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Manager Ange Postecoglou

Latest Spurs videos from Sky Sports

Was sacking Ange a good idea?

  • Yes, I think it was a good idea.

    Votes: 73 64.6%

  • No, I think it was a bad idea.

    Votes: 40 35.4%
  • Total voters
    113
Matt1882 said:
We don't look like we're coached at all anymore.
We're a total mess. There's constant panic when teams attack us. I feel like circus music should play whenever a team puts a ball into the box and it starts pinging around. The attackers seem to make the wrong choice every time. That Son shot that went high and wide for example. Johnson was closing in on the far post un marked. A fairly simple bent pass should have found him to tap in, Time and time again we break a press and a player will dribble through the middle, flanked by 2 team mates, and it almost always goes to the one with less chance of getting free. Happens every match.
Then there's the corners. Then there's our FB's playing in midfield making the flanks vulnerable literally all the time.

How is it so many people can't see this? We have a squad of players you were all raving about a yearish ago. Now all of a sudden they're all not good enough but it's not Ange.

WAKE UP PEOPLE.
He's as bad as AVB and Ramos. If not worse.
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Don't forget throw-ins. We throw the ball to the closest man to the throw-in taker to only pass it back to the throw-in taker 29/30 times. The fact is their are a lot of little things in football that can give you an edge if practiced and coached but Ange does not think these are important to success.

Even Guardiola will vary it up with route 1 and fast transitions every now and again. Ange insistence on asking the Centre Backs and Keeper to be pressed by the opposition every time we play it out from the back is ludicrous. Most the time we have our forwards playing against fully set defences because we have made so many passes at the back to beat their forward press.
 
BJK said:
I know that the comparison was far from perfect, as I acknowledged in my initial post.I made couple of empirically unverifiable assumptions, all flattering Ange and overstating the case that can be made for him. I'm aware that it's a futile thought experiment as Ange will probably never manage a club close to that level. The point I was making was at the very end. Maybe you missed it. The post was far from a praise for Ange, or the job he has been doing here.

But as a more general point, a distinction can be made between managers as floor raisers and ceiling raisers. Floor raisers are the ones who excel at uplifting teams from the ground. They create compact, hard-nosed, neat and tidy teams where the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts. They're not necessarily park the bus merchants who get a joy out of making the game as hideous as possible. They can play an appealing brand of football under specific circumstances. But their goal is to make the most out of their limited resources. Guys like Nuno and Moyes made a career out of this. It's certainly a skill.

Ceiling raisers, by contrast, tend to excel at situations where they have an abundance of resources at their disposal. They have no problem building up attacking, free-flowing, dominant teams that comfortably overpower their opposition. They make serial winners. This is a skill as well. Not everybody is up to it. Some fail miserably when trying to take that step upwards.

Now, these two don't have to be mutually exclusive. Ancelotti was a floor raiser managing Everton. Year later, he went back to being a ceiling raiser with Madrid. Some managers make that transition quite smoothly. Some, like Nuno and Moyes I mentioned above, can't make it. They had to go back to where they're most comfortable at.

Coming to Ange, I see him close to a ceiling raiser. That's what he did with Celtic. That's what he may be capable of doing with top teams. We may never know. My point is that, even if Ange turns out to be a ceiling raiser, it's irrelevant for us. The way this club operates necessitates a floor raiser. In other words, what Pochettino did in his tenure. It doesn't have to be him, but it has to be someone cast in the same mold.

Being a good floor raiser is not a prerequisite for being a good ceiling raiser. A good ceiling raiser is not guaranteed to be a good floor raiser just because he did well at a 'higher' level. These are two different situations. With different expectations, requirements and circumstances. They're not directly comparable. How well or poorly a manager performs in one of those roles is not indicative of how he will do in the other.
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Ok, thanks for explaining, I did get your points better now!

Certainly agree with the point what kind of manager suits into our operating model. But I doubt a little bit about conclusion that Ange is the ceiling raiser on highest level of todays football. He does have a plan how to play, which makes him certainly look as one. But on the highest level it is all about an eye towards the smallest of details. To go extra 0,5% of advantage from here and 0,1% of there. I don't see him doing this at all. He has wide view of the things, but not certainly the path how to get this really done and into reality.

When distancing from specifics and using figurative speech, I would say that Ange have the wings to fly, but he does not have feet to walk. That is often case with idealists.

But I guess we will neve know if he has what it takes on the EPL / CL level, agree with that too from your conclusion.
 
Richard Arlison said:
What success did he have?
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It was enjoyable for one.
I believed we could win any game even behind with 10 minutes to go I believed we could score 3 goals.
Apart from the after the Champions League Final where everyone and his dog knows that Poch and Levy were not speaking because Poch actively refused to sign off on the documentary and was in a general state of malaise because he did not feel he was getting the help he needed in the transfer market.
 
Aphex said:
I heard an Ange quote this morning from after yesterdays game which just sums up how clueless and stubborn he is.

He actually said something along the lines of

"I don't know any other way mate, as far as I am concerned it was good enough to get us into a 2 goal lead, so why should I change?" suggesting his tactics clearly aren't the problem

I mean WTF!! That sums up everything wrong with him. How can he not realise that despite being two goals up, our style of play was so open that the opposition were very likely to get back into it. As far as he sees it, he is doing nothing wrong.

That beyond anything is why HE HAS TO GO NOW. He is so arrogant and stubborn.

I can't believe he hasn't gone yet. What are the club waiting for!
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maybe he didn't realised his 2-goals advantage was because of Cinderella wearing the wrong pair of magic shoes/
 
VonnegutBusy said:
Fail to beat Rangers + defeats to United and Pool and that's a wrap I reckon, regardless of Southampton result.
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And I wonder how many injuries we'll rack up before then by playing this kamikaze brand of football? How many more VDVs and Romeros will Ange rush back too soon to try and save his own neck? Pity the next manager who has to deal with whatever rag-tag group of players Ange has left uninjured.
 
