According to various reports Maurizio Sarri is in contention for the Tottenham hot seat. Italian journalist Carlo Laudisa was apparently on Radio Punto Nuovo and a move to Tottenham was deemed the most plausible option to the former Juventus coach. The Sun go on to say that Arsenal are close on Spurs’ heels when it comes to looking for a new manager, and this could add to Daniel Levy’s woes.
For my money, Sarri would be a dreadful fit for the profile of players in our squad. Many of them didn’t care for Pochettino’s demands and few were keen on José Mourinho’s methods either.
There remains the business of the optics – Sarri has an excellent pedigree – but does Daniel really want a stone-faced chain-smoker in his technical area, as ‘face’ of the club? Perhaps not.
Levy needs to get the right man in, and before Spurs’ get involved in any preseason football.
I think he regrets not backing him fully after we finished 2nd… I don’t think Levy had a choice when he sacked Poch our home & away form was dreadful, and I think the players had thrown the towel in with many looking as they do now… totally disinterested & lacking energy….which is pretty much how we’ve been after the Leceister defeat…difference is we have picked up points in between where as back then we werent.
I don’t mean you Dan, you’re fairly balanced about it. I’m talking about the lunatic fringe… 😂
Totally agree. Poch knockers have got a screw lose…
Poch needed fresh blood and transfer churn. He got the opposite…
Great Piece Sir.
Why not he’ll have the experience when we go down.
I don’t see Martinez coming because of the world cup next year
I agree 100% with your sentiments.
And hopefully “No Bums on Seats”. But that is unfortunately wishful thinking with the amount of deluded Spurs fans waiting to pounce on ST cancellations.
Getting into the top four, four years running is an awful lot of football matches to be put down to a fluke. We did this with a very small budget compared to our rivals and played some of the best football in the league. You aren’t making any sense, although neither do I expect any…
We are not in a perfect world with ENIC , but im hearing who we dont want as coach/ manager. Anyone say who they would like
He won nothing with the best defence in the league and prime Kane. Leicester won it. Stoke Brum and Portsmouth managed trophies in his time… The CL final run was a fluke really, Lucas Moura was the hero there… The game is about winning and this is what history will tell… Botchy is even losing the ligue 1 race with PSG right now.. Dans spot on for me. The first season was rubbish and the last 18 months were awful. The CL run papered over the cracks.. At the end of the day you’re judged on what you win. Nothing in 6 years is a failure in any sport.
I mistook your comment. My main point is you disregarded Parker because of his recent relegation, promotion, relegation record but Martinez’s at club level is very similar.
Levy has no doubt looked at chelsea, city, Utd & Liverpool & realised we’re way short of thsm… he’ll be secretly regretting not spending more over the last 3-4 years on players but then again what is his remit to the board? If its about making money from it all, then he’ll continue to be employed… as fans he’s failing us, but his priority is to the board & share holders. The best thing that could happen to us would be 2-3 seasons of no European football at all, coupled with no sponsor ship rights/revenues from the stadium
I didn’t say I wanted him, I said he was the likeliest option because allegedly he wants the job.
Don’t forget having to navigate nearly 2 seasons at Wembley
Absolutely spot on
Seeing the way things have turned out, do you think Levy secretly regrets sacking poch
Do you think he realises now it wasn’t pochettino fault and it would have been cheaper in the long run if he had kept him and backed him
Penny for your thoughts please
What’s he worth now? We wouldn’t have agreed personal terms with him without knowing Benfica’s asking price.
I think the price tag for Ruben Dias was £65 million. Too much for Spurs for a player who only had experience of portuguese football.
Problem is Levy wants top dollar for the crap we need to be rid of.
Terrible choice.
Unfortunately, the only people foolish enough to work for Levy will be ones with little or no other options. Will set us back further once the latest cycle of mediocrity has run its course and Levy sacks another scapegoat. Enic out.
As far as a new manager is concerned, it is frankly to me almost an irrelevance because there hasn’t been and will never be a manager who will succeed at Spurs whilst Levy is running the club. My manager of the season is Sean Dyche who never gets a mention but who has kept Burnley in the PL for nine years with substantial lack of transfer funds and salary spend and I fail to understand why the likes of Martinez and Southgate get a mention before him. People say Burnley do not play attractive football, but then neither did Spurs under Mourinho and we didn’t mind initially as we were seduced into accepting Mourinho’s style as a precursor to winning trophies. I doubt Dyche, along with many other touted candidates, would want to work for Levy anyway.
