Next Manager Watch

Ghost Hardware said:

Tbh I doubt the club would be telling him they have made up their mind until it’s official so it sort of feels like a non story.

That being said I’m actually okay with this if it is the truth. Fact is we aren’t going to have a manager in place and working until summer so I’d rather they take all the time they need to asses all the options and come to the right conclusion rather then rushing it just to appease the fans as it won’t really change anything in the immediate future. Yes it might boost morale somewhat but the team performances won’t changes. They need to get this appointment right, there is no room for failure and as much as it is frustrating ultimately as long as we come to the right fit then I’m not so bothered about it taking until the end of the season.

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3 of the coaches who may be on the list have still to see the season out as well.

Let's say the club really like Slot and put him top of the list. But then Feyenoord blow the title and get KOd by Roma.

Doubts will creep in if we've chosen the right guy.

Same for Kompany, if Burnley started losing all their games and lost focus doubts would arise.

The good news is a lot of this will be concluded soon so we'll get a good idea

Kompany would just be a bit awkward. He has a statue at the Ethihad ffs

Not against him, it's the profile we should be looking at, it would just be a bit weird on away days up there.

chrisd2k said:

Kompany would just be a bit awkward. He has a statue at the Ethihad ffs

Not against him, it's the profile we should be looking at, it would just be a bit weird on away days up there.

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It's a statue for what he did as a player so not the same!
I'm sure Levy will have a minimum release fee of 100m anyway to ensure he does not get poached!

jay2040 said:

It's a statue for what he did as a player so not the same!
I'm sure Levy will have a minimum release fee of 100m anyway to ensure he does not get poached!

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He his literally a living legend at city. Which ever way you want to twist it.

re levy. Yeah. Right. This guy can’t find his loafers at the minute. So. No.

I think we’re going to have to get used to ex Pl players managing other pl teams. We’ve got the most money the best facilities the best managers for ex players to learn off. Therefore, big name players will be managing top 4 rivals from the team they played.
It happens in Italy all the time, let’s face it it’s happened with managers too(4 ex chavs).

ntmac82 said:

It's because Daniel Levy really hasn't got a clue when it comes to appointing managers. He has got lucky a couple of times but generally he is woeful at making the right selection. Probably sticks a picture of all the available managers on a dart board and throws a dart blindfolded and whoever it lands on he goes after.

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Probably no good at darts either, so the dart misses the board and hits Donna and she decides

Hercules said:

Kompany chatter is not just chat.

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What a disappointment if he’s appointed. Levy penny pinching yet again. He’s not even been tested at the top level.

spark7586 said:

What a disappointment if he’s appointed. Levy penny pinching yet again. He’s not even been tested at the top level.

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Tbf managers is one area where we haven't spared any expense. Conte and Jose were 2 of the best paid manages in the world when they were here.

If we do go for Kompany I'm pretty sure it won't just be cos he's cheap.

spark7586 said:

What a disappointment if he’s appointed. Levy penny pinching yet again. He’s not even been tested at the top level.

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Mourinho and Conte were hardly cheap were they? This penny pinching line is a myth to some degree.

If we go for "top level" tested managers then the available list is incredibly short. Pretty much Poch or Nagelsmann. Would you say Celtic is top level? Feyenoord?

Besides the last couple of top level managers failed miserably. So maybe someone who hasn't necessarily been tested may work out better.

fans disappointed before a manager is appointed. Come on, I think generally the names on the list all feel credible and we just need to get behind the manager

So Kompany arrived at Burnley and cleared out most of the existing players for his ‘own’ team/players?
That is the first red flag, to expect that Levy will sell off any/all of our players in a sort of fire sale!
Not a chance IMO

VoteMe4Prez said:

I would happily take 6th or 7th next season if it meant we at least had our free-flowing football back

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You say that now but a few poor performances and defeats with us falling down the table and you and everyone else will be calling for changes.

spark7586 said:

What a disappointment if he’s appointed. Levy penny pinching yet again. He’s not even been tested at the top level.

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The managers we’ve just had weren’t exactly short of top level experience and they didn’t work out to well. Why not try something fresh, different and a little bit more exciting?

marion52 said:

So Kompany arrived at Burnley and cleared out most of the existing players for his ‘own’ team/players?
That is the first red flag, to expect that Levy will sell off any/all of our players in a sort of fire sale!
Not a chance IMO

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Is that really true, though?

Burnley needed to cash in on McNeil, Pope, Cornet and Collins, while 5 players contracts ran out and Weghorst left. They basically lost two thirds of their first 11 at the end of last season. I'm sure Kompany would've loved to have kept some of those players given the choice. Most of the remaining first teamers are still regulars (Barnes, Cork, Brownhill, Roberts, Rodriguez, Gudmunsson).

