It could well have been partly down to trying to keep Kane but either way it was yet another poorly thought decision by them to join many others over the last 7-8 years. I think saying hopefully they’ll learn is just becoming too wishful nowadays. We’ve been saying that line for years now and they rarely seem to do. Smaller clubs are now surpassing us at a time where we should be thriving with the infrastructure we have in place. Whilst ENIC are still masters at business, football has long passed them by and we the fans are paying for it - literally too! As for Ange and being amateurish, I think it’s a harsh but brutally realistic remark. His career has been spent in the B Leagues and it shows to be honest. His intention to play good football is great, his execution at this level isn’t. His football isn’t sustainable for the Premier League and hoping/ needing a bigger squad isn’t even really the point, he needs a quality squad, one that’s arguably as good if not better than City’s or Madrid’s because for him to maintain how he wants to play throughout a season with league, cups and possibly Europe, he’ll need (at least) 22 players of equal calibre to rotate seamlessly and there isn’t a team in world football with such a luxury, nor will there be. I think he retains a lot of support from players and staff because he’s a phenomenal motivator and speaker (and generally just a bloody nice bloke) and I think these sort of qualities can be endearing to players to the point where it may mask over how they feel about Ange as an actual football manager. If we do fail to win the Europa I’d struggle to see the reasoning for keeping him for a third season. Two years in there should be signs of progression, even if little, yet I think there’s a much bigger argument to say we’ve seen considerable regression, both in terms of individual player performances as well as team performances/ results.
1. There has been no regression in attack since Kane left (a classic "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts" ) . 2. There is no question that during the Kane era that his brilliance saved the Portu-ball managers and the club from experiencing all of what we have this season.
I still can not move on from my analogy of the early Burkinshaw days...we simply can not start the whole process again ... surely not. And yes Brian....I know your name ain't Shirley
I agree for the most part. I think my point is that B leagues are still professional leagues. Better squad, bigger squad, higher quality squad, full squad, all semantics to me. The squad needs to be how he sees it fit, whatever that looks like. We don't know yet know what an Ange Tottenham squad looks like in comparison to say a Redknapp squad or a Pochettino squad. Until we do, it's unfair to judge. He hasn't landed yet. Let him land. The injuries have meant that full training hasn't really happened of late, we look more shapeless that we did at the beginning of his tenure as a result. We score more goals than most teams in the league, and definitely more than any of the teams that you claim are surpassing us. Scoring is the hardest thing to do. A little firmness in the middle and at the back would make all of the difference to our position. 22 players of equal caliber? I'm not sure. At the very least we just need adequate basic cover in key positions. Four fit actual CBs. Two fit actual strikers. We haven't even seen this yet under Ange. Davies and Gray don't count. We only just arrived at adequate keeper cover. I think it's unfair to put that on Ange, or any manger, until that level of depth is present. I'm sure for example that Nuno at Forest isn't playing a teenage midfielder as a one CB and a LB as another for any extended period. That's why these teams are doing well, not because they have world beaters in every position, but because they have the basics covered. We still don't. The squad is not balanced. Starting another rebuild, with another manager, using the same gaffer tape temporary measures isn't going to work any better. Hire. Sack. Rinse. Repeat.
It's not really semantics though because we already have a large squad, however we lack the quality to be able to heavily rotate and maintain the intensity Ange's style is so overly dependent on, he essentially needs two "A teams" that can play 50% of the season each and realistically that's as close to impossible to get. Redknapp and Pochettino had considerably improved Spurs at this exact stage of their Spurs careers and I'm pretty sure with less additions too. Other teams are also doing better than us because they're better coached and managed. Nuno isn't playing a teenage midfielder at CB because he probably doesn't rush his other injured CBs back too early only to re-injure them, nor is his style as intensive as ours to where it raises the risks of injury to his players. You'd only be starting another rebuild if we sack Ange and hire a manager with a completely different brand of football, IE going back to a Jose or Conte type. Brighton and Liverpool have shown that managerial changes can be seamless if you target those with similar philosophies as predecessors but just slightly different tactical/ coaching approaches.
