Antonio Conte looked like a man who had discovered, that cyber-hackers had simultaneously emptied all his bank accounts, and done so with such dexterity that the banks had just told him that they had no reason to believe he hadn’t moved the funds himself. And now he was explaining his situation to his wife.
Such was the change in the man’s demeanour, it was easy to lose track of just how many times he used the phrase, time and patience. The fact that he used the words ‘I’m not scared’ several times was equally a cause for concern.
The reality of the situation is one that most of us had anticipated some good while ago. After all, no amount of revisionism could explain how Tottenham’s turnover of managers began to positively cascade once Mauricio Pochettino was sacked. Mourinho hung on for 17 months. Then there was a further 2 months of trying to replace him. Finally, Nuno Espírito Santo agreed and only survived just 4 months before also being fired.
Around each sacking, we were fed a tale by footballing nitwits. Mourinho was a vile dinosaur. Nuno was a nice guy- dot-dot-dot. It has now taken Conte less than a month to realize he’s in the same sinking boat as the last 3 coaches.
Time and patience are normally aspects in life one has to ask for. In this instance, they are non-negotiable. ENIC have spent a very long time creating this situation, and these concerted efforts to neglect the team will take some time to turn around.
If I was Conte, I wouldn’t be scared either, it is painfully ironic that the Italian said that he wasn’t a magician. For many seasons, Spurs fans sang ‘he’s magic you know’ about Pochettino, who despite facing the diminishing returns of the club’s transfer activity head-on, still managed to secure Champions League football and reach a Champions League final. These close but no cigar moments were now many years ago. Since then, the turnover over players has been bitterly insufficient. Yes, I am certain that ENIC has spent the money it says it has. But was the money spent wisely? Were the players, which we acquired, relevant and insightful purchases that provided immediate strength and depth to the squad? The answer is a rather pitiful, rather meek, no they were not.
One can only imagine how uncomfortable Daniel Levy was watching the latest gaffer’s comments. Or maybe he wasn’t. Who either knows or cares.
Lol
Voted best defender at serie A last season, beating all the big guns at the big clubs.. We can see already Romero is a beast.. He’s far better than Sanchez.
My comment removed for being complete fiction is fiction in itself
No I think you are wrong about Romero he came with a history of yellow/red cards so needs coaching but one of the best CBs in Serie A and you only have to look at the England game to see how good they are,
the phrase that got my attention was “i am happy to stay here”. that means he has thought about leaving, after 4 weeks. you could not make it up
Why did Conte agree to take the job?
I wouldn’t be surprised to see Poch win things now he’s done the loser bit at Levys hand. The stadium joke scuppered any chance he had of progress and trophy’s. Top 4 money was the only goal.
I totally agree, and waited a long time for Levy to reach this crossroad. I think if Conte walks then Lewis wouldn’t risk the financial backlash from the fans. No more BS – Levy put himself in this position when he hired Conte so now has to crap or get off the pot.
C—-wit…like that..
It does.
Lucas Moura too.. Our first eleven isn’t too bad.. It’s strength in depth we are seriously lacking. We need improving in all areas really. Top 4 clubs have competition for places. Our second string are way off. The likes of Dier and Davies and Skipp wouldn’t be in the firsts in any top four club.. Still we are in the mix, we need Kane and Son firing again though.
Death will probably come quicker than both of them selling up.
And in that regard Lewis will love him for turning over massive profits for ENIC. Football is barely a 2nd, 3rd, 4th or 5th thought to Patagonia Joe.
Quick buy a lottery ticket!
For me everyone is praising Romero far too early in his PL career. He’s dropped a few clangers already and I’m yet to be truly convinced. I hope he turns out to be what we all hope he will be, but he’s basically surrounded by clowns which won’t help. It will take time and he needs better players around him
I recall when Sanchez first joined, all Spurs fans were praising him in droves and calling him the new “Beast”, and look how that turned out. Sometimes we Spurs fans are guilty of desperation because we’ve had soooo many disappointments in the past. Understandable really, we all crave success.
I think he is ultimately accountable to Joe Lewis.
I did the same thing and it went from 6 to 11
Which takes us full circle to Levy and recruitment doesn’t it?
I think these players know what we all know. They aren’t good enough for a team that wants to compete at the top of the table. Sure they can be better than they are but that still won’t be good enough. They know that trying to impress the manager is futile and so they have no motivation because they know they will be leaving the club.
Romero was always a punt when compared to the likes of Skriniar is what I’m saying. He’s young and untested, and hence a lot cheaper.
Gil and Sarr are cheap punts the way Levy likes them, no better than Sessegnon (except he wasn’t cheap!) and Clarke. So what has changed pre-Conte?
30th August 2020 evening standard
I’d say he’s just found out what due diligence actually means…..
Yes he did
No its not their (City’s) turn for the title; the lack of a genuine striker will likely cost them here, though they may win the CL. Champions will be Chelsea (my first bet, I think) or Liverpool this time around. I don’t see United winning it for a few seasons yet.
