The atmosphere around the club at the moment could easily be described as febrile. Modern football’s impatience is at its worst in the Premier League, and it doesn’t take a lot for discontent to turn into something more serious, something more career-threatening, which is at the heart of the ENIC cycle.
This season’s results have been, so far, unexceptional. Tottenham has beaten a good many sides that have had something fundamentally wrong with them, like Manchester United, and sides that bookmakers have quoted very long odds on in Europe. Very few if any games have felt rock solid. Last Sunday’s 4-1 win over Aston Villa was the eighth time this year that Spurs have recovered from conceding first to win at home in the league.
More to the point, we have all been sold the idea of ‘Ange Ball’, but the players themselves appear to regularly forget what the basic principles are.
One week Spurs rampage, the next, we are falling apart at the hands of sides like Ipswich Town who had yet to win a game in the division. Gold warns us that the ENIC cycle at Tottenham is in danger of repeating itself, once again.
“Spurs seem allergic to stability beneath boardroom level, a trait all too common across modern football. It’s time to let Postecoglou work and construct something different to what’s come before in N17, otherwise, that dreadful feeling of déjà vu is never going to go away.”
The idea that any club’s board would stop interfering, and simply back a manager is common sense, but not something that Gold or anyone else is going to witness at Tottenham. Antoni Conte threw a fit live on TV, and José Mourinho was sacked just days ahead of a cup final. The business model at N17 is not focused on football, it’s all about securing the next commercial deal.
ENIC has spent a tonne of money on Postecoglou‘s watch, but the squad is unbalanced and feels as if it was the product of a committee, which of course it was.
Gold may well want to let Postecoglou work, but that’s what we are seeing right now, and under every other managerial at this club over the last 25 years with ENIC at the wheel.
