Tottenham's Brutal Clearout | The 33-Day Heitinga Farce, Tudor's Youth Dilemma & Is Pochettino The Answer?

29:28Tom Foins:League experience does come in handy when it comes to keeping like it's probably a bad example because he's just been sacked by them but Sean Dyche at Nottingham Forest I think he probably would have kept them up because I think that's the sort of job that he does that's the sort of level of team within the league and in sort of football in English football in general that he has pretty much done his whole career he doesn't want everyone to think that but he does just keep teams in the Premier League by and large so that side of things can't be understated I don't think but generally yeah you should be able to come in and at least impose your sort of philosophy and your your tactical outlook on on any team in any league it's just it's the sort of intangibles isn't it it's the the atmospheres of going away to certain grounds and your team's being psychologically fit and able to deal with that when they're there as i say when they're lacking form fitness and and everything else and discipline so hopefully for for tudor that will be a pretty universal thing that he can just come in and install straight into the squad and we can we can start on a high or at least just yeah sort of grind out a couple of these these essential wins that we desperately need um but uh yeah i i don't think it can i don't think you can say it's completely irrelevant put it that way and certainly in the situation that we're in right now do you

31:03Jack:ever think in some ways there's a little part of me that i think going into like an arsenal game his first game against Arsenal, right? Somebody that isn't, say, perhaps as well-versed in the Premier League is looking at, you know, Arsenal are a big team, obviously, but also he's coming at this from the perspective of being a, you know, a Juventus hard man, good player, probably won some fairly considerable sort of trophies there. He's probably looking at this from the outside thinking, yeah, that's Arsenal, the team that are good domestically, but they never win anything in Europe. So they can be beaten.

31:37Jack:you know he he's I wouldn't be surprised if he's played in the Juventus team that's beaten Arsenal I can't say that for a fact I don't know but I'm just saying that that's the sort of mentality that he could bring to a game like that um and I guess that leads me to ask you like what is it that you want to obviously we want to see him win games we want to see Spurs you know not get relegated but what for you is going to be acceptable from him you know are we still in a place where we can say well I want him to play a certain brand of football or is it just simply a case of we have

32:12Tom Foins:to grind out these results yes stay up it's the latter we as I say we are in an emergency situation now we aren't we aren't in a place where the only time that I can really think or the only comparable situation that I can think of is is um when Sherwood took over right in terms of obviously not where we are in the league and what that manager's coming in to take over but more in terms of everyone knows this is short term I mean Sherwood was given an 18-month contract but we all knew that he was going to be gone in the summer with Tudor it is a lot more black and white with him it is you are here until May and then you are gone that he might be on the list the long list for consideration for the new season if he does well but I think there's I think from the way it's been reported it's basically no obligations no promises you're here for four five months and that's it but with sherwood there was this kind of there was that point where of what can you do with this team could you blood some youth could you there was i just felt as if there was a few more objectives for him coming in with tudor it is just one thing one thing on your tick list stay up it doesn't matter how it happens it doesn't matter if you have to become the worst version of Stoke City from 2008.

33:33Tom Foins:It doesn't matter if you play ultra-defensive to grind out a 0-0 away from home at Anfield, say, or even, I hate to say it, but at home to Arsenal. I think I'd bite your hand off for a 0-0 right now, honestly. That's it. That's all you've got to do. It doesn't matter how you achieve it. And I think the other thing is that even if we wanted a certain brand of football or if he promised a certain brand of football, we haven't got the players. As you said, everyone's dead. we've got injuries that people are coming back pretty much every week from now until the end of the season, if you count Kulazewski in there.

34:09Tom Foins:And that's a really difficult situation to walk into. You've got to try as hard as you can to sort of rouse the existing players or the fit players that you've got in your squad, which at the moment is a very, very small number. Just get it over the line. It doesn't matter. If we're bored every week in that stadium, I get it. It's not pleasant. It's a disgrace that fans are having to pay the amount of money they are to be in this situation. But we all need to acknowledge the situation that we're in. And it's embarrassing to feel like we're going to need to fill 60 ,000 people in the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium that was built for us to have, basically for the sun to never set on us.

34:50Tom Foins:And we are now desperately scrapping for points to stay in the Premier League to avoid pretty much the worst thing that's ever happened to us, certainly in modern history. So it doesn't matter. Just 12 points, that's your job. That's all you've got to do.

