What was the trigger in our downward trend?

[Mulletperm]

Was it one specific thing? Or was it a perfect storm of injuries, lack of investment, lack of foresight/strategy?

For me it's a few things:

- Not finding a suitable replacement for Dembele
- Shocking purchases in the 19/20 season
- Not backing Poch and bringing Mourinho in

The injuries we have are obviously contributing to our relegation fight, but I strongly believe with players fit we'd be mid-table. Certainly not the heady heights of where we were 5 or 6 years ago.

 

[SissokoWasGood (BoL)]

Was it one specific thing? Or was it a perfect storm of injuries, lack of investment, lack of foresight/strategy?

For me it's a few things:

- Not finding a suitable replacement for Dembele
- Shocking purchases in the 19/20 season
- Not backing Poch and bringing Mourinho in

The injuries we have are obviously contributing to our relegation fight, but I strongly believe with players fit we'd be mid-table. Certainly not the heady heights of where we were 5 or 6 years ago.

Love this thread idea. For me, I think there was a key moment where it all started to decline. But then there has been moments we could have recovered and built positive momentum again, and we have made the wrong decisions consistently since instead.

The start of the decline is not backing Poch. And by backing I mean trusting in how he wanted to build the team. It means understanding what made his team good in the first place. So it meant selling players before they became less effective under him. Replacing them with players a level up, in line with the position he had taken us to. Realising that Poch was the reason we performed so much above our station. His system, his cultural foundations.

Sacking him was insanely stupid to me at the time. I actually couldn’t believe it. But the decline wasn’t the sacking, it was the lack of trust in Poch when he’d more than earned it.

Then the other times we could have pushed forward but didn’t. Hiring Jose on the expectation that he would succeed with Poch’s now older squad, as opposed to hiring him to back him. Same with Conte. Feel like we probably could have had a title challenging campaign under him if we truly backed him. But it was never on the cards, so not fair to say decline so much as missed opportunity.

With all of that said, if you think about where we were on the day of the parade, all the ups and downs, I feel like we’d arrived at the point where we could begin to build forward again. We were winners. We were in the Champions League. We had a manager the squad was behind. And that all happened after they forged deep bonds after coming through the toughest season of their lives, all sticking together and never breaking apart.

And so I think the sacking of Ange and the appointment of Frank is almost equal to the lack of trust in Poch. I think it was a complete misunderstanding of what happened last year, of what the players actually needed, and what problems we actually needed to solve. And I think that decision utterly destroyed the culture among the team. I think there was a clear realisation from the players that Tottenham had no intention of really going anywhere, and so they began going through the motions. They were unified, they were bought into an idea, and that was destroyed. An unfathomably bad decision.

I think a special mention to other strange decisions. Trusting so much in Paratici, who I can understand had so much experience as a football administrator that Levy could see himself really starting to allow himself to be more hands off. But actually unsuited to our footballing ideals as a club. Paratici also probably provided us an edge in the transfer market through sheer connectedness but he is obsessed with reactive 3 at the back coaches. As long as he was making decisions, there would be some level of misalignment that would inevitably make it harder to progress.

And then Lange, and trusting him so much with the Frank appointment, and decision to stick with Frank. He has never struck me as a true Sporting Director, but seems to have way too much responsibility.

TLDR:

1. Not trusting Poch in 2018
2. Sacking Ange after everything the players went through in 24/25.

 

[demotw]

Maybe controversial but I would say the stadium and training centre.

The focus moved away from talking about the team and became about the facilities. I understand the lack of backing Poch during this period, and to be fair we only started to drop off towards the end of that, but the focus should have moved back to the team at that point. Think of all the signings after, was never great team or has great players, it was always great stadium and great facilities - even managers like Mou led with that Rhetoric.

