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Manager Ange Postecoglou

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WillWilliams said:
You were onto Dier? What the fuck are you talking about?
Him and Wanyama bossed that midfield and Dier moving into defence to make a 3 kept us tight in defence.

You’re a little bit mental.
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I was watching him pull of magnificent "no look" pass backs that sent Salah clean through on goal at Wembley.
Just because Salah didn't score and there's no such thing as a "Dier gag reel" on youtube, doesn't mean it didn't happen.
It did. And then there were the more subtle problems with him where he never stepped forward to win any loose ball he should have been sweeping up, and often stood off attackers rather than close them down and commit. Because a Toby, or a Jan, or a Hugo cleaned up that mess, it generally got forgotten.
But it happened, most matches.
 
Matt1882 said:

ENIC/Levy have invested £194m of their money since 2001. This is aprox £8m per season.
HOWEVER - £100m of that £194m is what was spent from the £150m raised in 2022 whereby
Go on,hivr nr afigure that "only" £100m was spent. That wasn't actually ENIC money, it was from shares.
£94m / 24 years is aprox £3.9m per season of owner investment.

For comparison. Black Knight Football, a consortium led by Bill Foley bought Bournemout in 2022 and have invested £213m in that time.

So tell me again how ENIC aren't cheap.
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Give me an amount that would take the argument away from ENIC/Levy in terms of expenditure, as opposed to one of the competence of whichever manager you want to choose?

Pochettino, by your cheapskate analysis over or under-achieved?
 
Herclueless said:
You can't really pose that question without fleshing it out with the cup/league performances for each scenario though.

If you said whilst finishing 2nd in the League we would be knocked out of every cup competition at the first hurdle, then maybe it becomes a difficult hypothetical. But then what is the League performance whilst winning these 12 cups? Finishing 17th every year? Then no, it's not worth 80% of the games you watch your team in being a dismal experience.

Plus, over an extended period of time, you also have to apply some basic logic. If a side is good enough to be finishing 2nd in the league consistently, then the chances that they will win a cup is increased. Meanwhile, if the side is so poor they can only just about avoid relegation, then they aren't going to be much of a threat in the cups.

This season is an absolute freak, only enabled by the fact that Europa has a pretty easy format for getting to the knockouts, and has seen a very favourable run to the Semis, largely due to the lack of CL dropouts in this new format.

We won't have that luxury next season, because we either won't be in Europe at all, or because we'll be playing CL calibre teams in the actual CL.

Winning the Europa would in no way excuse this season's League performance, or justify it. We should have been able to negotiate our way to the latter stages whilst also being able to at the very least be in the top half in the League.
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Good post mate, I agree that it's not cut and dry.
My post was meant to reflect that a large percentage of our fanbase are saying that top 4 isn't a trophy and trophies matter more.
Then the original poster is reflective of another large percentage of our fanbase who say that top 4 is more important than any trophy other than the CL.

Top 4 brings way more money in than just winning domestic trophies, but it must be used as a catalyst to improve the playing squad, like Liverpool have demonstrated. Unfortunately Levy is not loosening the purse strings, so there's a decent argument to say that if there's no gains to be made from increased CL revenue then trophies do matter more.
 
Socrates said:
Tottenham News reports that Levy loathe to gamble on Xavi due to his lack of EPL experience.
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Literally one of the most decorated players in football history.
Whilst he has no PL experience, he has played against every top PL club and beaten them.
He does have a slightly concerning record as a manager in the Champions League though, but has only done so on 3 occasions.
He finished 1st and 2nd in his 2 full seasons in La Liga. In his first season he had 25 games and won 17 of them with only 4 losses. 55 points from 25 games. In that same period, Real Madrid also won 17 but lost 3. They took 1 more point.
This was Xavi's first managers job at top level football and he went fully toe to toe with Carlo Ancelotti, one of the most experienced and successful coaches ever.

I think Xavi is worth the risk.
AngeLOSS was not.
 
CaptainCabinets said:
This is genuinely a good question.

I fondly remember 2007/08 more because my first thoughts whenever I see that season's lovely all-white kit or hear of that campaign is just Berbatov's piss-take of a penalty in that final or Woodgate's header-face thing that gave me probably the best day of my Spurs supporting life. Nothing happened in 2016-17 to equal that, but of course over a full season we were a much better team to watch.

I think it underlines that football is subjective. For me as a fan following a football club means you have to have a level of hope a team can win something and then every now and again it does. That's all relative of course. If I supported someone like a lower league club that means winning League Two, the Football League Trophy or even reaching the League One play-offs and getting a cheeky back door promotion in between the lows of relegation.

I never had faith Poch or that squad could get us over the line. There was just that something missing from it that first showed up in that stupid 5-1 Newcastle loss that never escaped my mind.
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And Newcastle were down to ten men!
 
Notabadsquad said:
Give me an amount that would take the argument away from ENIC/Levy in terms of expenditure, as opposed to one of the competence of whichever manager you want to choose?

Pochettino, by your cheapskate analysis over or under-achieved?
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Poch over achieved but I think that was mainly down to the stars aligning and cheap players really proving to be excellent.
I don't know if he can do that again. Happy to let him try but at Spurs, he's going to have to shift some big names to do it. Fans might whine and complain.
 
CaptainCabinets said:
This is genuinely a good question.

I fondly remember 2007/08 more because my first thoughts whenever I see that season's lovely all-white kit or hear of that campaign is just Berbatov's piss-take of a penalty in that final or Woodgate's header-face thing that gave me probably the best day of my Spurs supporting life. Nothing happened in 2016-17 to equal that, but of course over a full season we were a much better team to watch.

