The 'If You Still Need to Purge Yourself Of Ange' Thread

[kb 1984]

 

[kb 1984]

 

[kb 1984]

 

[kb 1984]

 

[kb 1984]

Last picture for today

 

[kb 1984]

One for the true believers

 

[veryoldspur]

Which one? The one we lost on the last day of the season, or the one in October in which we threw away a 2 goal lead playing suicidal football?

Both games typified what we were about under Ange. Two nil up and we couldn't hold on to a lead, and despite Ange saying we should try and win every game, he allowed the players to go on a two day p155 up prior to the final game. It's OK saying it didn't mean anything, but it certainly meant to a lot to all those supporters who spent a fortune on tickets to watch the game. Anyway, fortunately the two dark years are behind us now

 

[Silly McSilly Face]

Not going to get into the should Ange have had another season or not, as quite frankly who knows - can understand if he was and can understand why he wasn’t.

What I am intrigued by is the conflicting messaging by Levy - from his original message he made it clear he and therefore the board was aware post Christmas that the PL would be sacrificed to go for the EL “At times there were extenuating circumstances - injuries and then a decision to prioritise our European campaign”.

Then we get the we expect to compete in all competitions message post sacking. So who made that decision to prioritise EL rather then focus on PL, clearly the board was unhappy about it as we are only talking about PL, we did fine in cups - was it Ange telling the board I will be doing this? You can’t agree to an action then remove someone for delivering agreed action. If they had said no, you need to focus on all then there is every chance we finish mid table with no cup win - so why the differing messages?

This isn't actually so difficult to understand:
- you set someone objectives at the beginning of the year:
A
B
C
D
A is the most important.

- 3/4 through the year its clear A is unachievable. C & D are done. Your report says "i think i can overachieve in B, but it'll lead to even worse performance in A". You agree to it as its the only chance for them to achieve one of their objectives.

Final performance report:
A: Significant under achievement
B: Overachieved
C: under achieved
D: achieved

There's no contradiction there. You gave your report the best chance of achieving the best end of year rating they could given their performance to that date across the year. He aced one of his objectives. He massively failed the primary one agreed at the beginning of the year. He's toast. He always was toast, right from the minute it was clear objective A was royally f***ed. And it was royally f***ed.

Ange will not have had permission to "throw the league" until we were safe from relegation, which was not achieved until pretty much 3/4 of the way through the season. So as much as he got permission to "throw the league" at that point, the fact that we were at risk at one point in the season was likely deemed completely unacceptable despite all mitigating circumstances and the decision was likely made around about that point that he's toast. But you agree that he can focus on Europa as its the last chance to salvage something positive from the season.

 

[Bishop]

...in which case we also need to evaluate what he walked into, and what his remit was, versus others.
I also come back to one even more vital factor, and that is the refusal to accept (by some) that there is a dialectic here. Just as you cannot solely judge his tenure on the Europa League victory, you cannot solely judge his tenure on last seasons final league placing. There is so much more that was done, so much more which happened over two seasons, so much...

...I also have to say I cannot agree with any 'future declaration' as it is total conjecture. It is your opinion, so I respect that, but it is not an 'absolute' and I certainly don't agree on it's 'absoluteness'...

...didn't you once say I only worked in specific boxes whereas you operated across a spectrum which embraced various shades of grey? I have to say my friend, it doesn't always feel that way (FWIW I generally don't believe in absolutes but do believe in dialectics, even when -for me- only one truth exists...I know another truth exists for someone else)...anyway...how about we get back to football and tic-tacs!

I think this is where you are misunderstanding the arguement. Most of us who felt it was time for him to go did not do so based entirely on last season or the final position of that term. For me I saw it as continuation of the previous year. I had some criticisms of his approach towards the latter end of 2022/23 these were quite fundamental issues as far as I saw them and I felt he doubled down on those same things last season. That's why I was so vocal so early with my misgivings about his lack of tactical variation and adaptability. So yes there's context ie. Injuries, supposedly prioritising the EL etc but none of that negates what I felt was a downward trend that he seemed unable to arrest. Sometimes you have a great idea but on practise it needs a nip and a tuck here or there and that's the part he failed at and why he lost me. 17th place and 22 losses are just the corroboration of that critic I had for him.

 

[Bishop]

None of it makes any sense. If they sacked him for the League form, why did they wait until June? If the Europa League was the priority and seen as a reason to give him until the end of the season, why sack him just after winning it?

The only answer I have is that Levy and the board have no idea what they actually want. They wanted a trophy...they got it, but still thought "actually nah we'd rather have finished 6th."

It seems like Thomas Frank has two or three seasons to get us in the top 3 or we'll be starting again.

Absolutely the league finish is what is important to Levy. Without going through the old arguments a top end finish guarantees a certain degree of financial security which we know is the metric he actually cares about.

Frank will like every other coach needs to consistently outperform his financial backing to keep his job. That's just the truth of Spurs.

 

[Silly McSilly Face]

I think this is where you are misunderstanding the arguement. Most of us who felt it was time for him to go did not do so based entirely on last season or the final position of that term. For me I saw it as continuation of the previous year. I had some criticisms of his approach towards the latter end of 2022/23 these were quite fundamental issues as far as I saw them and I felt he doubled down on those same things last season. That's why I was so vocal so early with my misgivings about his lack of tactical variation and adaptability. So yes there's context ie. Injuries, supposedly prioritising the EL etc but none of that negates what I felt was a downward trend that he seemed unable to arrest. Sometimes you have a great idea but on practise it needs a nip and a tuck here or there and that's the part he failed at and why he lost me. 17th place and 22 losses are just the corroboration of that critic I had for him.