I also think teams move in cycles, no team ever really stays near the top permanently and it can take a few years to start again and build another title worthy team and that’s the last element that went wrong - the wrong people at the wrong time like if we knew we were building this stadium and wanted to spend a lot to do it, then that is the time to invest in a good DoF to get value for money and pick the right young players to develop.

 

[Welshspur60]

Maybe controversial but I would say the stadium and training centre.

The focus moved away from talking about the team and became about the facilities. I understand the lack of backing Poch during this period, and to be fair we only started to drop off towards the end of that, but the focus should have moved back to the team at that point. Think of all the signings after, was never great team or has great players, it was always great stadium and great facilities - even managers like Mou led with that Rhetoric.

I also think teams move in cycles, no team ever really stays near the top permanently and it can take a few years to start again and build another title worthy team and that’s the last element that went wrong - the wrong people at the wrong time like if we knew we were building this stadium and wanted to spend a lot to do it, then that is the time to invest in a good DoF to get value for money and pick the right young players to develop.

I agree. Our players are pampered and entitled. Our academy is a joke that just trots out robotic players with zero flair or initiative. Only Kane in the last 15 years has been a top player thats come through there. We ve produced a few championship robots like Winks, Skipp, Donley, thats about it really.

 

[fernadez]

Always felt if we had stayed at WHL for another year we would have won the league.

In reality constantly buying back ups and prospects (the debate would be when that started, but when is the last time we had a top player close to thier peak and bought someone else to compliment this, rather than buying when they had already massively declined).

 

[Mr Gogolak]

If you look at the broader picture, it certainly is the decision to freeze the squad and stop buying players, but we had plenty of chances to make up for that over the past years. If that's the perspective you want to take, I think our obsession with signing younger players with a good resale value prospect coupled with our complete lack of interest in their mentality was the real trigger.

You need a bit of everything in football, including experience. It's all about finding the right mix and we never tried to do that after the Champions League final.

However, on the short term, the decision to focus on the Europa League turned out to be an unmitigated disaster. At least, we've got a trophy to show for it, but Wigan have an FA Cup too... Most managers will tell you that breeding a winning a mentality comes from trying to win every game. It follows that throwing games away - VDV practically admitted as much - breeds a losing mentality.

That's something Frank and the club in general should have considered a lot more carefully when they started the season. Saying "I guarantee you we will lose games" to a squad that has been used to losing two out of three games was actually the worst thing Frank could have done.

The medical department should also have been audited after what happened last season. It's easy to put it all on Postecoglou's training methods - and I was the first to bite into that - but what's acceptable on a fans' message board isn't acceptable when you're running one of the richest and best clubs in the world.

 

[ricky2tricky4city]

The real proper downward slide has come since Sonny and Kane left

Before then, All the other stuff you talk about still produced a 4-8th finish.

To have two WC strikers come thru the club at the same time was a blessing. To have 2 stick around for as long as they did was a godsend.

Goals are everything in football... literally win you games. All other reasoning is highly subjective.

....and we probably missed a trick really capitalising on them.

 

[fernadez]

The real proper downward slide have come since Sonny and Kane left

Before then, All the other stuff you talk about still produced a 4-8th finish.

To have two WC strikers come thru the club at the same time was a blessing. To have 2 stick around for as long as they did was a godsend.

Goals are everything in football... literally win you games. All other reasoning is highly subjective.

....and we probably missed a trick really capitalising on them.

Capitalising how?

If we had sold them for big money we would have bought like we always had. The only way to capitalise would have been to bring in more quality which is what we didn't do. The real question is how long have we been carried by those two players> Because it wasn't always the case, regardless of what Pep said, we used to be a very good team with a World Class striker.

 

[ricky2tricky4city]

Capitalising how?

The only way to capitalise would have been to bring in more quality which is what we didn't do. The real question is how long have we been carried by those two players> Because it wasn't always the case, regardless of what Pep said, we used to be a very good team with a World Class striker.

That's exactly what I'm saying.

Add better quality around them. Realise these are two generational gems.

