Rather chilling words have emerged from the former Chelsea gaffer Conte. Perhaps, if like me, you have little or no faith in the overall quality of our squad which has failed to be meaningfully on an ongoing basis over numerous years under Pochettino’s reign, his words make sense.
What screams to me here are the recent utterances of Eric Dier. A man 7 seasons in at Spurs, yet incapable of putting his hand up to being an occasional massive failure. Harry Winks and Erik Lamela have also been on the books too long, using Conte’s yardstick.
Conte is another coach with Winner’s Enclosure form. How long will it take for the penny to drop with the average supporter, to understand that even Emperor Franz Beckenbauer himself couldn’t get a decent tune out of this squad.
The mental chip of which Conte speaks can’t be ignored. Too many current Spurs players are clearly living peacefully in their own minds. Or do I need to add a screenshot of the Premier League table?
The DELETE button is right next to the ENTER button…Just saying LOL //ssl.gstatic.com/mail/emoji/v7/png48/emoji_u1f914.png //ssl.gstatic.com/mail/emoji/v7/png48/emoji_u1f600.png
I am not a fan but cut him a little slack it is early days
It doesn’t matter how often you are told to be more positive if you are working for a manager who is consistently negative and berates you for mistakes. I’ve worked for a manager like this and their attitude counts for more than any words.
A tad unfair to state we developed a loser’s mentality. Poch didn’t have much time for the domestic cups, he was pipped by a better funded Man Utd in the Carling Cup final, same with Chelsea in FA Cup semi. We wouldn’t have beat Real Madrid, Dortmund, Inter Milan, City or Ajax if we had a loser’s mentality.
We needed a club that backed the manager to win trophies by buying a winning squad, not a winning first XI. Our best 2 players, Dembele and Kane, had to play every game and were run ragged as a result. Bulgarian donkeys got more breaks!
Going back to 70s & 80s our culture became beat anyone when we are in the mood , but away mostly not roll up sleeves & grind them out,
1/ If you say we cant win because other clubs are richer , you are mentally wrong.
2/We have finished above EVERY 1 more than once & very recently.
3/ As said over 2 year period we were most consistent
4/ Their superior money doesnt make us incapable of beating Fulham, Palace etc & West Ham when 3-0 up with 10 mins left
5/ We have beaten all the other top clubs several times
6/ Their superior money doesnt stop us churning out the dead wood year after year, Dier 7 years ffs.
7/ Scouting is useless, so called smaller clubs recruit better & dont hesitate. I could go on all day.
8/ This club should be challenging for honours regularly. No comfort zone for poor players. Ruthless demand to win. If we beat all the lesser clubs home & away , all the top teams at home. Job done. Its not easy but its what we should demand
I have felt for a very long time that the expectation culture at the club is part of the reason we end up with the players we do. They are players who perhaps don’t have the genuine self-belief that real winners have and they see joining Tottenham as a ‘safe’ yet attractive option (money is ok, quite high profile, in London, unlikely to be in a relegation battle, not expected to deliver trophies).
Yes 1961 (ouch!!!)
COYFS!!!
But back in those days there was merit in winning a cup. you could afford to do it at the expense of league positioning. Then it became apparent that it was much better financially to get in to the Champions League places and the cups were just a day out for the fans – sda but true.
the article is about ‘blaming someone else’. That could be applied to what Dier had said… or to what JM has said.
Winning isn’t some kind of mystical super power, as some people seem to think Jose possesses for example.
Jose won stuff in the past because firstly he was very good at putting together winning team together. Secondly it was about circumstance, going to work for clubs with owners that wanted to win things in the first place.
Without that, you might just collect one Mickey Mouse cup every decade or two, if you’re lucky…
ENIC OUT
Great Stuff.
Wasn’t anything to do with the blog, nothing deleted or pending
I think you’re right in saying that winning mentality is something the top teams have – an arrogance, where your pride just won’t allow you to drop points to average teams. There will always be a Wigan/Birmingham/Swansea picking up the odd cup, but winning mentality should be something that makes you always hungry for more, not 1 cup in 20 years but meaningful challenges for honours year in, year out.
