Let me preface this by saying, I currently and have (for more than 25 years) worked for much bigger companies than Spurs, in my experience this is how this plays out
- Team has a full year goal, in our case, highly likely to be primary goal of qualification for Europe via league, additional goal of good cup runs, stretch goal of cup win.
- Weekly/monthly/quarterly those goals are reviewed at a management level, the what (current result) the how (caveats, things like the injuries, the draw of cups/opponents) and outlook for next period (i.e. any corrective action) is looked at. Classic red/yellow/green stuff
- When things are red, which it would have been by Oct/Nov, you ask another set of questions, is this the continuation of a trend? (in our case, back end of last season), do we continue, change/adjust or completely reset? do we (at leadership level) still back the person who is accountable for the delivery of the goal (in this case Ange)
I'm 100% certain that two things happened
- Ange was asked about the situation/position and he would have said this was his plan, if it was needing the re-enforcements in January, or expectations of results once injured players were back, or some adjustment in coaching/tactics, we don't know, but we can safely assume it wasn't I'm going to barely avoid relegation but give you a good cup run.
- Without Ange, the senior leadership team would have had a meeting (or two or three) where the question would have been asked, do we stick, do we provide the manager additional tools or do we make a change now (to save season)
Somebody had to have advocated to stick with Ange, based on Levy's historical body of evidence, a decent guess is it wasn't him, that kind of leaves Munn as the only counter at high enough level for us to have stuck with it.
To your specific points
- Every high level business decision is a risk/reward decision, i.e. risks of season continuing to spiral, risk of new manager not being able to change things, reward of maybe new man does change things (look at Wolves). The baseline/status quo in this particular business is to make the change earlier.
- Your point about the raft of managers rejecting us is very typical fan answer (seriously not trying to be a dingdong). Let me be clear 100%, that literally is fudging Munn's job, his role is to 1/Have a succession plan for the current manager (regardless of current results), 2/Hire that manager when the time comes.
And that last point is why I'm saying (from an outsider point of view), a lot of the season failing appears to fall on Munn even more than Ange, specifically
- We made a decision to stick with Ange, in hindsight, it is a bad call. Likely at least supported by Munn
- We half assed the January window (Kinsky early, Danso & Tel late), Lange, Munn & Levy
- If we didn't/don't have a replacement lined up (in November, and now), again that is on Munn
So to summarize, it literally is someone's job in the club to have that set of managers lined up, they should have made the call to change (Dec/Jan for the latest) and they should have got that person. That person doesn't get to say "no one wants the job, or it's too hard to get the right replacement"
And yes, at this level, one mistake, one missed year of targets can cost you your job, that's why these people get paid well.
