*** Tottenham Hotspur v Aston Villa ***

[braineclipse]

League performance is the only real metric to judge a manager on afaic - with cups there is too much riding on the luck of the draw or one off fixtures that can come at a time you're in a bad spot. I don't hold the Forest game against him and won't do if we get lnocked out v Portsmouth.

I'll judge his performance against the length of his contract - he had huge credit in the bank after last seasons turnaround but if we continue to regress on the pitch this season and end up out of Europe altogeher come the end of it then no amount of 'this team needs multiple windows (that i haven't agreed to oversee)' will save him from critisism for taking us backwards.

I agree with this. He needs to find that turnaround of form, both performances and results. Him and Paratici have another window now to find more solutions in the market, after that it's on him to find solutions within the squad. But somewhere solutions must be found.

 

[glasgowspur]

League performance is the only real metric to judge a manager on afaic - with cups there is too much riding on the luck of the draw or one off fixtures that can come at a time you're in a bad spot. I don't hold the Forest game against him and won't do if we get lnocked out v Portsmouth.

I'll judge his performance against the length of his contract - he had huge credit in the bank after last seasons turnaround but if we continue to regress on the pitch this season and end up out of Europe altogeher come the end of it then no amount of 'this team needs multiple windows (that i haven't agreed to oversee)' will save him from critisism for taking us backwards.

That's all very fair and the only bit i can't agree with is the multiple windows, although I don't think some of our players are as bad as are made out they aren't good enough for where we want to be.

 

[Finney Is Back]

Ødegaard annoys me, an immense talent (that the entire world knew about) and had languished for years doing nothing in particular and for a reasonable fee. Can't get a much Levy-ier target than that. And as we said when he went to Arsenal - exactly what we needed. An uglier version of Eriksen. He could hate Spurs for all I know, but I think I would have picked up on that.

I suspect his wage demands may have been more than our club were happy to pay.

 

[Bedfordspurs]

I thought he could have done better with both, seemed to lazily waft at the pair of them. Only saw them once though.

One was a defection that he actually saved and the other was a corner flicked on…

 

[Bedfordspurs]

I suspect his wage demands may have been more than our club were happy to pay.

Odegaard or eriksen?

 

[Finney Is Back]

I wouldn’t put Conte in that bracket, he’s done it with smaller budgets, Juve and Inter are closer to us than they are Madrid/City spending wise.

Also, despite the spend difference, we have a squad at that level, due to Kane coming through the academy and smart signings of players like Hugo, Son, Kulu, Bentancur and Romero (who are at the top end of the market, but not priced accordingly) before the rest of game realise how good they are.

We had to have a manager that they would respect, which I admit is a mental weakness of some of them, the way they let Nuno down was disgraceful.

Conte was overwhelmingly the best option at the time.

Difference is that at both Juventus and Inter he was managing a club with the biggest/second biggest budget in the league. Here he is managing the club with the 5th to 7th biggest budget.

 

[Finney Is Back]

Odegaard or eriksen?

I was talking about Odegaard but we also got blown out of the water by Man Utd on wages for Eriksen.

 

[Bedfordspurs]

I was talking about Odegaard but we also got blown out of the water by Man Utd on wages for Eriksen.

We could have afforded him but he wasn’t what we needed at the time IMO
He also was a player at risk of flopping in his potential
Credit to him because he has stepped up and I think being made captain has pushed him even more

 

[Baleforce]

Difference is that at both Juventus and Inter he was managing a club with the biggest/second biggest budget in the league. Here he is managing the club with the 5th to 7th biggest budget.

fair point, but the pool of players we are shopping for is the same level

at the minute, generally, the richer clubs are just overpaying, there are not that many superstars about, Haaland is the only recent big signing you can look at where it was obviously going to work, Chelsea, United, Liverpool have all spent big on brick

we have the funds to build another great team if we scout properly

 

[balesleftboot]

getting out of the domestic cups in the first round goes in the + column

Really doesn't. Look at what our years of focusing on top 4 has got us. Meanwhile Arsenal still managed to pick up trophies whilst we were supposedly better than them and now look far more likely to win the league than we ever did in that period.

 

[Baleforce]

Really doesn't. Look at what our years of focusing on top 4 has got us. Meanwhile Arsenal still managed to pick up trophies whilst we were supposedly better than them and now look far more likely to win the league than we ever did in that period.

yeah, it got us top 4

I honestly couldn’t tell you which trophies they have won as they would have been worthless ones nobody pays attention to

I can tell you they’ve missed 6 years of CL though

CL is everything

 

[Finney Is Back]

fair point, but the pool of players we are shopping for is the same level

at the minute, generally, the richer clubs are just overpaying, there are not that many superstars about, Haaland is the only recent big signing you can look at where it was obviously going to work, Chelsea, United, Liverpool have all spent big on brick

we have the funds to build another great team if we scout properly

Hard to scout properly when the scouting department at the club is virtually non existent though.

 

[Finney Is Back]

yeah, it got us top 4

I honestly couldn’t tell you which trophies they have won as they would have been worthless ones nobody pays attention to

I can tell you they’ve missed 6 years of CL though

CL is everything

The honours board doesn’t show CL Qualification, it does show FA Cup Winner however. The good thing about qualifying for the CL is that it improves the finances to enable a club to have a bigger and better squad to try to win trophies…. Though seems you don’t care about those?

 

[balesleftboot]

yeah, it got us top 4

I honestly couldn’t tell you which trophies they have won as they would have been worthless ones nobody pays attention to

I can tell you they’ve missed 6 years of CL though

CL is everything

Think most would swap their trophy haul with our years of playing in the Champions League.

 

[Lemonade Money]

A poor way to run a club if true.

Well Levy can't win, can he? If he'd appointed Potter, and it didn't work out, he would have got accused of penny pinching and a lack of ambition. "Why don't we show some ambition and pay what it costs to hire a top manager like Conte".

 

[Mcfee]

Well Levy can't win, can he? If he'd appointed Potter, and it didn't work out, he would have got accused of penny pinching and a lack of ambition. "Why don't we show some ambition and pay what it costs to hire a top manager like Conte".

I thought appointing Conte was as close we could get to a sure thing. There was a lot of talk at the time that Conte was the manager who would finally give us the definitive answer on whether Levy/Enic were prepared to spend what it takes or not. That Levy would be “hounded out” if not.
Not really getting that feeling so much now.

 

[lurker of old]

You've got to credit Villa for parking the bus so well to start with. When was the last time a team played 6 at the back so well against us? A schoolboy error from Hugo cost us, and maybe knocked the wind from our sails. Horrible loss...let's hope it prompts Paratici to pull his finger out and deliver a player or two in time for the NLD....

 

[Baleforce]

The honours board doesn’t show CL Qualification, it does show FA Cup Winner however. The good thing about qualifying for the CL is that it improves the finances to enable a club to have a bigger and better squad to try to win trophies…. Though seems you don’t care about those?

I care about one trophy, the European Cup, it’s the entire point of football.

Nobody looks at the honours board for the domestic cups.

 

[Bedfordspurs]

I thought appointing Conte was as close we could get to a sure thing. There was a lot of talk at the time that Conte was the manager who would finally give us the definitive answer on whether Levy/Enic were prepared to spend what it takes or not. That Levy would be “hounded out” if not.
Not really getting that feeling so much now.

We are 2 days into his third window so hard to judge how it will pan out

 

[Baleforce]

Think most would swap their trophy haul with our years of playing in the Champions League.

I’d consider that mad, but, each to their own.