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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.
Pootle said:
A very depressing but totally fair opinion piece in The Guardian today:


Like the proverbial tree falling in the forest, or the sound of no hands clapping, the prospect of Antonio Conte not joining Tottenham Hotspur has a certain paradoxical quality to it. Conte joining Tottenham: on some level, I suspect we all knew how this would pan out. The initial fire-streak of success; a brief title challenge; the inevitable implosion and acrimonious divorce, leaving only bittersweet memories and a squad packed with unshiftable 29-year-old wing-backs.



But Conte not joining: somehow this feels meaningful and epic in itself, a mini-tale of clashing egos and competing ambitions and insecurity and longing all packed into a week-long heavily briefed news cycle. And for all the disputed details of their courtship – are we really to believe Tottenham pulled the plug on one of the world’s best coaches out of concern for the development of Oliver Skipp? – there is a sense that even this apparent nonevent has subtly wrinkled the fabric of the universe.



Conte, of course, will be fine. Though he may be short of options right now, he has successfully positioned himself as the gold-embossed, club-class option for the next ailing super-club with a trophy drought and a Nasa-sized transfer budget. The sabre-rattling, the lavish demands, the fixation on instant success: for his part the last couple of weeks have just been a brand-burnishing exercise, a reminder to oligarchs the world over that the Conte luxury marque is still in business.



The more interesting question, really, is where this leaves Tottenham. Almost two months after José Mourinho was sacked Daniel Levy is still searching for his replacement. The chairman’s preferred option, Julian Nagelsmann, went to Bayern Munich. Hansi Flick took the German national job. Brendan Rodgers seems quite happy at Leicester for now. An eye-catching flirtation with Mauricio Pochettino appears to have come to nothing. In the midst of which, and seemingly at random, a new director of football (Fabio Paratici) has been hired from Juventus.



Now Conte has also spurned their advances, any prospective new manager will know that he or she is – at best – fifth choice. And, more tellingly, that Levy’s stated commitment to “free-flowing, attacking football” and youth development extends only as far as the next superstar coach who makes eyes at him. In many ways this is the tension that has defined the modern Tottenham: a club eternally caught between long-term processes and short-term obsessions, a team that for all its moderate success on the pitch still has no real idea what it wants to be.



Levy is the common denominator here, the common signature at the bottom of two decades of eclectic, reflex managerial hires. Mourinho’s confrontational pragmatism was a reaction to the inclusive idealism of Pochettino, which was a reaction to the British bluntness of Tim Sherwood, which was a reaction to the gnomic intellectualism of André Villas-Boas, which was a reaction to the homespun wisdom of Harry Redknapp, which was a reaction to the continental technocracy of Juande Ramos, and so on. Even the current farce has its own precedent from 2003-04, when the promised “thorough search” for Glenn Hoddle’s replacement – with names such as Vicente del Bosque, Klaus Toppmöller and Martin O’Neill all mooted – ended in the caretaker manager, David Pleat, remaining in charge for nine months.



Clearly Levy has a fine instinct for commerce. And yet in any normal business there would be some sort of reckoning for the serial errors that have occurred on his watch: a hierarchy to answer to, consequences to confront. Even the much-maligned Ed Woodward at Manchester United has to face the shareholders every few months. Levy, by contrast, operates a small circle of loyal nodding dogs, with an absentee owner in Joe Lewis who may as well be propped up by pillows and sticks. With fans locked out and largely ignored in any case, Levy basically has untrammelled power to keep messing up and getting away with it. How curious that the ninth richest club in the world has somehow ended in a position where the major footballing decisions are being taken by a guy who – with the greatest of respect – does not really seem to know that much about football. This much is evident from the club’s Amazon documentary, in which the normally reclusive Levy is clearly at pains to present himself as some superior footballing intellect, only to come across as the bloke who sits next to you on a plane and tells you about how he won the Champions League with Bolton on Football Manager.



And so the search goes on: led by Levy, assisted by Paratici or perhaps by Steve Hitchen, the head of recruitment who has just been demoted by Paratici’s arrival. Meanwhile Harry Kane drifts towards the exit, Son Heung-min will turn 29 without a club trophy to his name, Érik Lamela still collects a weekly wage and the under-23s lost 6-1 to Manchester City last month.



Is there a theme to any of this? Maybe caprice and human error: the inevitable product of tying your club’s fate to one man’s vanity. Together with the doomed European Super League, it is hard not to see Tottenham’s pursuit of Conte as their last shot at leveraging whatever remained of their Big Club status.



