Match Day Thread Tottenham Hotspur v Manchester United

Nah, a lot of what you said I actually agree with, I’ve just never seen it so passionately put!

I’ve dropped some rants in the past, 90% probably aimed at Winks but my rants were like hand grenades, you just dumped a Hiroshima, lol.

I’d say one of the things I disagree with your post though is saying don’t play Rodon. I think we should, and I think we should begin building around Rodon. Toby, Dier and Sanchez have had their time, one of them has to partner him for the remaining games and who that should be is open for debate but I like what I’ve seen of Rodon, he’s got mistakes in him no doubt but that should get ironed out with experience. Get a top, commanding CB in the summer to play alongside and mentor him and I think he’ll turn out a very good CB.

 

Ole can suck a fart the little hobbit. Bruno’s more or less singlehandedly keeping him in a job.

 

Got a like for effort tbh

 

I have thought for some time that Jose doesn’t actually want this job. His decision making over team selections and in game subs is utterly bizarre. You have to wonder if he’s after the £30m pay out as it’s more appealing than doing the job itself. I mean, he’s won everything already.
Could it just be that he pulled levy’s pants down from the outset with that contract?

 

My problem is that it seems as though the staunch Levy/ENIC fans who are laying into Levy for appointing Jose will forget all about how **** the owner is with regards football and carry on backing him once this phase is over.

Jose deserves the sack for picking wrong teams and formations, ok established. However, I think ENIC need to **** off too considering they’ve only managed to appoint a handful decent managers in their 20 year, 1 trophy tenure.

just because he ‘won’t go’, ‘cant sack himself’ and all the other reasons/excuses people will use to indirectly defend the appalling football club owners, (great accountant mind)...does not mean it shouldn’t always be pointed out and should not be ignored by the fans if they want our club to be winning trophies.

Got most fans over an emotional barrel due to the stadium build...pathetic.

 

A few years back, I wrote that building the stadium and training facility was a declaration that we were a big club and we had to act like one....and at the first hurdle, we've unseated the rider and it's time to call the vet. We look clueless on the football front. Appointing Mourinho should see Levy sacked.

I think that there's zero chance of getting ENIC out. Joe Lewis wants to own an NFL team. Until that London franchise is awarded, he's not selling unless there's an insane bid. While nobody's allowed in the stadium, that's simply not happening. We're stuck with them in the medium term.

On the other hand, we could get Levy out of the club/away from footballing matters...and I'm all for it. I think that you'd struggle to find 5 regular Spurs posters who would disagree with shunting him into a role that stops him from picking transfer targets and managers...or giving him a gold watch and handshake.

If ticket/membership/merch sales go down significantly, they'll have to do something. I've already declared my hand....I want real change before I renew my membership. Mourinho has to go and the club needs restructuring before I pay what they want...that includes Levy not running the football side of the business

 

What a classless little **** Solskjaer is. How disgusting to accuse Son of cheating when he was hit in the face, not accidentally in my opinion, and going to ground. Is he going to drop and fine Rashford who fell to the ground clutching his face after a tap on the calf?Or maybe Fernandes for falling over several times without any contact at all.There was a time when publicly calling someone a cheat would have brought a sanction from the FA but now it appears that certain people/clubs can do so with impunity.

 

completely agree regarding the “on the field” decisions, and Levy has a lot to answer for.
But right now, this process of repair starts by sacking Jose.

 

I was thinking about this this morning.
If a ST holder decides not to renew, there’s an abundance of people on a waiting list who will say thank you very much, and take their season ticket. Levy wins.
It’s a lot to ask of current ST holders (as they pay insane amounts of money as loyal fans), but it needs those current occupiers to make a stand and not go to games when we’re allowed back into stadiums. I fully expect any ST holders to think “**** that, I pay fortunes for my seat” and rightly so, but an abundance empty seats for even a few games will not sit well with Levy. It’s not a good look for the clubs image.
ST holders pay the highest prices in Europe as we know, so why should they have to watch garbage with their hard earned money? And why should they have to give up their season ticket?

 

They have managed to turn the rule book of football into a complete mess that encourages snide and deceitful play and penalises honest but mistimed play.
As others have said we had already seen similar behaviour from United players on at least 3 occasions before Son exaggerated in a similar way. We are constantly told by retired footballers how well so and so did by 'winning' his team a free kick. Here we had what IMO was essentially a decent ref in Kavanagh trying to control the game in as fair minded way as he could but once again proving that VAR is more of a handy device for TV and has little to do with making football fairer. Incidents will always look different in slow motion, accidents will look deliberate and minor contact will be exaggerated.
At this rate football will be a very different game in 20 years or so, much more akin to US Football with lots of convenient breaks for adds built in. next will come crash helmets because of heading, then more padding because of crash helmets. Since SKY involved itself in football the game has deuterated just as the Roman Games did in the distant past and it seems most human sporting endeavours. I stopped watching the Olympics years ago when it lost it's amateur status and became instead a way for States to parade their dubious patriotism and is more to do with that flag waving than honest sporting endeavour. Trumpism rules the roost in many areas now.

 

Sadly, I agree.