35:07Jack:They were saying on View from the Lane that if Spurs went down, they reckon it would genuinely be the most significant relegation since Manchester United in the 70s, late 60s, early 70s. Yeah, I don't disagree.

35:21Tom Foins:I think the only comparable one in the Premier League, Newcastle and Villa, are the only other two huge, what you'd consider huge clubs. And, well, Villa were ever present, Newcastle weren't, but yeah.

35:36Jack:Newcastle and the way Mike Ashley handled the strategy at that football club is definitely, you know, learn from history Tottenham Hotspur. You know, that's, the course is pretty much charted there, I suppose, because it's funny, isn't it? In retrospect now, you look back on it and you just saying that, it almost doesn't feel like that big a deal in Newcastle going down. But you do forget where they were. Like when we, especially I'm a few years older than you, but when I was growing up, Newcastle were, they were like us under Pochettino. You know, they were the biggest team outside of Arsenal, Man United, Liverpool, really.

36:14Jack:In terms of stature, at that point in time, they were outperforming two of those clubs at least in the league and everything. But it just, yeah, I mean, I would love to sit here and I'm not trying to be like a doom monger about it, but I definitely, I had a sense of relief that Thomas Frank went because it was at least an indication that the club knew things were bad now and things couldn't continue on the course that they were on. um that there was no correcting it that we were heading to a bad we were in a bad we're heading to a bad place we were in we were in an actively bad place um this is the bad place you know um yeah i'd love to my point is i'd love to sit here and say right this is this is good we are we we're good we're we're gonna pull away from the relegation places and and we should be okay now Now, Tudor brings with him this authoritarian approach that we, you know, there's a lot of talk that the squad's very unruly, people not turning up for training, people answering back, people wanting this, people wanting that, you know, players not wanting to do their jobs ultimately, seemingly, anything but that.

37:33Jack:So this guy's going to come in, we're all with an iron fist and get everyone going because he's done it before with Lazio and he's turned Juventus' season around. But, you know, it's, it's a, and I appreciate there aren't many people there to available to do this job. Right. But it's a risk, isn't it? This, this is a risk. Spurs are, are far from safe. Like we could be, you know, get behind the bloke. Like number one. Yes, of course, get behind the bloke. Let's not bring this energy into the ground. come the North London derby everyone full voice let's not let Arsenal mug us off in our own home all that type of stuff right let's we've got it's not just stopping Arsenal winning this title we've got to save our place in the Premier League right so full voice we get behind him but equally I think in the back of my head I am like this is still a massive risk and I'm I'm still concerned, mate.

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40:00Tom Foins:and stream on Hulu. It's a strange feeling because, again, I'm going to compare it to a previous situation that we've been in, but when we got rid of Nuno, we'd gone on a run of, I don't think it was just a winless run, certainly in the Premier League. I think we hadn't even had a shot on target for like four games or something like that, or four of our previous six games, we hadn't had a shot on target until the 80th minute or something like that. It felt really terminal and obviously it felt over and it just didn't feel as if there was any way of turning it round. But we acted in, I think, late October, early November.

40:41Tom Foins:And that felt so crucial for the club to acknowledge, yeah, we've got this wrong. And I know that Conte was lined up for it, but we still had to make an early decision on a manager. And Conte walks into that team and it just felt as if, obviously the goal then wasn't just to avoid relegation it was to finish top four finish in Europe finished in the top four and it all felt immediately doable because of timing and this is what I mean around the whole the fact that we held on for so long and as you were alluding to with Lang and Vinay making such a big deal about backing him without ever actually backing him where it where it counts and where it matters which is on the pitch we've left ourself in this situation where yeah it's february and we're in free fall the players that are getting injured that the injury list is getting longer those players aren't rushing back like we we haven't got we haven't got the ability to to ease them back but even so like as i say there's it's pretty much every week there's another player gone down and every week there's a one more player joining training again like everyone's a few months away from what we we can hear so the situation is brought in on it is really concerning and as as good as it was to see them take the decision on frank because that i think that was that was guaranteed relegation i don't think we'd have got another probably more than four or five points for the rest of the season i genuinely mean that under frank if he'd have stayed the the vibes everything was off so they've done we weren't going to win another game mate we weren't going to win another game no i don't think so i think and I think the whole thing about I think the momentum behind us going down and yeah, as I say, as I've mentioned not every club wanting to relegate us I think they would have had an easy job of beating us because we were beaten before we even went on the pitch so he's got that we've hopefully got a manager through the door that's able to at least arrest that not to sound like Frank but we are going to lose games from now until the end of the season but you just hope I can say that because I'm looking at it saying this squad is shite and ripped to pieces and we're pretty much no hopers but you don't want your manager saying it but hopefully he can come through the door, reverse that messaging, reverse that look, it doesn't have to be a Harry Redknapp, it can just be a point to the games recently where we've dropped points and conceded stupid goals, it's been like what are you all doing?