The pandemic has bitten hard; the stadium still needs paying for. And whether it is Erik ten Hag or Graham Potter or Roberto Martínez at the helm, Tottenham’s world feels just a little smaller this week, a little darker, a little less hopeful. A bright new dawn that turned out to be another illusion: insofar as the modern Tottenham does have an identity, this might just be it.
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Posted yesterday
 
Don Corleone said:
TheMindOfIan TheMindOfIan

TheMindOfIan TheMindOfIan ​

Well-Known Member​



Trix
5 minutes ago
Ok so quick update. It's Ten Hag. That is from the same guy that gave me the initial heads up many moons ago.

With how many times we've changed direction already though, I'm still cautious it will actually happen.

——————

The bullshitter is back. I swear he said he wasn’t posting again? What did I say, they literally can’t help themselves can they. So Trix as per usual has jumped on the bandwagon as the in thing now is Ten Haag. Follow up with the usual Spurs community replies of “wow thanks Trix” … “I love you Trix “ …. What a ridiculous website
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I highlighted this yesterday when they were back. Hercules chucking his oar in this morning was shameless but unexpected.
 
bus-conductor said:
I don't agree with you here. Not entirely anyway. City under Txiki/Pep have never really gone out and made a Neymar/Mbappe type purchase. They've spent a fuck ton of money, but they've spent it pretty well, paid some big wages, but a lot of that was about catching up the uber clubs in a short(isn) amount of time. Their rec odd purchase is only about 10-15m more than ours.

There's been plenty of examples of City baulking at players and buying second on the wish list. Last summer they baulked at Kounde's fee and bought Diaz instead.

And Thiago wasn't exactly established first team super star when he took him to Bayern, (he was on the way to becoming one maybe) and at 25m Euro, hardly a money no option signing.
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I hear you, but I reiterate:

The world's top coaches, in all sports, are fucking stubborn about who they want.

Pep was saying to Bayern & their DoF structure, if you buy some deep-lying CM I don't want, I won't play him. I want Thiago or No One. He couldn't have been clearer.

Conte threw his toys out of the pram when the Inter owner thought he was being astute by signing Eriksen at a low price because he had 6 months left on his contract. Conte threw a tantrum because Eriksen was not the type of midfielder he wanted. And Loco Antonio sulked by hardly playing Eriksen for around a season.

I agree that the squad depth & youth signings at a club like Shitty will be driven by Pep outlining the "charateristics" he wants in players and Txiki then offering him a list for some sort of joint evaluation process. This is also probably what happened with Gabriel Jesus too. I'd be very happy with such a system at Spurs.

But with Shitty's biggest recent signings - eg Mahrez & Rodri at c£60m each - Pep would have known all about the player and been clear that this was who he wanted. Just as I suspect he will have identified Harry Kane as the player he wants this summer. He won't be asking Txiki to bring him a list of CFs with specific characteristics.

And as for coaches being stubborn, there are plenty of claims that late era Poch told Levy "it's this player or no one". Hence we turned down Tielemans & delayed over Bruno F, but did sign Ndombele & GLC, who were the CMs Poch wanted.

So, taking that example and developing it hypothetically, if our DoF had said: "we are signing Tielemans" and the Head Coach replies, "sign him all you like but I don't want him & won't play him", what happens?

Do we sign Tielemans & watch him rot in the stands? Do we fire the head coach, because he's refusing to play a big money signing?

These are complicated, unpredictable, situations. But I entirely understand why top coaches stubbornly back their own judgement on players over that of a DoF.

And sometimes the coach will be correct. And sometimes the DoF will be correct. So it goes.
 
Last edited:
Tart said:
SpursOfficial Announcement:

Tottenham Hotspur are delighted to announce the appointment of our new manager and Director of Football, Anield Evyl.
Anield has a proven track record of building successful teams over many years, without the need for any help from anyone - and he brings with him his own trophy cabinet.
Welcome Anield!

91tDnt4.png
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SpursOfficial Correction:

Of course that should have been Aniled, not Anield. Our apologies, Aniled*.



*pronounced 'Anal Ed'.
 
