We hear that Timothy Sherwood is being groomed for greatness, gawdelpus. We hear that Pleaty is returned to the fold. All of this would carry far less weight if our beloved Arry wasn’t a) being openly courted by the media for the England manager’s job and b) off to court shortly with a question mark over a custodial sentence hanging over his loaf.
This got me thinking about who ought be the next man for the job. I tend to develop narcolepsy when well meaning folk start shouting out ‘Mourinho!’ or ‘Ancelotti!’ like the have twisted strain of Tourettes Syndrome. Despite a significant groundswell of contempt aimed at Citizen Aitch, he has statistically his win % makes him the most successful manager in 35 years.
The debate for who ought to be the next England manager is dominated by the demand that the new man be English, yet the two big shouts for Arry’s successor aren’t even British. I bet they don’t even know how to play Pooh Sticks, by Jiggins.
I could have deliberately trimmed the sample managerial period to be examined for a number of reasons but opted for to run from the first man to manage in my period of support to today. So we start at Burkinshaw.
The statistics of Tottenham managers vary wildly from source to source. At the risk of losing the will to live constructing some class of mean average figure from all the numbers out there, again I took the easy route and simply used those in Uncle Norman’s The Managing Game.
Arry Redschapps 48.68
Glenda Hoddle 48.00
Matrin Jol 44.96
So why shouldn’t we appoint Hoddle? The negatives are obvious enough I guess. Eileen Drewery’s name will be in the mix. Glena’s passes routinely found their target, but the old boy seem to have increasingly lost his mind to the evangelical hokum of a Berkshire housewife. The mulleted one violently hit the button marked ‘Career Eject’ with his forehead when he announced that disabled people were paying the price for misdeeds in a previous life.
But he was head and shoulders above so many others. Admittedly some of those others were Ardilles and Santini, but the list includes Burkinshaw, Venables and Shreeve who all had win percentages over 40.
I feel that Glenda has grown up since his faith healing days. Not knowing the man personally I won’t try and kid you he is a born again human being: but my feeling is that he has certainly at the very least learned to keep his cuckoo religious views very separate to his public.
So that’s the case for Godlite Hod.
Steve perryman
Steve Perryman finished above Wenger when they were both managing in the J league, just saying….
I always thought that we were too hasty in appointing him in the first place. We should of waited till the end of the season to get rid of that man in a coat and then appointed Glen hoddle afterwards. I remember it created a lot of bad feeling at the time.
whether he would of achieved more or not is open to debate.
Hodd was/is a visionary thinker; he was on the field picking 40 yard passes that changed the play and he was as a manager.
Remember that Hodd was pretty much the first to play a large squad with squad rotation when at Chelsea, Gullit then Vialli capitalised on that: but Hodd set up the foundations. He was also very solid as England manager and whilst in all honesty, not as good as Ramsey, Capello who has a better record has today’s opposition to fluff his stats: games like Andorra and Lichtenstein where we pick up a draw and or a close call at 2-1!
He did wonders a Swindon and also kept Southampton up.
At Spurs he tried a roving 3 man central defence with mobile full backs almost a ‘zone defence’ and occasionally it worked, but mostly didn’t. However with our flanks and a strong two man central defence covered by a strong defensive midfielder, that vision is achieved in a slightly different way.
BUT…………
GH is an awful man manager, a candidate for a mild case of Aspergers if I ever saw one. His ability with the press and his handling of players and situations was tragically naive.
As a tactical consultant? Sure. As Manager? No way.
Martin O’Neill might be a reasonable bet, but if we do change I’d like it to be someone who has won things and has a winning mentality, certaionly not the undergrad learning the ropes.
Agree with most of what you say. I think the man management part in particular.I recall a comment by Tony Cascarino who said of him that he had never met anyone with his head so far up his own arse. As a result I think if he had to give a player bad news and he had tracked him down to Victoria, he would ask them to announce the death of the players mother over the Tannoy.
As a player though, he was peerless.
Regarding a manager with a track record of having won things, we have had several of those, Santini, Gross, Ramos. Getting an “English” manager with a pedigree is a bit more, as Manure and co are frequently winning trebles.
I’d like to see us do it the way bindippers used to do it, by promoting and grooming from the back room staff.
My choice would be Hodgson, who has done pretty well wherever he has been with the exception of his trip to merseyside, but then again, what can you expect when they give him less than £10 mill to fix the problems there.
Dub, Are you forgetting Blackburn?, dreadful time and they ended up getting relegated after he squandered the family silver with some really poor buys, Dhalin was one, but there was lots of others as I recall, but I’m sure Brian Kidd ended up trying to save them, but may have gotten my wires crossed.
You might be right, Can’t be bothered to look it up. He did a good job with the Fools though.
To be fair to Hoddle we had a pony squad when he was manager.
I can never forget that when he was just about to join us, we had a FA semi against Arse, and he postponed joining us until that was lost.
When he did join us, he stated his ambition for us was “sixth place within three years”.
Thinking of those two points, is anybody really surprised that it all ended in tears or the equivalent. I personally am very sorry that he came back, because I would like to have remembered him for the great player that he was, rather then having to remember that he was just another on a long line of mediocre managers that we hired and ultimately fired.
To be equally fair, we had an even worse one by the time he was sacked, his buys were disastrous and expensive.
To be fairer still, he was the last England manager to win a cup. Thats not me having a pop by the way! :winke:
Just read your comment below. Ignore above buddy!
And to be honest, if HR does go, I’m flummoxed as to who comes in.
Same here, because as I see it, we’ve built a mainly British squad, playing and coaching staff included. To bring a non Brit into the fold would be a massive problem, so I’d look at Hughes, O’Neill or perhaps even Lambert, although he may be too early. But keeping the current club ethos is vital, as opposed to bringing in a new face, who’ll set about changing everything just as it’s showing fruit from senior to youth levels
Like the Lambert suggestion. Certainly gets a team playing for each other. Wonder if he can handle high profile players?
@ essex. It’s noteworthy that of the four foreign managers we have had, only one who played the game in England, MJ. I suspect that his relative success here may have had something to do with that.
Bringing a foreign manager in to an English team with a large contingent of English players, must have risks if the manager has never played the game in England.
On that basis, Jurgen Klinsman is worth a thought. The reason why Foreign managers don’t have this problem at Chelsea, is because they are the London branch of the foreign legion anyway.
Remember meddling David Pleat he bought the players and screwed us.
Hoddles time at Spurs was with a poor squad after Judas left us and we were in a spin.
Id have him back and he would come too! I though he did well at England the Eileen situation was disastrous but look what hes been doing in Spain with discarded English youth players!
I would not let Hodgson wipe my arse hes not good enough.
Twat should have stayed at Fulham
thats what I say too!
Hazard’s Bandaid is near the mark.
A journo on 5live recently reported that at THFC Moyes name has already come up as a possible replacement.
IMO Hoddle has no chance. His time as a manager has been and gone and consigned to the wheely bin of history