Daniel was fresh hungry and ahead of the curve. I was a fan, as we progressed and improved. All that tailed off and died as his attentions went elsewhere, the club outgrew the capabilities of the small cabal of Daniel Discipes and the level of time and expertise required increased, as we battled at a higher level. He became stuck in his ways, as those ways became inappropriate for the size of business we had become and outmoded. He wouldn't cede control of any of it and, out of absolute necessity, it had to be taken away from him for the good of the club and its owners. His and Joe's time was over. If you genuinely want to understand why he had to be removed, see my last post (still the last word on that topic?) on the thread about his departure. Listen to the podcast. It's everything I had been saying for just shy of a decade... I genuinely hope you get it, because it's all true.
Add on top ridiculous ticket prices. That’s what I think is causing a horrendous atmosphere. Pound for pound I’d say Spurs have had one of the worst atmospheres in the Premier League over the past 2-3 years.
The Pathetic playing silly buggers with a clickbaity headline comparing Frank's tactics to Nuno's Frank's tactics are hamstrung by at least one missing component in his system due to both Deki and Maddison being out (though the pivot clearly needs a Modric/Iniesta-like player, as is becoming abundantly clear) Nuno had the components he needed for his tactics, but the players treated him as the stopgap they knew he was so there was no commitment to them
Bergvall could potentially be that type but he’s likely needed to play in the 10 due to how **** Simons has been, who himself was ideally brought in to cover and then compete with Maddison/ Kulu for the creative roles. I don’t blame Frank for much at the moment anyway, working with our “attackers” if we can even call them that, many managers would struggle with this lot. Richarlison is and always has been a relegation calibre striker, Tel and Odobert at the moment are Championship calibre players, Johnson’s a great finisher but if the ball’s not on a plate for him you’d never know he was playing and Simons hasn’t earnt the right to be called “Xavi” yet, in fact right now l’m gonna call him Chavvy. Only thing I’d criticise Frank on is not making some changes earlier, I felt at times he’s been a bit Poch-esque by waiting for the bad to happen, instead of anticipating it beforehand.
It used to be in 5 years, then a new project, end of the project,3 years, 4 years etc etc There’s no balance in your argument because I’ve never seen you say the cycle has failed, you just do a Levy and kick the can down the road When is one accountable for their decisions and predictions?
The issue with our squad makeup is we have three players who can play as an 8, but none of them are the metronome needed so we can create passing structures in the middle of the pitch - and this is creating a lot of the backwards passing and isolated front band Definitely need Paratici to get us our Serie A care package in January
Predictions are just that. They get made wrong by events and nobody should be held accountable. Decisions have outcomes and if the outcomes are below expectation then there should be accountability. Whatever you think of Levy's style of management there is no evidence of underperformance. All the clubs round us in the League when Levy took over have done worse and the only one that has really improved is Man City
Poor predictions I can live with to a degree. For instance, as bad as the 19/20 window was, no one at the time could have likely predicted it to have been that bad. Negligence however is something I don’t think can be forgiven. We’ve sold two of our best ever players and in the windows they left we never signed a replacement. The spots they used to fill are now currently taken up by players that shouldn’t be anywhere near the XI and/ or club. As for underperformance - and this is a point I’ve made time and time again - if you’re going to charge amongst the highest ticket prices in world football, then you have to deliver a team worthy of such, otherwise you get a stadium that is now more and more becoming soulless and developing a reputation almost as bad as “Boodison”.
Already seeing a very disturbing picture on one measure (we will know by the end of the season whether the above is the cause) .
There is significance in the division (specifically the amount of terrace support to lift/berate the team during a game depending on the performance on-pitch) .
I am paying for the highest price seats in the stadium. I see that as my way of helping to fund a better team. I can afford it and I honestly don't know how I would feel if I was going without basic essentials to fund my ticket. But I wouldn't boo the team or call for the manager or chairman to be sacked under any circumstances, at least those related to performance. I would boo Thomas Partey even if he played for us. We are not entitled to be successful.
That was one of the worst performances I've ever seen, despite the narrow scoreline. Chelsea weren't particularly good and they didn't have to be. We were abject. Couldn't string a couple of passes together and made absolutely no threat to their goal. I've not read the other comments on here yet and I'll get to them later. There's a lot of factors that have lead up to this and some of our players are knackered already. I don't expect much when we play Chelsea, but that was pathetic, even by those standards.
I humbly suggest the possibility that you aren't tempted to boo precisely because the cost of tickets, by your own admission, doesn't make a dent in your weekly budget. I don't envy you for that, on the contrary I'm happy for you. But fans who have to make a very careful decision every week how to allocate their funds and perhaps even make sacrifices elsewhere in order to be able to afford to support the team (which is a growing number of people as the economy in this country continues to remain comatose)? I fully understand their frustration if they have to sit and endure the kind of performance we churned out on Saturday.
I don’t boo either, albeit I do shout expletives when I’m annoyed but realistically there are very few other ways for fans to voice their discontent when they’re paying so much money for an often poor product. In any business, the more you pay the higher quality you expect, whether it’s in clothing, food, vehicles etc so the same has to apply to football and then when the thing you’ve paid for isn’t up to standard you’re going to complain. I don’t think the higher ticket prices are actually helping to fund a better team. I’d say that for the most part, we’re signing poorer calibre players than we were 15+ years ago at WHL. Over the last 6-7 years especially, I’d say our transfer success rate has been around 20-30% at best, I’m pretty sure a few years back you and I agreed that you need a minimum of a 50% success rate in order to progress.
There is now more competition to sign the same supply of players so I think everyone has a worse outcome on recruitment now. But I don't think the booing comes from disquiet about expense. The right theoretical response to that is to go and watch a different club. But fans don't have that choice because of their emotional commitment. But booing is still totally illogical because that just makes it less likely that the team will play well.
Yes but I think even that isn't the whole story. Football fans want to bask in the reflected glory of their team. If there isn't any glory to reflect then they get frustrated. Personally I am very happy with my situation and any reflected glory is just icing on the cake. I am very lucky but I also think it allows me to analyse our situation in a much less biased way than most fans.
I don't really think there's more competition, we've just made more wrong choices than right ones in the market over the last 6 years and that's what has allowed other teams to close the gap on us. We can still largely target a lot of very good players that many others in the Prem can't, unfortunately we tend to waste a lot of our resources on players like Richarlison, Johnson, Solanke, Odobert, Tel and even Gray. FWIW I don't think Gray is bad and obviously has considerable potential but equally I'm not sure he was the right player we should've been spending £40m on either. I definitely think booing is connected to it. High prices and consistently bad performances will go hand in hand in creating a toxic atmosphere, I think we've only won 3-4 home games in the league this calendar year, supporters paying the 2nd/ 3rd highest prices in Europe should expect better. And whilst booing may be counterproductive to the team, I'm generally of the opinion that players should be putting in their absolute best from minute 1 to 90 regardless of whether they're playing in an empty field or 60,000 seater stadium, they're paid a fortune every week, that alone is enough motivation to make you graft your arse off.
