ENIC

[billyiddo]

Yes, but that’s decision making with hindsight. There is absolutely logic to the appointments. They’re not the decisions of some crazed chairman without a clue about football.

Well i disagree with that- firstly for myself it wasn't with hindsight, i knew we needed a rebuild and Levy himself should have known that given the manager at the time had been telling him so, secondly that makes the logic that those decisions were based on just plain flawed - it was just an outright mistake to go for win now managers when we didn't have a win now team/squad, there's no hindsight about it and the thinking behind it was just plain wrong.

 

[ricky2tricky4city]

Personally i think there's a difference between an appointment not working out and one which didn't make sense - for me on paper Potter ticked all the boxes for what we needed wrt the job at hand, if for whatever reason it didn't work out I'd like to think i wouldn't be calling the decision to appoint an impressive project type manager in to question

Thats because you're capable of thinking.

 

[billyiddo]

Thats because you're capable of thinking.

I'd like to think so...

 

[ricky2tricky4city]

Yes, but that’s decision making with hindsight. There is absolutely logic to the appointments. They’re not the decisions of some crazed chairman without a clue about football.

I agree to a point. I think Levy was seduced by Jose tbh.
I can see the logic in Conte. Prepared to front £150m, had an ex work colleague/friend in place as a go-between/buffer.

It's not like Levy signed off on Fat Sam or Super Frankie Lampard.

 

[Raziel]

Well i disagree with that- firstly for myself it wasn't with hindsight, i knew we needed a rebuild and Levy himself should have known that given the manager at the time had been telling him so, secondly that makes the logic that those decisions were based on just plain flawed - it was just an outright mistake to go for win now managers when we didn't have a win now team/squad, there's no hindsight about it and the thinking behind it was just plain wrong.

Bit of a circular argument but I think the piece you are missing is

- It wasn't meant to be the same squad, the stadium was supposed to provide money (Covid prevented it from doing so with Jose, but Conte got backed)
- If (and this is where I think you are not giving credit), if Conte didn't have the personal issued he did this year, and if he took the money given and didn't buy Richi, Porro, Bissouma, put that money into a CB and creative midfielder, actually leveraged some of the "club signings" I'd find it hard to believe we couldn't have got past Milan and been in top 4 ..

 

[tommysvr]

Well i disagree with that- firstly for myself it wasn't with hindsight, i knew we needed a rebuild and Levy himself should have known that given the manager at the time had been telling him so, secondly that makes the logic that those decisions were based on just plain flawed - it was just an outright mistake to go for win now managers when we didn't have a win now team/squad, there's no hindsight about it and the thinking behind it was just plain wrong.

Again, you’re right with hindsight. But how many teams making a Champions League final for the first time in their history are in that desperate need of a rebuild? We had two of the best strikers in the world, Eriksen and Dele still at the top of their game. Our team was very good. If you saw it, congratulations maybe you should go and work in football. But I certainly thought rolling the dice with Jose was worth a shot. COVID absolutely fudged us too.

 

[billyiddo]

Again, you’re right with hindsight. But how many teams making a Champions League final for the first time in their history are in that desperate need of a rebuild? We had two of the best strikers in the world, Eriksen and Dele still at the top of their game. Our team was very good. If you saw it, congratulations maybe you should go and work in football. But I certainly thought rolling the dice with Jose was worth a shot. COVID absolutely fudged us too.

It wasn't only me who saw it, it was the man who saw them.day in day out on the training field and iirc it was a very big talking point at the time with many others in the fanbase (I'd even say the majority) saying it aswell.

Well, you were proven wrong weren't you - (there's no shame in that btw) and several years later we're essentially in the same situation.

 

[tommysvr]

It wasn't only me who saw it, it was the man who saw them.day in day out on the training field and iirc it was a very big talking point at the time with many others in the fanbase (I'd even say the majority) saying it aswell.

Well you were proven wrong weren't you.

Yes I was, very wrong. But you’re completely missing the point. It’s not what you or I would have done, it’s that there was absolutely logic in Mourinho and Conte’s appointments.

 

[Grays_1890]

I can see their thinking, however as pointed out the thinking was flawed/wrong - Levy backed the squad being good enough to compete when he appointed Mourinho rather than it needing an extensive rebuild- i get that thinking but it was wrong and that makes it a bad decision/mistake. Essentially same same with the Conte appointment.

