Ex-Manager watch: Antonio Conte

Trix said:

Couldn't agree more. That said it is an all or nothing philosophy. Without having all the pieces his system falls short and is failing. I know I keep harping on about it but buying that other real quality CB we definitely had the money for, has probably cost us the CL next season. It meant barring catastrophic injuries and even with rotating we never had to see Dier and Sanchez line up together again and could have really transformed us.

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parklane yid said:

If paratici wants another Italian coach then would like him to look at

Vicenzo Italiano
Roberto de zerbi
Thiago Motta

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wrd said:

I'm sorry I have no intention of singling one person out with this gripe as it's more general but it now beggars belief to me that people still bring up the final period as a reason to devalue Poch. I think people really by now should have learnt to appreciate the context of what that final 12 months entailed. We lost Wanyama to injuries where he was unable to recover his ability due to damage on his knee's, We lost Dembele who was arguably the most pivotal player we had by far and that is still underappreciated to this day. We had to make do with Winks and Sissoko covering for them and we then had a pile of injuries as we dragged our way to the champions league final and a top 4 finish, go look at the line-ups we had in those final months of that season.

People also ignore that our stadium was delayed for 6 months, The players, the staff, the fans all thought we was going back to Tottenham and we didn't for an additional 6 months. People just completely forget how that felt, everybody hated it, it was said out loud by the players, everybody had the mental energy of people whose flights were delayed home. We then had to navigate moving into a brand new stadium with no prior pre-season to get settled. Look at Arsenal in their first season at the Emirates. They didn't have the hangovers we did of playing at Wembley for 18 months or it happening midseason. People then ignore the absolutely devastating mental impact that coming inches from winning the champions league had on the players and staff. They ignore that we made big signings, 2 of which got injured instantly as we tried to transition, people expected us to be bang at it, all new players settled in, being world class right away because they were replacing players who had left 6 months earlier, instead of easing them in and phasing old players out, a mistake we have made yet again with Lloris as a new keeper will have to come in and be bang at it day 1. People ignore that teams go through cycles. Liverpool have had 2 seasons where they've hit a wall and their club backed Klopp and he turned both of those seasons around. The first time, the season after they nearly won a quadruple.

I do think Poch probably needed a break but the fact that fans just ignore all these things and always go "oh but remember that bad period though" Well clearly people don't because they don't seem to ever acknowledge why it happened. I've never hid my love for Poch but I've rarely bothered to lament this failure of people who throw that jibe out to appreciate contextually why because I want to move forward and I certainly still want Conte to succeed but after 4 years of abject failure to progress consistently, for people to still not appreciate Poch, to still not appreciate why things turned sour, it is ridiculous to me that people still mention the underperforming final period as an argument to diminish the man's managerial ability.

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mil1lion said:

But it's better than it was when Poch took over and although some way off his peak side its better than the squad he left us with. We're on the right track at least now. Under Poch a lot of these players peaked at the same time. There's no reason the same could happen now. We have plenty of players early to mid 20s to develop. If we can develop them the same way we could have a great team again. Just need some more in the summer especially in defence and to build them up together. The Poch side stagnated as we failed to keep signing young players for him but under Paratici we've got the conveyor belt running again.

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JUSTINSIGNAL said:

And the reality is it took Poch 18 months to get us playing consistently to his philosophy. Prior to that there were numerous comments about how the football wasn't any different to what we say under AVB.

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ComfortablyNumb said:

Yep , and 12 months later the squad was dead on its feet, burnt out. And the results we got were from the sheer brilliance of our front four of Kane, Eriksen, Son and Dele. Poch didn’t have to coach them, and wouldn’t have known how to if he had.
Part of me wants him back now to prove how useless he is.
Or prove me wrong, obviously…

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jimbo said:

This is a bit revisionist, he got less out of the players he inherited than Sherwood had managed to - the real turn around didn't happen until he'd shunted out much of the foundation of the previous squad. Players who went to Levy to complain about him, only for Levy to back the manager this time. Pochettino was under pressure, the football wasn't great, and he said himself the narrow win at Villa was a crucial turning point in his time with us continuing.