We certainly had moments when we had better players around them but equally they pulled us thru when not so much.

Hence me positing the idea that, they go...we slide like a fudger

 

[treepits]

The real proper downward slide has come since Sonny and Kane left

Before then, All the other stuff you talk about still produced a 4-8th finish.

To have two WC strikers come thru the club at the same time was a blessing. To have 2 stick around for as long as they did was a godsend.

Goals are everything in football... literally win you games. All other reasoning is highly subjective.

....and we probably missed a trick really capitalising on them.

Completely agree - these two helped elevate us to higher league positions than we would otherwise have struggled to reach

Also, as someone mentioned above, instilling an attitude that we don't have to try to win every match to a young group has potentially lead to this situation. I get why Ange did it, and I probably would have agreed with it considering the EL success, but the knock on effect has been disastrous

 

[billyiddo]

Last season.

We lowered our floor to an unacceptable level, we normalised accepting poor results and performances over an extended period of time.

 

[Spoonman]

In regards to Kane and Son, I posted about a month ago how we and the club probably underestimated their impact on our results over the years, their insane Xg numbers and how they single handedly turned many poor performances into 3pts.

I think that and our incredible ability to replace all of our players from that peak era with inferior ones is what has taken us from a top 4 side to (what should be) a top 8 side.

Now add to that the unprecedented and never ending cycle of injuries over the last 2 plus seasons and the normalisation of losing as @billyiddo mentioned and that leads us to where we are today.

 

[Lemonade Money]

Goon workmen burying arsenal shirts in NWHL foundations.

 

[DubSpur]

The real proper downward slide has come since Sonny and Kane left

Before then, All the other stuff you talk about still produced a 4-8th finish.

To have two WC strikers come thru the club at the same time was a blessing. To have 2 stick around for as long as they did was a godsend.

Goals are everything in football... literally win you games. All other reasoning is highly subjective.

....and we probably missed a trick really capitalising on them.

It was a blessing having them, but Kane especially covered up cracks elsewhere. There was games he was our best defender, most creative player, and scoring. He made the team around him look better than it was. He also was a good example to the others with his drive to improve and a total professional. Outside Kulu we don't have anyone like that and definitely not with his profile. Instead our leaders are the likes of Romero who is more interested in having a go at the club than trying to improve himself and the team.

 

[mudshark]

Like most catastrophic declines throughout history, there's no single cause, but the roots do go back years to the abject failure to have faith in Pochettino and trust him to rebuild and kick on, followed by sacking him. Zero bravery. Cowardice pervades the whole organisation; it has seeped into the walls, and that comes from the top. The club is the complete antithesis of its schoolboy Latin motto.

Edit: if we do go down, the sole consolation is that ENIC will have thoroughly deserved it.

 

[Modrical]

I don't think there is a single event, just high level incompetence and the taking for granted of employees, be them managers or players. Complacency that the 'good times' and progression of the first team will continue, without adjusting or hardwork, not backing those who have earned it has resulted in us sleep walking into such an embarrassing situation/position.

An occasion which does spring to mind in hindsight is the transferless window, and then signing a couple of players in the next.

 

[MartyFunkhouser]

Was it one specific thing? Or was it a perfect storm of injuries, lack of investment, lack of foresight/strategy?

For me it's a few things:

- Not finding a suitable replacement for Dembele
- Shocking purchases in the 19/20 season
- Not backing Poch and bringing Mourinho in

The injuries we have are obviously contributing to our relegation fight, but I strongly believe with players fit we'd be mid-table. Certainly not the heady heights of where we were 5 or 6 years ago.

- Lack of long term planning

 

[Mikey10]

Last season.

We lowered our floor to an unacceptable level, we normalised accepting poor results and performances over an extended period of time.

Not the only reason, but a big one in our performance this season. I said at the time that we were becoming far too accepting of losing, particularly at home. It's massively bitten us on the arse.