Ange in or out?

[Mr Gogolak]

I have never ever denied it. Have I?

Not at all and I certainly wasn't trying to imply that you have but let's just say I wanted to make the pass he gets in these parts from some more believable! In other words, that's just me being obnoxious...

 

[Muttley]

p.s. ANY insinuations that I am biased against Jose Mourinho, and have thus allowed that bias to affect any rational thought around his time with us, will not be denied and could possibly be welcomed as perverse badges of honour!!!!!!!

Get me a badge

 

[Mr Gogolak]

I have absolutely no idea. What I do know is that Pioch's squad needed a rebuild, he deserved the chance IMO, Mourinho said he could do better with that squad, and he did not. Is there context beyond that? Of course! Always! Nothing's black and white! Should Levy have made up with Poch in the first place that summer? Probably not! If he'd have parted ways with Poch that summer, got Mourinho and given him the Ndombele money, moight Mourinho have done better? Quite possibly! Was Mourinho's PPG that specific season better than Poch's? Given you asked the question I suspect you have an answer saying that it was. Wonderful! So pleased! In the end, Mourinho fudged it, fudged us, and left us in a giant lurch with mini-wars around the club. He got his amazon ads in, and we suffered. fudge him!

What I do find interesting is that you put the blame solely on the whisperer but don't seem to hold any grudge on the sucker who took the bait. It's not a dig, by the way. I've had the same conversation a week or two ago with a young man on a more dramatic topic (a woman being under the influence of - apparently - a fairly dangerous man). I've come to the conclusion that the answer depends on a more general outlook on life and there's no right or wrong answer there.

On a side note, in my opinion Mourinho was already past his sell-by date when he came here and there was some evidence of that. But it's another matter entirely.

 

[Raziel]

What I do find interesting is that you put the blame solely on the whisperer but don't seem to hold any grudge on the sucker who took the bait. It's not a dig, by the way. I've had the same conversation a week or two ago with a young man on a more dramatic topic (a woman being under the influence of - apparently - a fairly dangerous man). I've come to the conclusion that the answer depends on a more general outlook on life and there's no right or wrong answer there.

On a side note, in my opinion Mourinho was already past his sell-by date when he came here and there was some evidence of that. But it's another matter entirely.

The blame for Jose and Conte is exactly the same (with my caveat that Jose probably got less money that could be expected for Covid reasons)

Both of them knew exactly what they were signing up for, both of them knew exactly the limitations of the club and both of them obviously either made or agreed to certain results expectations.

The big issue is when they (as managers) failed, they both fudging deflected, resorted to narratives and did everything to blame the culture of the club well laughingly not taking an ounce of responsibility themselves (you cannot complain about culture/winning mentality when you have zero accountability yourself)

Jose/Conte are risk/reward decisions, we had a very good team that didn't cross the line, conceptually bringing in managers who were good at only getting across the line had some logic. and the fact that Conte can even post Spurs still pull the occasional rabbit out of the hat shows, it's not just as simple as "they were past their prime and everyone knew it"

 

[Muttley]

The big issue is when they (as managers) failed, they both fudging deflected, resorted to narratives and did everything to blame the culture of the club well laughingly not taking an ounce of responsibility themselves (you cannot complain about culture/winning mentality when you have zero accountability yourself)

Ange has a narrative for everything. He just picks a communication style that is more palatable to the public versus his predecessors like Jose. He's not blaming the culture but has his own list of go-to topics that he uses to deflect. He is rarely making himself accountable nowadays.

 

[monkeybarry]

As Mrs Goggins well knows

So does Jess.........(Allegedly)

 

[carl]

Responded to the stat correction in Jurgen's post; you'll not get two apologies out of me LOL!!!

Of course there is context in my examples. I remember them all clearly (not dearly in most cases).

I think what is clear is that you don't like him and want him out. All good. However to my eye, you're skewing various contexts to suit that narrative. The 'european trophy to rebuild' area of your debate is a huge example of this. Yes. We have been competing for European football since (well) 2006-ish. However the rebuild we needed after the mess made in the Post-Poch era was huge. You have chosen to only focus on Porro, Romero, Bentancur, Bissouma, Deki, and Son as 'established players' he had at his disposal. You have wilfully ignored the mess our academy was in, the bloat of average players we had, and the broken communication between board and football team. These are massive structural issues. Getting the academy back on track is a huge undertaking. Getting the bloat off the books is a huge undertaking. Doing these whilst committing the club to a 'youth forward' policy? You guessed it, a huge undertaking.

You bring up Spence and the EL squad. This has been discussed. This was a club fudge-up. And a clear indicator of the sort of problems he had to deal with in regards to how the squad was built.

I am not a fan of hindsight, the single most useless gift ever bestowed upon mankind, and only retrievable as useful IF people learn from it.

