• The Fighting Cock is a forum for fans of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. Here you can discuss Spurs latest matches, our squad, tactics and any transfer news surrounding the club. Registration gives you access to all our forums (including 'Off Topic' discussion) and removes most of the adverts (you can remove them all via an account upgrade). You're here now, you might as well...

    Get involved!

Management Poll: Who do you want most as our next manager?

Latest Spurs videos from Sky Sports

Who would be your first choice?

  • Graham Potter

  • Scott Parker

  • Ten Hag

  • Rafa Benitez

  • None of the above - comment below

  • *Marcelo Bielsa

  • *Ralf Rangnick

  • *Ralph Hasenhüttl

  • *Steven Gerrard

  • *Julen Lopetegui

  • *Christophe Galtier

  • *Marcelo Gallardo

  • *Oliver Glasner

  • *Ryan Mason

  • *Maurizio Sarri

  • *Gian Piero Gasperini

  • *Mauricio Pochettino

  • *Antonio Conte

  • *Eddie Howe

  • *Gareth Southgate

  • *Nuno Espirito Santo

  • *Paulo Fonseca

  • *Gennaro Gattuso

  • *Ernesto Valverde


Results are only viewable after voting.
You make some good points, however specifically on the conte one. Yes I believe that conte was probably paratici’s first choice, but I also believe that if it was that important to him then he would of refused to join when conte said no.

If reports are to be believed then paratici is getting his 2nd choice, not 4th or 5th. Which isn’t terrible in football, it’s almost expected especially for club that’s been awful in recent years.
Ok, let's go about it this way then...imagine you were being hired for a high-profile job for which you would be the ulitmate person responsible for success or failure because ostensibly you were the person in charge of organizing the puzzle pieces. But during your evaluation for hire the person charged with evaluating your performance takes away your center piece. Are you not hamstrung from the start? Is that move in good faith? Or is it typcial Levy meddling? The actual hiring is not the only important part. Making the call not to hire someone matters too. Imagine if there was a DOF on board to veto the Mou hire.

Sure he still took the job but it's at probably 2x the salary of his previous which is the coercive effect of the PL's money/profile and really the only bargaining chip Levy has considering our circumstances. Many would look past this for a few million dollars especially if they back themselves. And many people suck shit for a bit if it raises their profile and future prospects...while filling their pockets.

And moving on to your 2nd choice is not a bad thing when it is your choice. Being made to do that by the guy above you is galling and doesn't augur well for our DOF's autonomy in his new position. And it is that autonomy that we are wishing for this position. Otherwise it's just Levy doing his thing with a scapegoat to take the fall. Exactly what we don't want. He was on the hook for Mou and he felt it. Now he's seemed to give himself 1 degree of separation.
 
For what it’s worth, I don’t think too many conclusions can be drawn from the XG or XGA for Fonseca. Roma were 7th best for both….and finished 7th. Marginally underperforming both metrics by about 4 goals.

I watched Roma about 8 times last season and a few times under him the season before. I’d say the first handful of games they played some decent stuff at times, there were a few meh, and a couple of really ropey games, they always seemed to look a bit defensively fragile though.

I don’t exactly buy the “he fits the profile” thing completely either, they weren’t exactly a heavily possession biased team the last 12 months, although they can look good in forward transition. But they did have some good attacking players.

Definitely not high on my wish list, better managers that aren’t called Conte in Italy than him IMO.

But I’d still take a punt on Fonseca over the likes of Martinez, Southgate, Nuno, Deschamps…

He might be as shit a option as them, but at least we don’t really know it yet and can enjoy the element of surprise shitness.

I’m pretty sure many of the people moaning about him have never even seen his teams play?

But this does look like what I was saying the other day. The delay was Levy waiting for the DOF, and then having the DOF have some kind of input into the head coach appointment. Makes sense.
 
Hilarious! Close this pathetic thread down you morons. They are not coming! They are not here! Not in a million years! S
Fonseca you say?

Where are all the morons say in Nagelsmam was ready to sign? Fucking morons you lot.
 
For what it’s worth, I don’t think too many conclusions can be drawn from the XG or XGA for Fonseca. Roma were 7th best for both….and finished 7th. Marginally underperforming both metrics by about 4 goals.

I watched Roma about 8 times last season and a few times under him the season before. I’d say the first handful of games they played some decent stuff at times, there were a few meh, and a couple of really ropey games, they always seemed to look a bit defensively fragile though.

