Roberto De Zerbi Appointed | A Volatile Rebuild, Fan Displeasure & Tottenham's PL Survival Reality

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1:31Um, there we have it. Roberto Dezerbi, Tottenham's new manager, confirmed, official. I mean, it was the world's worst kept secret, wasn't it? We all knew it was going to, we all knew it was coming, didn't we? Right.

1:51Fabrizio gave us the here we go, what, a couple of hours ago? or so club announced it maybe one hour ago give or take don't really know why i'm going down the timeline of when this has been announced or not um it's just a weird one it's a weird one to talk about it's it's it's it's a strange one um it's one that i know a lot of people are very happy about it's one that a lot of people are not very happy about at all um it's

2:29how do we how do we how do we dive into this one first and foremost um it's overall it's disappointing that a managerial appointment at this point in the season has divided a fan base that was very very united look at look at that kind of the nottingham forest game look at those scenes before the ground all together always everyone's sort of pulling in one direction um it was the most sort of unity i'd seen in the spurs fan base for a long long time and it's a shame that whatever it is that we've we've had to bring somebody along that is quite this divisive now look i get it people i know i know what the response is going to be because i've been getting it on twitter all week people are going to say well get over it and it's just it's it's not that simple is it life isn't that simple you know people of course are going to have a reaction to this they're going to have a reaction to roberto de zerbi for non-footballing reasons, they're going to have a reaction to Roberto De Serbi for footballing reasons.

3:45It just so happens that the non-footballing reasons obviously make this a much bigger and much more complex argument. It's the type of argument that, you know, we are going to be having an increasing amount, most likely, as the years roll by. As people do, you know, silo down into into their own different kind of belief systems and we have our own sort of view on the world and everything like that i mean i don't think that's quite as applicable here i think it's pretty kind of obvious and i don't want to just apportion this off into just being the point is i think nowadays values and people's values as individuals the people that make up institutions their values their thoughts their opinions on things are important to people they are you know i think for a long time a long time a lot of society was structured in a way that institutions almost felt

4:55emotionless i guess to a degree we would attach our emotion to these things but we would take things for what they were um and i i guess that's you know there's a there's a very good piece and i'm not going to butcher it here but there's a there's a really interesting thing that i'm sure 99 of people will have seen but david bowie was talking about david bowie david bowie whatever you want to call him i always get made fun of the way i pronounce stuff David Bowie was essentially predicting how the internet would go and his point was that it's a Pandora's box of sorts because right now prior to the internet coming along everybody was sat down at the same time we all watched EastEnders or Coronation Street we all watched the same news program we all read the same limited amount of newspapers and so the proliferation of information was much more difficult it's not to say there weren't ever academics it's not to say that there weren't people pushing themselves and reading outside the the scope of what was presented to them but we're talking about like the general populace right we're talking about what people generally would accept and it was much easier in those moments to have more uniformed opinions it was much easier to have universal experiences, universal thought.

6:15Again, it's not to say that everybody agreed on everything.

6:21But it's not like it is now. And I would say I'm older, you know, I'm 41 now. And so I'm of an age where I kind of remember pre-internet, and I definitely now live in post-internet era. I was still pretty young, you know, like the internet existed since I was a kid but the point I'm making is like the way it is now social media and everything really kicked off what 2005 2006 maybe we've probably had 20 years now of of the internet so I would say pretty much half my life has been lived pre-internet and post-internet and I guess like you know what you do notice is that as i say people's actions people's words people's thoughts they bear a greater consequence now um people are held to account much more for the things that they say and the things that they do and so with roberto de zerbi with his you know his defense of mason Greenwood and everything, look, that's going to ruffle people's feathers.

7:33It just is. We've had years, years as a Spurs fan base of weaponising Mikel Arteta and his thoughts on Thomas Partey against Arsenal fans. Years of it. And, you know, quite predictably, really, it turns out a lot of that was just to have to have some ammo to attack them with. Because, you know, a lot of people are... And the thing is, look, let me also say at this point, right, everybody's entitled to their opinion. You are perfectly entitled to say, it wasn't really for me the Greenwood stuff, but I quite like him as a manager. I'm quite excited about what he can do for Tottenham as a football club.

8:22And I want us to stay up. and next season I want us to go on and be even more successful and I feel that this guy can do that for us. I'm not the arbeiter. I'm not here to say that everyone would agree with me on this, but in my opinion, I think that's fair. You can have a good faith discussion about this. I think you can sit there and say, yeah, I didn't find that pleasant. I hope the club don't sign Mason Greenwood. I think that's a much bigger issue. Let's not bring that one into this as such. Let's not conflate what I'm talking about here with that. Let me just extract that from the record.