Pootle said:
A very depressing but totally fair opinion piece in The Guardian today:


Like the proverbial tree falling in the forest, or the sound of no hands clapping, the prospect of Antonio Conte not joining Tottenham Hotspur has a certain paradoxical quality to it. Conte joining Tottenham: on some level, I suspect we all knew how this would pan out. The initial fire-streak of success; a brief title challenge; the inevitable implosion and acrimonious divorce, leaving only bittersweet memories and a squad packed with unshiftable 29-year-old wing-backs.



But Conte not joining: somehow this feels meaningful and epic in itself, a mini-tale of clashing egos and competing ambitions and insecurity and longing all packed into a week-long heavily briefed news cycle. And for all the disputed details of their courtship – are we really to believe Tottenham pulled the plug on one of the world’s best coaches out of concern for the development of Oliver Skipp? – there is a sense that even this apparent nonevent has subtly wrinkled the fabric of the universe.



Conte, of course, will be fine. Though he may be short of options right now, he has successfully positioned himself as the gold-embossed, club-class option for the next ailing super-club with a trophy drought and a Nasa-sized transfer budget. The sabre-rattling, the lavish demands, the fixation on instant success: for his part the last couple of weeks have just been a brand-burnishing exercise, a reminder to oligarchs the world over that the Conte luxury marque is still in business.



The more interesting question, really, is where this leaves Tottenham. Almost two months after José Mourinho was sacked Daniel Levy is still searching for his replacement. The chairman’s preferred option, Julian Nagelsmann, went to Bayern Munich. Hansi Flick took the German national job. Brendan Rodgers seems quite happy at Leicester for now. An eye-catching flirtation with Mauricio Pochettino appears to have come to nothing. In the midst of which, and seemingly at random, a new director of football (Fabio Paratici) has been hired from Juventus.



Now Conte has also spurned their advances, any prospective new manager will know that he or she is – at best – fifth choice. And, more tellingly, that Levy’s stated commitment to “free-flowing, attacking football” and youth development extends only as far as the next superstar coach who makes eyes at him. In many ways this is the tension that has defined the modern Tottenham: a club eternally caught between long-term processes and short-term obsessions, a team that for all its moderate success on the pitch still has no real idea what it wants to be.



Levy is the common denominator here, the common signature at the bottom of two decades of eclectic, reflex managerial hires. Mourinho’s confrontational pragmatism was a reaction to the inclusive idealism of Pochettino, which was a reaction to the British bluntness of Tim Sherwood, which was a reaction to the gnomic intellectualism of André Villas-Boas, which was a reaction to the homespun wisdom of Harry Redknapp, which was a reaction to the continental technocracy of Juande Ramos, and so on. Even the current farce has its own precedent from 2003-04, when the promised “thorough search” for Glenn Hoddle’s replacement – with names such as Vicente del Bosque, Klaus Toppmöller and Martin O’Neill all mooted – ended in the caretaker manager, David Pleat, remaining in charge for nine months.



Clearly Levy has a fine instinct for commerce. And yet in any normal business there would be some sort of reckoning for the serial errors that have occurred on his watch: a hierarchy to answer to, consequences to confront. Even the much-maligned Ed Woodward at Manchester United has to face the shareholders every few months. Levy, by contrast, operates a small circle of loyal nodding dogs, with an absentee owner in Joe Lewis who may as well be propped up by pillows and sticks. With fans locked out and largely ignored in any case, Levy basically has untrammelled power to keep messing up and getting away with it. How curious that the ninth richest club in the world has somehow ended in a position where the major footballing decisions are being taken by a guy who – with the greatest of respect – does not really seem to know that much about football. This much is evident from the club’s Amazon documentary, in which the normally reclusive Levy is clearly at pains to present himself as some superior footballing intellect, only to come across as the bloke who sits next to you on a plane and tells you about how he won the Champions League with Bolton on Football Manager.



And so the search goes on: led by Levy, assisted by Paratici or perhaps by Steve Hitchen, the head of recruitment who has just been demoted by Paratici’s arrival. Meanwhile Harry Kane drifts towards the exit, Son Heung-min will turn 29 without a club trophy to his name, Érik Lamela still collects a weekly wage and the under-23s lost 6-1 to Manchester City last month.



Is there a theme to any of this? Maybe caprice and human error: the inevitable product of tying your club’s fate to one man’s vanity. Together with the doomed European Super League, it is hard not to see Tottenham’s pursuit of Conte as their last shot at leveraging whatever remained of their Big Club status.



