Reading opinions about Kompany I would think he's completely changed their style with the same players.
No different to any other team. Players/managers wouldn't ever find a club if they said no based on that.
We would have more chance of playing on the front foot with forward thinking players on the pitch. Hojbjerg and Skipp are good solid CM's but they are hardly forward thinking then you have 3 centre backs as well those players natural first thought is going to be safety first and then the forwards have to drop or the gaps are too big. We desperately need to change something before the end of the season or we are just treading water with the same shit different week approach.
Sorry but I was bullied heavily in my school days for being a Spurs fan, so to say I don't know what it is like is ridiculous just because I have a differing viewpoint. I was around pre Poch and remember when we barely scraped by in mid table or below.
I'm not going to keep going round in circles over this but your defence of this is quite simply pathetic imo. This wasn't just a case of a player being booed for having a stinker. Emerson was booed as his name was read out on the team sheet and when he was coming on as a sub. You keep going on like it's common place and it really isn't. Yes sometimes players/teams get booed but this was a hate campaign that started on social media and transferred into the stadium. If you can point me to other players that have received the same treatment from their fans despite giving 100% every game and being eternally positive towards the club I'll rethink my take on it, but I simply can't remember one that has gotten anywhere near the amount of abuse from their home fans just for being picked. It very much could affect a players decision to come especially if say he was Brazilian or Columbian who followed the progress of their International team mate.
Regarding the Poch paragraph at the end, I must say that if this somehow ends with us appointing him after another few defeats then I will have officially lost all hope. I don't say this because I don't like Poch, I love him, we all do. And if anything, my feelings towards him coming back now have warmed slightly. Whilst he wouldn't be in my top 4/5 choices i'd now put him on the list where as before he wouldn't have been on it at all and lets face it, who wouldn't smile seeing him doing his first press conference and back on the touchline. BUT If we were going to appoint him it would have to have been the moment we sacked Conte or at the end of the season. To do it now would feel far too reactionary (which it would 100% considering we clearly aren't even remotely thinking about him currently) and that is something that has to be addressed if we ever want to move forward as a club. We can't keep making major decisions after the fact, it never leads to anything other then failure. To hire Poch now would be Levy bowing to fan pressure and the appointment would have zero chance of success. I honestly think it would be a complete disaster. The only way his return works is if we have talked to all the managers we are looking at and Poch ends up being the man we think is best suited to take us forward.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.
Can Levy resist Pochettino with so much going against him?
Tottenham are becoming increasingly toxic. Bringing back Pochettino would change the mood, regardless of whether it's the right decisiontheathletic.com
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.
ADVERTISEMENT
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.
ADVERTISEMENT
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.
ADVERTISEMENT
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.
ADVERTISEMENT
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.
ADVERTISEMENT
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?
What makes you think we'll 'start from scratch'.
Not exactly far flung, but can confirm that we are the most disliked club in Southampton after Pompey - there's a pretty big gap, like Pompey are Arsneal level of hate, but we are their West Ham, I'd say..
Adding in your own little qualifiers like “being eternally positive” is just an attempt to try and limit the examples that can be given against you.
A failed system or a failure to execute a system (or systems) proven by Jose and Conte to be successful elsewhere?
Or a commanding central midfielder could do the same. The head and the tail (until recently) of the spine were strong enough but the in between hasn't been. Dembele/Toby/Jan (and early Eric) were light years ahead of Holbjerg/Romero/late Dier in both skill set, mentality and most of all leadership.
Then what's the point of hiring a young manager to put his stamp on things? He'll be gone within 18months to 2 years. The current crop simply aren't good enough, 4 managers haven't been able to get a consistent tune out of them since 2018. What makes you think a new young manager will be able to without getting rid of most the squad?
Pathetic? Lol. No difference and the fact you think only Spurs fans have done this is just odd. Other posters and myself have shown examples but you ignore it because it doesn't suit your narrative and reply in your usual arrogant manner as if everything you say is fact.
