The way forward for THFC ??
- Thread starter The RDBD
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The squad remains the sixth most expensive and the one with the sixth highest wages and despite claims that half of them are not up to it, the manager has the wrong plan and the owners are useless, we still somehow cling on to fourth place.
Agreed the football is not much fun to watch but perhaps it is the only way to get more points than we deserve on paper.
Did the football of the final third of last season
"deserve" the points tally achieved ??
If we lose Kane in the summer, you’ll likely understand what that “somehow” was at this stage next season.
In your opinion, why were we markedly better under Pochettino when we are currently in a much, much stronger position financially? We weren't just clinging on to fourth place, we were wrapping it up with weeks left of the season, and competing until the latter stages of cup competitions at the same time. And we were playing football that was fun to watch. This wasn't a 'blip', it extended across over 3 seasons.
I ain't a fan of anything football related that Levy's done in the last 4 years but we won nothing between 1882 and 1901 (19 years) and nothing between 1901 and 1921 (20 years) but our worst spell was 1921 to 1951 (30 years) without a trophy.
This is just for accuracy
Only 7 clubs have won the Premier league and Leicester and Blackburn are exceptions to the rule.
There are in reality now 5 clubs who can claim to be the top clubs.
Unfortunately we are just not in there. We have never been serial winners of the league and have always been known best as a Cup club.
What I don't understand is how we cannot break into that top group - wjy can we not win the league.
For me the manager is really the be-all and end-all of a successful club. Someone like Graham Taylor - like him or loathe him - took a struggling fourth division club and took the to runners up in the top division and the FA Cup, Man U, Arsenal, Man City, Liverpool and Chelsea had brilliant managers whose time was right.
If ENIC want to win something they need to sit down and work out who is the next manager who can join the winners club
There are in reality now 5 clubs who can claim to be the top clubs.
Unfortunately we are just not in there. We have never been serial winners of the league and have always been known best as a Cup club.
What I don't understand is how we cannot break into that top group - wjy can we not win the league.
For me the manager is really the be-all and end-all of a successful club. Someone like Graham Taylor - like him or loathe him - took a struggling fourth division club and took the to runners up in the top division and the FA Cup, Man U, Arsenal, Man City, Liverpool and Chelsea had brilliant managers whose time was right.
If ENIC want to win something they need to sit down and work out who is the next manager who can join the winners club
Things most spurs fans agree on;
1. We are immeasurably better on and off the field (in the Premier league era) under Levy and Enic than before them.
2. The new stadium was a great achievement.
Some fans are still fully behind Enic and Levy continuing and some are totally against them continuing.
My personal opinion is that Levy should no longer have any say in footballing matters because since 2019 he has taken decisions which have dragged us backwards on the pitch.
The ones that spring to mind are:
1. In Pochettino's last full season we scrapped 4th cos Arsenal screwed up in their second to last game against Brighton.
He also got us to the CL final.
2. JM replaced him even though he did a poor job at getting United to play good football. Yes they won a trophy but very few (if any) United fans wanted him to stay even after they won EL. His man management, tactics and style of football alienated players and the fans.
3. The club sacked JM 2 months too late and only did so to take the heat of their moronic decision to join the ESL. It didn't matter to them that we were in disarray with a cup final just 6 days later.
4. It became obvious that there was no succession planning when we spent an embarrassing 12 weeks almost begging people to be our manager before bringing in Nuno and announcing he'd bring back exciting football to the club.
5. After the predictable car crash we got Conte who got us to 4th spot on the last day of the season cos Arsenal screwed up by losing their 2nd to last game of the season (sound familiar?)
We are visibly worse than we were in 2019.
That is ALL down to decisions taken by Levy.
Levy employed a manager renowned for having to but the best, most expensive players to win things playing pretty boring football (the complete opposite of Pochettino) but didn't give him a fortune to spend. So all we got were a handful of watchable game and a ton of boring football without winning.
