Ange in or out?

[Surfless]

I think Daniel Levy is as aware as anyone that in the last 5 or 6 years he has fallen short on the football side of things, hence appointing a new CEO. I would expect that the new guy's arrival will be when Levy publicly says that he is distancing himself from all footballing matters, and leaving them to the CEO and his team. With a reasonably decent manager, next season should be a breath of fresh air....I remember how refreshing it was under Martin Jol, to go to the Lane expecting a home win. How times have changed for the worse.

Ange has a higher win percentage than Jol, and has got us further in cup competitions. albeit big Mart managed 148 games to Ange's 80.

 

[lurker of old]

We just don't take risks. We are so risk adverse that we are almost the antithesis of our freaking motto. We don't dare and we absolutely don't do.

I would argue that the trouble is that we have taken risks but recent footballing risks haven't worked out. As an example, I believe that Modric was seen by some as too lightweight for this league, but Levy bought him. And Berbatov etc. But the overweight French guy (can't recall name) was a £60m risk which became a financial disaster. Getting Ange in was a risk. Keeping him for a second season was definitely a risk. I think what you are saying is that when we built Ange a team, there was still some daft compromise in the squad building, which hurt us badly when we needed defensive reinforcements. In other words we go 80% of the way to backing a manager, but not the whole 100% of the way.

 

[Lilbaz]

also a very short bit or research has shown that while this season has the potential to be the worst we've had, actually the 1993/94 season was worse by almost any metric you want to consider, goals scored, goals conceded, games lost etc etc.

I'm going to throw up an olive branch here because being confrontational and negative AT each other is pointless, we all want the club to be better and I think Ange is unlikely to be here to be part of that - I just think we're in need of more than a new manager.

Sorry my bad the stats i saw were the loss percentage. 93/94 was 45% of games lost. Currently we are 54% of games lost. Which is the worst ratio in our history.

 

[Robspur12]

do you consider Ramos and Ange to be comparable?

No I dont. Ramos got us playing very well against teams who were, on paper, superior to us. In particular, 5-1 vs Arsenal, 2-1 vs Chelsea in the final, leading the peak United until almost the last kick of the game. We attacked AND defended well in many games. Sure it went wrong in the end partly due to the disgraceful summer transfer window but he achieved significant results along the way. Even if Ange wins the Europa League, he won't have beaten the quality of opposition that Ramos did on the way to the Carling Cup. I genuinely loved the Ramos period up to the Carling Cup win. During that time he was a far superior manager to Ange IMHO.

 

[Robspur12]

Ange has a higher win percentage than Jol, and has got us further in cup competitions. albeit big Mart managed 148 games to Ange's 80.

All probably true. But BMJ was the trailblazer. He took us to within 1 point of Champions League football in 2006. He then finished 5th the following year. Imho he was a better manager than Ange.

 

[harr1984]

No I dont. Ramos got us playing very well against teams who were, on paper, superior to us. In particular, 5-1 vs Arsenal, 2-1 vs Chelsea in the final, leading the peak United until almost the last kick of the game. We attacked AND defended well in many games. Sure it went wrong in the end partly due to the disgraceful summer transfer window but he achieved significant results along the way. Even if Ange wins the Europa League, he won't have beaten the quality of opposition that Ramos did on the way to the Carling Cup. I genuinely loved the Ramos period up to the Carling Cup win. During that time he was a far superior manager to Ange IMHO.

I do agree with this post Rob, but as a sidenote I don't like people directly comparison European performance to domestic cup performance. Yes on paper Chelsea from that year is more difficult than the opposition in the Europa League. But to travel in Europe, play teams with a different style and culture in the middle of the week and at atmospheres that are often more intimidating than in England it's not an easy thing to do. And for us if and a big if we did win it, to of finished 4th in our group, negotiated three knockout ties and a final in Bilbao? I would say that is just as difficult as a couple of London derby wins including a very much second string Arsenal side where we had our first eleven playing....

 

[Robspur12]

I do agree with this post Rob, but as a sidenote I don't like people directly comparison European performance to domestic cup performance. Yes on paper Chelsea from that year is more difficult than the opposition in the Europa League. But to travel in Europe, play teams with a different style and culture in the middle of the week and at atmospheres that are often more intimidating than in England it's not an easy thing to do. And for us if and a big if we did win it, to of finished 4th in our group, negotiated three knockout ties and a final in Bilbao? I would say that is just as difficult as a couple of London derby wins including a very much second string Arsenal side where we had our first eleven playing....

Not sure I agree tbh. There is no bigger game than playing those 2 London derbies especially in cup competitions. We hadn't beaten any string of Arsenal team for some time before that CC cup win. I don't think many would agree that it would be less hard than playing Hoffenheim, AZ and Frankfurt.. I'm not sure either that Ange wins the CC that year either.

 

[Daveeeeeeeed]

I do agree with this post Rob, but as a sidenote I don't like people directly comparison European performance to domestic cup performance. Yes on paper Chelsea from that year is more difficult than the opposition in the Europa League. But to travel in Europe, play teams with a different style and culture in the middle of the week and at atmospheres that are often more intimidating than in England it's not an easy thing to do. And for us if and a big if we did win it, to of finished 4th in our group, negotiated three knockout ties and a final in Bilbao? I would say that is just as difficult as a couple of London derby wins including a very much second string Arsenal side where we had our first eleven playing....

