funding. I'd like to think that he can remember what the stadium sounded like during and after the United defeat and that should Conte walk, that would be as nothing. However, the habits of a lifetime are hard to break and it could require him and Tavistock to put in funds and take a risk on getting into a European competition with greater reward than the one that we just got kicked out of. He can play safe and reap the whirlwind of failure or roll the dice and see where they fall.... ...basically, we're ****ed.
I feel pretty confident the board will back him. Reporters said at the time the board were taken aback by the response of the crowd against Utd and if they didn’t already clock before that game that they were skating on thin ice with the fans then they certainly would’ve done after it. They swallowed their pride, Fabio went and pestered Conte to the point where Conte probably made financial demands he didn’t think we’d meet but we said “sure, no problem” and then in he came. Next step for the board is to now back him and I think they know that.
No, we'll just introduce a rule at the bars saying if you buy yourself a pre-match pint, you also have to buy the halftime pint at the same time - and if you lost your ticket, tough, buy another
Honestly I do wonder at which point Paratici made inroads with Conte I know it's easy to believe that he did so during the Man Utd game after leaving his seat and never returning, but I personally believe when that happened he actually went to talk to Levy and outright said that he could get Conte in then and there as he'd been negotiating for a few weeks and all he needed was Levy's say so to make a formal approach
Not a chance Hojbjerg is in the top 100 and not a chance Hugo is outside of it. Don't get me wrong, the Dane is a good player but not that good.
He could be but I doubt it. The difference between the 100th best player and the 500th best player is likely too small for anyone to know for sure.
Some very interesting comments in Ally Gold's review of 2021, specifically regarding the farcical manager hunt to replace Maureen. In brief, it sounds like Poch and no DOF was genuinely our Plan A and when PSG told us to go forth, we switched to Plan B which was appointing Paratici and handing him the reins. Conte was top of his list, followed by Fonseca and then Gattuso. And then when they didn't work out we went for Nuno - a manager who hadn't been on either shortlist.
No it isn't. Even if you take the PL as a sample group of 500 (appx. 20 squads x 25 registered players) once you're outside the top 250 players employed by PL clubs, you are for all intents and purposes not good enough to start at any PL club. The next 250 players range from being good enough to make the bench to peripheral players who get minutes here and there in cup games or in the event of injuries etc. So whereas the 500th best player in the PL (i.e. the worst player in the division) might expect to play a couple of games for a bottom 3 club, the 100th best player will likely start every game for a top half club. The gulf is enormous and is like saying Pierre Hojbjerg is no more talented than Norwich's Lukas Rupp.
This should be shocking. It really should leave one reeling at the insanity of the club's owners, the chairman and all on the board of directors and the lack of understanding and planning that goes into sporting matters. It doesn't. It's no surprise at all.
That is actually irrelevant to my comment. The 100th best player in the PL is probably about 500th in the world* and the 500th best player in the PL is probably not in the top 10,000 in the world# so there will be a noticeable difference. * Assuming the 500 best players in the world are about evenly split between the PL, Italy, Germany, Spain and everywhere else. # The further you go down the list the more players will appear in weaker leagues. If you look at tennis rankings then a player ranked around 500 only needs a couple of wins to get into the top hundred. If you watched a series of matches between players ranked around 100 and around 500 then you would often mistake which player was which. In football it is appreciably harder to judge which player is better because you almost never see a one to one comparison.
Isn't it equally shocking that people with no experience of running a PL club think they know better than people who have got one to second place in the PL and CL?
