OMT - Tottenham Hotspur v South Coast's Biggest Club

[AdamB]

It's a tricky one because we were understandably hamstrung financially by the stadium build but i can't help but think we massively mismanaged the recruitment situation, money or no money

Yes. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but perhaps rather than trying to have say 22 senior pros, we'd have been better off going with 16-18 and then 4-6 kids. Means you'd divide the fees and wages around a smaller number of senior players. Problem is that, for all the hype, Poch didnt really trust/play kids in the way some managers do

 

[StephenH]

This is the unfortunate truth and I think also partly down to our fans' expectations.

The fans expect to win football matches!
Just how silly can they really be!

 

[nayenezgani]

Chelsea give us a chance to gain points again and we totally fudge it up. The players don't deserve top four at this point. fudging rabble. We'll need a titanic shift in attitude or a miracle January window to resolve anything. Absolute joker's.

 

[thfcsteff]

I don’t have to back him when we went almost an entire calendar year without winning an away game and struggled to beat relegation teams at home. I’m not a Jose fan but Poch lost the dressing room at the end and that very rarely gets turned around.

OK, for old-time's sake (and this as someone who is vociferously pro-Poch but has absolutely done their best to move on and back the new manager). Poch asked for TWO YEARS that certain moves be made (NOT all involving incomings, though when they did he wanted them for FULL PRE-SEASONS). Despite all that, had we solidly supported him and all he wanted to do the night of June 1st before midnight, we would have a plan, a clue. Instead, we got tinkled off because he left on a train to Barcelona and was upset for a week...which frankly is PRECISELY what I want our manager to be after that; upset!!!!!!!

You are absolutely right, you don't have to back him, but in my opinion, not doing so was the wrong move. Oh how I hope I am wrong, but everyone's "winnah innee?!!!" Jose is NOT going to turn this around with youth because he does not BUILD teams, he MAKES them with piles of cash.

 

[AdamB]

This is the unfortunate truth and I think also partly down to our fans' expectations.

I've seen things like selling Walker had no impact on the squad or its achievements, not making x or y transfer had no impact. This comes from a meteorology where as long as we qualify for the CL, its ok and all that is needed.

I appreciate there have been other constraints but we've gotten consistently worse, year after year, since Walker left. Of course not all because of him specifically. He leaves and is replaced by inferior players. Dembele declines and is sold, is replaced by inferior players. Wanyama breaks, replaced by inferior players. Rose declines, he's still here and only competition is Mr reliable. Vertonghen and Toby get older and slower and our replacements are not yet up to scratch. Kane gets older and starts to feel the weight of his injuries, nobody to really reliably relieve the load. Lloris declines, Gazza is a pretty standard 2nd keeper. Etc etc, all through the spine of the team.

Its death and decline by a thousand cuts.

It isn't all doom and gloom but we've made things a lot harder and more painful for ourselves than they needed to be.

Thats better put than most explanations. Problem for Levy is that it now needs serious investment as a result. 2 CBs and a DM of a decent quality cost £200m in total nowadays

 

[billyiddo]

Yes. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but perhaps rather than trying to have say 22 senior pros, we'd have been better off going with 16-18 and then 4-6 kids. Means you'd divide the fees and wages around a smaller number of senior players. Problem is that, for all the hype, Poch didnt really trust/play kids in the way some managers do

In hindsight we should have sold Eriksen and Toby when it became clear they were not signing new contracts and their value was on the decline - could have used the proceeds to do what Liverpool done with the Coutinho money

 

[billyiddo]

Chelsea give us a chance to gain points again and we totally fudge it up. The players don't deserve top four at this point. fudging rabble. We'll need a titanic shift in attitude or a miracle January window to resolve anything. Absolute joker's.

Forget top 4 mate, not a chance

 

[StephenH]

it's no good moving players on or whatever as we are not capable of choosing good replacements!

 

[nayenezgani]

Forget top 4 mate, not a chance

Have to keep believing.

 

[AdamB]

Forget top 4 mate, not a chance

I have to agree that unless we spend say £50m - £60m (each) on a couple players, I thikn we'll limp home between 6th and 10th.

The optimist in me says that the fact we've been linked with the likes of Varane, the CBs at Napoli and Leipzig etc could be an indication that proper spend is needed. However whether we can convince those sort of players to join us, rather than other clubs, is debatable.

 

[Hootnow]

The fans expect to win football matches!
Just how silly can they really be!

