Ange in or out?

[Muttley]

You can’t assume that you can keep the, all fit
So you need more players

I still struggle with the numerical thing though. We might need different players rather than more players. We have 21 outfield players listed on our official website.

When you break it down, Ange won't use Reggie so has made his squad 20 players. Richi and Odobert being missing for so long has meant we were mostly going to be rotating on 18. However, Ange seemed fine to keep Moore involved so that brings it back to 19. I'm wondering if that is so different to other managers in the PL, even the ones in all 4 competitions.

I think a good January for Spurs would be Reggie moving on and us bringing in 2 new signings in the 24-26 age range. Then we recall Philiips and get Richi back fit again. I guess that's 4 warm bodies that Ange would use. It would make a difference.

 

[Grays_1890]

The issue now is for Ange that its not going to matter soon as he is going to get sacked unless he and the team dig in, I like him but he is not going to survive many more weeks being in and around 12th/13th

 

[Grays_1890]

I still struggle with the numerical thing though. We might need different players rather than more players. We have 21 outfield players listed on our official website.

When you break it down, Ange won't use Reggie so has made his squad 20 players. Richi and Odobert being missing for so long has meant we were mostly going to be rotating on 18. However, Ange seemed fine to keep Moore involved so that brings it back to 19. I'm wondering if that is so different to other managers in the PL, even the ones in all 4 competitions.

I think a good January for Spurs would be Reggie moving on and us bringing in 2 new signings in the 24-26 age range. Then we recall Philiips and get Richi back fit again. I guess that's 4 warm bodies that Ange would use. It would make a difference.

Reggie is a non story as he has not been a consideration at Spurs for ages and he is also not very good.

Moore has been out for two months now so he adds to the woe

Conversely the major difference to those in the places we want to be is not the numbers game its the quality coming into the side when their first team are out, we just ain't there, I would argue that a fair few of our starting line up need upgrading too. I just don't think our first team is anywhere near what people think it is.

 

[Muttley]

Reggie is a non story as he has not been a consideration at Spurs for ages and he is also not very good.

Moore has been out for two months now so he adds to the woe

Conversely the major difference to those in the places we want to be is not the numbers game its the quality coming into the side when their first team are out, we just ain't there, I would argue that a fair few of our starting line up need upgrading too. I just don't think our first team is anywhere near what people think it is.

That's fair.

Last time around under Poch we made a fair few signings but you can bring it down to just a few that made a difference e.g. Toby.

I still want us to go that route. We have 15 promising U21s and have to seriously hope that more than a couple make it to the other side. Then you add one Toby each transfer window, perhaps two if you're lucky and you're soon in a different place.

 

[Grays_1890]

That's fair.

Last time around under Poch we made a fair few signings but you can bring it down to just a few that made a difference e.g. Toby.

I still want us to go that route. We have 15 promising U21s and have to seriously hope that more than a couple make it to the other side. Then you add one Toby each transfer window, perhaps two if you're lucky and you're soon in a different place.

We are in desperate need of those stardust players IMO, otherwise we will have to wait another 2 years for this lot to hopefully mature into a golden generation AND risk some moving on because the ambitions don't match.

Gray looks generational for me, but if we get to his 23 birthday on strategy and tomorrow never comes in terms of success, he isn't going to stick around.

Where I have issue with Ange is that there seems to be an almost, lets just pack it all in attitude because of the injuries, yeh there are issues and yeh I don't think there is the quality in areas we need, but we can't just shrug our shoulders and say "it is what it is.....mate"

 

[El Guepardo]

One question that I haven’t really seen answered is WHY do we suffer so many injuries? No other team has close to the number of injuries we have had since the start of last season.
We can use injuries as some level of excuse but we also need to find a way to minimise injuries or all that will happen is that we will continually suffer more injuries and have more excuses.

 

[Bedfordspurs]

One question that I haven’t really seen answered is WHY do we suffer so many injuries? No other team has close to the number of injuries we have had since the start of last season.
We can use injuries as some level of excuse but we also need to find a way to minimise injuries or all that will happen is that we will continually suffer more injuries and have more excuses.

