FORMER Manager Watch: Nuno Espírito Santo

[Deleted member 29446]

Yes, Levy has to get the next appointment right.

...but that's exactly what we all of said after Mourinho was sacked.

....and when Pochettino was sacked.

We fans can point the finger at Levy. But there's no real accountability for levy. If there were, he would himself would have sacked ages ago.

Not sure what your point is to be honest?

Mourinho was at the time the right appointment. You can certainly see why he went for him.

Nuno was Paratici's choice as JJ just said.

 

[jimbo]

If he goes, Levy is in a whole heap of shit. He can't go back to Mason because that's a huge admission of failure, not only in the manager search, which was a huge fuck up anyway, but in his appointment of Paratici as well. He has to get this next call right, so sacking Nuno and appointing Mason, however temporarily, isn't going to cut it, most names who might be seen as 'getting it right' would be currently employed (Conte aside), which leaves him looking for a caretaker (once afuckinggain) who can at least keep us going until the end of the season.

Would Eddie Howe take the job in those circumstances? Just for six months? Would it be better to appoint someone familiar with the club that isn't Mason? Klinsmann or Hoddle perhaps? I can't see it being them, nor Redknapp. When you look for candidates it all looks very skinny. I mean, who'd want it? Fat Sam? Name after name you just can't see happening, it's a very very tough call and I don't feel sorry for Levy one bit, this whole situation is another fuck up of his own making. So who would really want it just for a few months? Someone surely? If he does sack Nuno and goes caretaker, he really really needs to get the next perma patsy right. And even if he does, can anyone really guarantee his interference won't hamstring the guy?

I can't see any good around this from whatever angle short of him leaving the club, people have wised up to him now, I don't mean the fans, but prospective managers too are reportedly thinking twice because of his reputation. I'd bet that some other club chairmen would rather not sell to him either. It's all far too messy and it's coming out on top now, it's actually very worrying. It's got to the stage where almost anything he does now is going to be seen as bollocks.

A quick trawl tells me the following list of 'better' coaches are available (or might be depending on the accuracy of the site I used)

Favre
Hughes
Conte
Zidane
Ranieri
Fonseca (Fuck my life)
Martinez (Diego)
Wilder
Setien
AVB (Double fuck my life)
Roy Hodgson out of retirement for six months? Yep that's how ridiculous it all is

And who would be seen as the right man on a perm deal? ten Hag, Conte and i'm on the fence with Gerrard and ZZ, anyone else? Really?

Fucked

We're so fucked.

#wellandtrulytriplefucked

I'm sure there are some unforeseen twists and turns to come. Strap in, strap on and enjoy the ride whilst you're being ridden. If you can

I feel like we've been saying 'he has to get the next call right' since he sacked Pochettino. Mourinho was a gamble (worth taking imho), but meant he had to get the next one right - now that looks to be a bigger fuck up, he has to get this one right... on and on he goes, fucking shit up left, right and centre.

If we want a manager to come in for a partial season, stave off relegation and then replace with a 'proper' choice next summer then I think Allardyce is your man. He'd probably be one of the few willing to come as well, given we'd be the biggest club side he's had an opportunity to manage. However, given the perception that he's very negative in terms of tactics/style (which is a little overdone in my view) that would be an extremely hard and unlikely sell. Levy would be admitting that the DNA thing was bollocks, that he completely fucked it in the summer, and that this season is a total waste of time as we wait for something better to turn up next year. You have to imagine it would sink him finally, somehow.

It seems very unlikely anyone is going to leave a club mid-season to come to us, once upon a time they may have, but not now. The possible exception to that is Gerrard, and while I think he would have been a better choice in the summer I'm not sure he's experienced enough to parachute into this dumpster fire and turn things around.

Valverde is missing from your list as a currently unemployed manager who might come. Other than him, it's probably just Fonseca - and that is also going to be a very hard sell for Levy with wider implications about the role of Paratici.

