So on that basis, your response is to try not just another manager, but a previous one that was treated with contempt by our current chairman in the hope it may or may not work and paper over the huge gaping cracks at our club, until it goes tits up again in 12 months time. You'd prefer to do this because it's the exact same logic that our chairman has... make small, quick easy changes and lay the blame at the feet of the symptom rather than the root cause based on the logic that change at a higher level may or may not bring success for fear of what... worse? Can it get any worse? Our team is rudderless, leaderless and is there for the taking... it can't simply be the manager alone. It runs through our club and it's a disease that need eradicating. Evidence overwhelmingly displays the hierarchy at the club made structural appointments and transfers to date that have been at best pretty questionable and at worse, the beginnings of a massive decline at our club and I only see it getting worse that I confidently predict, we'll be rooted well and truly in the bottom 6 come January. So the solution is... let's ignore the elephant in the room and get the fourth manager in 12 months and that'll solve everything. Great, we really are a laughing stock aren't we!
No1 seems to be mentioning Baldini. My main gripe with Levy is that he insists on a DoF when it clearly doesn't work. Harry was the only one who didn't have to work with one and got the players he wanted (except for Levy signing Rafa which was a bonus). Let the manager choose who we sign, that way he can be judged fairly if the player turns out to be a flop and also that way we know he actually wanted him in the first place and wasn't given a cheap alternative to what he actually asked for. Eg Dembele instead of Moutinho and Stambouli instead of Schneiderlin.
lol It's true that we don't know for sure. But, as I have said, and others have alluded to, somebody has to accept responsibility. If not Levy, then we should be told who. There's no point in blaming the manager or Baldini as the question remains, who hired them? Yes, that's the most worrying thing. It's a complete dispirited, demotivated shambles. We could seriously be sucked into a relegation battle soon. The footballing side of things at the club has been run incompetently for some while now. It's high time that the culprit(s) were indentified and prevented from causing any more damage.
The circus boss is a big problem but a good ringmaster can help hugely. Let's contact Dutch circus Ajax and speak to their ringmaster to come and join our circus, I think it will help enormously if the same one is still there. Doing well for one season at Saints isn't good enough for Spurs, winning the Dutch league four times on the trot is good enough for Spurs. What looks better when it's written down "Spurs boss Mauricio Pochettino or Spurs boss Frank de Boer? I know which one I think looks better. We can't blame Poch as he's only been here a very short time, the one to blame is Levy. Out goes Harry who was the most successful for a while. Out went Graham who won us a trophy. TOP NAMES. TOP NAMES. Levy, FDB is a top name, GET HIM HERE YOU PLANK. Oh and didn't Kane do well yesterday, missed a good chance. Strange starting him after he missed a sitter.
People have mentioned Baldini on a few occasions but I think most people recognise that he just represents just another in a long line of DOFs who don't seem to be working out in terms of signings or running that side of the club. But the question is why? Is it because Baldini is sourcing and recommending absolute duff players or is it that Levy refuses to buy the top end ones that get recommended and opts for the second rate, cheaper alternative will a potentially good sell on price? Or is it thirdly that Levy has just hired the wrong man for the wrong job (again) full stop? We could go stir crazy chewing over the possible causes and faults in this part of our club but its the very man at the top who insisted in returning to that system after Harry left and it was Levy who hired these guys. So the buck has to stop somewhere. All I know is that our Chairman has been a very divisive figurehead amongst the Spur faithful for the past few years now and it appear to only be getting worse. As far as I see it, there's two factions - you're either: 1) Pro-Levy - the group that reflects on the past and his financial acumen and where we were before he took over our club or 2) Anti-Levy - the group who reflects on his appointment and man management skills and where he's now taking our club (especially since Harry went) All I can say is the "pro" camp are running out of steam in my opinion. You can't keep using a story from 13 years ago to totally whitewash the fact that 10 managers have come and gone and in that time we hired some terrible managers, got bailed out mostly by luck in the form of Jol and Redknapp and when the going was just starting to look good, we fire them. For me, there's clearly an insanely megalomaniacal element running at the top at Spurs because some decisions over the past few years just baffle me. The press don't call us the most political club in the league for no reason and Shearer on MOTD2 last night seemed to elude to this and the fact that our club is in turmoil. It's really sad but many of us knew it was coming and now its here, it's worse than I thought it would be.
I'm not pro or anti Levy but I think I am realistic. I've been a Spurs supporter for nearly fifty years and we've never been real championship contenders in that time. Levy is the first chairman who really seems to be genuinely trying to change things for the better. Doing something about the training ground and the stadium and building for the future. The DoF thing really gets me - I'd argue the real reason Harry did so well was because he had such high quality players particularly Bale and Modric, who were signed by a DoF. Harry's ability to get the best out of a team is very high but he has left a legacy nowhere he has managed because all his signings only fix short-term problems. One of our difficulties now is that we've got no quality players coming through from his days at the club. I think the only signings he made that we still have are Walker, Naughton and Friedel. Levy has made loads of mistakes but he has got a very hard job because expectations are so unrealistic. We ought to be around sixth and win the occasional cup - It is clubs like Aston Villa, Newcastle, Nottingham Forest and Sunderland that we ought to be comparing our performance with - they were the upper mid-table clubs who we used to battle with for the cups and the last UEFA cup spot from the league. They've all fared far worse than us in the new world where money matters so much. Only us and Everton have really held on to the coat-tails of the super rich. There is no way we can be more successful than we are currently unless we get very lucky with a manager, or our current young squad comes good (that will take two to three years as it did for Bale and Modric). In the meantime the people in charge and the team deserve our support not being called clowns.
