Johan Lange - Sporting Director

[Muttley]

Not a football guy or a football position - just a backroom nerd who makes sure the computers are running ok

Johan wasn't a pro footballer but went into coaching at a younger age. He has done 1st team coaching roles before more through the gears and up to DoF type roles. It's hard to say he's not a football guy to be fair. He's done some very hard yards in the game.

Perhaps we have a situation like we do with the bloody refs where they can't make a call as they've never played the game.

I'm not all down on him to be fair.

 

[SissokoWasGood (BoL)]

I do think some of the criticisms of Lange last year reminded me a bit about how Chris Hughton would get slagged off by some people because ‘all he did was put out the cones.’ A completely bizarre criticism based on only what you can see publicly and not with any knowledge of what was happening behind the scenes.

I think Lange deserves some fair criticism for his part in advocating for the hire of Frank, and for advocating for him to have more time. Although with what has come out since around how people in the club thought there was just so much turnover at the leadership level they didn’t want to add yet more to it with a change of manager. So I get how the decision can have been made taking Lange out of it too. But still, he very likely would have been a voice advocating for more time and probably not appreciating just how broken psychologically the squad was.

I also thought he deserved some fair criticism for seeming to not be able to get signings over the line, in the sense that it always seemed like Ange or someone else was responsible for convincing a sceptical player. But with this I can temper it a bit with what we now know - we are looking for a more market facing / relationship driven Sporting Director and Lange’s strength is clearly on the data. So it’s hard to criticise him too much for a weakness he and the club are well aware of. And where it feels like the role is big enough that others have to play a part too.

Overall though as we’ve seen from this summer, it wasn’t as if before Lange was in control of all footballing decisions and that his incompetence was holding us back. He clearly plays an important enough role to be kept around, and clearly it is a bigger strategic decision of the club to decide to invest more money. And clearly RDZ has a lot of sway on the direction of the football strategy too. I feel like a lot of the criticism was directed at him as if he was some all knowing omnipotent footballing decision maker and was ultimately to blame for everything and that wasn’t the case. He owes his share of blame for Frank but I think it was a collective headloss of the club too that got us into that situation.

 

[billyiddo]

Johan wasn't a pro footballer but went into coaching at a younger age. He has done 1st team coaching roles before more through the gears and up to DoF type roles. It's hard to say he's not a football guy to be fair. He's done some very hard yards in the game.

Perhaps we have a situation like we do with the bloody refs where they can't make a call as they've never played the game.

I'm not all down on him to be fair.

Was talking about the guy that metalgear posted a tweet about

 

[MartyFunkhouser]

I do think some of the criticisms of Lange last year reminded me a bit about how Chris Hughton would get slagged off by some people because ‘all he did was put out the cones.’ .

Anyone that said that about him (i havent seen it) but they are a major league cnut

 

[Raziel]

I do think some of the criticisms of Lange last year reminded me a bit about how Chris Hughton would get slagged off by some people because ‘all he did was put out the cones.’ A completely bizarre criticism based on only what you can see publicly and not with any knowledge of what was happening behind the scenes.

I think Lange deserves some fair criticism for his part in advocating for the hire of Frank, and for advocating for him to have more time. Although with what has come out since around how people in the club thought there was just so much turnover at the leadership level they didn’t want to add yet more to it with a change of manager. So I get how the decision can have been made taking Lange out of it too. But still, he very likely would have been a voice advocating for more time and probably not appreciating just how broken psychologically the squad was.

I also thought he deserved some fair criticism for seeming to not be able to get signings over the line, in the sense that it always seemed like Ange or someone else was responsible for convincing a sceptical player. But with this I can temper it a bit with what we now know - we are looking for a more market facing / relationship driven Sporting Director and Lange’s strength is clearly on the data. So it’s hard to criticise him too much for a weakness he and the club are well aware of. And where it feels like the role is big enough that others have to play a part too.

Overall though as we’ve seen from this summer, it wasn’t as if before Lange was in control of all footballing decisions and that his incompetence was holding us back. He clearly plays an important enough role to be kept around, and clearly it is a bigger strategic decision of the club to decide to invest more money. And clearly RDZ has a lot of sway on the direction of the football strategy too. I feel like a lot of the criticism was directed at him as if he was some all knowing omnipotent footballing decision maker and was ultimately to blame for everything and that wasn’t the case. He owes his share of blame for Frank but I think it was a collective headloss of the club too that got us into that situation.

All people make mistakes, good/bad calls, it's usually how the scale balances in the end.

That said, I'm utterly amazed Lange is still here, Lange was part of a team (we don't know who else) that made the two worst decisions potentially ever made at Spurs (in terms of the risk it brought to the club)

- Keeping Frank for too long (this was fundamentally doubling down on the mistake)
- Not doing more business in January (complete misjudgement)

I suspect his role as been minimized, i.e. stick more to a lane, and others are probably doing some of his duties (new guy, can't recall his name)

 

[SissokoWasGood (BoL)]

Anyone that said that about him (i havent seen it) but they are a major league cnut

It’s years ago now but I’m sure it was mentioned even on this forum. Especially as there weren’t too many other places to read and debate about Spurs. Was just completely bizarre criticism, seemingly based around nothing more than he was a bit quiet? As if assistants need to be the big booming voices.

 

[SissokoWasGood (BoL)]

All people make mistakes, good/bad calls, it's usually how the scale balances in the end.

That said, I'm utterly amazed Lange is still here, Lange was part of a team (we don't know who else) that made the two worst decisions potentially ever made at Spurs (in terms of the risk it brought to the club)

- Keeping Frank for too long (this was fundamentally doubling down on the mistake)
- Not doing more business in January (complete misjudgement)

I suspect his role as been minimized, i.e. stick more to a lane, and others are probably doing some of his duties (new guy, can't recall his name)

I think he simply must be good at the lane that they’ve put him in now. And they must all recognise that it can just be him with blame around Frank. Because Levy pushed it, and VV talked about the 30 candidates and ten key criteria.

Anyway, if it so happens that Lange is best when there’s a strong manager who likes broad responsibility for football strategy, and a more relationship oriented sporting director alongside him, then I’m happy for him to remain. Booting him just to have someone fall on their sword when if it wasn’t purely his decision on how last season went would have been really harsh and not a way to inspire loyalty among the rest of the staff, I think he like all of them was caught up in the fact that there was so much change. Levy pulled the trigger on Ange, the kids pulled the trigger on Levy, the players probably had no idea what was happening…and so on.