Something that we might have cultivated with real backing for our managers: Harry, or Poch when we were flying high and were close to winning the league twice (best team in England over two years, most points and whatnot, but no trophies to show for it).
Instead, we cultivated a loser mentality. No trophies since 2008, so over a decade of blaming others, sacrificing cups (and managers, who were always set up to fail without backing) and establishing that being losers is somehow excusable (“but we have a philosophy, we play nice football, 3-2 in Amsterdam”, whatever).
I wasn’t yet a Spurs fan when we won the Carling Cup and I wasn’t even alive when we won our last FA Cup.
We might develop a winning mentality now with Jose, if we back him. If we again choose to fire the manager over the deficiencies of the squad, it is a sign we will not move forward.
Back the manager, Levy. Please.
Some players and Jose himself came out saying the retreats into defence are not down to his instructions. The squad is mostly burned out, and it doesn’t appear to have the drive required to pummel a team for 90 minutes.
The double IS on. COYS
My comment has disappeared 😳
This is the kind of mindset that would both offend and upset Daniel Levy to a great extent.
City and Chelsea developed that winning mentality by spending more than anyone else. Same with Man Utd in the 90s and Liverpool in the 70s and 80s. The winning mentality is somewhat a misnomer for me. There isn’t a curse over Tottenham. We have Lloris, Aurier, Alderweireld, Sanchez, Bergwijn, Bale, Son and even Vinicius who have won titles in their careers. It doesn’t make them responsible for those titles, although Lloris, Toby and Bale are on a higher plane than than the others.
With Mourinho you’d think we’d be ok, but he’s not a magician. I think our problem was that during the ‘golden’ Poch years we had a First XI capable of beating anyone but had a rubbish bench, full of Tom Carroll’s, Vicent Janssen, N’Koudou’s, Ben Davies’ and Josh Onomah’s. Did anyone see Man City’s bench today? Frightening. Back in 2015 if we had signed players like Darren Fletcher, we wouldn’t have improved and he’s won everything. He had Scholes, Giggs, Tevez, Carrick, Vidic, Hargreaves, Ferdinand and Rooney way ahead of him We needed game changers like them, not Trippier, Winks, Sissoko. The Rooney’s, Zola’s, Pires’, Kompany’s of this world, players that make a difference. We just couldn’t afford them.
When Chelsea and City both won the ‘lottery’ the calibre of players they could sign changed their ‘winning mentality’. I have had to sit and watch Birmingham City and Wigan win trophies since 2008, where did their winning mentality come from? In 2008 we had a winning mentality and then Berba and Keane wanted out. Kante and Mahrez soon jumped Leicester’s ship. Winning is not an exact science, but money is invariably involved. In England, we have to compete with some seriously rich clubs.
We should relocate to Germany!
His bank account is winning….
Exactly. That’s the madness of the Levyologist. We used to win sometimes, a cup was always not far away, the famous old glory glory cup magic, even if Arsenal and Utd were doing doubles. Post ENIC we don’t win anything at all.
Pre 91 at least everyone thought we were at least a cup side club both inside and outside. Now what do people think of the club? That’s your issue, that’s the culture, that’s the mentality and it permeates through the club, even in the stadium build the long delay and errors were still viewed ok and they shouldn’t someone should have been culpable but no time to digress. Winning is a habit, winning is an attitude, we’ve got to start somewhere and for us the league cup is a start but never guaranteed to kick start anything, it’s only winning again after that can you say that, but you’ve got to win something to start.
I agree the squad isn’t good enough but definitely better than where we are and how we are performing, that is down to mourinho.
Sitting back and defending against teams like Fulham was his decision when I feel we could of kept going for more goals. Then we concede and the teams confidence gets another battering.
Does Levy look like a winner? Grrrrr, tiger
The culture of a club, to be either winners or losers, starts at the top.