• Dear Guest, Please note that adult content is not permitted on this forum. We have had our Google ads disabled at times due to some posts that were found from some time ago. Please do not post adult content and if you see any already on the forum, please report the post so that we can deal with it. Adult content is allowed in the glory hole - you will have to request permission to access it. Thanks, scara

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

Does this thread need to exist?

  • Total voters
    26
billyiddo said:
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.
Click to expand...

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.
 
Last edited:
Muttley said:
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.
Click to expand...

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.
 
veryoldspur said:
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
Click to expand...
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.
 
billyiddo said:
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.
Click to expand...

To me, this is an opinion expressed. Love to read it, like to see where I can take something from it that challenges my opinions, and in essence, is exactly what you have argued for ages forums should be about.
I wholly agree.
 
Robspur12 said:
People far more in the know than me or you felt our league form wasn't an anomaly. And despite the 5th place finish in his first season they identified a down ward trend in form and an inability to compete on multiple fronts, unlike other trophy winners last season. They had a lot to lose from his sacking in terms of criticism. Yet despite that they still thought the underlying data did not support keeping him.

And then there are the leaks in the press about his poor handling of injuries which made the situation worse. There is circumstantial evidence to back these up in the form of the immediate and reckless return from injury of VDV and Romero against Chelsea. Returns which led to them both breaking down and further lengthy periods of absence. And his own colleagues observations around injuries affecting his squads elsewhere.
Click to expand...

The key here is (IMO anyway) that they had made the decision to move on a few months before the end of the season. I believe Ange knew it/sensed it anyway.
Truthfully, I don't know if he'd have taken the gamble to put all eggs in a single basket otherwise. It was a 'death & glory' sort of action. I think the other part of the equation is that there appears to have been a move within the structure to shift things around. Donna Cullen's departure would've been known, Vinkatashem's incoming would've been known, Munn's departure this summer too. A shift in the structure. I'd wager that there was some analysis of the fact that the Munn-Lange-Ange line was not working as the club wanted or expected. Perhaps they believed that if faced with a crisis such as he had, Ange would change to suit. When he showed he wouldn't, simply underscoring what he'd always said was the case, perhaps that was the final straw?
I would've been flabbergasted if they'd retained him regardless of the win. It doesn't mean I wouldn't have enjoyed the ride had Levy switched last moment. And it doesn't change my view that Frank is a better fit for the way we operate as a club. Weird lines, I know ;-)

p.s. I'd love to know if Levy had a wobble about maybe keeping Ange, and Vinkastashem perhaps made sure he stuck to 'the plan'? Pure speculation on my part, but again, in terms of structure and behaviour it was the right move to make.
 
Muttley said:
Yep, as fans we only get exposed to so much. We see what happens on the pitch and we see what happens in the pressers. I'm not saying we should speculate about the other layers but we should do so knowing that there is an employer / employee relationship and if we think we have quant and qual data, I can't imagine what access they have inside the club. Those Spurs leaders acted with both types and seem to come to a unanimous decision. Of course, even that in itself doesn't make all the Ange Out phalanx right and the Ange In wrong. Even the THFC leadership could have made a bad call. I don't think they have though. I said way back that I would be proud of my club if they made winning the EL the equivalent of table stakes for a club of our size, and sought something even bigger in the next phase. That is a winning mentality.

It also doesn't deride Ange in any way. He got that trophy along with the rest of the football club. It's been 3 or 4 years in the building and there's been contributors everywhere including his own. Even poor old Scott Munn became our first Chief Football Officer and won a trophy on his watch. I don't see people up in arms about why he has got the boot (if he has). Again the employer / employee engagement model can only reveal why he wasn't the right fit for the next chapter.
Click to expand...

Because he was far, far in the background. Ange was front, centre and solo.
 
BrainOfLevy said:
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 😂😂.
Click to expand...

It's more of an attempt to show that despite maybe throwing some ott negative adjectives around at certain low points I do not think the man is an outright bad manager - the PL is, imv, the most competitive level of club football in the world, there's no shame in not making it at this level.


The J League appears to be the highest ranked league Ange has managed in pre PL, no.23 according to Google - there's a lot of ground between no. 23 and no. 1 that someone could find their ceiling at, tactics working lower down the ladder aren't necessarily going to work at the top of it (naive imv to think they would) - simply put i do not think you can succeed at this level when being so consistently open defensively, the risk balance is WAY off and when you're in a place where you are being routinely punished is it actually bravery to continue on?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back