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Igor the Interim

harr1984 said:
It's new manager 101 to come into a club that's just sacked their manager and say the players aren't fit enough, it's been done a million times by managers - what he said in itself doesn't mean much.

But the good old eye test watching us under Frank would tell you that our players especially midfielders were nowhere near close enough to the opposition when they had the ball, and the opposition would always swarm our players and be so much quicker.

Of course you could argue that was just the way Frank wanted us to be, but regardless it would naturally mean we aren't as fit as other teams when they are being trained on a daily basis to pressure and close down the opposition whilst we were week after week so passive....
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Yep completely agree! We don’t need to get hung up on quotes it’s why I didn’t bother looking them up, it’s just one small part of an equation. The eye test and stats are far more telling and harder to argue against here.
 
SissokoWasGood (BoL) said:
Sigh…I know most people are probably bored of the debate but we were simply not in relegation trouble last season. This season we are. Had we been last season, we would have made different player selections in the league and likely pulled away. We probably wouldn’t have allowed the squad to be hungover on the final day, or played Reguliion in the penultimate league game.

This season was a fresh start. A new appointment. A deeper squad. The decision to appoint Frank was bad, and the decision to stick with him 3 months too long was bad. The whole Frank experiment might still relegate us. Ange’s standards won us a trophy. But if it’s your view that the players, after the parade, thought ‘fantastic! I’ve won a trophy but the gaffer said it was fine to lose games, looking forward to kicking back this year…’ or any derivation of that, rather than being hungry and proud of the success that they finally brought to Spurs, then we just won’t agree.

I think it’s much more likely that by whiplashing the squad from Ange to Frank, and Frank playing a horrific style of football that the players clearly did not buy into, that we had another dreadful league season.
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There is absolutely no evidence we would have "pulled away". Football doesn't work like that. This narrative that we deliberately threw the league to win the Europa is nonsense. Throwing the league to win a cup is and of itself an exercise in incompetence as cup games are random. They go either way. The league is the bread and butter, where you build team cohesion and momentum.

We no doubt concentrated on the cup games in the later stages, but that was only because by that point our league performances were already woeful. But as you say we always had a cushion to the bottom 3. Had we not, we wouldn't have pulled away, we would have got sucked in like we did this season.

We finished 17th last season, 38 points, 22 losses. We are going to finish there or there abouts this season, but with likely less defeats.

Frank didn't bring us down here. That's just a fact.
 
Silly McSilly Face said:
There is absolutely no evidence we would have "pulled away". Football doesn't work like that. This narrative that we deliberately threw the league to win the Europa is nonsense. Throwing the league to win a cup is and of itself an exercise in incompetence as cup games are random. They go either way. The league is the bread and butter, where you build team cohesion and momentum.

We no doubt concentrated on the cup games in the later stages, but that was only because by that point our league performances were already woeful. But as you say we always had a cushion to the bottom 3. Had we not, we wouldn't have pulled away, we would have got sucked in like we did this season.

We finished 17th last season, 38 points, 22 losses. We are going to finish there or there abouts this season, but with likely less defeats.

Frank didn't bring us down here. That's just a fact.
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Nah. Had we not had the cushion, Ange would have played Romero and VDV (just for starters, there were others who didn't play those games too) who he rested for PL games during the Europa knockouts - and statistically we had a much higher PPG with those two playing, so you can't say as a matter of fact we would have got sucked in. Frank had the privelage of VDV and Romero for more of this season - both Romero and VDV have already played more league games this season (VDV over double)than last season and we are still where we are.

When Frank had a decent start we were told 'That's what a real PL manager can do', and yet when it went tits up it was because of Ange somehow. Funny that.....
 
harr1984 said:
Nah. Had we not had the cushion, Ange would have played Romero and VDV (just for starters, there were others who didn't play those games too) who he rested for PL games during the Europa knockouts - and statistically we had a much higher PPG with those two playing, so you can't say as a matter of fact we would have got sucked in. Frank had the privelage of VDV and Romero for more of this season - both Romero and VDV have already played more league games this season (VDV over double)than last season and we are still where we are.

