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Vinai Venkatesham - CEO

Raziel said:
RDZ inherited a broken squad, a confused squad, a fatigued squad, lots of injuries that only got worse (Xavi, Solanke, Romero). We struggled in the attack because we played with RKM (useless), Tel (Frank failed to develop) and mostly Richi (limited) up front. Every single statistic is wildly better under RDZ, Possession, Winning the ball back, Touches in opposition box, shots on goal, shots conceded, xG. Some of the stats go from us being bottom 3 in league to top 3 or 1st. So did our form.
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Can't dis agree with much of that. And let me be clear, the job RDZ did was phenomenal given where we were when he arrived. But the biggest influence he exerted was psychological. Getting into players heads, making them believe they were better than they were. He will be a top coach here imho. Frank could not exert that influence Those games didn't fully showcase the system RDZ wants to play. As I say The Leeds game was very reminiscent of the Sunderland game. Ultimately we will only improve by having better players.

Raziel said:
Frank is not a good coach, he fit into a system at Brentford that did a lot of things for him, nothing, nothing he did at Spurs shows that, the one thing we improved on (set pieces) was the work of another coach. Where to start, the brick stats? the losses? how bad Bentancur/Palhinha were under him vs. RDZ, the inability to get basic passing patterns, the inability to hold possession. Literally this guy's entire plan was get ball to Porro, have Porro pass to Kudus, have Kudus try to take on 3 players by himself, if not possible, pass back to Porro and have Porro cross to no runners in the box. And if we had got Robertson in Janaury, we were going to replicate that on left side, literally spam crosses with no runners was the plan. Lets not talk about the absolute fudgery of not closing down people who were going to shoot from the Zone outside box, and our players not being allowed to shoot either.

I genuinely don't believe he will succeed again at PL level, he's the equivalent of a manager who went into a very good team/system under very little pressure and others carried him. The minute it was on him, it all broke.

The fact that in the interview process that wasn't picked up is a huge red flag on the capabilities of people at the top of this club
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I'm not going to go over old ground as he has gone. But I do think he's a good coach who has laid the ground work for Brentford going from a promoted team to comfortably mid table. Given how many players he improved and then sold on for a large profit I think it is hard to make the case that he is not a good one.

For sure he failed at Spurs and it is clear he wasn't the right fit for the job. I do wonder why we hadn't hired RDZ after Brighton or Iraola after Ange. Frank was a strange choice and certainly wasn't on my radar. But many better, more feted coaches have failed too. I guess we will have to wait and see how he does elsewhwre.
 
harr1984 said:
The Tottenham side he inherited could play better football than just rely on a set piece or hope Kudus comes up with something which was the crux of it under Frank.

De Zerbi showed without any sort of pre season we could play better football (no one is saying that football has been breathtaking), and that was without Romero Kudus and Simons for the most part - he had even less creativity available to him.

Yes we know we need better players in areas, but the players available were better than the football being produced under Frank and that's why he got the criticism he did regardless of what delights he served up at Brentford....
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Oh don't get me wrong, Frank wasn't playing the best very best football possible from this squad and indeed De Zerbi improved the quality I just don't think he improved us to the point that we actually are quality.

For me watching Frank I understood why he took the approach he did. He didn't believe in this squad and the players he had available so he tried to maximise the results the way he thought best. I guess it's easy for me to sympathise because I felt fairly similarly, I hated the way we conceded stupid goals game after game with no attempt to mitigate them. I love attacking football, it's my preference but you have to have some balance to that structure. De Zerbi has that balance so I actually feel fairly confident going forward assuming we do what we never do and support him adequately in the window.
 
Raziel said:
I think that is being very unkind to RDZ and way too kind to Frank

- RDZ inherited a broken squad, a confused squad, a fatigued squad, lots of injuries that only got worse (Xavi, Solanke, Romero). We struggled in the attack because we played with RKM (useless), Tel (Frank failed to develop) and mostly Richi (limited) up front. Every single statistic is wildly better under RDZ, Possession, Winning the ball back, Touches in opposition box, shots on goal, shots conceded, xG. Some of the stats go from us being bottom 3 in league to top 3 or 1st. So did our form.