Impossible to say factually
But always something to speculate on
We are the most fouled team in the country again
But I don’t think that’s why
We sprint the most
And we do appear to have the smallest first team squad (I can’t say that for certainty)

 

[Bedfordspurs]

We are in desperate need of those stardust players IMO, otherwise we will have to wait another 2 years for this lot to hopefully mature into a golden generation AND risk some moving on because the ambitions don't match.

Gray looks generational for me, but if we get to his 23 birthday on strategy and tomorrow never comes in terms of success, he isn't going to stick around.

Where I have issue with Ange is that there seems to be an almost, lets just pack it all in attitude because of the injuries, yeh there are issues and yeh I don't think there is the quality in areas we need, but we can't just shrug our shoulders and say "it is what it is.....mate"

He has never said that about injuries

 

[Grays_1890]

He has never said that about injuries

No I did, it was a joke

We know the injuries are bad, but its allowing the narrative to dictated the season, almost like lets just give up, thats how it kinda feels.

 

[johnola]

One question that I haven’t really seen answered is WHY do we suffer so many injuries? No other team has close to the number of injuries we have had since the start of last season.
We can use injuries as some level of excuse but we also need to find a way to minimise injuries or all that will happen is that we will continually suffer more injuries and have more excuses.

The top pinned thread is “Injuries” -who what and why !

To sum up, these are not contact injuries. They arise because we are not or maybe cannot ever be conditioned for the intensity of training and effort needed for the intensity and volume of work the squad must put in for this open system with the ball travelling so far and fast in every bloody game and training session.

 

[Muttley]

We are in desperate need of those stardust players IMO, otherwise we will have to wait another 2 years for this lot to hopefully mature into a golden generation AND risk some moving on because the ambitions don't match.

Gray looks generational for me, but if we get to his 23 birthday on strategy and tomorrow never comes in terms of success, he isn't going to stick around.

Where I have issue with Ange is that there seems to be an almost, lets just pack it all in attitude because of the injuries, yeh there are issues and yeh I don't think there is the quality in areas we need, but we can't just shrug our shoulders and say "it is what it is.....mate"

I agree that Gray could be generational. Perhaps Moore, Vuskovic and others. I guess what I fear with Ange at the helm is Gray being 23 years old and a history of soft tissue injuries. Then we see a diminished player operating below his ceiling.

I do agree with your last statement. Ange can interview with some confident, roostersure persona on some days as if he's the only man on the planet for this job and hates losing. On others, his demeanour is awful and it is as if he doesn't want to be here. There are more of the latter recently though and it is a concern.

 

[veryoldspur]

Yes, I've posted as such myself....I'm not quite sure what that has to do with my post you replied to tbh?

You mentioned the fact we don't have enough fit players. Look, we have been dreadful following the first ten games of his management. Some of that time we have been plagued by injuries, but most of the time we haven't. I'm convinced you could give Ange the Liverpool squad and he still wouldn't win anything. His method may work in lower leagues, but it won't work here. I seam to remember Ossie trying something similar, and AVB playing an ultra high line. Any good manager is adaptable and pragmatic, Ange is neither, and prefers to be stubborn and arrogant

 

[ricky2tricky4city]

You mentioned the fact we don't have enough fit players. Look, we have been dreadful following the first ten games of his management. Some of that time we have been plagued by injuries, but most of the time we haven't. I'm convinced you could give Ange the Liverpool squad and he still wouldn't win anything. His method may work in lower leagues, but it won't work here. I seam to remember Ossie trying something similar, and AVB playing an ultra high line. Any good manager is adaptable and pragmatic, Ange is neither, and prefers to be stubborn and arrogant

The reason I said 'im not sure how that relates to my post' was...
We were talking about Iraola, and what his needs might be. Nothing about the ongoing Ange situation.

 

[ricky2tricky4city]

I agree that Gray could be generational. Perhaps Moore, Vuskovic and others. I guess what I fear with Ange at the helm is Gray being 23 years old and a history of soft tissue injuries. Then we see a diminished player operating below his ceiling.

I do agree with your last statement. Ange can interview with some confident, roostersure persona on some days as if he's the only man on the planet for this job and hates losing. On others, his demeanour is awful and it is as if he doesn't want to be here. There are more of the latter recently though and it is a concern.

I think immediately post losing a match he's a bit fan like...just down in the dumps trying to process it. Plus I don't doubt he's a guy that feels personally responsible.