I think our fanbase have different expectations from the likes of Emirates Marketing Project/Liverpool/Man Utd though. And rightly so generally for financial reasons.

You can be sure though that if those clubs finished in 2nd place and made a decent fist of a title race (though we never really got that close that season), they'd be looking to kick on and win the league next season. Or win something at least.

A lot of our fans seemed happy though to fall back (and not even see it as falling back), as long as we carried on finishing in the top 4. With the general view of the long term.

Which is fine...but we also need to look at least partly to the short and medium term. We're a football club, not (solely) a business. As fans, we're there to watch our team win games and trophies if we can, not sit there comparing our revenues now and 20 years ago or crow about our training ground/ how advanced the technology is in the stadium.

Sometimes you need to seize the moment and strike, make a small gamble for a big payoff. For a while now, we have had opportunities. Times when the opposition flank is exposed and if we just gambled with our troops just a little bit, we could have swept in and really achieved something huge. Instead we've dithered, kept the centre in the centre and ploughed on.

If you'll allow me to indulge my historical geekiness for a second, you don't become a Caesar, a Hannibal, a Napoleon, by always taking the safe option. if you want to really rise to the top, sometimes you have to take that risk. Otherwise you risk missing your shot and being consigned to small print of the history books.

 

[thfcsteff]

On Poch, surely nobody here is still sticking by the line that "we need to be brave" didn't mean we needed to refresh the squad? It was obvious then, it is more obvious now. But people wanted to believe we had found the secret keys to the kingdom and Poch and Levy had figured out something that no other club had done in the last 50 years.

As was said at the time by a few of us, he was saying get rid of some "names" which needed turfing such as Alderweireld, and rather than spend pennies on replacements lower down the list, go big on ones which really propel us forth.

 

[Baleforce]

I think our fanbase have different expectations from the likes of Emirates Marketing Project/Liverpool/Man Utd though. And rightly so generally for financial reasons.

You can be sure though that if those clubs finished in 2nd place and made a decent fist of a title race (though we never really got that close that season), they'd be looking to kick on and win the league next season. Or win something at least.

A lot of our fans seemed happy though to fall back (and not even see it as falling back), as long as we carried on finishing in the top 4. With the general view of the long term.

Which is fine...but we also need to look at least partly to the short and medium term. We're a football club, not (solely) a business. As fans, we're there to watch our team win games and trophies if we can, not sit there comparing our revenues now and 20 years ago or crow about our training ground/ how advanced the technology is in the stadium.

Sometimes you need to seize the moment and strike, make a small gamble for a big payoff. For a while now, we have had opportunities. Times when the opposition flank is exposed and if we just gambled with our troops just a little bit, we could have swept in and really achieved something huge. Instead we've dithered, kept the centre in the centre and ploughed on.

If you'll allow me to indulge my historical geekiness for a second, you don't become a Caesar, a Hannibal, a Napoleon, by always taking the safe option. if you want to really rise to the top, sometimes you have to take that risk. Otherwise you risk missing your shot and being consigned to small print of the history books.

So we’re all off to fudge the wife of a Portsmouth fan and nick his boat?

Personally, the little taste we’ve had is my new baseline, I’m going to be tinkled off with anything other than league titles and European Cups.

 

[Pirate55]

I think that where we really should be following Liverpool's lead is identifying the weakest couple of positions in the team and going all out to get the best attainable players to fill them. We need to take this approach over the next two or three windows.

Spot on. This is where we have been entirely remiss. We signed 26 ( yes 26!) players in the Poch era and how many of them improved the first team? Son, Toby, Wanyama (for one season) .....after that I am struggling. Last season we sold our only plan B player ( Llorente) and our best ( admittedly unperforming ) right back. We didn't replace either of these players.

Poch left us with an unbalanced and underperforming squad, which seemingly had lost motivation and was severely underperforming. None of his mega signings have hit the ground running. Compare and contrast our winger Clarke ( who can't get in a championship side) with the impact James has had at Man U. They were both bought for similar money.

It is this poor recruitment policy for which I hold Poch and HIS recruitment team largely responsible for the current state of affairs at our club. We need to look no further than Leicester to see how to replace quality players they lost ( Kante, Mahrez) with quality young players. This is where we have gone badly wrong. We desperately need a DoF and a new recruitment team.

 

[DubaiSpur]

Ladies and gentlemen, THIS is how history gets rewritten time and time and time again...