The only appointments he could make that aren't going to see Levy come under intense scrutiny are Potter, ETH, Conte - none of which are at all likely to come to us now, or Gallardo who might if the reported interest in him from Barcelona isn't true. Big 'if' that though.

Levy has completely fucked it, and it's not even October. I'd say there's no way he can survive it, in most situations he wouldn't, but it's hard to see exactly who is going to give him his P45.

 

[Albertbarich]

Levy doesn't have to do anything. He's Teflon. He has made mistake after mistake and still he is there despite sacking people for far less.

He knows we can't touch him and his ego clearly means he can't stop away.

The club is a disgusting mess and it's all on him.

 

[Monkey boy]

Really disappointing to read from JJ that Nuno's position isnt at least under consideration at the moment. We need to be piling on the pressure to everyone at the club that failure especially in the manner of the last 3 games is not acceptable and will not be tolerated.

 

[Japhet]

Not sure what your point is to be honest?

Mourinho was at the time the right appointment. You can certainly see why he went for him.

Nuno was Paratici's choice as JJ just said.

Mourinho was never the right appointment.

 

[Deleted member 29446]

Mourinho was never the right appointment.

Most was happy about it, and could see why Levy would try for a serial winner.

 

[thebenjamin]

Basically we hired a manager who plays 352 counter-attack and told him he can't play that system, he needs to play 4 at the back and be much more attacking than is his natural way of playing. Even though when he tried to do exactly that at his previous club, they went on such a losing streak that he had to revert to his old defensive system to prevent a relegation battle.

So having hired someone and prevented him from playing the only system he's good at tactically, and making him play in a way that is completely against his coaching philosophy, we are expecting it to be anything other than a total disaster. So we have a situation where after a matter of months in the job the manager's brain is so scrambled he thinks that going away to Arsenal and playing a suicidal, amateurish 4-1-5 is him fulfilling his brief.

Great work lads.

 

[Japhet]

It blows my mind that he consistently repeats this course of action over and over with nearly every aspect of the footballing side of the club. Sometimes I wonder if he realises that we are in fact a football team. Maybe he's just so balls deep in his property portfolio that he just couldn't give a shit.

I think Levy just knows that the amount of investment needed to compete at the top is so vast, that any returns would be chicken feed by comparison. City have spent over £1,000,000,000 and haven't won the CL. Chelsea have spent God only knows how much and can still yo-yo from season to season. Both teams still have massive amounts of laundered money pumped in, and their fans still moan and grizzle with the best if they don't clean up each year. There is the odd fluke like Leicester but I doubt that will be repeated any time soon. Levy is trying to protect his and Lewis's investment (rightly or wrongly), but he won't do that throwing ever increasing amounts of cash at it when City and Chelsea will simply up the ante every time.

 

[PLTuck]

I think we are probably stuck with what we have until at least November. If things continue the way they are he'll go then. If things pick up he'll stay. If he goes we'll prob get Mason until at least the end of the season. Not many managers will want to come into the chaos of Spurs right now.

We are a right basketcase. If Nuno goes that will be 4 managers in 2 years if you incluide Mason. Watford levels of ridiculousness. Also if Nuno goes, does Paratici go too? Does he get demoted to glorified scout? Or does he get to pick another pragmatic coach? It's all such a mess, and we're barely a month into the season.

 

[Flashspur]

Starting to get nostalgic about Mourinho. At least we had Kane and Son on fire. You would feel confident he would get you out of the mess we are in. With Nuno … well let’s just say it looks like a mega shit show is ahead of us. I can see this going tits up very quickly.

 

[fishhhandaricecake]

It blows my mind that he consistently repeats this course of action over and over with nearly every aspect of the footballing side of the club. Sometimes I wonder if he realises that we are in fact a football team. Maybe he's just so balls deep in his property portfolio that he just couldn't give a shit.

What is that quote about doing the same things and expecting different results being the definition of insanity?

It really is baffling how someone can be quite so inept, if he was in any other job he'd have been fired so so many times over for some of the decisions on the football side over the last 20 years.

I think the crux of it is twofold.