Not quite as bad post loss as Sonny though

 

[Robspur12]

No, the chairman sacked him because he had lost the plot and our performances and results had largely been poor for a year.

Hmm, champions league final and top 4 finish at the end of the previous season. How I wish our performances were that poor now….we have moved on as a club, and rightly so, but I think what’s happened since his departure has only reinforced what a great job the guy did under the circumstances.

 

[DeanoAustin]

Hmm, champions league final and finish in the top 4 at the end of the previous season. How I wish our performances were that poor now….we have moved on as a club, and rightly so, but I think what’s happened since his departure has only reinforced what a great job the guy did under the circumstances.

I was too hard on Poch towards the end. I thought he should have gotten till the end of that season as he'd earned that much but his demeanour and utterances were grating for the 6 months leading up to his departure. That said, with the benefit of hindsight, it was a terrible decision to fire him IMO. It was a combination of factors I think including the fact Jose was lurking in the background and he was clearly admired by Levy at the time. Had he not been available, Poch probably would have gotten longer.

On Ange, some of his public utterances are starting to worry me and it's just little things but a lot of them. Simon Jordan pointed out that after Liverpool he gave the BBC reporter grief for not acknowledging the injury situation as the reason we got whacked. Then the SKY guy asked a question where he said "injuries and absences are obviously the big factor here" and Ange corrected him saying they were a factor but not the main one.

He also sounds a bit like a madman howling at the moon by saying that his way works, we just need to give it time as if he has some sort of all-knowing power that says he will win at this level if he just gets time. Fact is, he doesn't know that to be the case. He's also using terminology like "this is what we want". Who is we? It almost sounds like he's trying to convince himself at times. And finally, he's saying things like "we wouldn't be the team we are if we didn't...". As if we were in a position to be envied. We aren't. We're underachieving and have been for a while.

I'll be there tomorrow and I'll be singing Big Ange's name. And I desperately want this to work but increasingly he looks like a man who has backed himself into a corner and the ground is crumbling beneath him.

 

[Finney Is Back]

Have we looked any better with a reasonably fit squad? And given we've had long periods in both seasons of having most of our defence out is this injury problem an issue of his own making or genuine ridiculous bad luck? Because if it's of his own making he will never have a reasonably fit squad...

I don't really remember us being second best in many games this season (other than Coventry) when we had a reasonably fit squad.

 

[lurker of old]

I'be backed Ange so far, but my patience is rapidly waning. I travel in to watch us, as many, perhaps most, do.
Traveling to a home game and not being confident of the result, means the club is in a bad place. But the DOF and Board know what the club's analytical models say about the manager's performance, and what the models say about the team's performances, as opposed to the results. If the data says Ange is underperforming once allowances have been made for injuries and bad luck - that is when Munn will wield the axe.

 

[Finney Is Back]

It doesn't matter how many times you say that he was sacked because he wanted a rebuild it still won't be true. The rebuild started in the summer before he was sacked, pity the money was wasted though.

The rebuild barely started. Three first team players that the manager hardly had the opportunity to integrate and play before he was sacked.. We’ve been paying the price ever since. Levy sacked by far the best manager he ever got to the club the moment things turned south, ignoring 5 great seasons of work. If only Levy was held to half of that level of expectation himself.

 

[Mr Gogolak]

The rebuild barely started. Three first team players that the manager hardly had the opportunity to integrate and play before he was sacked.. We’ve been paying the price ever since. Levy sacked by far the best manager he ever got to the club the moment things turned south, ignoring 5 great seasons of work. If only Levy was held to half of that level of expectation himself.

It's true, but it's also not as simple as that. There's a reason why very few managers stay at the same club for more than five seasons. At some point, players get bored of hearing the same instructions, week in, week out. Ferguson found a good way around that by appointing new assistants almost every other season, but Pochettino didn't have that luxury.

In other words and while I respect your faith in the guy, nobody knows for sure he had it in him to reinvent himself and see that rebuild through. The players he insisted on buying haven't been very successful. Sure, maybe they would have done better with him but that will remain a conjecture.

What's done is done. No-one will ever take what he achieved with us away from him, but we could spend a lifetime or two debating what might have been, I don't think anyone will change their minds now. For what it's worth, I think it was a bigger mistake/unfortunate circumstance that the managers we appointed next weren't backed properly.