Yeh this is true, although on a a sliding scale, Jose was alot worse than Conte for a time, what I found odd about Conte is that with less and more adversity ala last season he seemed to shine, then this season it just all fell apart after backing, been done to death but just odd.

Anyway we are on the same page here, we most certainly need someone who is going to bring a different set of skills to the table and come with a more fluid vision which includes developing talent which TBH I think is the way most good clubs go regardless, you have to have the ability to do both unless you are City or Chelsea. On a different level Fergie most certainly did it as does Klopp at Liverpool, before people start making sarcastic digs I am not saying managers of those level I am saying managers with a balance, a much more balance than Conte and Jose who all we heard was "cant work like this"

There is no doubting that our most progressive period was the one where we were buying young hungry talent and developing it, if you added to that our ability also spend more now I think its the way to go again, need the manager to support it though 100%

 

[billyiddo]

Yes I was, very wrong. But you’re completely missing the point. It’s not what you or I would have done, it’s that there was absolutely logic in Mourinho and Conte’s appointments.

You're confusing there being thinking behind a decision with that thinking being correct - no one purposefully makes bad decisions everyone can explain their reasoning, i get that the thinking was to back the squad over the rebuild but that doesn't mean it was the right call or that they weren't just straight up wrong.

 

[elltrev]

Let's say we replaced Nuno with eg Potter or Rodgers and it failed by now, and the rumour spread that at the time Conte was available to replace Nuno and we didn't go for it. Full meltdown?

This is the trouble with any discussion like this. All we know for certain is that the Mourinho and Conte appointments didn’t work out. So it’s very easy to make a case for any alternative, because it’s impossible to be proven wrong.

But no-one even seems to be considering that there might not have been any appointment(s) that would have got us consistently finishing top 4 and/or winning a trophy post-Poch. I can see the argument for another ‘project’ manager, but it’s not as if that’s a guaranteed (or even easy) route to success.

 

[tommysvr]

You're confusing there being thinking behind a decision with that thinking being correct - no one purposefully makes bad decisions everyone can explain their reasoning, i get that the thinking was to back the squad over the rebuild but that doesn't mean it was the right call or that they weren't just straight up wrong.

But many people are holding Levy to the standards of today for decisions he made years ago. That is my point.

 

[Surfless]

Yes I was, very wrong. But you’re completely missing the point. It’s not what you or I would have done, it’s that there was absolutely logic in Mourinho and Conte’s appointments.

there is logic in the appointments, if the overarching plan was to fund a short term glut of top-of-their-game professionals who would turn us into a power house overnight. If we were going to sign a centreback to replace Vertonghen, two full backs who were strong on goal and assist threats. If we were going to clear the decks, recovering £10-20 million per flop (GLC, Rodon, Ndombele) to reinvest. If we were going to focus on building a team in the image of the manager's wish list.

What we got instead was a DOF who is notorious for not being good at selling players on, who dallied, and then moved players on loan - meaning their 5 year contracts would be back in 12 months with 3 or 4 years on them of wages, hampering the improvement of the first team squad. A DOF whose signings have in the main not really worked out in the system the manager wanted to play - Bryan Gil, Emerson Royal, Djed Spence, Yves Bissouma and Richarlison. If we give Paratici credit for Romero, Kulu and Bentancur, he's still signing players 60-70% of which are not suited to the manager in question.

That this DOF has now left, leaving us with scope to get someone else in who can look to build a strategy that includes many of the players we have on the books.


But only if Levy hires them and then leaves them to get on with it.

 

[glorygloryeze]

Absolutely there was (some) logic to hiring Jose and Conte at those times; certainly the 'not bothered about trophies', 'not acting like a big club' accusations of the board were curtailed in the immediate short-term..
The problem was then that they were shown to have been very much short-term hires just for those purposes rather than actually trying to show there had been a growth in terms of how the club acts etc: as i've often said before there's little point (or logic) in getting a 'win now' manager only to act like you still have a Pochettino in charge.
Anyone with a football brain knew that Jose had been backed a Man Utd and Chelsea and still crashed and burned (likely because his methods werer being found out more and more at the levels we say we aspire to, i.e. challenging for top trophies, getting top 4, getting to latter stages in europe etc). What did we think we would do differently with Jose that the previous two big clubs couldn't/wouldn't?

