Ange’s coaching issues or lack of them are his problem. Even now he’s just coaching the system rather than the players. Ruben Amorim seems similar and he also isn’t getting the results required.
Ego likely plays into that too, because if he could admit there's gaps in his coaching that is all the more reason to delegate more responsibility to Mason, Wells et al in much the same way that Ralf Rangnick delegated responsibility in training and led to basically every German coach of the last 15-20 years you've heard of getting their breaks, which would have the knock-on effect of potentially getting us to the dream managerial partnership of Ryan Mason and Cliff Jones' grandson - but instead it looks like training broadly follows Ange's instructions so our senior coaches aren't getting that added responsibility For example I've seen that Eric Dier quote doing the rounds again about training sessions being about fitness above all else with technique way down the docket, and similarly WindyCOYS has criticised our handling of Tyreese Hall because he's in the Berbatov/Gascoigne class of player who won't run around for 90 minutes but if you get the ball to him he has the natural talent to make something that so many of his teammates won't
I’ve no issue with him believing his way is the correct way but the results have shown everyone even Ange that it’s not and I’m not sure he can dramatically manage every other way. Although the players haven’t given up on him, you wonder how they feel about it all with all these frequent defeats.
That would stand if we wasn’t still playing badly now that we’ve had more or less a fit squad for about 6-7 weeks. Not forgetting earlier results in the season when we had a fit squad, along with the end of last. He’s said himself his system causes injuries, you’ve often chosen to ignore he’s said as such. His overall squad management has been problematic too, he ran players into the ground, then ran their replacement’s too.
The main thing is that while we're not coaching the talent out of players, which is the biggest fear of a coach who prioritises physicality above all else, but the amount of misplaced passes does beg questions about how many combinations we work on in training Because based on the way they press us when transitioning from defence to midfield and forcing misplaced passes or safety balls backwards or sideways, it does give the impression that Captain Hook could count the number of combinations on his left hand
Ornstein’s said despite the links, Iraola will likely stay at Bournemouth next season. Also claims the Spurs hierarchy believe the squad is better than they’re showing and Postecoglou’s failing to get the best out of it. The majority of people can see also see and have said this… so erm… why persist with the bloke?!
Players don't get back to full capability the moment they are fit though. Ange, in common with all our managers since Poch, has been asked to get top four with a squad that was sixth best. Taking some risks with fitness by asking players to push themselves is a perfectly reasonable strategy. It's outturn a lot worse than expected though. Klopp did something similar at Liverpool but got through it.
Spurs fans don’t demand top four though, many are happy with top six and with the way other teams are improving, a top seven or eight finish wouldn’t be seen as a terrible but 15th is beyond silly. We’ve had practically a fit squad for close to 7 weeks now and performances are still dreadful. At what point are we meant to see a sign of progress in play? Then take into account form of good players like Son, Maddison, Bentancur, Porro etc and we’re witnessing a car crash in football management on how to destroy a football team.
While I don't want to keep changing managers the thing that is changing my mind is how awful we are to watch most weeks. It's as bad as anything produced by JM, Nuno and Conte.
At the moment it's a perfect storm of some players like Porro and Son are knackered due to having to work double shifts during the injuries, while others are still a tad rusty coming back from those injuries - though we have made things worse by having our back line still sit deeper like it's a combination of Davies/Gray/Dragusin starting when we have Romero and Mickey Van back, yet the midfield is still at least 10 yards further forward than they need to be with a deeper-sitting defence Add to that some longterm issues, for example Bentancur has only started looking like the player he was when he first signed him in the last 2-3 weeks due to all the rust
Where on earth are you conjuring that number from? The only way to get to it is to assume that we would advance to the very last rounds of the CL. Possibly the semi final at a minimum. This is a totally unrealistic assumption and not one any serious decision should be based on.
I’d say it’s worse, or becoming worse. I think if any of those three were managing us now they’d have us significantly higher in the table. I’d rather change a manager every 18 months if it means there’s a chance of things improving than persist with something that clearly isn’t. I’d persist with him if results were bad but performances were promising/ showing signs of promise but we’re getting worse and worse, both as a team and individuals.
The main issue is we just cannot build any momentum, and some of that is self-inflicted We had a short spurt of momentum in January with the Brentford and Man Utd wins courtesy of the second string, and then we started dropping them when the first choice players were available again Case in point, while I don't think Kinsky is as good a stopper as Vicario nor does he have his onfield leadership, I do think his distribution did add a different dimension to our play especially as he looked to catch the ball rather than punch as that let him quickly send the ball 30+ yards down the pitch and start a quick break so teams had to react to us instead of being able to predict exactly where we were going to be, but Vicario coming back saw us remove that option from the team and opponents were predicting our play 5-10 seconds before we were in the final third of the pitch
Debut aside Kinsky was really poor though, his distribution is significantly better but I don’t think it’s enough to willingly oust Vicario until his actual goalkeeping attributes improve. Vicario has his faults and obviously he had an utter mare on Sunday but he’s generally one of our most reliable players - no doubt I’ve now jinxed him for Thursday. In terms of momentum, I’d say it’s hard to build when it looks like the players just don’t know what they’re doing. I’ve said a few times now but we’ve witnessed some tediously boring football over the last 4-5 years but what we’re witnessing now is the most idea-lacking nonsense I’ve seen in yonks and the fact we have a decent if unspectacular squad, it makes it even more damning on the manager to be failing so badly.
My analysis was based on a decision to sack or no sack in January. If a new manager was going to be appreciable better he should have been capable of finishing 6 or 7 places higher (£20m) and winning the Europa League (£20m at that point). Finishing halfway up next year's CL group stage is worth another £50m so the estimated gain from a better manager is about £100m. That's so far in excess of any possible compensation that the latter wouldn't be part of any sensible decision making process. Of course if you think a new manager would do worse in the Europa then you are throwing away up to £70m plus the compensation by sacking Ange. So the net swing if you get it wrong is ridiculously high.
As others have pointed out, we have sacked managers from positions much closer to the sort of prize money you're talking about. Iirc, Conte was sacked when we were actually still in the top 4.
Correct. But he clearly wasn't sacked on results or because a better manager was available. He basically forced himself out. Same with Mourinho. Neither of those sackings made us better but I don't think Levy had much choice.