Levy then went for Nuno who had a reputation for not needing tons of money (another complete opposite turn) and he gave us some mind numbingly football.
Levy then switched back to a "buying top players" manager in Conte.
There was no consistency in those decisions.
Either we get in a JM/Conte type and give them what they demand or we get a manager in who brings through and buys young players like Jol, Pochettino or Redknapp.
I have no faith that Levy will implement a long term strategy and employ a suitable managerial team to follow that through.
We have had three managers that have left us in a better place than when they found us in their time with us.
Jol was not his choice so he's only made two good managerial decisions out of eleven (I've excluded Jol). By any standards that's pretty poor.
1. We are immeasurably better on and off the field (in the Premier league era) under Levy and Enic than before them.
2. The new stadium was a great achievement.
Some fans are still fully behind Enic and Levy continuing and some are totally against them continuing.
My personal opinion is that Levy should no longer have any say in footballing matters because since 2019 he has taken decisions which have dragged us backwards on the pitch.
The ones that spring to mind are:
1. In Pochettino's last full season we scrapped 4th cos Arsenal screwed up in their second to last game against Brighton.
He also got us to the CL final.
2. JM replaced him even though he did a poor job at getting United to play good football. Yes they won a trophy but very few (if any) United fans wanted him to stay even after they won EL. His man management, tactics and style of football alienated players and the fans.
3. The club sacked JM 2 months too late and only did so to take the heat of their moronic decision to join the ESL. It didn't matter to them that we were in disarray with a cup final just 6 days later.
4. It became obvious that there was no succession planning when we spent an embarrassing 12 weeks almost begging people to be our manager before bringing in Nuno and announcing he'd bring back exciting football to the club.
5. After the predictable car crash we got Conte who got us to 4th spot on the last day of the season cos Arsenal screwed up by losing their 2nd to last game of the season (sound familiar?)
We are visibly worse than we were in 2019.
That is ALL down to decisions taken by Levy.
Levy employed a manager renowned for having to but the best, most expensive players to win things playing pretty boring football (the complete opposite of Pochettino) but didn't give him a fortune to spend. So all we got were a handful of watchable game and a ton of boring football without winning.
Levy then went for Nuno who had a reputation for not needing tons of money (another complete opposite turn) and he gave us some mind numbingly football.
Levy then switched back to a "buying top players" manager in Conte.
There was no consistency in those decisions.
Either we get in a JM/Conte type and give them what they demand or we get a manager in who brings through and buys young players like Jol, Pochettino or Redknapp.
I have no faith that Levy will implement a long term strategy and employ a suitable managerial team to follow that through.
We have had three managers that have left us in a better place than when they found us in their time with us.
Jol was not his choice so he's only made two good managerial decisions out of eleven (I've excluded Jol). By any standards that's pretty poor.
Bad luck, basically.
Leicester won the league with 81 points. We beat that by 5 the following season.
Our failure to win a cup is more perplexing, though.
Conte's not really a cup manager, so it's understandable during his time at the club.
Losing a bunch of finals and semi-finals prior to his arrival is less understandable.
Luck of the draw may have something to do with it, as we generally face good sides.
Our last four finals have been City, Liverpool, Chelsea and Man Utd.
There's been some "controversial" decisions in those matches, too.
Watford, Villa, Palace, Hull, Stoke, Portsmouth, Cardiff and others have made the FA Cup Final.
Villa, Southampton, Sunderland, Bradford, Swansea and Cardiff have made the League Cup Final.
We happen to bump into the usual suspects when we managed to get there.
Failing to beat **** teams on the way doesn't help, either.
Broadly agree with RCL’s points. The lack of consistency and direction are causing us a lot of problems.
Realistically we’re looking at a change of coach either at or before the end of the season and the general consensus seems to be that Paratici will not be around for too much longer either.
