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Not Since Sir Bill & Burky? Is Poch our SAF?

DubaiSpur said:
Trophies are ultimately the marker you have to judge someone with, if you're going to compare them to titans like Sir Alex. Poch has come close once, but he hasn't yet won anything. For me, if he stays here until, oh, 2019, and leaves when we're settled into the new stadium having won something of note (the FA Cup, EFL Cup or whatever), his combined record of CL qualification and a trophy win would put him up there as the best manager we've had in the PL era. In the modern game, that's a reasonable expectation to have - he gives us five years, wins something, advances our club and then goes to Barcelona or United or wherever having written his name into our history books with sufficient vigour, and we go again trying to find someone to take us up the next level.

Getting up to Burkinshaw or Bill Nic is another matter entirely. Burkinshaw won two FA Cups (back when they were considered important) and the UEFA Cup over an eight year spell at the club. The longevity of his stay and the multiple trophies won would have to be something Poch matches if he's to be seriously considered a better manager (for Tottenham Hotspur) than Burkinshaw. And Bill Nic....well, Bill Nic revolutionized the club in much the same way that Arthur Rowe did a decade earlier, won the first double of the twentieth century, won the first European trophy a British club ever secured, and finished his sixteen-year managerial career at Spurs having won a league title, three FA Cups, two League Cups, the Cup Winners' Cup and the UEFA Cup. Similar longevity and a similar trophy record (topped with similar 'firsts' for the club) would be required before we could class Poch in the same category.

As for Sir Alex...

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.....erhmm. :) The signs of Poch wielding influence over the club and setting up a patriarchal style of management are good precursors to him eventually becoming a SAF. But I won't allow myself to dream of a day when Poch reaches the heights that Red Nose did, because, honestly, it's almost impossible to imagine such a thing. The man stands alone. He likely always will stand alone.

What I can imagine Poch becoming ((with some no doubt unwarranted naivety and hope) is a club icon, in much the same vein as Burkinshaw - a man who stays for close to a decade, wins multiple trophies and adds to our storied record of success and drama. Beyond that is an unknown chasm that I'm too cynical and scarred by past disappointments to venture into. :p
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Excellent post mate.
 
spurspinter1 said:
Didn't read anything bar the title but can safely say that he certainly isn't. Probably got to win some trophies with us first like....
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I would encourage you to read the piece. My comparison is based as much on the level of control he has exerted in such a short amount of time, as well as the taming of Levy, something no-one has managed prior. THAT is power.
 
can we please keep the SAF comparisons away until he's actually won a fudgeing League Cup, let alone a treble.

I like the optimism but the cynics are right: until Poch wins a Cup, he is just a contender, not the real thing. Having said that, we all like the fact that he is a very old-fashioned disciplinarian and a motivator as well....Spurs now are a genuinely solid team playing exciting stuff. If Poch can get us back into the CL next season, then he is without doubt the best manager for 30 years plus.
 
lurker of old said:
can we please keep the SAF comparisons away until he's actually won a fudgeing League Cup, let alone a treble.

I like the optimism but the cynics are right: until Poch wins a Cup, he is just a contender, not the real thing. Having said that, we all like the fact that he is a very old-fashioned disciplinarian and a motivator as well....Spurs now are a genuinely solid team playing exciting stuff. If Poch can get us back into the CL next season, then he is without doubt the best manager for 30 years plus.
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Let's say for bricks and giggles that he gets us top 4 consistently over the next 5 years (anywhere from 2nd to 4th, but not 1st) and a couple of CL finals, both of which we end up losing. But doesn't win a FA or Mickey Mouse cup in that period. Where would you rank him?

I'd easily put him at #2 behind Bill Nic.
 
alekaras said:
Let's say for bricks and giggles that he gets us top 4 consistently over the next 5 years (anywhere from 2nd to 4th, but not 1st) and a couple of CL finals, both of which we end up losing. But doesn't win a FA or Mickey Mouse cup in that period. Where would you rank him?