9:08I think people can say, I don't really like what he said, but whatever, come on you Spurs. I don't think that makes you a terrible person and that's not what I'm trying to say. um i don't think there are many people out there saying that but of course you will always have people with their own opinions and their own you know strong positions on on matters such as this right i just think my main my my main sort of point i'm trying to drive at is that i don't think you get to sit there and say why are you up because you know i've seen it now i've seen statements from various groups I've seen various people put their head above the parapet and say I'm not happy with this for these reasons and they're just being attacked about it and I don't I don't think that's necessary I don't think that's necessary people saying that they don't want Roberto De Zerbi and they don't like him hasn't stopped the club from signing him so you've got what you wanted you know if you if you wanted Roberto De Zerbi and you have faith in him and you believe in him to take the club forwards then you've got what you've wanted i don't think you need to police and i don't think you need to be abusive most of all towards people who aren't happy about it i just i just i just don't think it's necessary um i know this is all quite heavy up top i know you know i've started it off on this note but i think it's just i think it's just important to i think you you've got to say this stuff you can't just kind of sweep this under the rug it is a divisive it's a divisive signing it's divisive for that reason um but i think i've spoken about it and i can't look i can't sit here and talk about this exact issue for the next however long because that you know that's i primarily sort of you know we'll be talking about football right and yeah you know that's i hope spurs stay up i hope they do i have my concerns about roberto deserve it on a footballing level on a personality level um and i'm talking about stuff outside of the the remit of the you know his comments at Marseille and everything like that I think Spurs are pretty uniquely poised we're not in a good place at all are we um it's been very toxic it's been very uh yeah dodgy for a while at Spurs and I I think he's a particularly volatile personality um I'm not so sure I can be bothered for that again i mean look got no choice in it but i'm just saying i can't really be bothered for months of press conferences of him being angry and all that type of stuff that's what i feel like we will have coming with him because it's something that he's demonstrated across his entire career as a football manager

12:25um one of the biggest surprises for me from from all of this is that he has no relegation release clause it's quite interesting to see what the you know the what the discussions were there um and i know people say he was probably just offered loads and loads of money yep that i mean i could imagine that's probably a big part of it i guess if we if we consider the context that I think Thomas Frank was one of the, I think he was one of the high, I think he was within the top five or top five highest paid managers in the Premier League. I would imagine he's on at least on parity. I haven't seen anything mentioned about what his actual salary is, but I would imagine he's at least on parity with what Thomas Frank was getting, if not more.

13:17what was Conte on about 15 mil I think about 15 mil a season or so I'm pretty sure Conte was the highest paid manager in the league at Spurs I'd be staggered if it's that much but equally I wouldn't be surprised there's talk that Spurs would stand to lose what 200 250 million in the first season from going down so this to me is the ultimate you know i know there's sort of a talk of like sunk cost fallacy and all that type of stuff isn't there but i think you know they would look at this as in like well let's give him the money see if he can keep us up and it will still be cheaper than going down um problem is if we are paying him that much and we do go down you know I think it's Sammy Mockbell

14:19I'm pretty sure Sammy Mockbell said that De Zerbe is committed to the club that he wants to rebuild the club he wants to here we go um yeah semi mock belt it is understood deserby is fully committed to rebuilding tottenham and views the position as a long-term project regardless of which division they are playing in this episode is brought to you by state farm listening to this podcast smart move being financially savvy smart move another smart move having state farm help you create a competitive price when you choose to bundle home and auto. Bundling, just another way to save with a personal price plan.

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16:26It's a lot of money, I would imagine. and if we're talking over 10 million pounds, it's a lot of money to be paying a manager in the championship when we don't have Premier League receipt, gate receipts. We don't have Champions League football, any type of European football.

16:45But I suppose if he does stay, that is, I suppose that's the board, Enoch, the Lewis family, whatever we're calling them now, saying we aren't accepting that we will stay in the championship. A lot of people have said that if we go down, we won't come back up. And I guess this is a commitment from the people that run the club to say it's not an option. It's not an option for us. We're not going to sit in this league. we're going to spend and we're going to come back up to the Premier League. And I think really Spurs Spurs don't have an alternative option to that really. I don't really see it as like some sort of brave move by Enoch or the Lewis family.

17:43Spurs have got loads of overheads. We've got so much debt to pay off. Like they can't be in the championship for one season but they can't be in the championship for more than a season

17:58it is interesting that the board took this decision to appoint a manager a permanent manager at this point that they weren't more drawn to to the idea of having you know the interim guy to save us second interim guy to save us after Tudor Connor who I had on the pods yesterday I think he He raised the very good point that maybe players aren't going to buy into an interim guy. Maybe that's part of the problem. Maybe the players here need to see the vision. They need to see the ambition from the people that are running the club. And thus signing somebody like De Zerbe is going to signal that. It's going to signal that ambition.