The pandemic has bitten hard; the stadium still needs paying for. And whether it is Erik ten Hag or Graham Potter or Roberto Martínez at the helm, Tottenham’s world feels just a little smaller this week, a little darker, a little less hopeful. A bright new dawn that turned out to be another illusion: insofar as the modern Tottenham does have an identity, this might just be it.
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Jonathan Liew is a Tottenham fan and all.....
 
Pootle said:
A very depressing but totally fair opinion piece in The Guardian today:


Like the proverbial tree falling in the forest, or the sound of no hands clapping, the prospect of Antonio Conte not joining Tottenham Hotspur has a certain paradoxical quality to it. Conte joining Tottenham: on some level, I suspect we all knew how this would pan out. The initial fire-streak of success; a brief title challenge; the inevitable implosion and acrimonious divorce, leaving only bittersweet memories and a squad packed with unshiftable 29-year-old wing-backs.



But Conte not joining: somehow this feels meaningful and epic in itself, a mini-tale of clashing egos and competing ambitions and insecurity and longing all packed into a week-long heavily briefed news cycle. And for all the disputed details of their courtship – are we really to believe Tottenham pulled the plug on one of the world’s best coaches out of concern for the development of Oliver Skipp? – there is a sense that even this apparent nonevent has subtly wrinkled the fabric of the universe.



Conte, of course, will be fine. Though he may be short of options right now, he has successfully positioned himself as the gold-embossed, club-class option for the next ailing super-club with a trophy drought and a Nasa-sized transfer budget. The sabre-rattling, the lavish demands, the fixation on instant success: for his part the last couple of weeks have just been a brand-burnishing exercise, a reminder to oligarchs the world over that the Conte luxury marque is still in business.



The more interesting question, really, is where this leaves Tottenham. Almost two months after José Mourinho was sacked Daniel Levy is still searching for his replacement. The chairman’s preferred option, Julian Nagelsmann, went to Bayern Munich. Hansi Flick took the German national job. Brendan Rodgers seems quite happy at Leicester for now. An eye-catching flirtation with Mauricio Pochettino appears to have come to nothing. In the midst of which, and seemingly at random, a new director of football (Fabio Paratici) has been hired from Juventus.



Now Conte has also spurned their advances, any prospective new manager will know that he or she is – at best – fifth choice. And, more tellingly, that Levy’s stated commitment to “free-flowing, attacking football” and youth development extends only as far as the next superstar coach who makes eyes at him. In many ways this is the tension that has defined the modern Tottenham: a club eternally caught between long-term processes and short-term obsessions, a team that for all its moderate success on the pitch still has no real idea what it wants to be.



Levy is the common denominator here, the common signature at the bottom of two decades of eclectic, reflex managerial hires. Mourinho’s confrontational pragmatism was a reaction to the inclusive idealism of Pochettino, which was a reaction to the British bluntness of Tim Sherwood, which was a reaction to the gnomic intellectualism of André Villas-Boas, which was a reaction to the homespun wisdom of Harry Redknapp, which was a reaction to the continental technocracy of Juande Ramos, and so on. Even the current farce has its own precedent from 2003-04, when the promised “thorough search” for Glenn Hoddle’s replacement – with names such as Vicente del Bosque, Klaus Toppmöller and Martin O’Neill all mooted – ended in the caretaker manager, David Pleat, remaining in charge for nine months.



Clearly Levy has a fine instinct for commerce. And yet in any normal business there would be some sort of reckoning for the serial errors that have occurred on his watch: a hierarchy to answer to, consequences to confront. Even the much-maligned Ed Woodward at Manchester United has to face the shareholders every few months. Levy, by contrast, operates a small circle of loyal nodding dogs, with an absentee owner in Joe Lewis who may as well be propped up by pillows and sticks. With fans locked out and largely ignored in any case, Levy basically has untrammelled power to keep messing up and getting away with it. How curious that the ninth richest club in the world has somehow ended in a position where the major footballing decisions are being taken by a guy who – with the greatest of respect – does not really seem to know that much about football. This much is evident from the club’s Amazon documentary, in which the normally reclusive Levy is clearly at pains to present himself as some superior footballing intellect, only to come across as the bloke who sits next to you on a plane and tells you about how he won the Champions League with Bolton on Football Manager.