1) He thinks he knows what is best on the football side but he absolutely doesn't, he's so clueless about football, he's just not a football person at all and never will be, he's had 20 years to learn from mistakes so if it hasn't changed by now it never will.

2) He tries to be too clever. Leaving deals until the last minute to get a bargain and ending up with nothing, hiring managers who were failures elsewhere thinking he sees something in them that others have missed, prime examples are AVB and Jose. AVB was poor at Chelsea but Levy thought he knew better and Jose was on the decline and if we wanted to hire him we should've done that about 10 years prior but again Levy thought he knew better, that much was clear in the AON documentary.

3) I really don't mean to be offensive here but I seriously think he is a little bit on the spectrum, he's clearly a very very clever man but he's very socially awkward and I think this feeds into our constant changing of strategy as its similar to someone who is autistic who jumps from one thing to the next, but in combination with this he's also extremely extremely cautious and is an accountant at heart so mix the two together and you get some very strange decisions.

I actually do think he cares and wants to be successful on the pitch I just think he's deluded and clueless in terms of how to achieve it.

Quite simply he doesn't see the football picture and doesn't think or act in the way required to build sustained success ON the pitch, it is scattergun jumping from one plan to the next, none of which are ever any good.

Anyways I'm conscious this is the Nuno thread not the Levy thread but we are in this mess with Nuno because of decisions Levy has made yet again, I just hope/wish he had good football people around him who know the club who he could take advice from. A lot of other big successful clubs have ex players involved with their strategy as DofF etc, Ajax are a prime example with Van Der Sar and Overmars driving their ship and Cruyff involved a lot before that, in Germany, Bayern have Hasan Salihamidzic as their DofF and had karl heinz rummenigge as Chief Exec, Levy is just left to do it all himself and no-one who has the clubs values and who knows the FOOTBALL CLUB seems to be involved in the direction the football side is going.

We were doing well under Redknapp when we had the likes of Clive Allen, Les Ferdinand and Sherwood behind the scenes, Poch got the club and was a miracle worker on his own but otherwise we've never had this influence and I think if Levy had someone like that and he listened to them then a lot of this negativity and mess could've been avoided but we are run too much like a business than a football club and the soul of the club has been stripped away internally and externally.

 

[jimbo]

I think we are probably stuck with what we have until at least November. If things continue the way they are he'll go then. If things pick up he'll stay. If he goes we'll prob get Mason until at least the end of the season. Not many managers will want to come into the chaos of Spurs right now.

We are a right basketcase. If Nuno goes that will be 4 managers in 2 years if you incluide Mason. Watford levels of ridiculousness. Also if Nuno goes, does Paratici go too? Does he get demoted to glorified scout? Or does he get to pick another pragmatic coach? It's all such a mess, and we're barely a month into the season.

I kind of agree - November is usually when we pull the trigger on an underperforming manager. However, if he continues to lose games I think he might go before then. We've lost 3 on the spin, with 4 to play in October - I don't think he'll have the opportunity to achieve 7 consecutive defeats, especially if performances continue as they are. The Villa game is huge for him I reckon, a point and a positive showing would help stave off the inevitable.

 

[PLTuck]

What is that quote about doing the same things and expecting different results being the definition of insanity?

It really is baffling how someone can be quite so inept, if he was in any other job he'd have been fired so so many times over for some of the decisions on the football side over the last 20 years.

I think the crux of it is twofold.

1) He thinks he knows what is best on the football side but he absolutely doesn't, he's so clueless about football, he's just not a football person at all and never will be, he's had 20 years to learn from mistakes so if it hasn't changed by now it never will.

2) He tries to be too clever. Leaving deals until the last minute to get a bargain and ending up with nothing, hiring managers who were failures elsewhere thinking he sees something in them that others have missed, prime examples are AVB and Jose. AVB was poor at Chelsea but Levy thought he knew better and Jose was on the decline and if we wanted to hire him we should've done that about 10 years prior but again Levy thought he knew better, that much was clear in the AON documentary.