This is also a bit revisionist, much like any other manager, he improved some players, pushed others out, some were already top prospects and would likely have improved on their own. He was also pretty terrible at bringing through young players after the initial purge, and was strangely reluctant to let them go on loan for development opportunities. That's one of the big reasons why if he does come back, we really need a good DoF in place first.

What Pochettino did with us was fantastic, the connection with the fans and the team the best I can remember it - yet there is a lot of misty-eyed nostalgia flying around that ignores much of the reality of his time. We were quite capable of putting in turgid displays - it wasn't wall-to-wall exciting football as some seem to misremember it, we often needed a bit of Eriksen magic to get us a point(s) and it didn't always come. The crowd would grow frustrated with sideways and backwards passing, same as it ever was, and we were often naive in big games. Did he do a brilliant job for us despite that? Absolutely. Was it all as perfect as some seem to want to paint it? No, of course not.

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ComfortablyNumb said:

Yep , and 12 months later the squad was dead on its feet, burnt out. And the results we got were from the sheer brilliance of our front four of Kane, Eriksen, Son and Dele. Poch didn’t have to coach them, and wouldn’t have known how to if he had.
Part of me wants him back now to prove how useless he is.
Or prove me wrong, obviously…

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DickTopSpursFan said:

And this is what selective Amnesia looks like folks. Stay safe out there.

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ComfortablyNumb said:

Yep , and 12 months later the squad was dead on its feet, burnt out. And the results we got were from the sheer brilliance of our front four of Kane, Eriksen, Son and Dele. Poch didn’t have to coach them, and wouldn’t have known how to if he had.
Part of me wants him back now to prove how useless he is.
Or prove me wrong, obviously…

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ComfortablyNumb said:

Yep , and 12 months later the squad was dead on its feet, burnt out. And the results we got were from the sheer brilliance of our front four of Kane, Eriksen, Son and Dele. Poch didn’t have to coach them, and wouldn’t have known how to if he had.
Part of me wants him back now to prove how useless he is.
Or prove me wrong, obviously…

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ComfortablyNumb said:

If I knew how to do it on an IPhone I’d point you to posts back in 2019 which show you what people on here thought then. It’s not my memory that’s faulty.

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ComfortablyNumb said:

Yep , and 12 months later the squad was dead on its feet, burnt out. And the results we got were from the sheer brilliance of our front four of Kane, Eriksen, Son and Dele. Poch didn’t have to coach them, and wouldn’t have known how to if he had.
Part of me wants him back now to prove how useless he is.
Or prove me wrong, obviously…

Click to expand...

ComfortablyNumb said:

Yep , and 12 months later the squad was dead on its feet, burnt out. And the results we got were from the sheer brilliance of our front four of Kane, Eriksen, Son and Dele. Poch didn’t have to coach them, and wouldn’t have known how to if he had.
Part of me wants him back now to prove how useless he is.
Or prove me wrong, obviously…

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SargeantMeatCurtains said:

Not liking a manager is one thing but saying Pochettino is a useless coach is just complete and utter bollocks.

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dannythomas said:

I would love Conte to stay. But not completely on his terms. If we go out of CL this week there is no point in keeping him until the end of the season in the hope that we get top 4. With Liverpool now with their act together i think it‘s unlikely anyway. Sit down with him then and discuss a new contract. If he won‘t do that then let him go and bring in someone else to give him some games to work with our players and assess what the summer transfer plâns should be.

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ComfortablyNumb said:

.I’m judging him on his ability as a coach, the ability to make 10 outfield players more than the sum of their parts, and in my opinion he was very poor at that. And I can remember when most on here felt the same way.
I hate the way he turned the most talented squad we’ve had since the sixties into an effort team.

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dannythomas said:

I would love Conte to stay. But not completely on his terms. If we go out of CL this week there is no point in keeping him until the end of the season in the hope that we get top 4. With Liverpool now with their act together i think it‘s unlikely anyway. Sit down with him then and discuss a new contract. If he won‘t do that then let him go and bring in someone else to give him some games to work with our players and assess what the summer transfer plâns should be.

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