And so the search goes on: led by Levy, assisted by Paratici or perhaps by Steve Hitchen, the head of recruitment who has just been demoted by Paratici’s arrival. Meanwhile Harry Kane drifts towards the exit, Son Heung-min will turn 29 without a club trophy to his name, Érik Lamela still collects a weekly wage and the under-23s lost 6-1 to Manchester City last month.



Is there a theme to any of this? Maybe caprice and human error: the inevitable product of tying your club’s fate to one man’s vanity. Together with the doomed European Super League, it is hard not to see Tottenham’s pursuit of Conte as their last shot at leveraging whatever remained of their Big Club status.



The pandemic has bitten hard; the stadium still needs paying for. And whether it is Erik ten Hag or Graham Potter or Roberto Martínez at the helm, Tottenham’s world feels just a little smaller this week, a little darker, a little less hopeful. A bright new dawn that turned out to be another illusion: insofar as the modern Tottenham does have an identity, this might just be it.
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Brilliant piece of writing. Thanks for posting.
 
Elias said:
I hear you, but I reiterate:

The world's top coaches, in all sports, are fucking stubborn about who they want.

Pep was saying to Bayern & their DoF structure, if you buy some deep-lying CM I don't want, I won't play him. I want Thiago or No One. He couldn't have been clearer.

Conte threw his toys out of the pram when the Inter owner thought he was being astute by signing Eriksen at a low price because he had 6 months left on his contract. Conte threw a tantrum because Eriksen was not the type of midfielder he wanted. And Loco Antonio sulked by hardly playing Eriksen for around a season.

I agree that the squad depth & youth signings at a club like Shitty will be driven by Pep outlining the "charateristics" he wants in players and Txiki then offering him a list for some sort of joint evaluation process. This is also probably what happened with Gabriel Jesus too. I'd be very happy with such a system at Spurs.

But with Shitty's biggest recent signings - eg Mahrez & Rodri at c£60m each - Pep would have known all about the player and been clear that this was who he wanted. Just as I suspect he will have identified Harry Kane as the player he wants this summer. He won't be asking Txiki to bring him a list of CFs with specific characteristics.

And as for coaches being stubborn, there are plenty of claims that late era Poch told Levy "it's this player or no one". Hence we turned down Tielemans & delayed over Bruno F, but did sign Ndombele & GLC, who were the CMs Poch wanted.

So, taking that example and developing it hypothetically, if our DoF had said: "we are signing Tielemans" and the Head Coach replies, "sign him all you like but I don't want him & won't play him", what happens?

Do we sign Tielemans & watch him rot in the stands? Do we fire the head coach, because he's refusing to play a big money signing?

These are complicated, unpredictable, situations. But I entirely understand why top coaches stubbornly back their own judgement on players over that of a DoF.

And sometimes the coach will be correct. And sometimes the DoF will be correct. So it goes.
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How do you know allmof these things happened as fact?
 
Ginolaflair said:
How do you know allmof these things happened as fact?
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Which things are you talking about?

The Poch stuff I did not state as fact. I wrote: "there are plenty of claims that..."

As for Guardiola, here's a video of him saying it:



And here's the Grauniad:

Guardiola, for his part, issued his famous “Thiago oder nichts!” decree shortly after arriving at the club, announcing: “He is the only player I want. It’ll be him or no one.”

Pep Guardiola and Thiago Alcântara: a great minor-character footballing romance | Barney Ronay
 
Tart said:
SpursOfficial Correction:

Of course that should have been Aniled, not Anield. Our apologies, Aniled*.



*pronounced 'Anal Ed'.
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SpursOfficial, Chairman's Announcement:

"I would like to welcome Aniled to the club and assure him of my full support. I am aware of the fans' recent sense of mild frustration, but am confident they will get behind our new, world class manager and buy more tickets travel with us on our road to success."
 
Remember years ago when people were allowed into venues to hear jokes and all?

Yep that's us - The Comedy club.

It's exactly the same issue as trying to find q striker who could have been an ideal back-up to Kane.

Absolutely fcuking clueless.
 
Elias said:
Which things are you talking about?

The Poch stuff I did not state as fact. I wrote: "there are plenty of claims that..."

As for Guardiola, here's a video of him saying it:



And here's the Grauniad:

Guardiola, for his part, issued his famous “Thiago oder nichts!” decree shortly after arriving at the club, announcing: “He is the only player I want. It’ll be him or no one.”

Pep Guardiola and Thiago Alcântara: a great minor-character footballing romance | Barney Ronay
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All of the claims you made.
 
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