3) I really don't mean to be offensive here but I seriously think he is a little bit on the spectrum, he's clearly a very very clever man but he's very socially awkward and I think this feeds into our constant changing of strategy as its similar to someone who is autistic who jumps from one thing to the next, but in combination with this he's also extremely extremely cautious and is an accountant at heart so mix the two together and you get some very strange decisions.

I actually do think he cares and wants to be successful on the pitch I just think he's deluded and clueless in terms of how to achieve it.

Quite simply he doesn't see the football picture and doesn't think or act in the way required to build sustained success ON the pitch, it is scattergun jumping from one plan to the next, none of which are ever any good.

Anyways I'm conscious this is the Nuno thread not the Levy thread but we are in this mess with Nuno because of decisions Levy has made yet again, I just hope/wish he had good football people around him who know the club who he could take advice from. A lot of other big successful clubs have ex players involved with their strategy as DofF etc, Ajax are a prime example with Van Der Sar and Overmars driving their ship and Cruyff involved a lot before that, in Germany, Bayern have Hasan Salihamidzic as their DofF and had karl heinz rummenigge as Chief Exec, Levy is just left to do it all himself and no-one who has the clubs values and who knows the FOOTBALL CLUB seems to be involved in the direction the football side is going.

We were doing well under Redknapp when we had the likes of Clive Allen, Les Ferdinand and Sherwood behind the scenes, Poch got the club and was a miracle worker on his own but otherwise we've never had this influence and I think if Levy had someone like that and he listened to them then a lot of this negativity and mess could've been avoided but we are run too much like a business than a football club and the soul of the club has been stripped away internally and externally.

I appreciate you weren't trying to be offensive, but autisic people don't lurch from one thing to the next, they tend to obsess over a single thing, are often very driven by rules as they feel it gives them some signposting on how they are 'supposed' to behave, and are often overly cautious in their decision making due to lack of executive function.

Being socially awkward is not a barometer of autistic-ness. Avoiding social interaction whenever humanly possible would be more of an indicator.

 

['O Zio]

Not sure what your point is to be honest?

Mourinho was at the time the right appointment. You can certainly see why he went for him.

Nuno was Paratici's choice as JJ just said.

Not sure it'd be fair to class him as anyone's "choice" given the amount of managers we looked at. Regardless of whether it was Levy or Paratici who put Nuno's name in the hat, he was clearly someone's 3rd/4th/5th choice.

 

[ajspurs]

Really disappointing to read from JJ that Nuno's position isnt at least under consideration at the moment. We need to be piling on the pressure to everyone at the club that failure especially in the manner of the last 3 games is not acceptable and will not be tolerated.

I'm not overly worried about Nuno overstaying his welcome as I now think there's a genuine and realistic chance of him making it hard to have anyone greatly fight his corner. The style of play has to change drastically. In the space of time he'll need, can he get the players running more than they do as we currently sit bottom in those statistics? Can he improve the chance creation stats to an acceptable degree bearing in mind we sit bottom or near bottom in a range of those statistics too? Can he do all of this with the players not only seemingly not buying into his tactics, but possibly not buying into him as a person either? Not to mention the growing frustration amongst the fans. With that it mind it's all a tough ask.

I think at the very least you just have to have the players buying into your approach and that seems to be very questionable right now. All the players will have seen all the media coverage dissecting our embarrassing tactics over the weekend and that won't have helped either. It also may be a case of the more the media brutalise Nuno's approach, the easier it will be for Levy to get rid, as the spotlight would be on Nuno's shortcomings rather than the harshness of the Spurs hierarchy.

 

[Wsussexspur]

Keep hearing people saying give Nuno time and the club aren’t going to sack him and it’s too early for that.. but I keep coming back to the fixtures between this international break and the one in November.

Newcastle A
West Ham A
Man Utd H
Everton A

Also Burnley A in league cup
Vitesse H & A in ECL

Not too bothered with the Cup games. Burnley away might tough but should be winnable and should win both ECL games.


