CityVP Manjit

4 years ago · 4 min. reading time · 0 ·

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The Special One Comes to Spurs

The Special One Comes to Spurs

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It is strange to realize that there are many Tottenham fans who did not want Jose Mourinho to be appointed as Spurs manager because he does not suit the Tottenham philosophy of beautiful football.  Spurs have had a history of appointing managers that gave them exactly that and attracted some of the great soccer players of their age.  Yet Spurs became known as a selling club because those great players would move on to "bigger teams" in search of trophies and championships.  What the fans want is not necessarily what the great players want on their actual legacy.

Mauricio Pochettino being let go by Spurs comes as a shock to the football world and many would say he deserved more time to turn things around at Spurs, who sit currently in a miserable 14th player, but ahead of the equally miserable Everton.   It would be ironic if Pochettino took a job at Everton, though it is more likely that he ends up at the club he has always loved which is PSG, or Real Madrid or Manchester United.   If Bayern Munich want him, they could get him too and that would be interesting because Spurs travel to Bayern Munich in two weeks time - imagine Mourinho coming up against Pochettino so soon after his sacking this week.   What we need to remind ourselves is what happened when Bayern Munich did in their visit to Pochettino's Tottenham several weeks ago, they humiliated Tottenham by winning 7-2. 

It is a good thing to let Pochettino go before a desperate West Ham team, who have descended into their own little crisis - would have been motivated to lift their game against Spurs.  Spurs fans don't really dwell on beating West Ham, but for West Ham fans beating Spurs means so much.  So it was that West Ham could count on Pochettino's under-performing Spurs side to come to the London Stadium and West Ham gain the win that could restart their season.  As it is now this same West Ham team who could have contemplated beating a Pochettino led Tottenham team, suddenly face a Mourinho led Tottenham team.  Jose Mourinho has a record of winning his first game in charge with his prior teams. 

What shocked pundits about Mourinho joining Spurs is that they assume that he needs a treasure chest of transfer money to stay happy at Spurs, but Daniel Levy has made it clear that Spurs need to conserve money.  So why come? 

The reasoning is simple, while Pochettino lost the dressing room this year, with 20 defeats in the calendar year, Mourinho knows that the talent is still there, talent that he was trying to buy when he was at Manchester United.  He knows that Spurs focus on Academy players is working, even though he is more known for choosing experienced professionals rather than try out academy players.  Out of favour Jan Vertoghen and Eric Dier who only started 2 games, are the kind of players that Pochettino did not play and that Mourinho loves. 

Spurs fans may decry a Tottenham team based on defensive priority and fear the tag of their North London neighbours who were called "Boring Arsenal".  Yet that tag could not hide the fact that when Arsenal were called most boring, was when they were the most successful under former manager Arsene Wenger.   What hiring Mourinho has done is let the door open for Arsenal to pursue Eddie Howe.  Eddie Howe would not have succeeded at Tottenham, but the Arsenal set up right now has the kind of players that he could excel with.  Spurs on the other hand do need a rejuvenated Jose Mourinho, who on the back of two sackings at Chelsea and Manchester United, needs to show he still has that old managerial magic.

Jose Mourinho is exactly the manager Spurs need at this time.  As much as Spurs fans love Mauricio Pochettino, Pochettino needs a mentor like Sir Alex Ferguson to shape him to become the finished article.  So long as Pochettino remained at Spurs, his growth would have been stunted and the resulting lock down of financial resources would have meant that he would have left.   Levy could have let Manchester United have Pochettino for a payment of $50 million to Spurs for breaking his five year contract.  Now it is Levy paying off Pochettino with a golden handshake.  If anything that golden handshake is well deserved for what Pochettino has achieved, which is to transform Tottenham.  What he could not do was take them to that final level, which is to win a trophy.  Until Ferguson mentors him, he will not achieve that.

The throw of the dice of appointing Jose Mourinho is not a bad calculation on Daniel Levy's part.  Maybe Mourinho is one of the few managers who may convince the contract holdouts to stay with the club, especially the Belgian defensive pairing of Alderweireld and Vertonghen.  Spurs need that partnership again because Pochettino's admiration of Sanchez was misplaced - Sanchez is still work in progress.  Eric Dier will most likely also be rejuvenated.  Mourinho will probably play the way he knows best, but the humility that he know talks about means he cannot solely rely on old methods, in an age where Pochettino and Klopp have mastered the high press - using defenders as wing backs that support the attack and uses a high defensive line.


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Comments

CityVP Manjit

4 years ago #2

The big never give exhortations about being big, only those who hope that they fake it till they make it, make exhortations like 'Go Big or Go Home". President Trump makes big exhortations about being the best President ever - but the best US Presidents simply focused on the task they had at hand and followed through. For sure President Kennedy used the media to create a larger than life image of himself - but he also made big decisions such as the nearly catastrophic Bay of Pigs incident and his speech about sending a man to the moon before the century - and he and family came from a "Big" family which are simply known today as "The Kennedy's, Teams that try to claim that they should be viewed as a big club do not have yet a big club mentality. This is the realm for the few rather than the many. The point here is that Tottenham still have that opportunity (now under Mourinho) and it is clear that Daniel Levy, the Tottenham Chairman wants to think big (and has) but his penny wise pound foolish ways are continue to throttle and choke that final step toward success.

CityVP Manjit

4 years ago #1

#1
There is another paradox which is a small club mentality trying to be a big club mentality - i.e. the attractive football is an excuse to pretend to be a big club but the mentality is actually the fear that to actually be a big club, that it would drive up wages, transfer fees and create egos that only the top paid managers know how to control. Casing point is Derby County with Brian Clough. Clough started signing big money players - not huge but too much for the Derby chairman's liking. So instead of seeing or recognizing that success was possible, the Derby County chairman acted emotionally rather than rationally and fired Clough. Clough went on to win the league with Nottingham Forest and then what a big club really wants to do, which is to win the European Cup. Brian Clough won that cup twice. Spurs are bigger than Derby but they act the same way. The only difference is that they have more money to spend than Derby County. Yet the same lack of vision at the Chairman level cost both clubs. So Spurs fans in compensation for not being winners, settled for their culture being a team that entertains. So what is the difference between that and club wide imposter syndrome. In the end they hang out the illusion of wanting to be a big club without being one. Maybe Daniel Levy is a chairman who sees beyond that - but his financial decisions are now mixed - in some areas like the stadium build spending a billion dollars, but in player transactions losing transfer value and trying to build a side on the cheap. With Jose Mourinho we shall see if they will become the "big club" that they once were nearly 60 years ago. Today's win against West Ham could be attributed to new manager bounce - and it remains to be seen what the Mourinho finger print actually looks like - that test will come in a few weeks when Spurs visit Manchester United.

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