Why are Spurs struggling to attract a manager?
In theory, almost any football manager in the world should want the job of Tottenham Hotspur manager. It’s a Premier League club with a rich history, it’s in London, and the side contains some world-class players. Spurs are generally expected to compete for top honours even if, for whatever reason, they never manage to win any.
In practice, Daniel Levy and the rest of the Spurs hierarchy appear to be having a nightmare trying to find a new manager to replace Antonio Conte, who was driven entirely mad by the club’s inexplicable failures before “mutually agreeing” to vacate his post earlier than planned. Conte isn’t the first manager to find that things at Spurs don’t work in quite the same way they seem to at other top football clubs; Jose Mourinho didn’t fare any better. In fact, you could argue that the only Spurs managers to have enjoyed their work at Spurs over the past twenty years were Harry Redknapp and Mauricio Pochettino - and they were both fired, too.
Ryan Mason, currently in his second stint as interim manager at the Tottenham Hotspur stadium, won’t be given the job on a permanent basis. The once hotly-tipped Julian Nagelsmann won’t be the next Spurs manager either. The powers-that-be at Spurs have tried to deny that they were ever interested in the former Bayern Munich manager, but that's an impossible pill to swallow. He's one of the very few currently available managers with experience coaching at the elite level; it would make no sense for Tottenham to have no interest in him. It's far more likely that Nagelsmann has quietly told Spurs that he has no interest in being the next man to be burned alive by the volcanic managerial hot seat at the club.
Based on how things look at the moment, there's a very high risk that Spurs will start next season the same way they started the season before last - with an uninspired managerial appointment made at the last minute because nobody else was available or interested. That's how Nuno Espirito Santo ended up having a brief tenure as Tottenham Hotspur's manager at the beginning of the 2021/2022 season. It was the dismissal of Santo that led to Conte being appointed at great cost. It was understood by the press at the time that Spurs had attempted to land Conte before appointing Santo but had been turned down. Conte always seemed to believe that the job of Tottenham Hotspur manager was beneath him, and the failure of the Conte experiment came as no great surprise to anybody.
So, how did we get here, and what will happen next? It’s easier to answer the first question than it is the second. Spurs have ended up in this mess because of Daniel Levy’s constant gambling, both in terms of the managers he hires and when and why he chooses to fire them.
We have no idea whether Levy frequents online casinos, but if he were to ask us, we’d advise him not to. He strikes us as someone who, to paraphrase the old Kenny Rogers song, doesn’t know when to hold them or when to fold them. A good gambler will at least research the casino they’re playing at by checking out a website about sister sites before spending any money. With some of Levy’s hirings and firings, it’s almost like he never looks at a form guide at all. How else would one explain his initial decision to leave Christian Stellini, Conte’s assistant, in charge of Spurs until the end of the season after dismissing Stellini’s boss? It was a disastrous move, resulting in Spurs needing to take the embarrassing step of sacking their interim manager a few games later.
We said the second question would be harder to answer, and we're glad we're not the people who truly have to answer it. That responsibility falls squarely upon the shoulders of the embattled Levy, who, by this point, isn't trusted by the club's supporters. Most of them want him gone and haven't been shy about saying so. We'd say that Levy needs to ensure that he gets the next appointment right, but that feels like a redundant statement by this point. He needed to get the last four or five appointments right, and he hasn't done so. The names currently being linked to the vacancy by the press don't seem like likely candidates.
One of those names is Roberto de Zerbi, the Italian coach who came from nowhere to do such an impressive job at Brighton this season. We're sure Spurs would love to have him, but it's unlikely that de Zerbi would leave Brighton after his first season. He's spoken of his happiness in the post several times, and he'd likely be mindful of what happened to his predecessor Graham Potter after he left the Amex Stadium for Chelsea. He's building a solid reputation for himself on the south coast and is unlikely to want to spoil that by picking up what might be the most poisoned chalice in English football.
The name of Burnley manager Vincent Kompany has also been linked to the vacancy at Spurs. Again, Kompany would be mad to take the job. The way his Burnley team ran rampant in the Championship this season, sealing the title with several games to go, is deeply impressive. At times, watching Burnley has been like watching Kompany's old team, Manchester City. It's clear that Kompany learned a lot from Pep Guardiola during the many years the two worked together at City, and it's no secret that he'd love to be City manager himself someday. If he stays at Burnley and continues to impress, that prospect remains realistic. If he goes to Spurs and suffers the same fate as so many other managers, his standing would be damaged.
Instead of Kompany or de Zerbi, it's likely that the Spurs job will go to someone like Brendan Rodgers or perhaps a lesser-known candidate like Arne Slot of Feyenoord. Whoever ends up taking Levy's money, we wish them well - they have quite the task on their hands.