flaspur you talk as though pre Levy everything was fine it was not, far from it. Just look at the history since Bill Nich. you could argue that we have Burkinshaw for 6 years, Venables for 4, Jol for 3 and Redknapp for 4 and the rest have been poor. That means since Bill Nich the 27 years pre Levy, produced 10 with decent managers and the 13 with Levy have produced 7. So percentage wise he's doing better than predecessors. That's without the near death experience that Sugar saved us from. So far from the pro Levy brigade running out of arguments we still have IMO a better case for backing Levy than yours for opting for the unknown in some forlorn hope that we will suddenly have a winning football team. Levy is chairman of a board of directors all whom must have an input, otherwise why are they there, but as I have said many times the finances are one thing, and on this they have done a good job, football decisions are completely in the hands of the gods. Just point to a club of Spurs status that has enjoyed continuous sporting success, even the likes of Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, and Manchester United have fallow periods and we are just not in their league. What you can spot quite quickly is a manager who is out of his depth, we've had lots of those, and right now IMO, we have yet another one.
The DoF is a big issue. It's been debated before. A DoF doesn't work! Show me a manager who wants someone else to choose which players to buy for his team? Show me a manager who is content to coach players he wouldn't have bought and get the best from them? There are few who can make this work well. Levy backed AVB with £100M being spent on players. I don't know how much of a say he had in buying them, but we know for certain they weren't Pochettino's choices. And the club aren't going to find another £100M for players to be recruited in their place. Soldado and Lamela cost £50M+ so they have to be persevered with. The club won't take a £25M+ hit in offloading them. Paulinho was another £17M, Chirches £9M, Eriksen £11M. It's difficult for any manager to succeed with players acquired for another manager, when that manager was deemed to have tried and failed with them before a second manager came along and was judged a failure too (Sherwood)! The difference under Redknapp was that he had a say over which players he bought. He brought in players he wanted and could work with. He choose a lot more wisely - van der Vaart was proven quality for £8M, Parker was an experienced PL midfielder, who gave the team just what it needed - cover in front of the back four and a water carrier for Modric. Redknapp had no difficulty motivating players who wanted to play for him. It would have been foolish to dilute his great man management skills by having an intermediary with greater powers and responsibities than him. I shudder to think what Clough or SAF would have made of a set up like this where they did not have the final say. We know that successful teams are not just a collection of good players. The manager needs to blend together the qualities of the individuals so they complement each other - and those players need to be motivated by him. It's not enough just to buy players to order - a tall centre half, a young, pacy left winger etc. The manager needs to know what personal attributes (as well as physical ones) those players have - their character, personality etc. Are they focused, diligent, willing to learn? Are they leaders? Can they settle into their new environment? These are often personal judgements which should be made by the manager. If the problem at Spurs at present is the manager's inability to mould together players he hasn't chosen, then the solution would appear to be either a) sack him and bring in a manager with a proven record of being able to organise and motivate - like Pulis- and get him to do the best with what he's got (which is a large squad of talented players, mostly internationals and many young and capable of improvement) or b) back him in January and/or next summer by letting him buy/sell the players he wants/doesn't want, even if that involves a substantial net spend including losses on the sales of certain expensive acquisitions.
Most football managers have no experience whatsoever of dealing in markets because most are ex footballers. It is not a co-incidence IMO that some of the most successful managers were never great footballers. They have reached the top with their managerial skills not by virtue of being able to kick a ball really well. There is the case for a director of football. It enables you to employ a 'coach', in theory someone who knows the game inside out, and that means usually an ex top footballer. Without having to rely on his complete lack of nous when it come to transfers. Redknapp told us he had the final say on the player but he did not handle the negotiations and that is as it should be, especially when you have a board of directors loaded with bankers and economists.
David Gill did the buying for SAF - but there was never any doubt who he was buying, down to the player's middle name and shoe size. There was no danger of him getting Carlton Palmer when he'd asked for Roy Keane.
So fla who is this mythical figure you have in mind who will always hire the right manager? If you can find one we will all back him, and any number of clubs will pay him a huge fortune to work for them.
Yes Luke but Spurs do not have the resources or the pull of Man U. and that makes the task here a little more difficult.
The fact that one in a thousand managers (eg SAF and Brian Clough) have the right combinations of skills to both buy players and coach them doesn't alter the fact that most managers struggle to do one of the parts well. I just don't buy the fact that Poch would be doing better if he had selected the squad. If he is a good coach he will get the best out of the resources at his disposal. If he isn't he shouldn't be in the job.
I love the sound system at Spurs , never has one been played so loud , that must be some record . Also not the usual bland crap but some indie rocking garage band . Maybe we are been re marketed for the beat generation and pink pound . I suppose we are near Camden Town and Soho is not far.
