You are absolutely misquoting me and taking me out of context.
Where did I say I 'do not mind losing...'?
What I said was that I am not led/dominated by results IF there is a direction. Of COURSE if losses keep happening despite an attractive style then it becomes untenable.
I don't care if people disagree, I don't understand why it is so hard to at least understand the difference?
Remember Poch's first season? I had ample amounts of patience during his bricky start because he made it clear where he wanted to bring us.
I have a somewhat unique view on this Tottenham thing, not because I’m special in any way but more so because I’ve had a fairly critical view of the overall systems in place, specifically recruitment and the managerial appointments we have made over the years.
I’ve felt we were an ever-increasing shambles, marked with small fissures that season after season were growing wider and wider, covered over with the slimmest of plasters named Harry Kane and Son Heung-min.
I’ve not really been impressed with the quality of the players we’ve brought in either, in terms of raw attributes and specifically technique. I say all of that to say that we have been slowly building to this point, where a manager arrives and I just don’t really see a squad that is capable of playing “good football” but then also actually achieving anything.
Now for me, “good football” isn’t just pretty short passes. It’s control of a game — not in terms of pure possession (although that is my preference) — but in territorial gain and momentum control. It’s the regularity and quality of the attacking play. It’s the positioning of the players, but it also includes defensive work. I know of no great team that actually achieved great things that was not also great defensively in whatever manner they were set up. So good football to me is a balance, and football is always about balance: between the left and the right, between attack and defence, between a high or low block, a high press or man-to-man, defenders making timely interceptions, winning their duels, ushering the play. Midfielders controlling the game (I am absolutely biased towards this play style), both offensively and defensively.
That’s “good football” to me, and I look at this squad and I just don’t see a group capable of doing this. I’m personally not interested in heroically but naively going out to play with the intention of just “going for it”. For me, football is a very simple game on the surface that is full of skilled subtlety and nuance, and it’s in those margins that a great team is created, where a great team wins, and where “good football” exists. To be honest, I don’t even want “good football” — I want GREAT football — but I’m also realistic, and I believe this squad as it stands just isn’t capable of doing this.
So how do we achieve what we want? I believe it’s an incremental process. Something that, as clichéd as it sounds, will take time. It’s a process, yes, of style imbuement, but it’s really a process of recruitment. We are going to need to find players with certain key attributes and build from there, whoever the manager is. This is a process this club just needs to commit to.
I do think Frank could be doing better. There are lots of decisions I disagree with. The lack of a regular LW jars me. I get that he doesn’t truly rate any of them (me neither), but you still need to go with someone to get that balance, and sticking with an individual could at least create the façade of balance.
So the shape could be more aggressive, we could be more aggressive, but in the areas that will really make a difference — the passing quality, the vision, the first touch, etc. — I just don’t think they are there, and no amount of coaching is really going to fix that, in my opinion.