He had to build a new team whether he liked it or not.

marion52 said:

So Kompany arrived at Burnley and cleared out most of the existing players for his ‘own’ team/players?
That is the first red flag, to expect that Levy will sell off any/all of our players in a sort of fire sale!
Not a chance IMO

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Except it wasn’t Kompany wanting certain players out and, if you know anything about Burnley, their ownership are determined followers of the Moneyball approach (their owner has his own AI comp for assessing players I think) so not sure they were “his players” coming in either. He worked with what he was given albeit there was possibly a known philosophy at play when choosing a player type

Good piece this morning in Athletic. Really concerning that we are still in due diligence phase, the ineptitude at board level just keeps getting worse.


Cristian Stellini was the one giving the miserable post-match press conference on Saturday evening, but it could have been any of his recent predecessors sitting up there. “When we scored, we dropped,” he sighed, “and (then) we dropped again.”

Sound familiar? It might as well have been Antonio Conte, Nuno Espirito Santo, Ryan Mason (first time around) or Jose Mourinho on that same lonely stage, voicing those same complaints. Stellini is smart enough to know this. He even said that this was a “habit” the Tottenham Hotspur team have, something they have been doing for a “long time” rather than just starting now.

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Stellini talked nobly about having to “change this type of mindset” but not with any real conviction or force. How could he, when he had also admitted that these problems pre-dated him?

We are three matches into Stellini’s 10-game spell trying to save their season. Six weeks from now, he will be yet another ex-Spurs manager. In the long timespan of Tottenham as a football club, his tenure is just a brief flicker. And he is utterly powerless to do anything about the problems that he has inherited. He might as well have been talking about trying to change the weather.

It is easy to criticise the manager after a game like this.

Tottenham have had some awful days this season — Goodison Park was just 12 days before — but, as a result, this was probably the worst in the league. The one thing they have done well this season is win their winnable home games. But not this time. Not only did they lose here at home against Bournemouth, after going 1-0 up, but they did so immediately after top-four race rivals Newcastle United had lost away to Aston Villa in Saturday’s early fixture.

It briefly felt, after Son Heung-min’s opening goal, as if Spurs could put real pressure on Newcastle in the chase for Champions League qualification. It felt as if their 2022-23 season might be salvageable after all.

Until their old habits of dropping deep kicked in…


Levy is under fan pressure to get the next appointment right (Photo: Catherine Ivill/Getty Images)
By the end, Spurs’ hopes of scrambling fourth place when the music stops on the evening of May 28 looked more remote than they have done all year. The issue here is not the current league table: the points gap is small, just three to Newcastle, and Spurs still have seven games left, including a run of Newcastle, Manchester United and Liverpool in eight days starting next Sunday.

The issue is simpler than that, and has been staring everyone in the face for weeks: this team has had every last drop of confidence drained out of it.

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We knew this at Everton, when they were 1-0 up against 10 men and still found a way to surrender the initiative. We saw this again against Brighton a week ago, when only an unlikely combination of refereeing and VAR decisions helped them to victory over opponents who were far the superior side on the day. And we had it confirmed again on Saturday, as they handed control of the game to Gary O’Neil’s resourceful relegation candidates.

Yes, if Richarlison had managed to direct his header inside the post in added time then Spurs would have won and would now be level on points with Newcastle. But it would still have been a game in which they trailed for 38 minutes, it would still have been a shambolic defensive performance, it would still have been a largely toxic atmosphere in the stadium, and it would still have provided no assurances that Tottenham are on the right path — or any path at all.

At this point, it feels extremely unlikely that anything can be salvaged from this spiralling season. Because when you watch Spurs right now, it does not take very long for something to be ominously clear: this is a team with nothing holding it together. There is no confidence or belief, no personality, no robust plan with or without the ball.

Some teams fall apart as soon as something goes wrong for them in a game. This Spurs team fall apart as soon as anything goes right. That is the only explanation for their reaction to taking the lead against Everton, Brighton and now Bournemouth. They get vertigo as soon as they look at the scoreboard.

On Friday, Stellini explained to the media that he wanted his team to be better in possession and create more chances. But when he was repeatedly asked whether that meant moving away from his old boss Conte’s blueprint, his patience started to wear thin.

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He insisted there was nothing wrong with the 3-4-3, he pointed to how many goals Spurs scored with it last season, and when Stellini was asked whether Conte was a “defensive manager”, he snapped. It was the most passionate we have seen Stellini, explaining with some anger that he wanted to speak about “reality” rather than “philosophy”, and that the key for Spurs was to “go strong” and “play with desire”, just like they did when they beat Chelsea here in February.

But Stellini’s exasperation at being asked to put any distance between himself and Conte just underlines the muddled logic of his appointment.

He is meant to deliver change from the old regime while being its most loyal lieutenant. He has to lift the spirits of the players whose confidence Conte destroyed, after spending 17 months as Conte’s voice on the training ground. He is expected to generate a new-manager bounce but without using the leverage of difference to get Spurs off the ground.

It is an idea so fundamentally confused that when Chelsea recently did the same, they realised days later they were better off bringing back Frank Lampard.