I think it underlines that football is subjective. For me as a fan following a football club means you have to have a level of hope a team can win something and then every now and again it does. That's all relative of course. If I supported someone like a lower league club that means winning League Two, the Football League Trophy or even reaching the League One play-offs and getting a cheeky back door promotion in between the lows of relegation.

I never had faith Poch or that squad could get us over the line. There was just that something missing from it that first showed up in that stupid 5-1 Newcastle loss that never escaped my mind.
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If winning a pointless, 2nd rate domestic cup is everything, why even support Spurs?
City, Chelsea, United all win cups like that most seasons.
 
Matt1882 said:
Poch over achieved but I think that was mainly down to the stars aligning and cheap players really proving to be excellent.
I don't know if he can do that again. Happy to let him try but at Spurs, he's going to have to shift some big names to do it. Fans might whine and complain.
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I was always dubious about a Poch return, because whilst his original stint was easily the best all round period of following Spurs in my lifetime, the end was a very steady downward spiral, over a prolonged duration. It didn;t seem like a hiccup, and there was little to suggest things were going to turn around.

His time at PSG means nothing at all, it's likely even Ange would manage to win things there. His time at Chelsea is more meaningful, because he took over a mess, things looked pretty poor initially, but he got them going eventually. However, that only really mirrors his time at Spurs, had he remained in charge there's every possibility things would have peaked and then soured just like here.

Now though, I'd be all in on having him back, solely because of how inept Ange is. Poch at his worst is still magnitudes more capable than this turnip.

As fans, we probably need to drop this notion of getting straight back to threatening the top end of the table, for a couple of seasons at least. Not that it's impossible, but we should focus on getting back to being able to walk before we expect to be running, because at present Ange has conditioned this group of athletes to bum shuffle across the ground like a dog trying to wipe it's arse on the carpet.
 
PointToPatrik said:
Because that's how manager contracts are worded.

As long as he is fired solely on performances, he gets a pay out to void the remainder of the contract.

It is a different scenario if say he gets into a fight with a fan. Then he can be terminated with cause.

There's not a single manager in football that's going to sign a deal that says that they get no compensation if they get sacked.
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For the record, we've paid circa 80mil in compensation fees since ENIC been our owners.
 
WillWilliams said:
Core of the team that season in minutes played.

Eriksen
Dier
Alli
Wanyama
Lloris.

All 5 played over 3000 minutes.
How much did those 5 cost combined? Same as one Davinson Sanchez? Less?

The magic in a bottle Levy has been looking for ever since.

(And the amount of shit that Dier gets from our fans too. He was key to how we played that season)
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Agreed but for fun

Eriksen 11
Dier 4
Alli 5
Wanyama 11
Lloris 12
Total = 43

Sanchez = 42

And spot on with the Dier comments... how can one of our rejects be a regular for the Bayern Munich. Make it make sense without using the words farmers league.
 
PerthPaul said:
Is it??? There's such disparity between fans on here. So finishing 2nd for the next 20 years would be better than winning say 12 domestic trophies in that time?
Because all the banners, all the shouting is about winning trophies.

Objectively, finishing 4th is way better than finishing 6th and winning a domestic cup. Purely based on prize money alone. But the balance has to be struck between finances and success.
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There’s a conversation to be had about the merits of finishing 4th versus, say, 8th and winning a cup.

But playing like absolute cunts for over a year and sitting in 16th is not alleviated by any trophy.

There’s a lot of this gaslighting going on, attempting to paint Ange as some sort of competitive catalyst.

He’s an over promoted chancer that has been completely found out at this level. If we win the EL it’s despite this bozo, not because of him.
 
Shadydan said:
Football isn't about winning trophies though, otherwise 99% of professional clubs fail every season, I don't even know where this notion of winning trophies or bust came from, it seems to be a very modern day take.

What was a better season for Tottenham 2007/8 or 2016/17?
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All sport is about winning.

The problem with football is that the same clubs win all the time in all the biggest leagues.

It’s great for teaching young men to accept the status quo in society but terrible for reflecting the true competitive nature of Sports.

The PL loves to sell the idea that it’s unpredictable and exciting but then Liverpool win their 20th league title joining UTD and you look at the list of clubs that win regularly and realize that really it’s just an aristocracy masquerading as a Sports league.
 
enfield1985 said:
We haven’t won f all yet and we are likely to play Bilbao in Bilbao in the final if we get there.
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Frustrated Prince GIF
 
Richard Arlison said:
All sport is about winning.

The problem with football is that the same clubs win all the time in all the biggest leagues.

It’s great for teaching young men to accept the status quo in society but terrible for reflecting the true competitive nature of Sports.

The PL loves to sell the idea that it’s unpredictable and exciting but then Liverpool win their 20th league title joining UTD and you look at the list of clubs that win regularly and realize that really it’s just an aristocracy masquerading as a Sports league.
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Sport cannot be just about winning trophies/titles because it's impossible for everyone to win.
 
Shadydan said:
Sport cannot be just about winning trophies/titles because it's impossible for everyone to win.
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The whole goal of sport is winning.

A gladiator in the ring doesn’t win they die. Modern sport is more civilized than that but the same rules apply.

Sure there are other things to get from being B involved in Sport, like friendship, camaraderie, health benefits etc but the goal is winning.

If you didn’t win it wasn’t success. You can also make a great case that sports teach you how to deal with failure because normally people don’t win all the time.

It’s only in the biggest pro leagues where you get these oligopolies with the same clubs winning all the time.
 
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