Within a couple of months of joining us, Kane was injured long-term on new year's day and Jose publicly said he needed a number 9/target man to function. Never mind how much that shows him up as a coach, we didn't get one for him, even on loan and instead got Stephen Bergwijn, who seemeingly fell into our laps via his agent and the fact he wasn't going to renew his contract with PSV. Good player in or of himself, but again this is the sort of thing that happened when we were under previos managers like Poch...if we'd ALSO got a target man/number 9 then that would have been fine, but alas...and remember this was BEFORE Covid.

Then in the summer of 2020, it was reported on here by @Grays_1890 that the flurry of transfer activity in the latter part of that transfer window (i.e. when we bought Bale, Regulion, Rodon etc) only happened because the hierarchy saw how we fared in our opening game loss at home 1-0 to Everton. So they assumed all was good in the squad before that. Again, reactionary and totally clueless on the actual footballing state of things (again, ignoring Jose's shortcomings as well...as i say if you are going to hire Jose you should KNOW what it entails in terms of backing).
We know how things turned out with Jose's sacking (the poor timing of doing this) then the nonsense of ending up with Nuno after many weeks of searching...i won't go there now.

We then fired Nuno and hired what looked a REAL coup in Conte, though again one that would need the club to act like how HE would expect them to, i.e. backing him to the hilt fully.
To be fair i think they mostly did: i can't imagine the club would themselves buy the likes of Richarlison and Perisic for the fees and wages they did if not directed to by Conte.
Similarly, they bought Spence when they KNEW it wasn't a Conte pick and they SHOULD HAVE KNOWN that RWB was a position of such importance to how he/his teams function - we saw how things basically broke down a bit when Doherty was injured for the rest of the season and we seemingly got saved by Arsenal's late choke - and to not prioritise signing a rwb that Conte ACTUALLY wanted again showed they were a) not clued up with the football side of how we were playing under Conte b) not clued up with how Conte had got his success historically and c) still acting like Poch was still here...

To be clear, in my opinion they should have prioritised a rwb that Conte absolutely wanted rather than a 'club signing' for the future. We could, after getting such a Conte player, have also got Spence and then sent him out on loan to further his career, make himself better for use by Conte in the future.
The Conte meltdown, i think, started from this point. Yes, Conte was childish in how he eventually melted down, but was this really any different from how he did at his previous clubs (save for the lack of trophies)?

Again, we seemed to hire 'win now' coaches without fully committing to change to acting FULLY in the 'win now' way these coaches would have wanted/expected.

It's the transfer actions around these last two 'big' coaches, together with the timing of sacking Jose before the league cup final, that makes it look like their main strategy is about 'winging it' to get through the current football crisis of any given time rather than having an actual strategy for THFC to be the best FOOTBALL-WISE that it can be.
I also think the veneer of the owners/board actually having good knowledge of how to succeed football-wise has vastly slipped. They have A LOT of work to regain a reputation as even competent football-wise this summer.

 

[Grays_1890]

Absolutely there was (some) logic to hiring Jose and Conte at those times; certainly the 'not bothered about trophies', 'not acting like a big club' accusations of the board were curtailed in the immediate short-term..
The problem was then that they were shown to have been very much short-term hires just for those purposes rather than actually trying to show there had been a growth in terms of how the club acts etc: as i've often said before there's little point (or logic) in getting a 'win now' manager only to act like you still have a Pochettino in charge.
Anyone with a football brain knew that Jose had been backed a Man Utd and Chelsea and still crashed and burned (likely because his methods werer being found out more and more at the levels we say we aspire to, i.e. challenging for top trophies, getting top 4, getting to latter stages in europe etc). What did we think we would do differently with Jose that the previous two big clubs couldn't/wouldn't?