I agree, 14th in the league with 15 defeats is a poor record, and as I have said, I don't think he survives it. With regards to your rain paraphrase, I'd suggest that the injuries we dealt with are that rain he was speaking of, and the truth is we aren't going to catch up in terms of league play with those players returing, the best we can hope for is he gets 5 European games to prevail in with that side finding their flow in time. I personally don't think it will happen.

I stand by my opinion that (statistics aside) we have had worse, and seen worse.

We may have had (slightly) worse but the level of players we have now is miles ahead of what we had then

 

[Silly McSilly Face]

If I can avoid putting words in @thfcsteff's mouth

The squad needed a (the infamous painful) rebuild at end of Poch era, with Jose in particular the idea (seemingly) looked like, can we drag a result out of this core team (Lloris, Toby, Son, Dele, Kane) before that eventual rebuild.

Actually I think the shame of it was more that Poch had told Levy and the board that we needed a "painful" rebuild and I remember *some* in the press hinting that they'd be shocked by some of the players on the list that Poch had drawn up in terms of players that he thought should leave. In hindsight I imagine Dele, Eriksen, Dier could have been on that list and I guess some may have been shocked at their inclusion. I also wonder what Poch truly thought of Kane and his role at the time. I think by 2018/19 Kane had lost a lot of the mobility and aggression that characterised his earlier years under Poch and his tendency to drop deep and not press high hurt the system despite his numbers and much of his overall play remaining top tier.

The shame of it I think is that as an outsider looking in Mourinho thought he would win with the squad and didn't see what Poch saw - that mentally rather than physically the squad was jaded and key players like Eriksen had probably come to the end of their peak years and some like Dele were mentally finished at the top level.

It appears that Mourinho told Levy during talks that he didn't need the rebuild and Levy went for it.

 

[Silly McSilly Face]

I'm actually not sure
- Have we had worse teams? absolutely
- Have we had more fractured relationships between teams and manager? absolutely
- Have we ever had a side that was consistently (probably 12 months now) operating 8-10 league positions below is potential? I don't think so

Let me start with the credit
- He's had to deal with a lot of player churn (Vic, VDV, Danso, Spence, Udogie, Gray, Bergvall. Johnson, Wilson, Maddison, Solanke are 11 first team players in 18 months who have never played under another Spurs manager, Sarr & Porro only really had half a season prior, and that level of change goes through the full 25 man squad)
- Lot of youth players to manage, Kinsky, Udogie, Sarr, Bergvall, Gray, Moore, Wilson, Tel is a lot
- The players largely have stayed with him, every other manager I've seen at Spurs lost the players a lot earlier than he has

Here's my issues and why that statement
- Leicester, Ipswich, Everton, Fulham, we can't seem to win games where our player quality advantage should be all you need, to quote a previous manager, just tell then "go round about a bit" and we should win
- Lack of game management, this idea of we play the same way regardless of if it's minute 5 or minute 95 is frankly fudging stupid, it's one of those at high level statement seems to make sense, but the minute you actually think it through, not so much.

I listened to his whole statement on being ok with people criticizing his tactics/results but not being ok with (effectively) people saying he doesn't have a clue. no plan b, etc. because he's being doing this for 27 years and deserves more credit.
- The problem is (and yes, some of the statement towards him are OTT or inappropriate), he hasn't been doing "this" for 27 years, he has been managing football clubs and players for sure, but not this club and in this league.

My best comparison would be driving a Formula 2 car for a decade, moving to Formula 1, constantly crashing and saying "I've been doing this", no you haven't, the margins are different, what you can get away with is different and by you not understanding that, you are not even giving yourself chance to correct it, you are signing your own death sentence.

I'm completely confused that he is still here, of all the complaints I've had with the club over the years, we have never let anything drift like this, and it's really concerning.

This is my issue with the appointment of Ange in the first place and a lot of blame for the current situation lies IMO with the people behind the decision. Ange wasn't in the position to be given a job like Spurs IMO. It was a massive punt. A massive risk. One that the club didn't need to take and shouldn't be taking IMO. Ange has hauled himself up through football's backwaters and landed his first job in European football at Celtic. This job was the equivalent of an amateur player hauling themselves up through the pyramid, going semi-pro, and (in their late 20s) finally turning pro and signing for a League 2 club.

The logical next step in Ange's coaching career would have been a job at a big championship side or bottom half PL side.

Just flipping back to the consideration of Ange at celtic, the acid test for me as to whether a coach managing a big team in a league that isn't as competitive is how they do in Europe. I think where you get an up and coming coach in a league like Holland, Portugal (which are both superior leagues to Scotland IMO) that can win or be very competitive in Europe, it's worth taking a punt. Arne Slot for example got Feyenoord to a European final where they lost to Roma.

I just didn't see the evidence from Ange's track record that suggested he would have a decent shot at succeeding at a club like Spurs in a league like the PL. Obviously it *could* have worked out. Fairytales *do* happen very occasionally. Leicester won the PL. From that team, Jamie Vardy's playing career had a very similar backstory to Ange's coaching career (other than actually the bit where the fairytale of the *hidden non league gem becoming a PL winning England star* actually came true.

