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The 'If You Still Need to Purge Yourself Of Ange' Thread

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We have 2 seasons worth of football to use to form an opinion on that - I'm comfortable that that amount of football gives me enough grounds to form a solid opinion on the matter and that is that it didn't work and it wasn't going to get better. I think upper mid table would have been our level under him.

To preempt a response that 5th in his first season says otherwise I would counter that by highlighting that our form/ppg post opening ten games would have had us a fair bit lower and that over the two seasons we have seen a steady downward curve in that metric, we never showed since those opening games any hint that we could get back to that level of consistent performance, that's over 1.75 seasons of football - which is more than than the average PL manager gets.

The root of my opinion is that I do not have any confidence/faith in his tactical approach to the game and that the PL (and CL) has too many good managers/teams/players that will expose the inherent flaws in his setup, we saw this pretty much weekly over a lomg period of time. It's an unforgiving league with a high level of quality throughout (relegated teams of late notwithstanding) and you need more than bravery to make it work. Plenty of 'good' managers have not cut the mustard here (PL) and have still had good careers away from the league - no reason Ange couldn't do the same.

I know you’re trying to be fair and balanced with your last line but I just find it so utterly patronising - not to me but to the man we’re discussing. This is the exact sort of thing he’s had to deal with his entire career, people doubting him. The man who got us 5th in his first season and then a first European trophy in 41 years after dealing with a historic injury crisis gets a pat on the head and told that he might be perfectly good manager, just not in our league 😂😂.

Obviously you need more than bravery. I think Ange’s was a high risk system that needed players capable of playing in a really brave way for it to work. It probably requires having the first choice defence available for more than 25% of a league season. It probably requires being able to rotate and maintain some energy rather than having to use the same 11 players every game every 3 days for 3 days months straight. I was willing to see what it would look like with a deeper, more experienced squad. And not having to play one of Ben Davies or Archie Gray at centre back for most of the season. But that’s just me. I get that you feel you can draw conclusions from all the time after the first ten games, but the players that actually played in those games were either not the first choice or not in the optimal condition to give their best for most of them.
 
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Not sure I'll ever fully understand. I could absolutely see why Ange played on the hope and imagination layers. I could perhaps see why he may not have satisfied the quantitative data side as a contra to that though. I can imagine Lange and the analysts could pick to pieces some of the things that happened on the field. There were very few favourable stats in the bigger picture. Then you have the qualitative layer. The Spurs leadership knew the man personally. We didn't, but he seems to have done a great job of dividing his own Spurs fanbase. Perhaps he did the same internally with the leadership team.

In companies you need advocates at the senior level. He must have lost his advocacy bit by bit I guess. If you're saying he was hosed by February that's interesting as we didn't really have a semblance of a loaded squad again until about mid Feb in the Utd fixture. To be fair, you always said that.

I’m sure he did divide people internally too. I think to believe in Ange is to have a certain type of faith. It’s why he signs things with ‘for a true believer’ and I love that.

His career has been the art of doing things differently, being doubted, and then proving people wrong every time. It’s an uncompromising belief in himself. And the style of football. And it kind of is a style where it’s all in or not going to look that good. So I can see why the club wouldn’t have gone for it long term. All I’m saying is A I’d have loved to see what he could have done with a deeper squad and normalised injuries and B let’s not take away the fantastic achievement that he did manage with us.
 
So apart from Spurs Ange managed a club in Japan and the only team in Scotland. Perhaps you would rather carry on losing game after game after game, then watch him embarrass himself and the club when being interviewed by the press. He was an incompetent idiot who manged us to beat Frankfurt and a poor Utd side so we could lift a trophy
Okay. You've clearly missed the tongue-in-cheek nature of my post. Steff said he was tired of seeing threads about ENIC and Thomas Frank getting derailed with Ange talk, so I thought I'd better post about ENIC and Frank in his Ange thread.

FWIW, I'm absolutely on board with sacking Ange. I wouldn't have had the balls to do it straight after a Europa League win, but thankfully the one thing Levy can't be accused of is lacking balls. I very much hope that it proves to be the right decision.
 
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