I'd easily put him at #2 behind Bill Nic.
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If he gets us to the final of the top club competition in the world then wow... He has to be right up there

But it's about winning not just competing for they record books and that's what managers are judged on
 
Bedfordspurs said:
If he gets us to the final of the top club competition in the world then wow... He has to be right up there

But it's about winning not just competing for they record books and that's what managers are judged on
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I don't disagree, but would you put him below Ramos, if he achieved what I outlined, just because Ramos won a League Cup?
 
alekaras said:
Let's say for bricks and giggles that he gets us top 4 consistently over the next 5 years (anywhere from 2nd to 4th, but not 1st) and a couple of CL finals, both of which we end up losing. But doesn't win a FA or Mickey Mouse cup in that period. Where would you rank him?

I'd easily put him at #2 behind Bill Nic.
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The best in the PL era. I will say it tearfully, through gritted teeth, sadly tossing away my 'AVB No.1' foam finger, but I'll definitely acknowledge it.

But not as good as Burkinshaw. Not as good as Bill Nic. What Spurs lack most of all is a winning mentality, the sense of just *knowing* that the brilliance of a dawning sun lies just beyond those shrouded peaks, framed by the blood-red early morning sky. And that just chugging onward, doing what we're doing, will get us there, on top of those peaks... in time to watch the golden rays cutting through the long night.

Got a bit carried away, but our history's always been one of spurts of success and troughs of failure, all the while marked by a yawning sense of what could have been. Every trophy we win changes the history of the club just a little bit, in a way that could one day could help a SAF or a Wenger (blech) take that history and use it to inspire a side towards becoming a genuine Class of '92. Trophyless consistency doesn't do that. Nearly moments don't do that. Only winning does that. And while the prestige of getting to CL finals perhaps offsets the League Cups that Ramos and Graham (blech) won, ultimately, there is still perhaps a grain of truth to the argument that they helped us more by getting to finals and winning them than any amount of fourth-place finishes could hope to equal.

Ultimately, that's what it comes down to. @thfcsteff's eloquent post sums up his hope that Poch is our SAF, a man who can herald a transformation of this club in a way that would rank as one of the most astounding feats in sporting history. Like I said, I'm too jaded and bitter to subscribe to those hopes. But my own small hope is that he can lay the foundation that will one day make something like that possible for someone else. That comes from winning things, from the scenes of lifting silverware in triumph, high and proud into the night sky amidst the triumphant roar of countless thousands of delirious fans...from the pictures of triumph that will stand as silent witnesses to the endeavours of the future generations that don the Lilywhite shirt.

Willing them on to ground our enduring streakiness into the dirt, once and for all.

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One of the more interesting elements to this thread is what people are reading and how they interpret it. For me, the SAF comparison is every bit as much about a man making FULL control of his club from top to bottom at a time when chairman and boards and DoFs and committees are running things. Poch is decidedly not that man. And for me, not since SAF have we really seen that in full-force (even Mourinho bowed to the whims of Abramovich)...the success side of it will hopefully come, of course...
 
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anyone know the name of the guy standing next to Poch? Thanks
 
Sorry Steff but it just won't happen. When we went 1 down to Everton, I could see a Hoddle/Ramos situation again. We'd start the season badly, people would look at the end of last season, put 2 and 2 together and the knives would be out. Thankfully, it didn't happen but it will at some stage over the next few years.

If Poch finishes 6th or 7th this season, the wolves will start to circle. If he finishes top 4 this season and drops next season, hungrier wolves will circle and so on. He won't keep up top 4 forever so at some stage in the next few years, Poch will get f**ked out with support from a sizable portion of our fanbase. Either that or he'll be off to Chelsea/United/Madrid.
 
Oh it one of those threads.....

It's terrible, Levy out.

We are going ok and I for one and happy with things at Spurs!

"Is Poch our SAF" who cares - I can't understand what either of them says at times...;)
 
Far to premature to compare him to great managers of the past, but if the progress we've shown under Poch continues, in a few seasons he could be the best manager we've had in the modern era.
 
If he keeps us 'at it' why we build the new stadium and in this ultra competitive league we now find ourselves in, he IMHO will have done a "triffic job"
 
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