It always happens doesn't it? Some big time club comes along and turns their head.It happened to us and Villa.Hope it does Spuds as much good as it did them.
Worked out pretty well the last time they poached our manager. The 4-0 thrashing we gave Hoddle's team in the FA Cup was one of the all time great St Marys occasions.
I honestly don't think MP will do that well at Tottenham. Maybe it's sour grapes, but I don't think so. I think he was sheltered in a lot of ways because we were just very excited to be doing so well and would overlook flaws and no one questioned him too much. Which is why he could give interviews in Spanish and it wasn't a big deal. But I personally felt that he did not handle the pressure of losing that well, and I said so at the time. That period in December-January when we were hit with injuries and dropping down the table and the Osvaldo thing happened. That was when he was complaining about the officials a lot and appealing Osvaldo's deserved suspension, and the coaches got in a fight, and the Lallana thing where we wouldn't let it die, etc. He was able to duck out of that here. But I think at Tottenham something like that would have been made a bigger deal and it would have put more pressure on him, and he would have hit back, and it would have spiraled out of control.
It's like Cortese...when he was ours we overlooked his faults. Saints fans like to watch good football which he certainly gave us, but we should actually have done better than we did....though 8th was good for us. There was talk that his job was on the line when we suffered our bad slump, though that would have been harsh (if even true). He had faults with a failure to have a plan B...we are more tolerant than Spurs will be. However, he may do better with a bigger squad.
Yes. And perhaps he has learned from his mistakes. It's a bit of a bitter pill that he does his learning with us and we're stuck with the mess (like the Osvaldo contract), but he did some good things for us as well. I'm not saying he was a bad manager, but more that I think he was rough around the edges. He took our star player off just about every game, in part to get JWP some game time. Being a smaller club we recognize the importance of that. And we were happy to finish eighth so there wasn't as much at stake. Credit to him for seeing the big picture, but will he get the same leeway from the Tottenham supporters, press and players? Some of the tactical issues, like possession without scoring, or teams seeming to adjust to our tactics and play better in the second half-- that stuff can be smoothed over with better scorers/larger squad. Maybe it was never a flaw of his to begin with but just Saints not having the depth or stars. But the other stuff, I'm not sure about. I just think he would have been a lot better off in his career to stay with us another year. He could have polished his skills up a bit, or even if he doesn't need polishing it would have convinced other clubs he has them. He's going to Spuds now as their second or third choice which isn't a great situation. And their fans are a bit skeptical, which tbf they have a right to be as he's more unknown than possibly some other choices they might have made. He could have signed a modest one year extension and then quit after next year, so in reality he'd only be committing one year. If we failed to bring in players or too many players left, I really don't think it would have hurt him because anyone would be able to see what happened. They know Lallana, etc. were good and most were expecting them to be poached and us to slide down the table anyway.
And not forgetting we got him the sack the day after we beat them 3-1 at "the Lane" ..."sacked in the morning, you're getting sacked in the morning" and he was. away fixture about February time to do it again?