This is it for me. The second half of 2023/24 was poor and although 5th place was a good achievement we'd all have taken at the beginning of the season, given where he'd got us with the fast start, 4th by Christmas and a come back from the injury crisis to beat Villa and get into the top 4 again, we had a disastrous run-in with no mitigating circumstances around injuries where our open tactics in crunch end of season games were exposed and that left a feeling of disappointment.

The overall red flag with Ange's first season was the high loss rate, compensated for by the high win rate (few draws).

But it was something to build on with tweaks.

He didn't make the tweaks and he didn't build on it. The high loss rate bit us hard without that opening 10 game points rack.

 

[veryoldspur]

I will always see the Ange days as dark days. I hated the football, and found him an embarrassment to the club

 

[thfcsteff]

I think this is where you are misunderstanding the arguement. Most of us who felt it was time for him to go did not do so based entirely on last season or the final position of that term. For me I saw it as continuation of the previous year. I had some criticisms of his approach towards the latter end of 2022/23 these were quite fundamental issues as far as I saw them and I felt he doubled down on those same things last season. That's why I was so vocal so early with my misgivings about his lack of tactical variation and adaptability. So yes there's context ie. Injuries, supposedly prioritising the EL etc but none of that negates what I felt was a downward trend that he seemed unable to arrest. Sometimes you have a great idea but on practise it needs a nip and a tuck here or there and that's the part he failed at and why he lost me. 17th place and 22 losses are just the corroboration of that critic I had for him.

No, I understand thanks.
It's been made very clear by the volume of 'after his first 10 games' and 'once the Chelsea match had happened' posts...these ignore various factors including those pesky injuries again and the impact of AFCON with regards to losing Bissouma and Sarr (I'd argue that Biss lost the manager's full trust when he got himself suspended and then straight-redded BEFORE missing several games due to AFCON)...he clearly, clearly doubled down last season and -thanks to yup, those pesky injuries amoing other factors, found himself unable to succeed at all in the Prem (that is partially on him of course as he made the decision to be pragmatic only in the Europa League)...
...again, I think we all hold opinions which are quite different. But just to confirm, I absolutely understand where opinions such as yours are rooted.

 

[Baleforce]

I will always see the Ange days as dark days. I hated the football, and found him a embarrassment to the club

I think the embarrassment only came later on, and he embarrassed himself more than anything at times.

But I hated his football from the off.

 

[veryoldspur]

No, I understand thanks.
It's been made very clear by the volume of 'after his first 10 games' and 'once the Chelsea match had happened' posts...these ignore various factors including those pesky injuries again and the impact of AFCON with regards to losing Bissouma and Sarr (I'd argue that Biss lost the manager's full trust when he got himself suspended and then straight-redded BEFORE missing several games due to AFCON)...he clearly, clearly doubled down last season and -thanks to yup, those pesky injuries amoing other factors, found himself unable to succeed at all in the Prem (that is partially on him of course as he made the decision to be pragmatic only in the Europa League)...
...again, I think we all hold opinions which are quite different. But just to confirm, I absolutely understand where opinions such as yours are rooted.

I will never be convinced that the decision to defend our 1-0 lead came from Ange and not the players, but I suppose we'll never know

 

[afsoc4life]

I will always see the Ange days as dark days. I hated the football, and found him an embarrassment to the club

You must be an Arsenal fan!

 

[BrainOfLevy]

No, I understand thanks.
It's been made very clear by the volume of 'after his first 10 games' and 'once the Chelsea match had happened' posts...these ignore various factors including those pesky injuries again and the impact of AFCON with regards to losing Bissouma and Sarr (I'd argue that Biss lost the manager's full trust when he got himself suspended and then straight-redded BEFORE missing several games due to AFCON)...he clearly, clearly doubled down last season and -thanks to yup, those pesky injuries amoing other factors, found himself unable to succeed at all in the Prem (that is partially on him of course as he made the decision to be pragmatic only in the Europa League)...
...again, I think we all hold opinions which are quite different. But just to confirm, I absolutely understand where opinions such as yours are rooted.

I would also say…the end of 23/24 wasn’t even THAT bad. If you look at the results, we still get some big wins. It wasn’t world beating form, but it was decent enough. We had Saudi Sportswashing Machine away, Liverpool, Arsenal and City in that run of fixtures we lost towards the end of the season. Ideally we would have won more. But it’s a difficult run. Taken in the round, we finished 5th. I don’t know how or why it should be connected to the next season, when the general run of form even after those ten games wasn’t even that bad.

 

[BrainOfLevy]

I will offer my opinion/hunch (and this is with zero 'inside knowledge' obviously)...

I think the Levy knew that the boardroom was going to change. Cullen's departure would've been known in the New Year, as would Venkateshum's arrival in the summer. I believe the decision to move on from Ange & Munn was made in January, thus why we got minimal transfer market help versus the 'reinforcements' Ange spoke of needing as we entered the January window. I believe Ange knew at the close of the window that he would be gone in the summer. I have come to the conclusion that he decided to take the 'all eggs one basket' route as he wanted to go out with a trophy. I think for Levy & co, leaving Ange in place until the end of the season was a no-risker; they knew we would not go down. They felt (I'm sure) that he could not win a trophy, therefore making for an easy sacking. Instead, he defied odds, which made the situation slightly harder. However I always believed he'd sack him and thus it came to pass. I think Ange decided to take the gamble knowing he net result was likely going to be the same regardless. That's my theory mate...

I saw an interview with Paul Coyte after Ange was sacked, and I think he was being way too petty towards Ange. He was a relishing a little bit too much in the ‘the results just weren’t good enough’ argument.

I am absolutely sure that someone in the hierarchy told someone that Paul would deal with not to let Ange have the microphone on the parade. And I think Paul was clearly tinkled off that Ange took it and delivered the season 3 line. Because clearly the decision had been made a long while before.