I was thinking about this last night and quite frankly i just don’t get it.
Bringing in Conte is a real coup for Spurs and i cannot fathom out a suitable reason why this wouldn’t encourage our players to be better. I just can’t!
Let’s look at Matt Doherty as the perfect example of this madness. Essentially a championship player who did well under Nuno at Wolves. Signed for a song by Mourinho and as far as i can remember hasn’t had one decent game for Spurs. Please correct me if I’m wrong. Conte’s preferred wing back system is perfect for him but we all saw his reaction after the Leeds game and his performance last night. What gives, Matty?
What does he hope to achieve? He can stay at Spurs and fight the inexperienced (inexperienced in the Premier League) Emerson Royal and nail down a place in this team. We now have a manager that will do all he can to bring silverware to the club. Why wouldn’t he want to be part of that? The only alternative that i can see is that he gets sold/loaned out to a lesser club in the Premier League or drops down to the Championship. He’s not good enough to go to a better club than Spurs.
The same can be said for Winks, Sanchez, Ndombele, Dele, Rodon, Davies, Dier, Lo Celso & Bergwijn. You know what all of these players have in common? Poch, Jose, Nuno & now Conte couldn’t motivate them to play well enough to earn a first team place in a, let’s face it, very average Spurs side. What do they think is next for them? Do they think that Pep, Klopp or Tuchel are gonna sweep them up, give ’em a big cuddle, tell them how wonderful they are and that those bad, bad men at Spurs are just meanies.
They need to get a grip, sharpish. I can forgive a lack of talent but not trying is unforgiveable.
People say Ali has regressed….but think back even to when he was knocking in goals….was he ever that player who would dominate a game?
Skills are there but once he got into The England team he thiught he made it and began coasting…
Romero has been the only bright spot of the past 6 months…we will not get away with signing any more dross….otherwise mid table awaits and Levy will lose revenue.
Bloomin’ Hell, I’ve just pressed the up vote and has it just gone from 0 to 5!?
Including the ownership and chairman. Sadly that ain’t gonna happen in the foreseeable future.
Romero – a cheap punt? It is no coincidence that the only player Paratici has paid a decent amount for is one that is also well known to Conte. He always knew Conte was coming, it was just a matter of when. In the meantime he was not going to spend large sums unless the player was a first choice target for the longer term plan. Let us judge his recruitment skills on what happens in the next two or three transfer windows.
Yes, gallows humour is surely our only refuge and comfort?
Agreed! Excellent, wasn’t it?
I’m afraid he is and as a club we seem to have more than our fair share of gullible fans still taken in by this ef…g c…wit!
The phrase that startled me was, “everything needs to change”, at Tottenham. Everything.
Wow.
The United job wasn’t quite there because Ole hadn’t yet been sacked, though it seemed very much on the cards and, with a little patience from the Italian, the job seemed likely to pop up at some time in the not at all distant future.
The Newcastle job is perhaps a high risk one for a manager, at least until the project is a bit further down the road, with perhaps one or two managers having been sacked along the way. But then isn’t the Spurs job a hot potato you shouldn’t handle with the micro managing, bungling incompetent that is Levy?
As for Poch, a mate, the other night, wanted to have a bet with me that Poch would fail at United, a bet I was reluctant to take and, indeed, declined, because I’m not sure he will succeed, either! PSG don’t seem all that reluctant to see him go and perhaps he’s not so good at handling big stars and their equally outsized egos. It can be said, too, that under Poch, we kept slipping up when the big prizes were in sight; though our lack of squad depth, due to Levy not readily backing his manager, had a significant input into the disappointing outcomes (I’ve never been able to forget how in one FA Cup SF, at a crucial advanced stage in a tight match, Chelsea could bring on Diego Costa compared with the, by comparison, impoverished options we had on our own bench)
One set of players were a team. The kit looked like the kit of a football team. They were champions in their own league. They are winners, they like to win and they expect to win. They took seven yellow cards to ensure we didn’t get to run at their defence. They probably felt sore after the 5-1 in London and wanted to put it right.
One set of players were dressed in circus outfits. Sanchez tried twice but didn’t quite manage the face plant he achieved against Man City.
Sessegnon was lucky not to see red for his first offence. He had no chance of winning the ball and kicked through the back of the lad who had scored. Rodon did that thing I hate to see defenders do – stand there with hands behind the back and make a target for the forward to curl the ball around.
Player acquisition in recent years has been little short of atrocious. Levy and Hitchens have combined to create an utter sh it show in transfers. They couldn’t have messed up more if they tried. Now Paratici is bringing in cheap punts too so you can see who controls things at our club. Levy’s inherent tightness has cost the club tens of millions in money down the drain on losers, punts and footballing clowns.