Generally I think the learning from these last few years is that the club best operates when we try and pick from the stable of new, up-and-coming managers rather than the Contes and Mourinhos of this world. The club just doesn’t seem to be set up for them and it’s clear from both of their tenures that bringing in a coach to instill the fabled ‘winning mentality’ hasn’t worked. For us it seems, we have to find a way to forge it, and the way to do that is to have a younger, driven manager leading a group of players who are bought into the way of playing, which we all agree should be dynamic and good to watch (and obviously, as winning as possible).
Bringing Poch back is a big risk for everyone involved. We know he is a very good coach but I feel his weakness (aside from the old adage of never going back to an ex) is that his general work at a club, outside of coaching and moulding a group, is questionable. He doesn’t have what the cool Twitter crowd call ‘Talent ID’. Ironically, because it’s never going to happen, he’d probably do well working with Paratici, because I think the Italian does have the eye for a player. But I think, quite aside from Paratici’s legal issues, there’s too big a personality clash for them to work together. Both want to be the big dog. And I don’t think they want to play the same kind of football either.
IF we bought Poch back we’d also likely be leaning heavily on Levy to do more on the footballing side. He would also have to finalise the rebuild of the youth and scouting teams, and find someone to liaise with Poch and his staff - not a full DoF in the Paratici form, but someone who can join all the dots and help with clarifying talent ID, pathways for younger players, etc. So to me, the two big risks of bringing Poch back are going back to a precious success, and having Levy more involved.
Aside from that, if the strategy of picking the next big thing is going to work, the club needs to be more proactive in its actions, and more realistic about what’s working and what isn’t. Clubs want to protect their investments in players but it does feel like asking prices being inflated have led to some sticking around way longer than they should over the last few years. It’s also fair to say that we’d have to get more used to not being so attached to players. I mean that as a club as well as at a more emotional, fan level. Most clubs of our nature sell the Son types a year or two ago, make bank, and move on. Kane is a little different as a youth product but you probably see what I mean. Now obviously we may have wanted to sell certain players but it’s been a difficult sellers market for anything but the utter elite because of Covid recently. So perhaps we have to cut the club some slack there. But I think we perhaps as a club need to accept that managers and players will likely come and go more often if we give up the pretence of being a cut-price Man City.
Whether it’s Poch, De Zerbi, Glasner, Amorim, Gallardo or any other of the host of names we’ve seen bandied around recently, I just want us to focus on the strategy of the football side going forwards. I’m not asking for a roadmap to win the league in the next 10 years because there’s too many moving parts there and too many variables out of our control. But play good football under a modern, progressive coach, aim for excellence in recruitment and player development, and we’ll likely get somewhere. Poch got us closer than we’ve ever been in the league and to two cup finals in his tenure, all while dealing with the unique challenges of the stadium build. Now Covid is done we should be able to be more consistent in our recruitment patterns and properly support the coach, whoever that is.
Something I read today struck me, about Spurs having become a club who are more scared of failure than excited to figure out the next steps to improve. That’s what we need to get to.
Realistically we’re looking at a change of coach either at or before the end of the season and the general consensus seems to be that Paratici will not be around for too much longer either.
Generally I think the learning from these last few years is that the club best operates when we try and pick from the stable of new, up-and-coming managers rather than the Contes and Mourinhos of this world. The club just doesn’t seem to be set up for them and it’s clear from both of their tenures that bringing in a coach to instill the fabled ‘winning mentality’ hasn’t worked. For us it seems, we have to find a way to forge it, and the way to do that is to have a younger, driven manager leading a group of players who are bought into the way of playing, which we all agree should be dynamic and good to watch (and obviously, as winning as possible).
Bringing Poch back is a big risk for everyone involved. We know he is a very good coach but I feel his weakness (aside from the old adage of never going back to an ex) is that his general work at a club, outside of coaching and moulding a group, is questionable. He doesn’t have what the cool Twitter crowd call ‘Talent ID’. Ironically, because it’s never going to happen, he’d probably do well working with Paratici, because I think the Italian does have the eye for a player. But I think, quite aside from Paratici’s legal issues, there’s too big a personality clash for them to work together. Both want to be the big dog. And I don’t think they want to play the same kind of football either.
