You know if you read my blog regularly (or have been super keen and read back after finding it) you know that I am a Spurs fan. That's Tottenham Hotspur, if you're American. If you are a Spurs fan like me all you have at the moment is nostalgia since we remain stuck to the bottom of the league below EVEN NEWCASTLE, who don't have a manager and are so badly run, they hire an interim manager who can;t even get to the touchlines due to a ban picked up four years ago when he last had a proper job in football.
Sigh... I remember when I first started watching football and chose Spurs to be my team - where now are such heroes as Mabbutt, Lineker and Klinsmann? When I was a kid you could be certain of two things - a mid table finish and lots of goals for and against. These days we can only be sure of lots of goals against, despite the fact we have a bunch of international first string players as opposed to the olden days, when we just had second string internationals, like Ian Walker, Darren Anderton, David Ginola et al.
So what is going wrong right now? Well, football is changing, and the structure at Spurs was one of the first to convert to a "European" organisational pyramid. In the European system, the person who used to be the manager is now more of a head coach, while a "director of football" deals with all the transfers and signs the players, deals with agents etc etc. Thing is, we haven;t yet reached the stage where anyone except the manager is blamed for poor results, since he is the visible Representative of the club week in week out.
I personally place the blame for our current predicament square at the feet of Damien Comolli and Daniel Levy, the director of football and club chairman. It's not (manager) Juande Ramos' fault we sold three strikers and bought one. It's not Ramos' fault that because of boardroom stalling, the sale of star striker Dimitar Berbatov was delayed until the very last minute and no replacement could be found at such short notice. It's also not Ramos' fault that, on the first couple of weekends after the transfer window closed, we were fielding a team with 6 new players in it - this sort of team being IMPOSSIBLE to gel in such a short time.
These issues are all the fault of Commolli and Levy, so why is Ramos asked about being "under pressure"? When will things change so that the fans call for a "director of football"'s head instead of the head coach's?
Things are like this at Newcastle, where Christ-incarnate Kevin Keegan fell prey to the same system and the fans there didn't let him go quietly like Spurs would if Ramos quit.
So... I don't think we'll go down this year, but we are being humiliated as a result of incompetent transfer dealings which hamstring our manager before the season has even started.
I hope your teams are doing better. Unless you're an Arsenal fan - at least I had that result to cheer this weekend!
A
Sunday, September 28, 2008
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Yeah! Bring back the good ol' days of dictating managers like Brian Clough, Bill Shanklin, Don Revie, & (Sir) Matt Busby. Give them the 'hiring and firing' responsibilities and let them get on with it.
ReplyDeleteThen we'll see Leeds United back at the top - as well as Spurs, and Arsenal will be where they deserve to be - a good team for fielding an international side.
Well, my point's slightly more nuanced, but...
ReplyDeleteBasically what I was saying is that if you are going to give the manager no final say over the players who come in and out then it's a bit rich to then blame that manager and make him the fall guy.
In your language, I believe that is known as, "focussing on the wrong part of the process".
That being said, it looks like Ramos is under pressure,and there are rumblings that a takeover bid may be coming in since Joe's ENIC, majority shareholders, have recently lost 400 million over Bear Stearns and may be wanting to make that back. I foresee a really horrible season ahead.
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