Good question and, let’s be fair, Ange hasn’t succeeded here yet. He’s still got to deal with what ETH has to deal with in terms of some pretty major friction with players. Everything so far seems to be rosy in our garden, and that’s primarily down to Ange and his approach, but at some point there will be bad results and unhappy players and it’s how he deals with that sort of thing that’ll define how well he can do here.
I’d have bet on Jose succeeding at Man U and he didn’t despite a couple of cups and second place finish. Then again, he failed harder here than he did at Man U. A lot of it is dumb luck when it comes to managerial appointments or signings.
I think Levy, to be fair to him, has provided superb infrastructure which helps. I know it’s kind of fanciful but there is an expectation at Tottenham, more than many other clubs, that we’ll play a certain way and Ange definitely fits that. And, from a transfer perspective, Levy has backed managers recently without going for top tier players and within a certain structure that doesn’t give a manager too much control. Allied to that, the expectation at our club isn’t as great as at others if we’re being honest. So I think all those things have contributed to help Ange.
United have some of those elements but not others. Their infrastructure is brick, transfer business seems very unstructured and expectation is greater than here. All those things, perhaps, could work against Ange if he was there.
But who knows. In my view, sometimes it’s just dumb luck. You can put the right things in place, hire the “right guy” and it just doesn’t work.