Newcastle is must win really as it’s struggle to see us beating either West Ham or Man utd, might pick up 1 point from those games. If we didn’t beat Newcastle and only pick up point from the next two fixtures then Everton away just before next international break becomes must win.

If we dont Villa or Newcastle say we draw them the that would give us 2 points from possible 15 going into West Ham and Man Utd games be a lot of pressure to win those games.

Even if we get a win against Villa and Newcastle playing the negative football Nuno is renowned for. Is that really good enough to keep him in the job? playing defensive reactive football against a mid table team and another who is going to be in a relegation battle.

 

[dagraham]

I can't see any good around this from whatever angle short of him leaving the club, people have wised up to him now, I don't mean the fans, but prospective managers too are reportedly thinking twice because of his reputation. I'd bet that some other club chairmen would rather not sell to him either. It's all far too messy and it's coming out on top now, it's actually very worrying. It's got to the stage where almost anything he does now is going to be seen as bollocks.

Any Spurs fan with a half decent memory will know that for the majority of ENIC’s tenure we’ve been a club that is fractious behind the scenes. Not a straightforward club by any means, with a lot of politics and seeming interference on the football side.

Even going way back to Hoddle and Pleat there was discord. The Santini/Jol/Arneson situation. Jol and Commoli. I could go on.

The only two periods that I can remember of relative harmony were the Redknapp era and Poch before things went sour.

Even then of course ENIC didn’t have the balls to really invest and push us on, but at least things seemed relatively stable and harmonious from the football side.

There have mostly been “too many cooks” at Spurs imo. I’m not against the DOF system per se, but at Spurs it always has an extra layer of decision making on top. Too many committees, with too many influential people on it pulling in different directions. Just as it’s not advisable to have one person with too much power, having too many different voices in key decision making leads to a lack of clear direction and leadership.

In the past we’ve always been seen as an attractive proposition given the size and potential of the club, where the wider football community would ignore all of the above.

However, as per the part of your post that I’ve quoted, this current situation feels different. We’ve had other periods of crisis and plenty of shit shows, but I imagine we’ve now reached a point where managers and coaches are not going to be jumping at the chance to get involved with us.

Worrying times.

 

[Albertbarich]

Am I being an over reactive prick on the Internet to say I'm genuinely worried about a relegation fight?

I really think we look that bad.

 

[JJetset]

Really disappointing to read from JJ that Nuno's position isnt at least under consideration at the moment. We need to be piling on the pressure to everyone at the club that failure especially in the manner of the last 3 games is not acceptable and will not be tolerated.

I cant honestly believe you would seriously think that we would look to get rid of a manager after 6 league games. He isnt hopeless he is learning his players and he is very clear on what is required and who can be relied upon after 6 league games. He could be a monumental failure and all of you that think that also will say i told you so, or he could galvanise the squad into the way he wants to play and us to be effective and entertaining and then be a roaring success and you will all say how you were wrong maybe? or just celebrate and appreciate what he has done. Hindsight in sport is magnificent and i remember well all the negative noise about Poch joining and even Harry when he joined and it was 50/50 with the fans then also. We are all aware he has made some big tactical errors as it has been magnified, now the real interesting part is how he and his team responds. There is no rift in the dressing room and everyone is together like in every squad. Always will be a few squeaky wheels in the squad for many reasons but they exist everywhere. Very early days and lets hope it turns around as he got the memo....

 

[fishhhandaricecake]

Basically we hired a manager who plays 352 counter-attack and told him he can't play that system, he needs to play 4 at the back and be much more attacking than is his natural way of playing. Even though when he tried to do exactly that at his previous club, they went on such a losing streak that he had to revert to his old defensive system to prevent a relegation battle.

So having hired someone and prevented him from playing the only system he's good at tactically, and making him play in a way that is completely against his coaching philosophy, we are expecting it to be anything other than a total disaster. So we have a situation where after a matter of months in the job the manager's brain is so scrambled he thinks that going away to Arsenal and playing a suicidal, amateurish 4-1-5 is him fulfilling his brief.

Great work lads.

Nail, head.