Chelsea invest money. So they can afford to lurch to the next best available manager, buy him the player he tells them he needs and win. We don't have that luxury. We need to build a culture that can be our competitive advantage against more monied clubs.
I really think Poch will be looked back in in a few years in the light he deserves. I appreciate you don't think he deserves some of the praise he gets, or don't think the club should have backed him. But I think his achievements were ridiculous. I think just as there not really an example of a manager turning around that decline, I also don't see another example of one who delivered such consistent over-performance as Poch did, off the back of so few resources. When the issue was clearly he hadn't had any signings for 18 months, then got 3, two of whom were injured. I completely agree with
@Finney Is Back here. 3 months of declining performance (dealing with circumstances way out of his control for the previous 2 years) and he was gone. He earnt way more than that. So there haven't been many examples of it? So what? To Dare is To do! There also aren't many more managers like him, crazy enough to turn down Real Madrid to stay at Spurs. He really could have been our SAF.
I think for so long we needed to figure out how we could compete against more money, and he was the way. Now, it seems like Levy is stepping back again from the football side, which is good. Maybe this will finally be the time we have a DOF figure in post for long enough to build something over the long term that helps us compete. There's been a swing from manager to manager but also a swing from how important a DOF seems to be, versus Levy deciding to do it. Pleat, Arnesen, Commoli, Levy, Baldini, Sherwood, Levy with a bit of Mitchell and Hitchen. Now Paratici.
I actually sympathise with Levy a bit here. Arnesen not his fault. Commoli I guess paid for his job with the Ramos recommendation. Baldini - was he really just a deals guy rather than a real DOF? Then Sherwood, then Levy really taking back the reigns once we had Poch, and giving him more control. I understand why those decisions were made. But we really need to decide now - are we going to genuinely trust a DOF? Are we going to allow them to build something over the long term? If so, I think we could have a decent chance. But Levy himself absolutely needed to get out of the way. And 'time will tell' whether we needed to waste 2 years getting to this point, rather than just trusting Poch more. Because clearly Paratici wasn't the plan when appointing Jose. Which means it was a royal balls up.
I honestly think when Levy does his memoirs, he'll admit sacking Poch was a mistake, and his decision to go with Paratici now is an admission that the last 2 years stemmed from that mistake. He is effectively paying the price for his poor decisions in the same way Commoli did, and getting out of the way.