18:42It's going to signal that to some of these players who are maybe now thinking, I'm not that bothered. I'm going to leave in summer. maybe that will make a few of them now think, maybe this club do mean business. Maybe I should play harder and stay up here and stay with this club and see where this goes. You know, we can't sort of scrub that. That very well could be a big part of this. It might not be, I don't know. It's all just sort of speculation at this point in time, isn't it?

19:21there's a lot of videos doing the rounds of roberto deserbe and his type of football um there's videos of him doing big shouty like ranty team talks at uh marseille slamming the table in the middle of the changing room and all that sort of stuff

19:45i don't know who knows you know who knows there's probably lots of managers that act in that way um there's there's been the various videos of him shouting and screaming at um players on the training ground and stuff at marseille telling them to go in get in the shower call their agent all that type of stuff again in isolation that doesn't look particularly good but as I've often said on here and I'm not gonna you know I'm not gonna just backtrack on things I've said before to suit the fact I don't really like Roberto De Zerbe I've said before that lots of people in sport lots of people in football are just kind of wired a bit differently that people are ultra competitive ultra masculine alpha male type people competitive guys these these are people who are competitive to the nth degree you know their competitiveness has led them to be millionaires all of them um there's not there's not many primarily when we when we when you talk about a profession again and this is one of those things that always leads into sort of discussions about footballers wages and all that type of stuff right they shouldn't get paid all that they should when you look at how much money the sport makes and you look at how few premier league footballers exist when you talk about a premier league footballer as a profession that it's it's tiny it's absolutely tiny there are very very few professions on the face of the planet where they are so few in number um my point is that they've they've worked very hard they've been very competitive to get to that point i'm sure a gaffer shouting at them and stuff is probably not anything new

21:38i'm just saying you know because i've said it before um

21:44i do think about like this team um i do think about the the makeup of it the attitude of it at least the part that we see displayed um we're not there on the training ground but the part that we see suggests that it's a team that is very easily rocked it's a team that is lacking in confidence lacking in ability i think we have to start saying if if you know if i'm honest and we're bringing into this situation an incredibly intense manager with very exacting standards um kevin prince bertang has spoken about his time working under roberto deserbe and you know the picture he paints is is very intense i'm sure you'll have seen the clips during the round um but yeah we're talking about him coming in look you know i think on a purely sort of footballing level i would have had less of the footballing concerns about him if we'd appointed him in summer if we'd had whoever it is if tudor had kept us up and walked off into the sunset we said goodbye eagle thanks thanks for your help i mean he's kind of done that anyway but you get the point I'm making and then Deserby came in to claw over the wreckage of the season we just managed to stay up now it's time to build now it's time to strip the club of all its dead words getting a new competitive mantra a new competitive mindset you've got to be on board with me or you're out the door type thing I would get that from summer I think it's very it feels very dangerous right now I mean the danger is that Spurs go down and it looks like that's going to happen anyway so you know

23:46but I'd be interested to see how his ideas translate in this shorter space of time Conor and I spoke about this a lot like I said on the pod yesterday it will be interesting to see how his ideas translate

24:04how he plays, how he approaches this last seven games of the season. Because obviously he's not going to be able to get his system fully flowing and operational at this point. The players don't have the confidence to do it. They don't have the ability to do it. We don't have enough technical passes to do it. Funnily enough, this could well be Kinski's redemption I mean, he is going to be playing for at least the next couple of games, isn't he? But as much as he didn't show it against Atletico Madrid, he is a player, a goalkeeper that's good with his feet. That's pretty much essential in De Zerbe's kind of bait and switch, bait the press style of football.

24:51Draw players onto him. Draw opposition players into your own half and pick holes through them. I'm just not, I mean, one of the things I will say is I've seen a few sort of, you know, graphs and statistical models doing the rounds showing Spurs' players and their lack of forward passing and all that type of thing, all with a nudge, nudge, wink, wink, good luck Spurs, good luck getting these lot to play Deserby ball. But I think like this is one of those instances where I would say that data, I mean I think in all instances but I'd say this in particular data needs the context the eye test context which is we've just had half a season two-thirds of a season under Thomas Frank who has played some of the most regressive football that I've ever seen I've genuinely ever seen

25:57so the the idea i mean so say for example on one of these on one of these tests on one of these charts i saw like eve basuma down there i was like it's just that doesn't ring true eve basuma can pass progressively he can play through the lines he can hold on to the ball he can dribble with it he can get opposition teams so is there a chance that if Pesuma comes into his own in a system like this I mean definitely definitely I would imagine you'll be seeing Xavi Siemens feature an awful lot more under Roberto Deserbi