Levy is seemingly biologically incapable of bringing in a good, low risk player, he has turned down the likes of Fernandes in favour of the Argentine treatment room addict and PL shy Lo Celso, and Skriniar for the Welsh kid Rodon much loved by desperate fans but obviously not rated by good managers, these are just 2 examples of where dead cert players were ignored in favour of risks. Skriniar was allegedly available for £45m which Levy baulked at in the time honoured fashion, having wasted not far off that figure on Sessegnon and Clarke, 2 players that to this day nobody knows what they are doing hanging around aside from appearing as training dummies. Add to that punts on the likes of Gil and Sarr and you have the money for Skriniar sorted with change. We would have had a CB marshall who actually knows what he is doing.
But no Levy wants as many crap players as he can get his little hands on for his money, in an immature belief that more is always best. His bizarre state of mind is slowly destroying a great club.
Levy got £50m for Walker and went on to waste those funds on a never ending line of bang average RB’s in Aurier, Doherty and now Royal. None of them are remotely close to Walkers level. He’s blown the entire £50m and more yet we’re still no better off. Doherty is a C-Ship player, Aurier was good in some respects but as mad as a March Hare, and Royal can’t defend or cross. Oh joy how does Levy do it?
Doing the same stupid thing over and over is the definition of insanity, in which case we have the mad hatter of N17 at our helm. Will it ever change? No because insane people never change.
Excellent opening paragraph Harry.
Out of our non existent scouting network or Levy ,have any players in the last 5 years purchased worth anymore now?
NO
Levy is accountable only to himself
He didn’t say “I am so pleased he’s here” though did he.
Oh yes, in your second para, Harry, the repeated use by our latest incumbent in the TH managerial merry go round of the words “I’m not scared” is surely a cause for concern?
*comment removed for being complete fiction*
Of course, what I meant above is not that good players necessarily become good managers themselves, but that good managers need good players to be successful, though the best are good at getting that bit extra out of them; they’ll turn average players into good players and good players into positively brilliant ones. However they can’t turn dross into gold, as the bald one seems to like to believe.
Able to rely on 14 seems very generous to me. Lloris, Emerson, Regulion, Romero, Dier, Skipp, Hojberg, Kane, Son, Can’t think of anymore who should be in our squad if we are serious about been a top 4 club.
Love your first paragraph especially, Harry. Highly amusing and, alas, entirely apt. Managers are NOT magicians, Pep or Klop couldn’t make Crewe Alexandra champions or even Spurs, with their current set up, into champions. All they can do is get the most out of what they have got, but there IS a ceiling to what they can achieve. Of course, Pep and Klopp and others are good at their jobs but, essentially, good clubs make good (ie successful) managers. Or as Jock Stein used to say “good players make good managers and I have some good players here.”
What I can’t understand is why the likes Conte take this job (unlike Mourinho, Conte’s neither so advanced in his career or in need of doing something spectacular to restore his standing); I mean, hasn’t the word got around about what a hopeless case Levy is?
I said he would go to Utd in the summer, it’s a total fit and surely he would want to go…. especially now.
All yesterday told Conte was something that most supporters have known for far too long.
We can only rely on maybe 14 players at best in our current squad to wear the shirt.
The rest are sh**e and should have been jettisoned many transfer windows ago.
Danny boy has to back Conte in January, the only time he has done this was when after 8 games we had 2 points, he sh*t himself thinking we would get relegated, HR came in and spent a fortune and turned us around.
As many have said (me included) this really is the last throw of the dice, anything less will be the end of the ENIC boys.
You thought the Jose debacle was bad….just wait for this. It’s a mystery why the man took the job but then he’s playing his role like everyone else for a pound note. The Utd job was there, the Newcastle job was there….he mustv have known what poison ENIC/Levy was, has he been living in an underground apocalypse shelter?? No, he knew in the summer…?
I’m sure they will beat the upcoming fodder and fans will be fooled yet again of revival. It’s like watching the same slow motion car crash for eternity without being able to do a damn thing to stop it. This is what it’s for. Energy harvesting, distraction. It’s all bolox.
I may av jumped the gun on Utd but theyll likely win the title next season with Poch maybe succeed in Europe like when Matteo came in for Chelsea in the farce on 2012, Carrick could mirror that. The fact remains City could av got Kane and won it again but it’s not their turn.
I’m hoping that Levy’s position will become untenable. But we should never underestimate his ability to escape accountability. He’s a sneaky, scheming effer.
We’ve got to insert some humour in these grim times as Spurs fans. What else have we got?
Just imagine if he walked away before Xmas and took over Man Utd.
This is all on Levy.
There is still poison in that dressing room.
“Antonio Conte looked like a man who had discovered, that cyber-hackers had simultaneously emptied all his bank accounts, and done so with such dexterity that the banks had just told him that they had no reason to believe he hadn’t moved the funds himself. And now he was explaining his situation to his wife.”
Inspired. More of this level of material.