Seems like a decade ago I wrote a post shortly after Maureen's appointment where (clutching at straws) I argued that Levy was well aware the majority of the squad was on its last legs and had brought in the 'best' at short term solutions to eke a couple of trophies out of the squad before it collapsed entirely.

My reading of the appointment, together with the plans announced for the new stadium, the NFL franchise, the amazon documentary plus the peculiar lack of a sponsor (which was very out of character for someone as meticulous as Levy) all pointed in one direction:

Joe Lewis, who is pushing 85, was looking for an 'out' to sell what is by a distance his most valuable asset as one final nest egg before he goes to the big currency trading floor in the sky.

The plan made a lot of sense on paper: use the stadium to raise our off-pitch profile and a couple of shiny things to raise our on-pitch profile. Then sell. But then Coronavirus threw a spanner the size of Wuhan in the works and it all went tits up. The stadium has been dormant, the amazon doc has faded from memory, Maureen has unravelled quicker than anyone but Brian and RWAEB predicted, the squad has collapsed sooner than anticipated (although Maureen has quickened its demise with appalling man management and squad rotation).

So we are stuck with ENIC for the time being. Considering all of the above plus the global economy being a mess, unless Jeff Bezos buys us I can't see a buyer coming in for at least 2-3 years. Where we are by then is anyone's guess.

 

Re: Toby, there's a theory doing the rounds

Long story short, the theory says that club medical staff believe that Toby's calf is on the red line so he can't play twice in a week for fear that it could cause lasting damage

Obviously this has blown up since the baffling kerfuffle about when Toby did or didn't return from international duty a couple of weeks ago, so the siming seems more than a little suspect, but how is it the club medical staff didn't have an issue with Toby playing twice in the same week when Poch was in charge?

 

I'm not for telling people what to do with their 'hard earned'. I've reached a point where I'm not happy with the club...it's happened before and if I live loong enough, it'll be likely to happen again.

For years, during Sugar's mismanagement, I never bought anything but a ticket. No programmes or food or drink or merch. Often I went to games just to be bloody obstinate (I'm very good at it) and to see family and friends.

However, the price of a ticket makes that a very expensive thing to do...so, personally, I'm out until the club stops being the personal fiefdom of Daniel Levy and people become accountable for **** ups, like the current management are perpetuating. Mourinho and Levy need to go!

 

Can't speak for others but I think that my patience with Levy broke when he sacked Pochettino and appointed JM.

My patience with Enic broke when the club announced that they were going to furlough the lowest paid club employees during the first lockdown.
Like thousands of others I emailed the club and made it clear that me, my kids and my mates linked to my account (to buy tickets for eachother) would refuse to renew our memberships and would not go to games (if they furlough staff) until a new owner came in.

They backed down but they broke any link I had with them.

 

I still think it odd that people think Levy and ENIC have anything to prove. They have changed the club from being also rans into competitors and have simultaneously built the infrastructure to make that sustainable. The only team to have improved more in the last 20 years is Man City. Almost everyone else has gone backwards.
Of course mistakes have been made but even the Mourinho appointment isn't a terminal one. We've basically stagnated for a couple of years after 15 years of improvement.

 

All true but it makes little difference to fans if the football on the pitch is turgid and without passion. You can have a glittering house but if there is no love it's just a series of boxes and in the end people leave.

 

They've done great work and I've been a huge admirer but they've become too diversified and reached their ceiling on sporting matters. Levy's making unnecessary mistakes and if you're going to charge the highest ticket prices, you'd better have a product worth seeing.

Mourinho wouldn't have been appointed by any other top club. It was a mad decision. If he stays, would expect us to fail to get EL football for next season and for our best players to express a wish to leave. If that is true, expect empty seats and a toxic atmosphere when the fans come back.

ENIC have delivered 1 League Cup in 20 years. Now the stadium's built and we're paying for it, people want something to enjoy...If Levy can't deliver it, he will go....

 

I said at the time he was appointed (and was hounded off of twitter for daring to say it): in the year Mourinho was out of a job, Real, Chelsea, Juventus, Inter, AC Milan, Lyon and Bayern all appointed new managers. To a club, they all overlooked him.

That should have meant something.

Hubris meant it didn't.

 

I’d say King Power at Leicester would have something to say about that. From Championship to European spots and a league title in between, that’s all been done in 11 years too.

FSG have done very well with Liverpool too. Albeit Liverpool were already a big club.

I don’t think anyone will deny ENIC have done a good job overall but you can’t be resting on what they’ve done, it’s about what they can do and frankly I don’t think anyone is seeing a positive future at the moment. We’ve got a poor squad of players for the level we want to be at, we've got people at the top making awful decisions with recruitment, we’ve got a manager who’s been an utter disaster picking up an astronomical wage that’ll no doubt cripple us when we bite the bullet, we’ve got the highest ticket prices in Europe and there’s a genuine concern we could lose our only world class player in the near future who’s been carrying this team for a while now.

I think you’ve been kind to say we’ve stagnated, that’d somewhat imply we’ve just stood still, we’ve not, we've regressed and right now there’s little to no sign of that stopping.

 

Well said.