Vinai Venkatesham - CEO

[MartyFunkhouser]

I've explained why I think this (know it's not a post directed to me but no doubt I'm in your thinking re Levy diehards)

Lewis's stepped in > appointed Charrington > internal review > RC and other team-Levy staff leaves > Vinai comes in > Vinai front & center of all the presentation of Thomas Frank talking up the process of his appointment > Levy is shuffled off once season is underway > Vinai sticks with manager despite long run of poor form

I think it's a fairly uncomplicated take on that run of events that the Lewis's wanted Levy gone and the summer was essentially a handover process from the old guy to the new guy (Levy to Vinai) and that if that was the plan that they would want their guy making the big calls vs the man they are moving on.

I mean alternative to me takes more suspension of belief/raises more concerns...

Internal review is conducted but they don't pin point Levy as a problem so allow him to carry on making the biggest decisions then after one summer window they pull a 180 and realise he's the problem? I mean how thorough was the review in that case and why should we believe that any plans made since are any more well thought through? If Vinai wasn't the main man in waiting upon appointment what makes him the man to do the job now?

The first scenario is surely the preferable reality, no? They conducted their review and moved quickly to make the changes at the top level that they wanted to

The most balanced take I've read. Beyond the fact that people are ignoring what Vinai readily admitted, logic dictates there was more than just Levy making the decisions last summer otherwise whats been said after makes a mockery of their own process. The Lewis family didnt come to the Levt exit conclusion at the end of the window, it was clearly planned, so why give someone you are going to oust so much control still? Thats no defence of Levy, just sound logic

 

[Gazza]

Na il on the head. Any club that changes managers/styles as often as we do over the last few years is always making it hard for themselves.

Worked alright for Chelsea for a long time as with Real Madrid etc … only difference is they actually have intent in the market

 

[glasgowspur]

Think you're making a lot of assumptions there that run contrary to what we know. You said it was Levy's decision. Vinai said:

"We ran a really, really thorough process at speed,” said former Arsenal chief executive Venkatesham.

"We defined 10 characteristics that we think are important to be a successful manager at Tottenham Hotspur. We analysed in real detail through our technical staff led by [technical director] Johan (Lange), more than 30 candidates."

“We had a shortlist, we spent a lot of time with the shortlist, and Thomas was absolutely the number one candidate. I could not be more excited to have him join the club."

No one said it was exclusively his decision. He had a hand in it, Levy had a hand in it, Lange had a hand in it. He's answerable for that decision and I'd love to know now why the style of football is important enough to mention but either wasn't part of his 10 characteristics or he was part of a decision where they got that bit spectacularly wrong.

I think it was a WE decision, and that's why it was so bad.
Everyone got what no one really wanted.
On the face of it it's difficult to find a negative with Frank, the reality was different.
I suspect the others interviewed all had at least one thing that cast a doubt with one of the WE.
Frank was the only one they could all agree on, no of the WE were willing to put their balls on the line for their choice, so we ended up with Frank.

 

[thfcsteff]

Yeah, on your last point, De Zerbi has fundamentally put to bed the idea that the style of play that we saw at the start of the season was down to the players not being good enough. It took him his until his second game to demonstrate how much improvement could be made, how much control we could demonstrate, and how much initiative we can take with the ball. And he did that with a squad far weaker than the one available at the start of the season.

The thing I don’t really understand about Frank, is that I think he genuinely thought that part of building the team was to really prove they could play defensively first, before ‘adding layers’. This ties in with the recent story that has come out of Spence and Dier talking after the Monaco game, Spence being frustrated with the performance, and Lange coming by and saying ‘finally! More like that hey!’ To Lange, he had just seen what he probably classed as a solid defensive performance, and a great building block on the way to whatever layers we would ultimately add. Meanwhile Spence saw it as being completely hamstrung by the style of play and knowing he could do better.

No, I don't think so, I suspect you might have the wrong end of that one. Here's the actual quote mate...it infuriated me when I read it that our DoF was saying this. HE should be instrumental in making sure our club is constantly doing this sort of thing where necessary.

"Tottenham had just drawn 0-0 away at AS Monaco in the Champions League on October 22, holding on for a point they hardly deserved. After full-time, in the corridors of the Stade Louis II, the players of both teams were making their way out when staff overheard Eric Dier, the former Tottenham defender, now of Monaco, deep in discussion with Djed Spence.
Dier had always looked out for Spence at Spurs, like a mentor of sorts, convinced he would thrive if he could just straighten out some of his habits. With Spence on the bench against Monaco, Dier seemed frustrated and was reminding him of that advice when Johan Lange, Tottenham’s sporting director, walked past and detected the tone of the conversation. “At last!” Lange said with a smile. “If only we had more of that.”

If I’m right in what I’m saying about Frank, this is the biggest thing that deserves criticism for me, because it’s the thing that destroys the confidence of the squad. They’re on a high after winning a trophy, and for two years they were told to be brave. Frank could have been flexible, he could have played to the level of his players. Instead it feels like he made a conscious decision to restrict their capacity, because of his belief that building a team starts from proving they can be solid, because that’s what worked at Brentford. And I don’t think I’m mis assuming something here because he frequently spoke of ‘adding layers’ as if it was something we should have to wait for. De Zerbi will add layers too next season I’m sure, but it took him two games to show that we could be a team that seized the initiative again.

No, I agree, I don't think you are and it shows what an utterly limited coach he actually is and that whilst within his station he is a very capable coach, he cannot go to bigger clubs and succeed (IMO).

 

[mudshark]

He's history now, but I think Frank is a decent coach with decent ideas, just altogether the wrong fit for our situation and, in the end, probably a victim of his own logic. My belief is that, having taken the job on, he discovered he didn't fancy the mix of players he had at his disposal here. I think he saw a bunch of guys who, for two seasons, had been told not to worry about defending, or how the opposition might play, and realised that, at the same time, and wih injuries piling up as well, they were well short up front of making the resulting equation add up to positive goal-differences. In other words, he thought he had to make them more resilient and defensively capable, or else they were just going to keep losing the ball every five minutes and conceding goals. Hence the painfully cautious and negative style we saw, which seemed so bafflingly at odds with the way he would talk about the game and how he liked it to be played. In the end, I think the negativity turned into a feedback loop, and his fear became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

 

[Bishop]

He's history now, but I think Frank is a decent coach with decent ideas, just altogether the wrong fit for our situation and, in the end, probably a victim of his own logic. My belief is that, having taken the job on, he discovered he didn't fancy the mix of players he had at his disposal here. I think he saw a bunch of guys who, for two seasons, had been told not to worry about defending, or how the opposition might play, and realised that, at the same time, and wih injuries piling up as well, they were well short up front of making the resulting equation add up to positive goal-differences. In other words, he thought he had to make them more resilient and defensively capable, or else they were just going to keep losing the ball every five minutes and conceding goals. Hence the painfully cautious and negative style we saw, which seemed so bafflingly at odds with the way he would talk about the game and how he liked it to be played. In the end, I think the negativity turned into a feedback loop, and his fear became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I think it was exactly this. As everyone who keeps bemoaning the football doesn't seem to realise his Brentford team played better football than we did so it's not something intrinsic to his style. It was specific to the Tottenham side he inherited.