- Frank is not a good coach, he fit into a system at Brentford that did a lot of things for him, nothing, nothing he did at Spurs shows that, the one thing we improved on (set pieces) was the work of another coach. Where to start, the brick stats? the losses? how bad Bentancur/Palhinha were under him vs. RDZ, the inability to get basic passing patterns, the inability to hold possession. Literally this guy's entire plan was get ball to Porro, have Porro pass to Kudus, have Kudus try to take on 3 players by himself, if not possible, pass back to Porro and have Porro cross to no runners in the box. And if we had got Robertson in Janaury, we were going to replicate that on left side, literally spam crosses with no runners was the plan. Lets not talk about the absolute fudgery of not closing down people who were going to shoot from the Zone outside box, and our players not being allowed to shoot either.

I genuinely don't believe he will succeed again at PL level, he's the equivalent of a manager who went into a very good team/system under very little pressure and others carried him. The minute it was on him, it all broke.

The fact that in the interview process that wasn't picked up is a huge red flag on the capabilities of people at the top of this club
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I find it strange that some of our fans on here can’t see that. I’ve been watching Spurs for close to 50 years and Frank’s Spurs are the worst Spurs team I have seen no gameplan and no ambition.
 
Finney Is Back said:
I find it strange that some of our fans on here can’t see that. I’ve been watching Spurs for close to 50 years and Frank’s Spurs are the worst Spurs team I have seen no gameplan and no ambition.
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To be fair, Ange's football was equally as turgid as Frank for periods of his tenure. There were some desperate performances and some seriously bad coaching going on. It was all quite chaotic. The team looked absolutely lost at times under Ange.The difference is that Ange gave us and his players glimpses of something different being possible. So did Conte, Jose etc even though they were not a stylistic fit like Frank. Ange actually was. I never saw those "glimpses" from Frank unfortunately.

Even though we went to hell and back this last season, one key data point was interesting. That was goals against. It dropped from 65 to 57 and whilst it is a small mercy, at least we didn't implode completely defensively. I still think RDZ will focus on that massively. He had his forward line decimated but showed his players that you always have hope in a game of football if you stay tight at the back and work as an entire outfield team, even on the press. That leaves the door open for even your number 6 to be your goalscoring hero. Ange never gave us or his players that hope defensively. Frank failed at that as well, the one thing he was focusing on.
 
Gazza said:
Worked alright for Chelsea for a long time as with Real Madrid etc … only difference is they actually have intent in the market
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Yep and they actually want to win things in football and not focus on entertainment and property.

Agent Vin and Lange still here then.....
 
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Bishop said:
Oh don't get me wrong, Frank wasn't playing the best very best football possible from this squad and indeed De Zerbi improved the quality I just don't think he improved us to the point that we actually are quality.

For me watching Frank I understood why he took the approach he did. He didn't believe in this squad and the players he had available so he tried to maximise the results the way he thought best. I guess it's easy for me to sympathise because I felt fairly similarly, I hated the way we conceded stupid goals game after game with no attempt to mitigate them. I love attacking football, it's my preference but you have to have some balance to that structure. De Zerbi has that balance so I actually feel fairly confident going forward assuming we do what we never do and support him adequately in the window.
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Dezerbi had me enjoying football, because the players were playing like they enjoyed the ball and bamboozling opponents. From Ange to Igor, the players looked like they had to play in a particular style, no improvisation even if it wasn't working. It's been so long that I enjoyed the football even without so many of our key players.
 
metalgear said:
Dezerbi had me enjoying football, because the players were playing like they enjoyed the ball and bamboozling opponents. From Ange to Igor, the players looked like they had to play in a particular style, no improvisation even if it wasn't working. It's been so long that I enjoyed the football even without so many of our key players.
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Long may that continue 🙏
 
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Ange and Frank were both awful managers in the league but Frank was even worse, not least because it was so mind-numbingly boring to watch. His only tactic was the horseshoe, rinse and repeat. Under Ange we couldn't defend and were far too easy to cut through. But under Frank we seemed to have no attacking plan so we could neither attack nor defend. Just horrible.
 
Mikey10 said:
Attempting to be whitewashed from history by some, though, with Frank apparently the one getting an easy ride. 101 excuses for Ange (including for his time at Forest), but Frank… 🤔
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Not true. Ange was blamed by many on here (his thread was constantly near the top of page 1) throughout Frank’s time while Frank was still being promoted as a “great coach”. In fact up to around the 80th minute of the Wolves game (a few weeks ago) there were comments on match threads saying that we should have stuck with Frank. Anyway I agree that it’s time we all moved on.
 