HOWEVER: Just as a club with the sort of ambitions Spurs have shouldn't be looking to sign a striker from Fleetwood to lead our line, nor should we have signed Postecoglu to be our head coach.

To your analogy, would the top tier F1 teams sign a driver that was heading towards retirement age but who had, had a late bloom with an unorthodox high-risk driving style and managed to crawl up to F2 late on in their career? I doubt they would.

The Ange appointment IMO had about a 5% chance of being the fairytale come true and a 95% chance of what it has ended up being. Watching someone painfully out of their depth being thrown in the deep end and after a brief moment of "oh maybe he can swim after all" as his frantic splashing kept him above water, the splashing quickly became more frantic and panicked and ....Spurs have plunged down the depths as he's taken us down with him

 

[thfcsteff]

What I do find interesting is that you put the blame solely on the whisperer but don't seem to hold any grudge on the sucker who took the bait. It's not a dig, by the way. I've had the same conversation a week or two ago with a young man on a more dramatic topic (a woman being under the influence of - apparently - a fairly dangerous man). I've come to the conclusion that the answer depends on a more general outlook on life and there's no right or wrong answer there.

On a side note, in my opinion Mourinho was already past his sell-by date when he came here and there was some evidence of that. But it's another matter entirely.

No no, you just missed the copious amounts of
anger I spilt on Levy at the time. Ask those who have had to suffer my pro-Pochism for approximately a decade around here, they'll tell you I was disgusted by him too!

 

[thfcsteff]

Actually I think the shame of it was more that Poch had told Levy and the board that we needed a "painful" rebuild and I remember *some* in the press hinting that they'd be shocked by some of the players on the list that Poch had drawn up in terms of players that he thought should leave. In hindsight I imagine Dele, Eriksen, Dier could have been on that list and I guess some may have been shocked at their inclusion. I also wonder what Poch truly thought of Kane and his role at the time. I think by 2018/19 Kane had lost a lot of the mobility and aggression that characterised his earlier years under Poch and his tendency to drop deep and not press high hurt the system despite his numbers and much of his overall play remaining top tier.

The shame of it I think is that as an outsider looking in Mourinho thought he would win with the squad and didn't see what Poch saw - that mentally rather than physically the squad was jaded and key players like Eriksen had probably come to the end of their peak years and some like Dele were mentally finished at the top level.

It appears that Mourinho told Levy during talks that he didn't need the rebuild and Levy went for it.

Poch had wanted to sell Toby in Jan 2018 as I understand it. Eriksen too.

 

[thfcsteff]

This is my issue with the appointment of Ange in the first place and a lot of blame for the current situation lies IMO with the people behind the decision. Ange wasn't in the position to be given a job like Spurs IMO. It was a massive punt. A massive risk. One that the club didn't need to take and shouldn't be taking IMO. Ange has hauled himself up through football's backwaters and landed his first job in European football at Celtic. This job was the equivalent of an amateur player hauling themselves up through the pyramid, going semi-pro, and (in their late 20s) finally turning pro and signing for a League 2 club.

The logical next step in Ange's coaching career would have been a job at a big championship side or bottom half PL side.

Just flipping back to the consideration of Ange at celtic, the acid test for me as to whether a coach managing a big team in a league that isn't as competitive is how they do in Europe. I think where you get an up and coming coach in a league like Holland, Portugal (which are both superior leagues to Scotland IMO) that can win or be very competitive in Europe, it's worth taking a punt. Arne Slot for example got Feyenoord to a European final where they lost to Roma.

I just didn't see the evidence from Ange's track record that suggested he would have a decent shot at succeeding at a club like Spurs in a league like the PL. Obviously it *could* have worked out. Fairytales *do* happen very occasionally. Leicester won the PL. From that team, Jamie Vardy's playing career had a very similar backstory to Ange's coaching career (other than actually the bit where the fairytale of the *hidden non league gem becoming a PL winning England star* actually came true.

HOWEVER: Just as a club with the sort of ambitions Spurs have shouldn't be looking to sign a striker from Fleetwood to lead our line, nor should we have signed Postecoglu to be our head coach.

To your analogy, would the top tier F1 teams sign a driver that was heading towards retirement age but who had, had a late bloom with an unorthodox high-risk driving style and managed to crawl up to F2 late on in their career? I doubt they would.

The Ange appointment IMO had about a 5% chance of being the fairytale come true and a 95% chance of what it has ended up being. Watching someone painfully out of their depth being thrown in the deep end and after a brief moment of "oh maybe he can swim after all" as his frantic splashing kept him above water, the splashing quickly became more frantic and panicked and ....Spurs have plunged down the depths as he's taken us down with him

This is a really balanced take IMO, and it does add weight to the thought that Ange was chosen to do the dirty work and someone else will come in and enjoy a structure in place.