The reason why Redknapp and Poch improved Spurs much quicker is the rebuild had already started at least a year before we hired them, but the coaches weren't up to task and were replaced This is most obvious with Poch as Villas-Boas and Baldini had pretty much built the backbone of his team in the summers of 2012-3 and what was missing was somebody willing to have that collection of players play on the front foot, and once we had Poch in place all that was really needed was to further integrate some of the academy players who were coming into the squad under Sherwood and some fat to be trimmed Similar can be said for Redknapp, as all that was needed for that team was a striker as Comolli hadn't figured out that selling four strikers over the space of twelve months and signing two is not the best approach, and we were helped in no small part by being able to freshen up the squad pretty quickly by signing several Portsmouth using the unpaid transfer fees they could not longer afford to subsidise large chunks of the fee That being said, presuming Ange does move on in the summer, I'm curious if the club choose to follow the Spanish or the German meta when seeking his replacement
We're just so amateur/make do/lacking in learning and the concentration on every detail that brings success. The club recruits a coach and buys some players... ...that's about it. Seemingly no thought has been applied to how suitable one part is with the others. Players are bought who 'can play' out of position, because they're perceived as being cheap or we get on with the agent. We've got little chance of enticing a top coach or playing talent, because they know that it'll end in frustration and tears. Just look at the transformation at Villa and Newcastle. They've left us in their dust in no time...let alone Brighton, Forest and Bournemouth. Ange isn't going to get the backing he'd need to make a success of his stay with Spurs. All rigid system coaches will suffer the same fate, too whilst we're run like a market stall.
I think this is very much the view I and possibly others have right now of Ange. Our squad's not perfect but it's also not as bad as 13th in the table, losing more games than it wins. It's been poorly managed, ran into the ground and too often tactically out-thought.
TBH I think the injury crisis has likely kept Ange in the job, because if we were getting the results we were getting in December-January with a fully-fit squad he'd have been gone with a couple of weeks of the transfer window remaining
The squad Redknapp inherited had won a cup with the previous manager. Club legend King was a part of, and remained in, the team. The squad Ange acquired had just lost Kane, arguably the best player in the clubs history. It's hardly a fair comparison. Pochettino signed and got rid of a few dud players before things started to really click. He had also inherited the best parts of Redknapp's/AVB's pretty decent squad. Rose and Walker for example. Bringing the Klopp to Slot transition in for any kind of comparison is just wild. Let's not rewrite history.
And that side also finished 11th that season and was then sitting on “2 points from 8 games” the following season when Harry took over. 5 of the starting XI and 2 who appeared from the bench in that cup win were also sold before Harry took over, including Berbatov and Keane, who at the time were the equivalents to Kane. No history’s been rewritten. The transition from Klopp to Slot with almost zero signings has been seamless, just as the transitions from Potter>De Zerbi>Hurzeler have been. The transition from Ange to another manager should in theory be seamless if Lange/ Levy can be trusted to do their job, especially as there’s quite a lot of managers who’d likely fit this group of players, there’s about 5 or 6 managers in the Prem alone. No huge rebuild will be needed with the right hire, especially if as expected they can get more out of these players which Ange is currently failing on.
You're ignoring how unbalanced the squad was when Ange inherited in comparison to Redknapp. The current squad is still more unbalance than either Poch's or Redknapp's. Berba and Keane were not equivalent to Kane because Bent and Pavlyuchenko were at the club when Harry arrived. Which fit strikers were at the club when Ange came in? Redknapp inherited Modric and Bale. Who are the equivalents in the current squad? I really don't know why your'e even attempting this comparison. On Klopp to Slot, yes I agree if the squad is balanced, the transition can be seamless. This squad is nowhere near as balanced, so comparing them is just silly. That is my point. There is no manager that can come into this situation, with the current injuries, sign nobody, and drastically improve the situation. Pochettino would come close, but he'd soon be needing significant reinforcements. We need at least one significant midfield signing, that might be Gray, but we've never seen him play there for us, because our defender situation is so abysmal. (We also need another defender!!?!) The squad needs to be better, in whichever direction necessary, regardless of the manager. How is this even debatable? Also, Redknapp fortified quickly with PL experienced adults. Defoe and Keane, Palacios and Crouch. That is not what has been afforded to Ange yet in any significant numbers or positions. Maybe he is in part to blame for that, but he has been saying that he wanted to add experience and it hasn't arrived yet. Sacking Ange without addressing the glaring gaps in the squad would be a Levyesque move of the highest order. The club has invested in 'the future' but have not gone full tilt at backing the current manager for the current situation at all. The fact that some fans are thinking more like Levy every season, yet still wanting Levy out, is weird to me. You're probably correct in your thinking though, that if we don't win the cup, I can see Ange going and doing a Nuno with another PL club, once again proving that the issue isn't just the manager.
Think it is interesting that Van De Vaart was interviewed on Talk Sport this week and said the squad he played in at Spurs was the best team he ever played in. Wow!
