On the contrary. You have to be an optimist if you're supporting Spurs.How come you are an optimist, AND supporting Spurs??
-
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...
Manager Ange Postecoglou
- Thread starter The Fighting Cock
- Start date
Latest Spurs videos from Sky Sports
If he'd gone all out in the league and Romero or VDV had got injured and we'd lost to Frankfurt the exact same people would have slaughtered him.
But we won so instead they have piss all over the Trophy just to make themselves feel better about it.
Woah. I mean I like the bloke for the trophy but he ain't our lord and saviour ...
Post removed.
It was more a reference to our friendly neighbourhood cuntstable and his argumentative and insulting continuous posting in this thread, along with an apparent desperation to have the last word.
It's no wonder that the younger generations have no respect for the old bill anymore!
Oh.
Well
Deuterz
ain't the messiah either. Just a loveable naughty little scamp. So let's get this right you would rather a rate apologist over Ange.......why?
He didn’t throw it away nor wanted to lose.
He did rotate the squad with a focus on the cup though. Two very different things.
It was the only way of
A) Winning something
B) Securing CL qualification
The alternative was striving to finish 10-12th with no trophy or CL.
They do actually know all of this. They just pretend not to - or memory hole it because the narrative they've made up in their heads can't be questioned.
But it's good to always calmly explain the facts over and over. As you've done.
Obviously not.
Good lad.
In fairness I’m not totally sure about whether he did that or not. I think the reality is the wheels just fell off the bus. The bus had been going off track since the end of his first season with a long string of losses (we only beat Sheffield and Burnley, he had a full strength team & one match a week) and in general he never recaptured that momentum or sense of a team going anywhere long term again. There was no development of players after that amazing start, we were on a clear, measurable statistical decline.
That continued second season. Ange teams don’t do well with adversity. They work on momentum and vibes. The underlying coaching and tactics aren’t very sophisticated or in depth. That’s why we had players like Dier straight up saying we did no tactics work. Ange definitely wanted to win the league games, he just couldn’t. We steadily got worse and had injuries and it snowballed. The team clung to the life raft of the Europa league run. They couldn’t do that and win league games as they weren’t good enough. The “coaching” was sophisticated enough to get past Bodo and AZ in quarter final cup games everyone was ultra focused for, but he couldn’t do anything about bog standard league games against Brighton.
Because … he’s ultimately just an average coach. An average coach who won a cup which happens all the time. Di Matteo is a champion of the top tree in Europe and an FA cup champion all in the same season. Average coach. Ange is just an interesting personality with a lot of bluster who is pretty good at talking, but beneath it all there’s not a lot of sophistication or depth. The forest squad seem to have worked him out very quickly so he never got that initial bounce he got here.
It's quite the paradox isn't it....but you can't give up after 60 years can you....How come you are an optimist, AND supporting Spurs??
Not that you actually care about an good faith discussion going by your first reply to my post but the simple answer is I want Spurs not to be relegated and De Zerbi seems to me a better candidate for achieving that than the completely insane idea of getting Redknapp and Sherwood to stick their arms around the players and show them "The Tottenham Way " - from people who are neither really "Spurs" nor would any of our players probably recognise if they passed them in the street.
So De Zerbi is a serious option and serious manager who would command the respect and attention of our players and play football in a way that would appeal to them. That's what we need imo. Ange has similar plusses but obviously also has all the baggage of the 22 loss season. That's it really.
I agree with a lot of this but would just point out that up until Vicario's injury after the Man City 1-4 away win, Spurs xG vs xGA metrics were very good. Like easily Top 6 worthy. Those metrics fell off a cliff after Vic joined Romero, VDV and Udogie on the injury list.
Suffice it to say the xG vs xGA metrics under Frank were a catastrophe from the Bournemouth home defeat onwards. Like... cratered. We outperformed our xG by massive levels which papered over the cracks until the injuries really set in and everything just completely collapsed.
So, again, it's now clear Postecoglou, while potentially being "a problem", certainly was not "THE problem" at Spurs. It was injuries and our mediocre list.