Several other matters caught my eye recently with all of them reinforcing my opinion of Levy and the way the club is run.
Firstly, Spurs have applied to the council to extend the training facilities. Some of you will say that this is no bad thing. I say that this is another example of Enic prioritising the property assets over football success and this is essentially something that has been going on since time immemorial and sums up in a nutshell why we fail as a football club.
Secondly, like many of you, I read that when Griezmann was at Real Sociedad in 2014 that we lowballed them with an offer of €23 mill when he had a buyout clause of €30 mill. We of course refused to pay the price, Atletico Madrid swooped in and exercised the buyout clause and further down the road, sold him to Barcelona for approximately €120 mill. Another example of Levy’s symptomatic , penny wise, pound foolish transfer strategy.
Thirdly, I also read this week with interest a report in the Daily Express,( I know it’s a terrible rag ) that we had agreed personal terms with Ruben Dias of Benfica, Mourinho’s first choice as a central defender reinforcement but pulled out for reasons unknown. You can probably guess that Levy refused to pay Benfica the price they wanted and so he went to City and is a candidate for PL player of the season. Levy went on to buy Rodon instead.
In conclusion, I can only say that I can see no progress at Spurs whilst Levy is running the club as his mistakes are too numerous to mention and he never learns his lesson which is something any good businessman needs to understand.
Absolutely not Martinez, however, he does have the DNA. Belgium are the most ‘Spursy’ international team out there, fantastic squad, serial bottlers!
Just to show I genuinely am not trying to dig you out Mikey, completely agree with you on this.
We don’t want a relegation/promotion specialist? Is this the Martinez that got Wigan promoted and relegated?
Who also failed abysmally at Everton?
But it’s ok because he manages the Belgian national team who have won precisely nothing and got as far as England at the last World Cup.
His and Southgates record is comparable, should we appoint him?
I haven’t failed at all. I specifically said lack of investment was very heavily to blame. That stops with Levy.
Have a look at some of the comments on these posts from a couple of years ago. Everyone calling for Poch to go.
You bang on about “failing to pay players what they’re worth” and every time I ask you about it you never reply. Who are you referencing? Because as I have mentioned multiple times it can’t be Eriksen. He didn’t leave because of money. It’s black and white in the documentary. Levy: “I have already told you if it is down to money we will match whatever Inter are offering” Eriksen: “I know, and it isn’t about that”
Who else is there that hasn’t been paid what they’re worth?
I’m not having a dig, even I look back at Poch’s time with rose tinted glasses. Watch the games against City and Ajax, it’s an absolute miracle we got to the final and our league form at the time was absolutely abysmal.
Agreed, we’d be turned over in every game in the CL… all the teams above us have a much more balanced sqaud than us…If you took the best 2 players out of each team in the PL…we’d be bottom 7… that tells you everything about the quality…
For me Roberto Martinez is the most likely option. Allegedly he wants the job and it’s much easier to leave an international setup after a tournament than to leave another club. Parker has publicly said he wants to stay at Fulham and bring them up again next year, besides we don’t want a up down relegation/promotion specialist.
Several weeks before Mourinho was fired I had predicted Benitez would come in, he has his critics but in many ways is perfect for the role… he has a decent resume, and is known for getting the most out of average players. The biggest criticism will be that his teams dont play the Spurs way….well the thing is Poch got lucky here in that he got us playing well up until the last 12 months in the league primarily due to one or more of the other big 4 being in transition… that business model has a shelf life which we failed to fully exploit by not churning the sqaud…net result being once those other top 4 clubs got their house in order we slid down the table…. If I can see it, why cant Levy?
We don’t deserve to be in the CL anyway. Leicester dropped points unexpectedly at home and we fail to take advantage again.
Alasdair Gold reckons the shortlist has been finalised and talks have now started with candidates….so there’s that.
I think it’s going to be Scotty P.
Once again Dan you fail to appreciate the problems caused to Poch by Levy’s lack of backing. 2 transfer windows completely devoid of players, inability to bring in players he and Mitchell wanted – cheaper substitutes instead, failure to pay players what they were worth causing those players to become unsettled and not concentrate fully on the project. Then you said recently that the last 18 months of Poch’s tenure were very poor. Well all I can say to that is reaching a CL final doesn’t really fit into that analysis does it?