Within a couple of months of joining us, Kane was injured long-term on new year's day and Jose publicly said he needed a number 9/target man to function. Never mind how much that shows him up as a coach, we didn't get one for him, even on loan and instead got Stephen Bergwijn, who seemeingly fell into our laps via his agent and the fact he wasn't going to renew his contract with PSV. Good player in or of himself, but again this is the sort of thing that happened when we were under previos managers like Poch...if we'd ALSO got a target man/number 9 then that would have been fine, but alas...and remember this was BEFORE Covid.

Then in the summer of 2020, it was reported on here by @Grays_1890 that the flurry of transfer activity in the latter part of that transfer window (i.e. when we bought Bale, Regulion, Rodon etc) only happened because the hierarchy saw how we fared in our opening game loss at home 1-0 to Everton. So they assumed all was good in the squad before that. Again, reactionary and totally clueless on the actual footballing state of things (again, ignoring Jose's shortcomings as well...as i say if you are going to hire Jose you should KNOW what it entails in terms of backing).
We know how things turned out with Jose's sacking (the poor timing of doing this) then the nonsense of ending up with Nuno after many weeks of searching...i won't go there now.

We then fired Nuno and hired what looked a REAL coup in Conte, though again one that would need the club to act like how HE would expect them to, i.e. backing him to the hilt fully.
To be fair i think they mostly did: i can't imagine the club would themselves buy the likes of Richarlison and Perisic for the fees and wages they did if not directed to by Conte.
Similarly, they bought Spence when they KNEW it wasn't a Conte pick and they SHOULD HAVE KNOWN that RWB was a position of such importance to how he/his teams function - we saw how things basically broke down a bit when Doherty was injured for the rest of the season and we seemingly got saved by Arsenal's late choke - and to not prioritise signing a rwb that Conte ACTUALLY wanted again showed they were a) not clued up with the football side of how we were playing under Conte b) not clued up with how Conte had got his success historically and c) still acting like Poch was still here...

To be clear, in my opinion they should have prioritised a rwb that Conte absolutely wanted rather than a 'club signing' for the future. We could, after getting such a Conte player, have also got Spence and then sent him out on loan to further his career, make himself better for use by Conte in the future.
The Conte meltdown, i think, started from this point. Yes, Conte was childish in how he eventually melted down, but was this really any different from how he did at his previous clubs (save for the lack of trophies)?

Again, we seemed to hire 'win now' coaches without fully committing to change to acting FULLY in the 'win now' way these coaches would have wanted/expected.

It's the transfer actions around these last two 'big' coaches, together with the timing of sacking Jose before the league cup final, that makes it look like their main strategy is about 'winging it' to get through the current football crisis of any given time rather than having an actual strategy for THFC to be the best FOOTBALL-WISE that it can be.
I also think the veneer of the owners/board actually having good knowledge of how to succeed football-wise has vastly slipped. They have A LOT of work to regain a reputation as even competent football-wise this summer.

I agree with alot of that. I do however think people have at times overly simplified the "win now coach" idea. Conte came into worse club than the one the had in the summer so he must have known to some extent what he was getting into, to then get a summer of backing and then spiral down, thats partly on him as much as I think the board also need to look at themselves. This idea that Conte, this world class manager can only do one thing, I think that's vastly over used and isn't actually that great an excuse to bash the board with, that's as much on him as anyone.

I don't think Levy is a great footballing brain but then again I don't think many are TBH, Roman was a great chairman if a horrible human but Sheikh Mansoor isn't and famously spent 500m on defenders till he got the right mix, he also famously purchased Sinclair and Bony. Other chairman that Levy doesn't get compared to because they are poor, I mean Everton have spent vast amounts more, are historically a bigger club and have been run into the ground, but to prove a point on how poor Levy is there is an obsession to compare him only to Roman Abramovich when the reality is he probably sits somewhere more in the middle.

Brighton are held up as a great run club, to be clear I think they are but if you compare them, they are us 10/15 years ago, they are now in with the big boys and their lauded chairman/owner, likes ours has a choice, back the manager with 2/3 players this summer and really compete (that's how close they are) or sell off, let's see what they do and then see how the chairman/owner are viewed then....I think they will sell off players, big players and still be considered a we run club, not one with no ambition....