I would say it is actually easier for us to play in Europe than it is in the league, as the Europeans do not know how to play against us or probably do not watch our play week in week out. All of the premier league teams have worked out how to play against us as we only have one way of playing. It just happens that 3 of those teams have performed worse than us, but Leicester we have lost and drawn, Ipswich we have lost and won, and Soton ok, we did the double over them.

You could also point out we still have West Ham to play, so we could do the double over them, but our record at their stadium of late isnt great.

What I am getting is that, Europe has been a nice distraction and the teams we have played this year have hardly been decent. Frankfurt and the Turkish team being the toughest, but that's only really due to the crowd and atmosphere. To win the Europa league will hardly be deemed a miracle from outside of Tottenham, but for us it is a necessity that we do win it.

 

[harr1984]

Not sure I agree tbh. There is no bigger game than playing those 2 London derbies especially in cup competitions. We hadn't beaten any string of Arsenal team for some time before that CC cup win. I don't think many would agree that it would be less hard than playing Hoffenheim, AZ and Frankfurt.. I'm not sure either that Ange wins the CC that year either.

Neither am I Like I say, I just don't like comparing because to win it we would have played 15 games travelling around Europe for half of them and we have played some decent sides - sure it doesn't compare to our CL run, but still I think it would be right up there in terms of our accomplishments in modern history. But I doubt we will have to worry about this debate anyway ...

 

[Finney Is Back]

All probably true. But BMJ was the trailblazer. He took us to within 1 point of Champions League football in 2006. He then finished 5th the following year. Imho he was a better manager than Ange.

We ended up being lucky to have Jol. Arnesen wanted him in as manager but Levy (who of course knew far more about football than Arnesen ever would) appointed Santini instead. Luckily Arnesen managed to persuade Jol to come in as coach and he was therefore right there to replace Santini when he departed 13 games into the season after we'd had a poor start. Jol then significantly improved things with us finishing just one win away from European football.

No surprise really that Arnesen jumped ship to Chelsea at the first opportunity.

 

[Raziel]

The outlier of your comments here are those horrendous injuries we suffered for several months which destroyed our squad and forced us to the outer limits of our playing staff. I know I know 'no excuses' but there are reasons. Yes, he has fuvcked some things up obviously (his record shows that) but people are conveniently forgetting/not allowing for those injuries currently as the post-mortems are being written. And none of the managers you mentioned had an injury crisis like this. In fact the closest was Poch in the first-half of 2019, and as I keep on saying (and will continue to say whenever it comes up) what the geezer did in getting us into the top 4 again AND to a CL Final despite a really rocky few months was nothing short of incredible.

You call it 'deflection' I call it an acknowledgement that there are a series of issues afoot and someone choosing to discuss them instead of stating the same old 'Ange is brick' stuff which let's face it has been done to death.

One of Ange's worst decisions this season IMO, was making a fist of the league cup, a trophy which is increasingly irrelevant and can actually cause great issues if you go deep. He should've done what every other manager in recent times has done and fudged it off...who knows, we might've crawled into the 'magical 8th' had he not had those games to deal with from Sept/October on.

Harry gave us a few good years, Poch gave us a genuine title-challenging side on a consistent basis and got us to Madrid; I don't put the two in the same bracket of 'a few good years' personally, but there we go, horses for courses I suppose...

...as for that last sentence, come on now, that's just being glib and cheeky really. Why is it in these parts that unless you stand there with your shirt off screaming 'USELESS CVUNT' really loudly at Postecoglu and blaming him for every last drop of problems at the club, you're considered an apologist? As the Cro-Mags once sang, it must be a "Sign Of The Times"...

Do you really believe, minus a few injuries (every team has some), or if we had dropped out a cup earlier, we would be 8th? because I don't, and I see zero data or any eye test that doesn't show me exactly what happened yesterday will happen everyday, i.e. mid level to poor teams (extremely important for league standing to maximize points against these teams) can sit in, wait for our inevitable open spaces to counter against (or set pieces) and we are back to playing school yard "outscore the opponent" brick, and on somedays it will work, and on others it won't. That is not a fudging tactic mate.

Of course it's being glib, that was the point, because the idea that Ange's problems go away if he had a LB cover or another midfielder or even to your point, a few less injuries is not backed up by anything anyone has seen in the last 18 months.

I'm not deflecting, nor am I deluded. I am simply saying if we want "success" then sacking Ange is not the complete answer. He's going to go soon, because he's failed in the job he was given, but there's so much more we need to sort is my point.

But you painted it as such.

Lets be clear, sacking Ange does not solve all Spurs issues (yet to get a real perspective on what solving Spurs issues are, outside of moving goal posts of financial investments and win trophies), but he is clearly the single biggest problem right now.

20 years of data says, literally any manager (Except Ange) can take what Spurs provides and challenge and finish in top 6.

If you want a plan for "success" at Spurs, there is no question that step 1 is -> fire Ange, step 2, could be whatever, i.e. squad evaluation (again something I don't think you can baseline under current manager), investment decisions, etc.