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1) Ange Postecoglou
Just an endlessly fascinating manager of a wild football team. There is a growing sense that while it’s all quite fun (for neutrals at least) he really is just building – at, it should be noted, huge expense – the most ‘Lads, it’s Tottenham’ Tottenham team yet.
That sensational dismantling of Man City was Spurs’ 10th win in 14 games across three competitions after being outwitted by Woolwich in the NLD, and yet the defeats were all unbelievably stupid: from 2-0 up at Brighton, at a Palace team that hadn’t won a league game in their first eight attempts, a Europa schooling at Galatasaray that somehow ended only 3-2, and at home against an Ipswich team looking for a first win in their 11th attempt.
And since that magnificent win at City, Spurs have been, frankly, sh*t. They’ve drawn snatched a draw from the jaws of victory against Roma, drew a game they should have lost at home to Fulham and then produced an abject display in defeat to Bournemouth which got the away fans’ backs up and Ange’s back up at the fans’ backs being up. And then done another real big stupid v Chelsea, attempted a feat of staggering self-sabotage against United in the Carabao which Ange thought was all a great laugh and then succeeded in a mission previously thought impossible: suffering a 6-3 defeat in which that scoreline could be reasonably preceded by the word ‘only’. And in amongst all that they also managed to go 5-0 up before half-time against Southampton.
The pattern is clear: when they are good, Postecoglou’s Spurs blow teams away. Even your Villas and Man Citys. Even Southampton. But when they are bad they generally get nothing, against anyone. And they are bad just far, far too often. They were particularly poor v Nottingham Forest.
Really does feel like if Spurs are happy to go back to the good old pre-Big Six days of being an entertaining but ultimately irrelevant team who’ll have some good days and some terrible days while finishing mid-table and maybe having a bit of a run at a cup occasionally, then Big Ange is absolutely fine. But increasingly hard to see how playing what at times amounts to wilfully stupid football stupidly ever amounts to more than that.
Who can disagree with any of that?