From Here, it is STILL All Downhill

So here we are, arriving at the next stop on the José Mourinho rollercoaster ride. Along the line we have seen a few highs already, and just as many lows. Judging by past adventures, there are a good deal more to come. The final, terrible, destination is not yet upon us, I’m afraid.

To say all this is very tiring is already the sporting understatement of the year. What makes it so unbearable is the tedious inevitability of our failure; we know how this plays out, and we know that the part we are to play is as captive witnesses, again. Strapped into our seats we watch the unstoppable force of the football season steer us unavoidably towards another immovable object shaped hilariously like a runners-up medal. What makes the latest failure all the more intolerable is that it’s just so…‘on brand’. Our form is bad; but it’s not so bad that the board will pull the trigger. As a result, the whole thing is destined to continue to be relentlessly miserable for the foreseeable future. I’m not one to wax lyrical through the mouths of others, but it seems we have become the antithesis of Blanchflower’s Tottenham: we are literally waiting for the other team to die of boredom. The problem is that it may just kill us first. Mourinho’s Tottenham is turning into some bizarre sort of footballing chemotherapy.

Compounding this unfortunate situation is the miserable discourse around the club. Following the Spurs newsfeed in any sort of detail has become a pastime similar to that other popular topic: Brexit. All parties involved are polarised to some degree, impartiality seems impossible to come by, and there is no enjoyment to be had on either side of the divide. 

That the Portuguese would be such a divisive figure surprises nobody, his need to be centre of attention trumps all concessions to harmony. To labour the political analogy a bit more, he is the Nigel Farage of football management, albeit a version with a bit of actual substance. The only way to silence the discord he generates is through the delivery of bragging rights; supposedly his very raison d’etre. There is just a teeny problem in that regard; we just aren’t very good at football these days. 

This isn’t a José-only issue of course, such that the sorry end of the Pochettino Project was greeted with squeals of glee on one side of the divide (and much wailing on the other). Assurances that we would soon feel the full benefit of a proven winner have so far come to naught; but we are, as they say, still in the honeymoon period. Apparently.

Mauricio told us more than once that we needed a painful overhaul of the squad. We (and by ‘we’, I mean the board) ignored him, or more likely gave him some flannel about why it just wasn’t possible. The predictable knifing followed (one man being cheaper than many) and José swaggered in assuring us that this squad would be a delight to work with; these players were in fact a gift. No problems here, just you watch. Well, watch we did, and what we have witnessed since is the slow realisation that this simply isn’t the case. These guys are in fact shot to bits as a sporting unit. So Pochettino was right after all, damn him. It wasn’t that the players stopped believing as much as they needed new pastures, and some cases the glue factory.

So one way or another the painful overhaul is still inevitable; the high press of Poch’s first three years having aged the first team beyond their years. We’ve started well on the ‘painful’ part, just got to do the actual overhaul now. Similar phenomenon can be seen wherever this style of play is employed; either the squad has constant turning over or the whole thing falls to bits. Something like it happened at Klopp’s Dortmund, and without rapid investment it’ll happen at Liverpool. Leeds (and indeed every other club he’s managed at) are prone to the Bielsa burn-out toward the end of the season. It remains to be seen if PSG will tolerate their new regime for long. Is this a reductive way to look at that style of management? Of course, but this (you’ll be glad to read) is no thesis, merely an article.

Speaking of which, there can no longer be any doubt that Danny Rose was right, even if the manner in which he dispatched his wisdom rendered it as useful as tits on a bull. We have been rewarding mediocrity for far too long, and the result is a tired, flat team populated largely with journeymen. So what happens now? Well, first off we can’t have it both ways. If the likes of me are so convinced that the problem wasn’t Pochettino (and trust me, I am), then I must also concede that this latest debacle isn’t entirely down to Mourinho. The rebuild we chide the board for not giving Mauricio must instead happen under José; and fast. That may be no bad thing; Mourinho may leave clubs in smoking ruins, but it is said he remains one of the best-connected men in football.

In reality this means that Jorge Mendes stands to make an awful lot of money out of us in the near future. Some of the biggest names of recent times must slip into the past tense, as much as it pains me to admit it. The team that kicks off 2021-2 must be almost unrecognisable from this crowd, if we are to move forward. As for the rest of the season, we remain treading water, just as we have been since 2018 (insert your own drowning/waving joke here). The most critical change Tottenham must bring about now is the complete transformation of their recruitment policy; removing the process wholesale from the hands of Daniel Levy.

Recent near misses like Dybala, Bruno Fernandes, and Grealish are those which have left us bereft of ideas, and the trend must not be allowed to continue. For now, it seems the same bland cuisine will continue to be served weekly; our one-time giants left chasing ever-receding shadows of themselves.  Sometimes the pain of hunger is such that titbits alone bring a little satisfaction, but the brief respite only serves to mask a deeper malnutrition. True sustenance comes at a price, and we’ve been fed costly scraps for too long. From this point of the Mourinho rollercoaster we can see the food stalls, but we don’t seem to have joined the queue for dinner yet. Fingers crossed that the next part of the ride serves up better fare than the last.