Whatever patience or credit Stellini had with the fanbase is surely gone now. It will not be long before they turn their ire on him too. But blaming Stellini for being a bad appointment is like blaming Davinson Sanchez for being a flawed defender. Not wrong, but not quite the point either. Ultimately, they are both fall guys for years of strategic drift and decay that runs throughout the whole football club.

Booing Sanchez achieves nothing - he's just another piece of collateral damage at Spurs

So the question — in this long week until kick-off at St James’ Park — is whether Tottenham can do anything to arrest this.

Tottenham
Pochettino and Levy had a strong relationship during their time working together (Photo: Tottenham Hotspur FC via Getty Images)
It barely even needs to be reiterated here that getting the next managerial appointment right is crucial to the club’s steady forward passage. (Tottenham managerial appointments are like general elections, in that every single one is sold as being ‘the most important in modern history’, but this one really is.) Get it right and there is the prospect of rediscovering some sort of unity between the players, fans and board. Get it wrong and the already mutinous atmosphere will get worse.

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Given the stakes, it is understandable Tottenham want to get it absolutely right. But fans can be forgiven for being anxious at the lack of obvious public progress so far.

The shortlist is effectively more of a long list, including names as wide-ranging as Julian Nagelsmann, Luis Enrique, Arne Slot, Vincent Kompany, Ruben Amorim, Thomas Frank, Oliver Glasner and Roberto De Zerbi. As well as its length is a list so broad, it makes you wonder whether Tottenham have put enough time into thinking about what sort of a manager they actually want, and what the strategy for the football club is. Or will they appoint a manager they like the sound of and then just engineer a strategy to fit?

go-deeper
GO DEEPER

Tottenham need a new manager - but which one actually suits their squad?

Regardless, this process is still at the due diligence stage, with Spurs doing their research on the candidates before they start the interviews. Many fans will wonder why Tottenham have not progressed further with this given they knew for months that they would be needing to replace Conte; especially now Chelsea have sacked Graham Potter and are fishing in the same waters — but much more aggressively — rendering Spurs’ head-start irrelevant.

The most important event this week is Fabio Paratici’s appeal against his 30-month football ban, which will be held in Italy on Wednesday.

If the ban is upheld. it will be impossible for him to continue in his role at Tottenham. If the ban is overturned, Paratici might be welcomed back with open arms for the next stage of the process — although a second case potentially heading for the Italian courts could complicate that.

At this stage, there are just too many variables to be able to make any realistic guess at what will happen next. There is Paratici’s future, there is Spurs’ eventual league finish, there is a long list of candidates, and there is competition not just from Chelsea but from any other big club who may decide to change their manager at the end of the season.

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And then hovering over all of this is the figure of Mauricio Pochettino.

His name was sung louder than ever during Saturday’s game. He is still out of work, for now, and would be open to coming back to Spurs. But he is not under active consideration by Levy and Paratici, and there has been no direct contact with him about his old job.

Levy may well have good reasons for not wanting to reappoint him: a desire for a fresh start, a need for a new voice, a reluctance to fall back on nostalgia, a fear of a repeat of the sour ending to his reign in 2019. He may well want a candidate who is more like the Pochettino of 2014 — young, ambitious, cutting edge — than the Pochettino of 2023, whether that is De Zerbi, Kompany, Nagelsmann, Amorim or anyone else.

But with every mishap under Stellini, the crowd’s calls for Pochettino will only get louder. It was clear enough against Bournemouth, but what will it be like against at home Manchester United next Thursday if Spurs lose to Newcastle?

The public pressure on Levy has never been greater and is still growing by the week. He only has one lever left to pull with any hope of mollifying the supporters who are calling for his head.

That lever is Pochettino. Who knows whether he will be able to resist the temptation to pull it?

Hercules said:

Kompany chatter is not just chat.

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I don't understand why he'd want to come

the yid said:

I don't understand why he'd want to come

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Confidence of a young manger with faith in his ability and as yet unscarred by failure?

spark7586 said:

What a disappointment if he’s appointed. Levy penny pinching yet again. He’s not even been tested at the top level.

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Terrible take. We’ve just been paying a manager £15m a year.

the yid said:

I don't understand why he'd want to come

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I'd expect because his main objective wouldn't be to avoid the drop, and he'd get a massive pay increase from what Burnley could and would pay him. There is no point bringing in any manager that doesn't have the belief/arrogance that he's capable of turning our current lot around ,as there isn't going to be a massive turn over of our current playing squad, and as bad as some of this lot have been the priority still has to be on the whole moving on the players currently out on loan first.

It's obviously a free hit for any up and coming manager. If he fails then it's because two of the worlds most decorated managers were right and we are completely broken, but if he achieves something then he's done what the great Antonio Conte and Jose Mourinho could not. What he's done with Burnley will be more than enough credit in the bank to see him straight into another job if he can't succeed with us, and the narrative will be "of course he failed, it's Tottenham".