Agreed mate, but it's pointless to bring it up now. All it will do is divide the fanbase again.

The folks who were vociferously calling for Poch's head know who they are. The folks who supported Poch know who they are.

Thinking back to 2018, the folks who argued it was a genius move to make no signings know who they are. The folks who thought Poch wanted us to do absolutely nothing when he said we needed to be 'brave' know who they are.

Point is, we all know what stances we took, and when. Point is to learn from the times we were wrong - together, as a fanbase.

Sadly, that isn't happening either. If we sign no one in January, a bunch of people will still say it's a genius move by Levy, or that he's keeping the imaginary powder dry for some time that will never come. If we sign no one in the summer, it will be a similar story. When Mourinho is sacked, it will be all his fault and not the fact that the support structure at the club is set up to allow our coaches to fail.

Clubs that believe in their managers don't act like we do, regularly, for twenty f*cking years. We value the bargain bin option every time, because we are run to make a profit first, foremost and always. And then we are surprised when it leads to this sort of thing.

I saw this unfold with Juande Ramos, when he asked for at least one of Keane and Berbatov to be kept and saw them both sold, to be replaced by Pavlyuchenko and Fraizer Campbell on loan. And then we sacked him six months later.
I saw this unfold with Rent-a-quote, when we signed Ryan Nelsen and Louis Saha on frees in January 2012 when he was begging for players - when we were top of the table, challenging for the title. And then we sacked him six months later.
I saw this unfold with AVB, when he asked for Moutinho and got Clint Dempsey on deadline day, and then when he asked for David Villa and Hulk and got Soldado and Chadli (among others). And then we sacked him six months later.
I saw this unfold with Mauricio f*cking Pochettino, a man who deserved our trust and love more than any other, when he asked for a squad rebuild in 2018, and again in summer 2019. He didn't get it. And then we sacked him six months later.
I will see this unfold with Jose Mourinho, when he asks for players in January and in the summer and gets none, if he's lucky. And then we will sack him six months later.

And every time, it will be the fault of the manager in question, because we never f*cking learn from the same f*cking thing - and we never question the man above him, and the way we're owned and run.

I don't want us to turn on each other - and if ignoring the rewriting of history re: Poch accomplishes that, so be it. But I would like us to learn as a fanbase - and we won't.

Most of all, I'd like Daniel f*cking Levy to learn, but he doesn't seem to want to either.

 

[thfcsteff]

I have to say, your Ramos Keane/Berba point is absolutely bang on. I felt the same at the time. He lost 52 GOALS IN A WINDOW!!!!!

 

[StephenH]

Levy now has little choice!
He has to invest in a DoF and then new players!

 

[billyiddo]

Spot on. This is where we have been entirely remiss. We signed 26 ( yes 26!) players in the Poch era and how many of them improved the first team? Son, Toby, Wanyama (for one season) .....after that I am struggling. Last season we sold our only plan B player ( Llorente) and our best ( admittedly unperforming ) right back. We didn't replace either of these players.

Poch left us with an unbalanced and underperforming squad, which seemingly had lost motivation and was severely underperforming. None of his mega signings have hit the ground running. Compare and contrast our winger Clarke ( who can't get in a championship side) with the impact James has had at Man U. They were both bought for similar money.

It is this poor recruitment policy for which I hold Poch and HIS recruitment team largely responsible for the current state of affairs at our club. We need to look no further than Leicester to see how to replace quality players they lost ( Kante, Mahrez) with quality young players. This is where we have gone badly wrong. We desperately need a DoF and a new recruitment team.

Poch was working with two hands tied behind his back in the market, we wouldn't shift players on he wanted to sell and wouldn't pay the wages/fees for those he wanted to sign - you can argue he should be be better at buying players whilst balancing the books but i think you'd be focussing your ire in the wrong direction

 

[Baleforce]

They (Keane and Berns) were both desperate to leave though, had we kept one they wouldn’t have delivered 26 goals.

Once someone checks out you can’t move them on quick enough.

 

[Moby]

This is a really interesting listen on the end of Poch’s reign.

Very much sounds as if it was a mutual decision to part in the end. The board seem to have found Poch’s pre-CL Final comments to be very strange, and worried about him not fully committing to staying with us; Poch, if it’s to be believed, was not attending training sessions by the end; and the players felt that they were being too closely controlled.

2 minutes in before fat chops Sacks called Lyall “LOL” again.
What is it with that bloody speech impediment he’s got