I don’t exactly buy the “he fits the profile” thing completely either, they weren’t exactly a heavily possession biased team the last 12 months, although they can look good in forward transition. But they did have some good attacking players.

Definitely not high on my wish list, better managers that aren’t called Conte in Italy than him IMO.

But I’d still take a punt on Fonseca over the likes of Martinez, Southgate, Nuno, Deschamps…

He might be as shit a option as them, but at least we don’t really know it yet and can enjoy the element of surprise shitness.

I’m pretty sure many of the people moaning about him have never even seen his teams play?

But this does look like what I was saying the other day. The delay was Levy waiting for the DOF, and then having the DOF have some kind of input into the head coach appointment. Makes sense.
Yeah, I don't know why people are saying his xG is better than Potter's - the latter's underlying stats overperform by 11 places (16 vs 5th), while Roma are exactly the same in the xPoints table (7th). And Roma are especially bad against the better sides and are said to leak goals prolifically especially in transition. I'm not saying that xG is the be all end all or that Fonseca can't surprise us all here, the Roma fans I've seen have been saying their environment made it too hard to judge him, but I haven't really read anything in his fairly long career that stands out to me as promising vs just "decent manager who can work with a budget" (Paços was great, but that was so long ago, and supposedly he struggles with pressure/bigger jobs).

It's not just playing style either. How is he as a coach - does he really develop players? Work with youngsters? It doesn't seem like he's stayed anywhere long enough to even demonstrate that. It feels more like a stopgap appointment where anyone who can do alright with a budget will do, rather than a handpicked choice on the basis of his potential.
 
Hilarious! Close this pathetic thread down you morons. They are not coming! They are not here! Not in a million years! S
Fonseca you say?

Where are all the morons say in Nagelsmam was ready to sign? Fucking morons you lot.
Please don't pollute our forum with your childish ravings. Go straight back to Rampton and ask for your straight jacket to be refitted
 
What I don't understand is why people are raging at this potential appointment, someone who they know fuck all about (I know fuck all about him) but would rather take a guy that got beat by him who had a superior squad and a settled Club (not having DoF fired and new owners) or want Potter because he's got great xG but not as good an xG as the guy they are raging about!?

Seems and really flawed logic to rage about.

I will just quote this post to address a few points you have raised in the thread overall. I am not a Potterite, although did see him as the best of the 2nd tier choices- after Conte, Poch, Nagelsmann and ETH. And I was a very vocal poster about wanting a DOF.

I will address the DOF first. I very much wanted a DOF to remove Levy from the footballing decisions, but that doesn't mean that I have to just accept anyone and be happy. I had reservations about Paratici from the moment he was brought and was happy with it if paired with Conte because it would be Conte driving the bus and would take away a major concern with Paratici which was managerial hires. I don't think that I then have to be quiet just because a DOF was hired or back his hire just because I wanted a DOF.

Paratici had a lot of success when working under Marotta. Once Marotta left and Paratici was on his own he hired Sarri for a year which seemed like a bad fit but they had success because of the strength of the Juve team. The next year he hired Pirlo which was a terrible hire and made no sense from say 1. They had their worst season in years as well. Meanwhile Marotta went to Inter where they won the league. I think there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical about how much of Paratici's success was due to him having Marotta above him and that he deserves a lot of suspicion when it comes to his decisions as a DOF especially managerial hires when his previous two were pretty poor.

Now we get to Fonseca vs. Potter. I think you are misunderstanding or misrepresenting the argument for Potter. It isn't that his xG is so high, it is that it is so much higher than his actual results and when you watch his team play it is explained by watching the player constantly miss chances. There is a lot of reason to think that with better players his system would still create the chances but they would get converted at a higher rate meaning the standings would line up better with the high xG. The key is that the eye test of watching them matches up to the xG and there is a clear reason for the difference in xG and standings. With Fonseca at Roma this is not the case at all. The xG lines up with the standings, what you see on the pitch also lines up with what you see in the stats. It is a team that creates and scores a lot of chances but also gives up a shit ton as well. There isn't much reason to think with different players they are better. There is no reason to think if he comes here the results would be different.