IF we bought Poch back we’d also likely be leaning heavily on Levy to do more on the footballing side. He would also have to finalise the rebuild of the youth and scouting teams, and find someone to liaise with Poch and his staff - not a full DoF in the Paratici form, but someone who can join all the dots and help with clarifying talent ID, pathways for younger players, etc. So to me, the two big risks of bringing Poch back are going back to a precious success, and having Levy more involved.
Aside from that, if the strategy of picking the next big thing is going to work, the club needs to be more proactive in its actions, and more realistic about what’s working and what isn’t. Clubs want to protect their investments in players but it does feel like asking prices being inflated have led to some sticking around way longer than they should over the last few years. It’s also fair to say that we’d have to get more used to not being so attached to players. I mean that as a club as well as at a more emotional, fan level. Most clubs of our nature sell the Son types a year or two ago, make bank, and move on. Kane is a little different as a youth product but you probably see what I mean. Now obviously we may have wanted to sell certain players but it’s been a difficult sellers market for anything but the utter elite because of Covid recently. So perhaps we have to cut the club some slack there. But I think we perhaps as a club need to accept that managers and players will likely come and go more often if we give up the pretence of being a cut-price Man City.
Whether it’s Poch, De Zerbi, Glasner, Amorim, Gallardo or any other of the host of names we’ve seen bandied around recently, I just want us to focus on the strategy of the football side going forwards. I’m not asking for a roadmap to win the league in the next 10 years because there’s too many moving parts there and too many variables out of our control. But play good football under a modern, progressive coach, aim for excellence in recruitment and player development, and we’ll likely get somewhere. Poch got us closer than we’ve ever been in the league and to two cup finals in his tenure, all while dealing with the unique challenges of the stadium build. Now Covid is done we should be able to be more consistent in our recruitment patterns and properly support the coach, whoever that is.
Something I read today struck me, about Spurs having become a club who are more scared of failure than excited to figure out the next steps to improve. That’s what we need to get to.
I know "exciting" football is not enough for everyone but I do find it remarkable how few truely memorable games we have had in the past 4 years.
West Ham 3-2, Olympiakos 4-2, United 6-1 (under JM)
Leicester 4-2 (under Mason)
Leicester 3-2, Arsenal 3-0, City 3-2, Bournemouth 3-2 and Leeds 4-3
(under Conte)
That's 9 in 3 and a half years but I am not sure how many of these will memorable in another 15 years.
From October 2007 to October 2008 (just one year) we had Villa 4-4, Reading 6-4, Arsenal 5-1, Chelsea 2-1, Chelsea 4-4 and Arsenal 4-4. That's 6 in 12 months ... 5 under Ramos!
But even worse in the last 3 and a half years I can remember 12 car crash performances...
West Ham gave away a 3 goal lead (jm)
Zagreb gave away a 2 nil first leg lead (jm)
Red Bull lost 3 nil away in CL (jm)
Sheffield United 3-1 farce (jm)
Arsenal 2-1 away awful performance (jm)
Arsenal away see above (nuno)
United new low (nuno)
Palace 3 nil says it all(nuno)
Paco ECL how ???? (nuno)
Vietesse ECL really??? (nuno)
Mora ECL ????(Conte)
Southampton away (conte)
Boro fa cup (conte)
Sheffield United (conte)
Milan CL home (conte)
Arsenal away (conte)
West Ham 3-2, Olympiakos 4-2, United 6-1 (under JM)
Leicester 4-2 (under Mason)
Leicester 3-2, Arsenal 3-0, City 3-2, Bournemouth 3-2 and Leeds 4-3
(under Conte)
That's 9 in 3 and a half years but I am not sure how many of these will memorable in another 15 years.