26:36yeah

26:42we just have to wait and see I'm not going to sit here and say it definitely won't work we're definitely going to lose the first five games like Brighton did. There's absolutely no way he can get this load of players playing football. Because we saw this team of footballers playing football against Atletico Madrid just a couple of weeks ago. Confidence, inspiration, all these sort of things can go a long way in football. And maybe he can cut through. Maybe he can cut through a lot of the noise, a lot of the stuff that's been happening at Spurs these past couple of seasons really um and get them going but we will have to wait and see um I mean I guess one of the sort of the things that we do need to touch on is Vinay Venkatesham and Yohan Langer look you know we're I don't know how involved Langer is in this stuff again like I say he has been you know he's become kind of one of the the faces of this whole operation hasn't he one of the guys that people want to dig out and say is uh is completely at fault for this I think he's probably is at fault for a few things but the overall running of the club is is Vinay Van Kiteschen isn't it so So I'd imagine much more of that really rests with him.

28:12And it's not been a good first season, has it, to say the least. We sat here contemplating Tottenham getting relegated on our third manager of the season. Yeah, it is our third manager of the season, isn't it?

28:35Thomas Frank I mean it's difficult isn't it but I don't even think it's a hindsight thing many of us were saying this at the time the majority of Spurs fans were saying this at the time right it's

28:50Thomas Frank it wouldn't have been knee jerk to have gotten rid of him after what a couple of months I think it became abundantly clear it was abundantly clear by Christmas time at the very latest that he wasn't good enough for this that he didn't have it in him he didn't have this in him the fact that it took the Lewises who

29:18according to you know according to most people in the know actually have no day-to-day involvement with the running of the club this is an asset of theirs that they hire people to run for them the fact that nick butchler butcher whatever he's called piled in and said get rid of thomas frank get rid of him now is alarming it's alarming that that that vinai and let's just say yeah vinai still didn't see fit to get rid of him he was terrible he was awful it was really really bad the signing of Tudor a lot of people are sort of gunning them for it now I wasn't overly impressed of it when it first came in I warmed to the idea of it the more I read about him when I heard about the fact he was a kind of specialist and you know relegation escape specialist and all that type of thing but i think the initial conviction that he that this job was a bit beyond him i don't think was proven to be incorrect to be honest i think that's an opinion that most people shared so again you have to question the decision making of of finnoy to bring him in and now like i say you know we've we've gone all out to get to get roberto de zerbi who is a very divisive appointment um and yeah you know how this one plays out it remains to be seen i have paulo keith on this podcast i've had him on it several times down the past few months but one of the more recent appearances he basically said to me there's there's no appetite at the club to get Maurizio Pochettino back from what he'd heard the people who the person who wanted Maurizio Pochettino back one day was Daniel Levy and Daniel Levy's gone nobody else was really keen on him I think the idea is that he's just a bit spent I think the remit has always been to find the next Pochettino I mean, it does question why you wouldn't then go for an Iriola or somebody, but I guess Iriola is in quite a good place at Bournemouth and didn't want to drop that to come to Spurs.

31:46So, yeah, I mean, I think this, if ever it did, a five-year contract for Roberto De Zerbi signals the fact that Mauricio Pochettino is a thing of the past in terms of Tottenham now. he's a happy memory for 99.9 % of us and it doesn't seem like the club will be going back there on an emotional level obviously I would have really liked to have Pochettino back and I would have really gotten into it I did say on the last pod and I do stand by this that I think the hiring of Maurizio Pochettino would have been

32:26easy, easy for the Lewis family, for Enoch. It would have allowed them to tap into a lot of goodwill that they haven't earned. And it would also, I guess, just outline this sort of sense that we're hoping that he can bottle lightning twice. that there are certain constituent parts of this squad that mirror what he had when he first came into Tottenham all those years ago, decade ago now, that mirror those parts, and so maybe he'll get a tune out of them again. But, you know, maybe he won't, and, you know, maybe it'll just be miserable, and you've, you know, sullied another nice thing for Spurs.

33:16You know, maybe, maybe one day we'll get him back as an interim gaffer or something like that. Who knows? But I think in terms of like, really, if I'm being brutally honest with you, I think the time to have gotten Maurizio Pochettino back was the summer we got Ange Postacoglu. Just in the respect that, like I'm saying, that he was not in a contract at that point. He had spoken particularly lovingly about the club and everything all summer. I think he pretty much made it clear that he wanted to come back that summer. And in the end, we passed up and went for Ange. And I think from that point, it should have just been the signal enough that I don't think we're ever going to go back there.