When Frank had a decent start we were told 'That's what a real PL manager can do', and yet when it went tits up it was because of Ange somehow. Funny that.....
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Frank is no better than Ange. Lets make that clear. But the reality is we were already in a dire situation. You can't just flick a switch in football as i've said and Ange didn't start resting players for league matches until very late in the season. Resting players is also normal. Rotation is necessary. All the top teams do this. The players available to both Frank and Ange were capable of far more than both managed to produce.
 
Baleforce said:
If he keeps us up, id absolutely consider making it permanent.

Getting a Spurs team to actually dig in and pick up points when needed is not for nothing.
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I hope he keeps us up and sails off into the night. His career as a manager has shown short term it works, longer term it doesn’t. I’d like to see him viewed as a cult hero should he keep us up. Always welcomed back. If, and I stress a big if, he keeps us up

If he keeps us up with a couple games spare then he’s put himself on the radar of every team in the bottom third of the richest league in world football. He’d get a new job every season with what I imagine is an extremely handsome avoid relegation bonus in each contract
 
harr1984 said:
No matter how brick Liverpool are or how good we are we usually bend over at Anfield so it was a positive regardless.

We can only hope this past week is the base for momentum building, and at the very least it's given the fans a more positive feeling which is important in terms of supporting the team at the ground etc....
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We are only getting out of this together.

Let's take Tels interview at face value...the dressing room is coming together...whether that is with the assistance of Tudor I don't know.

The fans are (at last) realizing we all need to be on the same side and pulling for the team. That better hold firm even if things don't go our way Sunday.

We need this attitude all the way until the 24th May and last home game vs Everton.
 
Silly McSilly Face said:
There is absolutely no evidence we would have "pulled away". Football doesn't work like that. This narrative that we deliberately threw the league to win the Europa is nonsense. Throwing the league to win a cup is and of itself an exercise in incompetence as cup games are random. They go either way. The league is the bread and butter, where you build team cohesion and momentum.

We no doubt concentrated on the cup games in the later stages, but that was only because by that point our league performances were already woeful. But as you say we always had a cushion to the bottom 3. Had we not, we wouldn't have pulled away, we would have got sucked in like we did this season.

We finished 17th last season, 38 points, 22 losses. We are going to finish there or there abouts this season, but with likely less defeats.

Frank didn't bring us down here. That's just a fact.
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I think an unprecedented injury crisis during a period of playing a game every 3 days was the cause of our league form tailing off last season. I don’t think Ange was lowering standards because of that, he was trying to keep the squad onside and united because they were getting hammered by circumstances outside of their control.

And then it became clear the only way to bring success to the season, and also to get us back into the Champions League, was to win the Europa. So he went and did it. The guy with a track record of winning trophies brought one to the club that is a laughing stock because of our inability to get over the line at the final moment. It might be random to you and I’m sure it was a gamble in some respects. But he spun the wheel and won. Choosing to rest our best defenders before big European games and then writing off the last 2-3 games in the league around the final I don’t believe constitutes a lowering of standards. We won a trophy, and became a champions league club again. The club decided to throw that all away to ‘change the culture’.

We had a new start this season, with a deeper squad and a new approach. It started off ok as the players put something new into practice. Then it became clear they had not really bought into or not understood what Frank wanted. They couldn’t or wouldn’t put it into practice. And we started to slide with some of the absolute worst performances any of us have ever seen. The logic doesn’t compute with me that the players were allowed by Ange to settle into a slacker mentality in the league, only to then start well, and then fall off. I’m not having that it’s Ange’s fault that we start to really fall away November onwards this year. I think it’s much more likely the players realise Frank wasn’t up to it, and consciously or not started to disengage. The Chelsea and Arsenal defeats were embarrassing for different reasons, and I think Frank lost the job there.

To bring this back to Igor, I think it’s great that he’s been able to show these players aren’t bad players. We’ve heard a lot about this squad being full of actual bad players lacking in quality and I think just in the last two games when the squad are bought into an approach that suits them, they can play really well. The decision making is better, certainly the physical output is better. Thanks to Igor for that.
 
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