At the end of the day one reason I don't lose my head over football is literally anything can and does happen, like I said at the weekend, I never expected Liverpool to drop like a stone following their league win and I never expected Chelsea to tank this season. Equally never expected Villa to do so well with Gerrard at the start of the season or Fulham which effectively shows you are a good summer and managers appointment away from doing bits. Now being honest, as we have shown you are equally a bad appointment away of sh1tting the bed BUT no one knows for sure what's coming so I'm not sure why people wind themselves up so much about what's coming down the pipe when no one clearly knows.

What's done this season is done, big summer coming for us, has to be

Sent from my SM-A127F using Fapatalk

 

[parklane1]

Let's say we replaced Nuno with eg Potter or Rodgers and it failed by now, and the rumour spread that at the time Conte was available to replace Nuno and we didn't go for it. Full meltdown?

I would lay money on that being the case for sure. Any manager appointment is a risk ( after all most managers are sacked sooner or later). At the time i never met anyone at games who thought Conte was a BAD choice ( there were some who thought it was risk but were willing to go with it). Well we all know NOW that if failed ( but there were several other reasons for his outburst, namely losing good friends and emergency surgery) which had to effect his moods.

As football fans we are so emotially invested in our club and with all the rubbish, rumour around on the likes of T watter etc its easy to become negative about everything and we find ourselves down that rabbit hole again.

 

[DubaiSpur]

The problem was then that they were shown to have been very much short-term hires just for those purposes rather than actually trying to show there had been a growth in terms of how the club acts etc: as i've often said before there's little point (or logic) in getting a 'win now' manager only to act like you still have a Pochettino in charge.

Exactly this, but to be fair loads of people were pointing it out at the time, too. When both Conte and Mourinho were hired, there was a feeling that to make it work, the club had to change its ways - people were hopeful that both appointments were actually the sign of the club doing that.

As we now know, no such thing happened - the club tried to do things halfway, failed miserably, and is now into Day 50 of looking for this year's miserable bargain bin Nuno Espirito Santo for 2023.

 

[DubaiSpur]

I do however think
Brighton are held up as a great run club, to be clear I think they are but if you compare them, they are us 10/15 years ago, they are now in with the big boys and their lauded chairman/owner, likes ours has a choice, back the manager with 2/3 players this summer and really compete (that's how close they are) or sell off, let's see what they do and then see how the chairman/owner are viewed then....I think they will sell off players, big players and still be considered a we run club, not one with no ambition....
k

I believe Tony Bloom has spent 400m of his own money on Brighton to get them up the leagues, including a lot of his own money in the Amex Stadium.

That earns him a pass Levy cannot match - it's the difference and the reason why Bloom is a better owner of Brighton than ENIC are at Spurs. They will finish higher than us after being close to dropping out of the Football League at the time ENIC were taking over Spurs - since Bloom took over in 2009, he built them a new stadium, got them up and then kept them up.

The randomness of football is a fair point, but let's be clear here - Tony Bloom is a smarter, more ambitious owner and chairman than Levy will ever be. It's not even close.

 

[glasgowspur]

I would lay money on that being the case for sure. Any manager appointment is a risk ( after all most managers are sacked sooner or later). At the time i never met anyone at games who thought Conte was a BAD choice ( there were some who thought it was risk but were willing to go with it). Well we all know NOW that if failed ( but there were several other reasons for his outburst, namely losing good friends and emergency surgery) which had to effect his moods.

As football fans we are so emotially invested in our club and with all the rubbish, rumour around on the likes of T watter etc its easy to become negative about everything and we find ourselves down that rabbit hole again.

Personally I thought it was unlikely conte would work, and obviously would have been delighted if it did, but i knew that if it didn't he wouldn't leave quietly and that hoped would be a catalyst for change. I await the outcome of that, not convinced I'm right on that.
Probably alone in this but my opinion of conte as a person has went up in the time he spent here.

 

[Grays_1890]

Exactly this, but to be fair loads of people were pointing it out at the time, too. When both Conte and Mourinho were hired, there was a feeling that to make it work, the club had to change its ways - people were hopeful that both appointments were actually the sign of the club doing that.

As we now know, no such thing happened - the club tried to do things halfway, failed miserably, and is now into Day 50 of looking for this year's miserable bargain bin Nuno Espirito Santo for 2023.

Agree with that although in the example of Conte, if Enic were the dynamite in that disaster he provided his fair share of the gunpowder.