Mcfee said:
Not true. Ange was blamed by many on here (his thread was constantly near the top of page 1) throughout Frank’s time while Frank was still being promoted as a “great coach”. In fact up to around the 80th minute of the Wolves game (a few weeks ago) there were comments on match threads saying that we should have stuck with Frank. Anyway I agree that it’s time we all moved on.
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It's pretty much the dog brick cat brick argument....the main task is to get both of them off your shoe...and on you walk.
 
SteveAWOL said:
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It's always a bit unfair to judge people on their mannerisms, looks or the way they speak.

But Vinai does have weasel, snakey, snidely vibes. That slow, precise, softly cadence to his voice....a hint of all knowing arrogance, projected smartness, with patronising tendancies. Polished PR gonads.
 
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Mikey10 said:
Attempting to be whitewashed from history by some, though, with Frank apparently the one getting an easy ride. 101 excuses for Ange (including for his time at Forest), but Frank… 🤔
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Nah. To compare Ange and Frank in this way is massively off for me. Not withstanding that Ange never lost the squad and didn’t systematically destroy their confidence, Ange’s football was never as GHod awful as Frank’s. For the simple reason that what we saw from Frank was what Frank actually wanted.

There were periods under Ange, especially away in his first season and in the second half of the second season when the injuries had really piled up, that we didn’t look good. But it was more not being able to impose our game on the opposition and being overrun. But there’s a difference between ‘Ange’s football’ and just playing badly, which will happen to all managers sometimes and will happen more when you have a crazy number of injuries concentrated in a short period of time.

Frank’s low block for 60 minutes, hoof from Porro to Kudus, no forward passes from Bentinha system…that was intentional. And De Zerbi showed very quickly that it didn’t need to be that way, with a worse set of available players.
 
SissokoWasGood (BoL) said:
Nah. To compare Ange and Frank in this way is massively off for me. Not withstanding that Ange never lost the squad and didn’t systematically destroy their confidence, Ange’s football was never as GHod awful as Frank’s. For the simple reason that what we saw from Frank was what Frank actually wanted.

There were periods under Ange, especially away in his first season and in the second half of the second season when the injuries had really piled up, that we didn’t look good. But it was more not being able to impose our game on the opposition and being overrun. But there’s a difference between ‘Ange’s football’ and just playing badly, which will happen to all managers sometimes and will happen more when you have a crazy number of injuries concentrated in a short period of time.

Frank’s low block for 60 minutes, hoof from Porro to Kudus, no forward passes from Bentinha system…that was intentional. And De Zerbi showed very quickly that it didn’t need to be that way, with a worse set of available players.
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Surely he's showed them both up then in that case. His football is better than either of them were serving up under worse conditions. From that Chelsea game through the rest of Ange's tenure and through Frank's the football has been brick.
At some point it becomes what each person prefers, attacking 'intent' but not scoring and concedeing goals, or defensive 'intent' but not scoring and conceding goals. For me there is no difference between them, personally I give Frank a bit more leway as I would much prefer to have to plug holes at the back as opposed to having my whole attacking line up out.
 
Muttley said:
To be fair, Ange's football was equally as turgid as Frank for periods of his tenure. There were some desperate performances and some seriously bad coaching going on. It was all quite chaotic. The team looked absolutely lost at times under Ange.The difference is that Ange gave us and his players glimpses of something different being possible. So did Conte, Jose etc even though they were not a stylistic fit like Frank. Ange actually was. I never saw those "glimpses" from Frank unfortunately.

Even though we went to hell and back this last season, one key data point was interesting. That was goals against. It dropped from 65 to 57 and whilst it is a small mercy, at least we didn't implode completely defensively. I still think RDZ will focus on that massively. He had his forward line decimated but showed his players that you always have hope in a game of football if you stay tight at the back and work as an entire outfield team, even on the press. That leaves the door open for even your number 6 to be your goalscoring hero. Ange never gave us or his players that hope defensively. Frank failed at that as well, the one thing he was focusing on.
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Goals against did drop over the season but if you look at where we were when De Zerbi came in, it's frightening.

Not only did he have to cope with a team who had no attacking options and had to make do with Richi, Muani and Tel as his only front three (as well as a lack of creativity in midfield) but we had conceded at least 2 goals in 10 of our previous 11 league games (Liverpool away being the exception). We conceded 26 goals in those games - 2.6 goals a game. We were leaking goals for fun.

When you are in the drop zone, you haven't won for months, you haven't won at home for longer, you have arguably the worst attack in the league and your defence is leaking goals...it really does underscore the brilliant job that de Zerbi did.
 
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