Next tr
Klaus said:
Why do people keep throwing Poch into this list?

Do people forget that Poch took us from the Sherwood/AVB doldrums to multiple 2nd-3rd place finishes, established us as a top 4 stalwart, had us finishing on 86 (EIGHTY SIX) points, and a CL final, all with basically a zero net spend for 5 years??

How is that in any way comparable to Ange, or Mou, or Conte?

Surely if anything the experience of Poch (or Redknapp, or Jol) is you CAN drastically improve results just by changing the manager. I'm sure there were plenty of people saying when we sacked AVB, "Oh what's the point, things will never change under this chairman, this is our level, we're cursed, yap yap yap".

Actually there weren't because it was fucking obvious AVB was a busted flush. Just like it should be obvious Ange is one too, but for some reason he has half this fanbase by the balls like no cult I've ever seen before, it's quite remarkable.

Anyway, 24 months after sacking Sherwood we're in a title race. Having spent no money. And there are plenty examples of this all throughout football, where a managerial change can spur huge improvements on the pitch. Take a look at Gerrard to Emery at Villa for one. Or Steve Bruce to Eddie Howe. Or Gary o Neil to Iraola. Or whoever the fuck was in charge of Ipswich before McKenna took them up two divisions.

Yes it went wrong eventually under Poch - 99% of managerial appointments do, in the end. Wenger and Klopp did too - does that mean the Goons and Dortmund/Liverpool were wrong to hire them in the first place?

For the record, I don't disagree that Levy is also an issue. He's a real estate developer, not a football chairman. But he's not going anywhere, so I see no point in wasting my breath. It's like yelling at clouds.

And really, which of the other chairmen in the league would you even take? They're all cunts; either oil-money despots or yank private equity wankers. Or worse—some genuine moron like Moshiri who takes the club from top 6 competitors to relegation fights. For all Levy's flaws at least he's not done that.

And it's not like we have any control over who would replace him. Look at United—they finally got rid of the Glazers and are now lumped with Jim Ratcliffe and his band of idiots. Another 200m blown in the summer and they're already sacking the DOF. Out of the frying pan, into the fire.
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And poch didnt have a stadium or spend money for 2 years. Polite decent bloke and great manager.
 
Herclueless said:
Ange rushed back both centre backs yesterday in a desperate attempt to save his own skin, now who knows how long extra they will be unavailable for, and we're down to Dragusin and Gray for the other two games this week. Maybe he'll rush Davies back next???
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Romero was always set to be back for this game and picked up a totally unrelated injury after 20 mins, that's just bad luck...

VDV was only going to play 60 mins but with Romero going off stayed on for longer but I don't think he is injured is he? Ange just said he was feeling some tightness so it was precautionary.

Everyone was happy when the squad was announced but now in hindsight it is apparently terrible management.
 
TheSpurEst said:
Ok, thanks for explaining, I did get your points better now!

Certainly agree with the point what kind of manager suits into our operating model. But I doubt a little bit about conclusion that Ange is the ceiling raiser on highest level of todays football. He does have a plan how to play, which makes him certainly look as one. But on the highest level it is all about an eye towards the smallest of details. To go extra 0,5% of advantage from here and 0,1% of there. I don't see him doing this at all. He has wide view of the things, but not certainly the path how to get this really done and into reality.

When distancing from specifics and using figurative speech, I would say that Ange have the wings to fly, but he does not have feet to walk. That is often case with idealists.

But I guess we will neve know if he has what it takes on the EPL / CL level, agree with that too from your conclusion.
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I think you are being generous, he has an idea, and it's a nice idea tbf, planning and execution seem to be sorely lacking though.

Actually on reflection I think I might have been generous, if you dumb his idea all the way down to "play attacking and win" then it's a nice idea, his idea of attacking football being lump as many people forward as you can and spam a packed box with shit crosses to no-one is actually dreadful...
 
Deuterz said:
We were about as chaotic as you can get. We played at full octane the entire match.

Watch it back again and I'd be surprised if you disagreed. We had players charging round like headless chickens, vacating spaces, showing zero discipline constantly. We later gave away two penalties due to the clumsy/erratic nature of our play. It was like our entire team had snorted a line prior to the game.

That's absolutely fine and what you want early on in a derby but when we were 2-0 up we kept doing it ... we then kept doing it at 2-1 so it was constant chaos/turnovers in midfield to the point of dizziness. That was the game Chelsea wanted badly at this stage as it gives them the best chance to get back in to it.

We never start playing smart - drawing in fouls, frustrating the opponent, making the most of a lead .. just keep playing the same dice roll way until we conceded twice.
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That still doesn't mean it was absolutist or all or nothing. It was chaotic because we failed to keep the ball, often because simple passes weren't being made or were being read by Chelsea.

For me that is primarily where the chaos came from, and during the first 20-30 mins you could say the same for both sides.
 
John Thomas said:
What's happened to that guy who used to dominate this thread.
Starks Starks I think it was.
Hope he's OK ?
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Starks/Totti the positivity grandstander funnily enough dissapeared after the Ipswich fiasco and hasn't been back since

I was surprised when he didn't return temporarily after the city win

Can no longer grandstand and peddle the "our defence is one of the best in the league" bluster , so I guess there is nothing here for him
 
Does anyone have any idea why we are so chaotic and end to end this season?

Because we didn't do this last season. Does he just not trust the players and thinks this is the only way to get results? Because it isn't. All it does is lead to more injuries which is why I'm starting to lose sympathy for that excuse.
 
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