Frank advice for our next manager

And a big thank you to Big Ange

Is Levy going to have a crack? He is, you know…

A mere couple of weeks after Daniel left on a plane, its red taillights headed for Spain to witness one of the most glory-filled of glory, glory nights in club history, our chairman has us back on the manager carousel yet again despite Ange Postecoglou winning our first European trophy in 41 years.

Throughout the divisive debates between the #AngeIn and #AngeOut camps, I remained consistently “In”—because context is everything.

When we had our first XI or anything close to it, we were a good team. A very good team. A trophy-winning team, in fact.

And yes, when we didn’t, we weren’t. But again: context. When we didn’t, we had the likes of Ben Davies and Archie Gray and Emerson Royal as center halves. And for that I blame Levy, the same person who approved just one player acquisition across three windows when we had the chance to kick on under Mauricio Pochettino, our last culture-changing manager before Postecoglou.

And the irony in Levy firing Ange is we’re being linked with Thomas Frank, who won just one of his first ten matches with Brentford, something for which Levy himself would have no patience. Manchester United supporters left feeling devastated after the Europa League final can console themselves that Levy wasn’t running their show at the beginning of the Alex Ferguson years.

But whether our next manager be Frank or someone else, I wanted to offer the following points of advice. Consider this a list of “don’ts” for managing the club whose motto is To dare is to do:

Do NOT inspire the home supporters to sing “We’ve got our Tottenham back!” It’ll set the bar too high for when we’re waiting to get our center halves back.

Do NOT play pressing football. They’ll blame each and every injury on it.

Do NOT say things like “It’s just who we are, mate,” or anything else to imply you’re establishing a progressive way of playing, much less a new culture at the club. People will just take that to mean you’re inflexible.

Do NOT adapt to other ways of playing. Half the people won’t notice you’ve changed, and the other half will wonder what took you so long.

Do NOT respond to insulting questions with pointed answers. If they call you a clown, just say, “Thank you, mate; may I have another?”

Do NOT form a fatherlike bond with the team that inspires star players to say things like “Yes, we had lost the game. But we won at life.” The media will just report that not everyone on the team loves you and that those who do were probably just saying it for the media’s benefit.

Do NOT prioritize one competition for another. We live in a fantasy world in which paying a wage scale that’s a distant 7^th in our domestic league should be good enough to boss four competitions at once.

Finally, do NOT win a trophy; definitely do NOT do so in your second season; and dear god, do NOT predict that you’ll do so in your second season and then deliver on that promise.

***

We move on because we must.

But before we do, I must close with some words of appreciation for Ange:

Gaffer, you gave me the happiest night of my Spurs life so far. You made me proud of this team. I’ve even written that your win in Bilbao made my job as a father just a little bit easier.

We’ll always have Bilbao. But we’ll have more than that. We take our memories of what it felt like to have our Tottenham back.

We won a trophy with you. We probably would’ve won more with you. But you’ll go on to win elsewhere, and so will we.

Win-win.

We won at life.

Thank you, Ange.