From October 2007 to October 2008 (just one year) we had Villa 4-4, Reading 6-4, Arsenal 5-1, Chelsea 2-1, Chelsea 4-4 and Arsenal 4-4. That's 6 in 12 months ... 5 under Ramos!
But even worse in the last 3 and a half years I can remember 12 car crash performances...
West Ham gave away a 3 goal lead (jm)
Zagreb gave away a 2 nil first leg lead (jm)
Red Bull lost 3 nil away in CL (jm)
Sheffield United 3-1 farce (jm)
Arsenal 2-1 away awful performance (jm)
Arsenal away see above (nuno)
United new low (nuno)
Palace 3 nil says it all(nuno)
Paco ECL how ???? (nuno)
Vietesse ECL really??? (nuno)
Mora ECL ????(Conte)
Southampton away (conte)
Boro fa cup (conte)
Sheffield United (conte)
Milan CL home (conte)
Arsenal away (conte)
The thing with Taylor is he had a ton of momentum behind him, which can also be argued for Leicester given they had that end of season run that kept them up and it carried over into a season where so many of the expected Top 4 never got into gear. Same can be said of most of those clubs you mention: Man Utd would go into insane runs of form once they got going and bulldozed their way to titles, Liverpool had a good run of form from 2018-20 (albeit now are in a similar boat to us as Norbert needs to build a new team and is instead patching things together), and Chelsea also have had periods of insane momentum in the 2000s and 2010s in no small part as the nucleus of their squad experienced it before in the same shirt
And that's something we never seemed to get right, as we'd finish a season strongly but that never carried over into the following season, which was as much the case in the 90s under Gerry Francis or Christian Gross as it is the 2010s under Poch where we'd never come flying out of the blocks at the start of the season. In fact the only manager who has managed to have our form carry over from the end of one season to the next was Glenn Hoddle...which is why David Pleat was installed as caretaker for the vast majority of that season
And that is the trick we never seem to find: we need a manager who can both gets results and give the team a siege mentality that gives them a bloody-minded will to win, and we've never quite managed that. Obviously there have been times where we've had a bloody-minded will to win matches which was certainly the case under Poch (and there were certainly periods under Conte and Villas-Boas where this was the case too), but that bloody-mindedness seemed to stop at the final whistle and not carry over to the next two or three matches afterwards
In short the issue can be summed up by what many a Rome: Total War loading screen says: "Hannibal knew how to gain a victory, but not how to use it."
I fully agree with your point and think the main cause, which you might disagree with, is our recruitment in transfer windows - especially windows that immediately follow unexpectedly strong seasons. Something the truly relentlessly successful teams know how to do is strengthen from a position of strength, not just panic from a position of weakness. The former led to Liverpool signing Fabinho having got back into the top 4, or Diogo Jota having just won the league. The latter led to us singing Ndombele, Sessegnon and Lo Celso. Chelsea and City have been particularly good at this in recent years.
I'd zoom in on the summer of 2011 as an example of this. 5th in the league and a run to the CL QF and we add Friedel on a free, Adebayor on loan and Parker for £5m. Not that any of those were poor signings, on the contrary they certainly added to the team. Then we added Saha and Nelsen on short term contracts in January and I guess when we take the step back that hindsight affords, it just wasn't enough. There was still a huge dip from the starting xi to the reserves and not enough competition for spots keeping incumbents on their toes.
Then we can also look at the summer of 2017 and whereas I accept that Levy was busy looking at a massive hole in the ground where the new stadium would one day stand, losing Kyle Walker while only adding Serge Aurier, Sanchez, Llorente and Foyth again just wasn't enough to build on the successes of the previous season. We came within a whisker of winning the league the year before...did anyone confidentially predict we'd go a step further the following year, after that window?
And I feel this is very much a pattern, we only spend big and ambitiously from a position of weakness, which inevitably leads to panic buys and paying well above the odds for players. If we truly understood how to strengthen from a position of strength, to provide real competition and a clear meritocracy across the squad (as opposed to the A-team/B-team nonsense under Nuno and to a lesser extent Conte too), I think the success we've been chasing for so long wouldn't be elusive.