And that's why it's weird you're so obsessed about him. He just was never as bad as you said and certainly nowhere near as bad as the guy who replaced him (if you're blaming the managers for these things)
I agree with a lot of this but would just point out that up until Vicario's injury after the Man City 1-4 away win, Spurs xG vs xGA metrics were very good. Like easily Top 6 worthy. Those metrics fell off a cliff after Vic joined Romero, VDV and Udogie on the injury list.
Suffice it to say the xG vs xGA metrics under Frank were a catastrophe from the Bournemouth home defeat onwards. Like... cratered. We outperformed our xG by massive levels which papered over the cracks until the injuries really set in and everything just completely collapsed.
So, again, it's now clear Postecoglou, while potentially being "a problem", certainly was not "THE problem" at Spurs. It was injuries and our mediocre list.
And that's why it's weird you're so obsessed about him. He just was never as bad as you said and certainly nowhere near as bad as the guy who replaced him (if you're blaming the managers for these things)
Frank and Ange play very different football. Ange had good xG metrics at Forest too.. bad actual results. At a certain point the question mark has to be whether the style he favours was looking good on xG but not in practice consistently. Until everything fell apart and then we were bad on and off paper .. which is partly because again, bad in adversity. Angeball on paper with everyone fit and firing and with momentum can and did have very strong games. IIRC our xG was actually misleading as we’d have matches where we’d score 4 and be great and then drop off entirely the next game. It wasn’t consistent.
Frank didn’t work. And I argued with a couple of people who stubbornly said otherwise past the obvious point in regard to that, I.e thinky. I’m very happy with Frank to hold my hands up & say he was a bad choice but one I backed, he ended up being extremely uninspired and with no progression anywhere. The difference is there is almost nobody who will argue for Frank on here. I also just generally wish him well - he’s not a huge ego like Ange.
I have never stated that Ange was “the” problem - have always been pretty consistent that the squad has big holes in it. I do think it’s better than where we currently are, even with injuries. I do still think there’s a failure in coaching consistently here. I actually believe we pulled the trigger too late on Frank and if an interim was given a kinder run and more time, that interim could’ve had some success.
“Nowhere near as bad” is a stretch. Frank was sacked in 16th. Like Ange he had continental success but poor league results. The difference is a bit of silverware but I see zero factual basis that it is impossible Frank could win a Europa under the same circumstances. He beat as good or better teams in Europe and got 4th in the CL. They’re both comparable league failures this season & last.
I’ll also be fair to Frank & say this is a team built more for Ange than him. Ange got multiple transfer windows. A lot of what Frank wants/needs in his team simply didn’t exist at spurs. I’m not saying we should’ve given him it as the vision was hardly utopia - but Ange finished 17th with Son and 4 transfer windows. Frank got 1.
I’m somewhat surprised that the Ange issue is even a debate. You could blow your brains out in the league and maybe get to Europa Conference, or save your best squad for Europa, win a trophy and get into Champions League. There wasn’t a chance of doing both.
And sure, you take that risk, lose Europa and finish 17th, you’re getting fired and aren’t surprised by that. But…he did it. He won, and the risk was definitely worth the reward.
And sure, you take that risk, lose Europa and finish 17th, you’re getting fired and aren’t surprised by that. But…he did it. He won, and the risk was definitely worth the reward.
The difference is ange has ego because he genuinely wins trophies wherever he goes and generally breaks long droughts such as j league with Yokohama(15 years) ,spurs etc.I didn’t want to mention Celtic as I know what the response would be to that but I would love to see frank take on the Celtic job and see how he would go,hard to have an ego when you don’t win anything.
Ange also finished 5th after 2 transfer windows,do you believe frank could achieve that?.
I don't think he could with us. He's too negative both in how he plays and how he (de-) motivates the players. Tactically I still don't know what exactly his tactics were. I'm not sure what boxes he ticked or how good his Powerpoint presentation was to to the board when he was interviewed.
And he owes me big time for the hours of sleep I lost watching us play "I'd rather put a needle in my eyes than watch whatever it was the players were meant to be doing but play football" football.
Last edited: