Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy is reported to have negotiated a smart clause into Nuno Espirito Santos’ contract when hiring him as Spurs manager this summer.
According to The Athletic, the Spurs chief was sure to have a clause in place with Nuno that allows the club to sack the Portuguese tactician midway through his contract without paying him any compensation if he cannot achieve a top six finish.
It hasn’t been the best start to the season for Tottenham, with three consecutive league wins then followed by a run of three straight defeats, though Nuno’s side got back to winning ways against Aston Villa at the weekend.
It remains to be seen if things can really improve enough for this side to be genuine top four contenders over the course of this campaign, but it’s clear that Nuno will be under pressure to deliver straight away.
In a way, this sounds like a shrewd move by Levy in case things go pear-shaped, but it also perhaps points towards a bit of a lack of faith in the new manager.
This perhaps shouldn’t be too surprising considering it’s well documented (by the likes of Sky Sports and others) that the former Wolves boss was far from the club’s first choice to take over from Jose Mourinho.
Now we know the limits of the “boards” ambitions. Fifth or sixth.
Which when you think about it is actually quite ambitious when you see the net spend.
Assuming there is any truth in this rumour, imagine being the sort of business genius that sacks one of the most successful managers of the modern era with no replacements lined up and is so confident of the quality of the squad he has assembled and the manager he eventually dredged up that he feels the need to put a get out clause in the manager’s contract in the event a sixth place finish isn’t secured. Laughable.
You have to remember we are talking about our 8th or maybe 9th choice manager here. I think Levy got a very rude awakening about the attractiveness of the Spurs manager job in the summer. Nobody should believe that anyone on the Tottenham board was entirely satisfied that we ended up with Nuno.
Nuno is a stop-gap manager who will hopefully stop the gap increasing between us and the teams that try to win things.
If we don’t get top 6 then i’m sure he will be sacked. I think this is a risky strategy but you can never underestimate the willingness of top managers to take on a lost cause hoping to be the one that fixes it.
Cant players be sacked for not performing!