You've also talked about this on numerous occasions, how we seem to often sign players we've had concrete interest in a year or even two years down the line. Why wait? Why not act sooner while we still have a strong hand?
Because Pochettino is a much better coach than Conte? And we had Eriksen, Dembele and Dele who were all fantastic signings.
Poch was sacked after a downward blip which was a huge mistake. I think he got a bit too big for his boots but Levy should have managed that.
We were massively overperforming then.
So you agree that sacking Poch when we did was a huge mistake.
You agree that our signings since then haven't been very good.
You agree that Conte isn't a very good coach.
I assume you'd say the same about Mourinho.
Yet you feel Levy hasn't made consistently wrong decisions for the past 4 years?
One thing we also seem to love doing is weakening ourselves at a time where it makes little sense
For one glaring example there's the January window in 2012. While the highlight (for lack of a better term) was the short-term signings of Saha and Nelsen, what really stuck out is that window we carved a large chunk out of our squad with some late window loans out: Corluka, Bassong, Pienaar were the obvious ones given they were all loaned out on the last day of the window, but we also let Tom Carroll, Andros Townsend and Adam Smith go out so we actively made ourselves light in several positions, for example if Kyle Walker got injured we wouldn't have had a replacement as Naughton was on a season-long loan at Norwich, and then we let Smith and Corluka go out on practically the same day
The fact a few people on here think we did likewise this January in loaning out Gil (albeit he practically begged to be loaned out for his own mental health) and loaned in Danjuma who we seem determined not to use does stick out, as it seems that we treat the January transfer window as an excuse to hit the self destruct button
In terms of being slow to pick up certain players, or ones who seem to be linked with us every window, there does seem to be a track record of the process turning into a pain in the backside due to the manager and DoF/sporting director having a difference of opinion
Andy Reid: linked for what felt like the entire summer of 2004, finally signed him in January 2005...which, coincidentally, meant Santini wasn't around to act stroppy when Arnesen brought in players who dared to pass the ball forwards, as happened the previous summer
Christian Benteke: Franco Baldini reportedly pitched him as the striker which Villas-Boas' system needed, but Villas-Boas overruled him and insisted on Roberto Soldado. Soldado flopped, Benteke then became a regular fixture of transfer stories for a good 4-5 windows afterwards
Youri Tielemans: Steve Hitchen alerted Poch that he was available and would tick several boxes, but Poch was stroppy that he couldn't get Tanguy Ndombele (which appeared to be because we assumed Lyon had not triggered the clause to make his loan from Amiens permanent yet, yet they appear to have triggered the clause months earlier) so we signed nobody as some sort compromise...?
Kim Min-jae: Linked since time immemorial, but based on current scuttlebutt Paratici pitched him to Conte last summer but Conte shot the idea down
This is the thing with having a DoF or sporting director, while on paper it can streamline player acquisitions it's never 100% smooth, because if a manager digs their heels in then the proposed deal doesn't happen as hoped - yet that doesn;t necessarily mean a substitute deal is made
You are putting words into my mouth.
The first statement is correct.
The other three are not.
Our recent signings have been quite normal on average. The Pochettino team contained 9 absolute bargains plus Harry Kane. Totally unrealistic to expect to repeat that.
Mourinho and Conte are both proven good coaches and I don't think their appointment was a mistake. They might easily have been just what we needed. And we got rid of Mourinho quickly when he didn't work out.
Anyway I think Nuno and Conte were down to Paratici.
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I don't see the last point as an issue. I think it is reasonable only to sign players who the DoF and the Coach agree on. If they don't agree that anyone within budget can improve the team then it's a waste of money to sign them
Tottenham Hotspur the club that did football a service and exposed Conte and Jose as managerial frauds
You forgot all of the Chelsea games last season that Conte seemed to fold on even before kick off