This also leads to a big difference and a major issue I have with Fonseca, and in part in comparison to Potter. Roma is team that is similar to Spurs, at least in comparison to its place in the league. Both teams are good but not great teams in the league. They have had success in the past, can compete with the top teams but are not the elite (Inter, AC, Juve vs. City, United, Chelsea). In fact Roma might be the most comparable team in Serie A to us in EPL. Brighton is not that. We have not seen Potter at a team where he has close to the resources of the teams he is going against, maybe the Swedish team did and he got that team much better results than the previous guy. Fonseca got worse results at Roma than they had in the 5-10 years before him. At Porto he took a 1st place team 3 years running and brought them down to 3rd. They returned to top of the league shortly after. Yes at Shaktar he won with a dominant team but that is one good performance with a stacked team out of 3 at biggish jobs, not good.

Yes the Roma job was tough but it seems very similar to us. Restrictions in money compared to rivals, tough ownership, lesser players. He did poorly with all that. Even taking into to consideration all the issues nobody can say he did well.

It is possible that Potter would have had similar poor results but he has yet to have them, with Fonseca we have seen what he can do with a team like Spurs and it is not impressive at all. It seems clear to me that he needs to go somewhere else to prove that he can do a good job rather than fail at his previous job and move to a similiar, or what I would say is a better, job.
 
What I don't understand is why people are raging at this potential appointment, someone who they know fuck all about (I know fuck all about him) but would rather take a guy that got beat by him who had a superior squad and a settled Club (not having DoF fired and new owners) or want Potter because he's got great xG but not as good an xG as the guy they are raging about!?

Seems and really flawed logic to rage about.
Well in the end it comes down to luck as well as the right appointee in DoF and Manager.

The problem is that on paper, there's alot of managers out there who would be great. It's the same as DoF and players.
And to be fair, on paper, we have a great squad. And we had a great manager with Mourinho.
On Paper.

My best piece of advice to everyone is, take a huge step back emotionally. Last season broke me and with Levy and ENIC I'm taking everything with a grain of salt now. It has been much easier when you know what to expect and were just a fucking circus at the moment so nothing would surprise me.

I understand everyone's frustrations though, 50 days without a manager and it seems like no one is even interested in the job does send alarm bells ringing.

...but did we really expect anything else to happen?

Edit: just learnt about what's his face. See post in said thread for reaction
 
Last edited:
Well if we appoint this Roma guy we've conceded the top for next season.

I think it may be up to Paratici to get rid of our dead wood. Let's see what happens in the transfer window though, if not much then we're fucked.
 
Well if we appoint this Roma guy we've conceded the top for next season.

I think it may be up to Paratici to get rid of our dead wood. Let's see what happens in the transfer window though, if not much then we're fucked.

I don't see any reason to think that Paratici will move on from our deadwood, if anything it was one of his biggest issues at Juve.

He is a guy that can come in and try to get good deals on veterans on cheap transfers. I think the thinking with him is that since there won't be much money coming in from ENIC or sales that we need him to get the bargains on free transfers.
 
I don't see any reason to think that Paratici will move on from our deadwood, if anything it was one of his biggest issues at Juve.

He is a guy that can come in and try to get good deals on veterans on cheap transfers. I think the thinking with him is that since there won't be much money coming in from ENIC or sales that we need him to get the bargains on free transfers.
There's no way that Dier, Winks, Sissoko can live with that attacking football style and get back to defend counter attacks. Dier & Sissoko have blown their gaskets at top 4 level and Winks is just a spanner.

Maybe GLC and Ndobby can improve. but the 3 in my paragraph above really need to go. Aurier and Regiloin (always spell his name wrong) are better attacking that defending but we still need better CBs. Skipp is an improvement on Winks, I like Toby but like Dier he's not fast enough. We're going to need CB's that can move fast or we;ll get destroyed on counter attacks.
 
There's no way that Dier, Winks, Sissoko can live with that attacking football style and get back to defend counter attacks. Dier & Sissoko have blown their gaskets at top 4 level and Winks is just a spanner.

Maybe GLC and Ndobby can improve. but the 3 in my paragraph above really need to go. Aurier and Regiloin (always spell his name wrong) are better attacking that defending but we still need better CBs. Skipp is an improvement on Winks, I like Toby but like Dier he's not fast enough. We're going to need CB's that can move fast or we;ll get destroyed on counter attacks.

The same thing could be said about those players needing to go for years and yet here they are still here.

It doesn't matter if they don't fit the system if Levy demands a certain amount for them. Alli did not fit in Jose's system and supposedly had offers, did he go?
 
Back
Top