Yes the latter months were a struggle compared to the seasons before, but I suggest that was as much down to Levy taking his eye off the ball as Poch.
You don’t need “rose tinted glasses” to understand how brilliant Poch was. His results over the vast majority of his tenure said that.
Funny that Aguero pen at the weekend. Giving Chelsea 2 extra points to make sure they get top 4…..they want scousers and Chelski in there no doubt. Spam and Leicester suddenly dropping points…..same old same old…
With Levy in charge it is akin to trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.
Agree with a lot of this. I’m not a Poch detractor at all, love the guy. But I think a great many of us look back with rose tinted glasses, the first three seasons were great. But then the high press started to fall away, teams figured us out and we had no plan b (remember when we tried playing 3 at the back under Poch? Disastrous. Especially against Liverpool).
I think the “project” just ran its course, lack of investment was certainly heavily to blame and I think Levy knows that in hindsight. We will all wonder what might have been had we signed a Dybala or someone of that ilk.
Completely agree that we basically need a MkII, the question is who fits the bill? I cannot see Conte leaving Inter and the squad he has assembled to come to Spurs with a tired and rotten core of players and no money to strengthen.
After watching the interview last night….I think it will be Parker.
If the players don’t like the manager then get rid I say (the players). Bunch of overpaid wasters, has-been’s who’ve never won anything. Played off the park by Leeds, a squad paid a pittance compared to them.
I’m afraid the dream is over East Stand.
Like you I simply cannot believe the flak Poch took for not winning a trophy. For God’s sake, Levy asked him to prioratise CL over everything else and He delivered beyond our wildest dreams, a CL Final. That was so unbelievable it was laughable.
We were always 2 players short of silverware, something that Levy never addressed and probably never understood.
Levy has found out the hard way that a football team is equivalent to a business; you let it plateau and there’s only one direction you are heading in.
Regardless of who the manager will be, I dread to think what is in store next season.
I doubt it will be Conte, he’s top dog in Italy now and has a point to prove in the Champions League. He’s also notoriously aggressive when it comes to the club owners and wages a running battle over money and transfers so I can’t seem Daniel and him getting along.
As for that list of Italian managers we’ve been talking to I think as H has said it’s all wishful thinking there has been no contact.
My guess is that Levy will now look back at the first four years of Pochettino wistfully (finally with real perspective and retrospect) and realise what a fortune Baldy man he really was.
An unprecedentedly low net spend and wage bill to league placing must now seem like a distant memory. Especially with Bale coming in as our saviour on 260k a week, plus all the other underperforming squad members. Yes, time for reflection perhaps Daniel?
Strangely enough, Poch still has his detractors, based solely around him not winning a pot. Well firstly we know that our esteemed chairman demanded that our Premier League placing was prioritised above all else ahead of the stadium move.
Levy’s audacious efforts to get us in with the Super League breakaway, was dependent on us being in the Champions League in the seasons leading up to the announcement. Would anyone really have felt that we belonged in that group ahead of the four seasons of constant C.L involvement? Some still don’t but just imagine if our recent history had been like it had been for the previous 20 odd years!
For several seasons at least, there was at least a football plan or strategy in place; to buy chiefly younger age group players with a coach in place that could both develop and galvanise them into a competitive side. The absolute definition of a team being the sum of its parts, for this approach at least Pochettino was perfect.
Unless we go back to something like this, with the net spend I expect going forward, we will be flailing around with the Spammers and Everton’s of this world scrabbling around for top four and ending up in the Dopey League every season.
When he was given the tools to do the job, younger hungry players eager to prove themselves at the top level (given our budget) Pochettino was utterly brilliant. The whole thing ‘worked’. If anyone can give me a reason why we might be competitive under Levy unless we return to such a model i’m all ears.
We need ‘Poch Project Mk 2’. If Conte would take that on then all the better, but let’s forget about competing with the other top four clubs for established quality players under Levy. It’s fantasy, it would be like spotting a unicorn on Tottenham High Road.
We need another plan and the precedent has already been set. Over to you Baldy Man… 🤔
suit you sir :-)))
Must agree just not a good fit for me, but to be fair i am beginning to wonder who is