43:17Tom Foins:what do you think you're doing to take to the pitch and be this sort of just this poor and so insipid and yeah whatever else you just hope that he's able to arrest that and then hopefully a bit of quality will shine through that we haven't really been able to see for a good few months now but I'm with you I keep thinking like we've actually still got all the issues that Frank had they're still there you know we've still got Romero's out from three games still we've got all of our injured players which is numbering what 10 or 11 first teamers now which is putting additional pressure on the likes of Mickey van der Ven whose hamstrings must be right on the tightrope now like they they must be close to to going but he's going to have to play every single game because if he doesn't we will not win many games like it's a real really concerning position to be in and And yeah, we'll know more this time next month, right?

44:18Tom Foins:If we will hopefully be able to say a couple of wins, better performances and players coming back, chances are we're going to be absolutely fine. But we could be in the bottom three within three games, mathematically within three games. And if you take it, we're up against Arsenal league leaders, pretty much not quite run away, but they've got a fairly decent cushion. they should be beating us the cold hard facts unfortunately they should be turning up and beating us and if they do the gap could be two points and yeah then it's all bets are off and we are scrapping and we really need to scrap so hopefully we'll see something on Saturday that shows that we've got the fight in us because for the last three or four months we just haven't shown that at all

45:11Jack:We've both had our say on randakolomawani at points throughout this season but it's heartening at least to know that one of the better patches in his career was served under igor tudor there's got to be there's just got to be a hope that he can at least sell him that vision of like look play well here score some goals in the premier league and then you'll get that move to wherever manchester united or so i don't know do you know what i mean but yeah whatever wherever it is that randakolomawani wants to go by all accounts he just wants to go back to juventus um but if he can at least show people he can get on board score some goals help top them along the way then that's i mean that's that's that's just it's things like that we've got to hope for right there's there's there's you know what do you say strings to igor's bow like that that you really have to hope aren't just

46:05Tom Foins:aren't just fanciful coincidence right yeah yeah i know what you mean yeah we need everyone we need everyone who's who's able to put one foot in front of the other currently um and be pain free

46:20Jack:would you chuck some kids in there young youth team i think we have to don't we i think we are

46:27Tom Foins:literally in at the position where we we have to be looking at the likes of byfield and um Williams Barnett as even just people to take a few minutes and talking about just doing what's necessary if we're 1-0 up or I don't know like we've got ourself a decent result somewhere that just inches us towards that safety line and we need to give 20 minutes rest to a Solanke or whoever and bring on another midfielder and sort of go you know three six zero or whatever is fine we're just going to have to do what's necessary and I think it's not I don't think it's a case of having a choice like we're going to have to rely on a couple of the kids from the academy I've heard a couple of good things about that in terms of whether or not he would trust um the academy and as i said it's not it's it's not something on his agenda in the way that it would have been for as i mentioned someone like sherwood when he came in um that's that's just not on the agenda but it has to be because we just don't have the numbers in the squad at the moment so i think we'll see a lot of young players whether tudor wants to or not because as i say it's the injury list isn't static.

47:44Tom Foins:We have picked up one injury in every game since Christmas, I think. I'm pretty sure I've read somewhere that we have picked up at least one injury in league games in every single game since the turn of the year. And the pressure on the rest of the squad is saying, Mickey's got to be close to it. We've seen it with Porro. It's an overload. You can't keep playing these players and expecting them to not break down. It eventually will catch up with them. And for another thing against Lang, just the audacity to sit there and say, well, we didn't want to panic because we've got players coming back.

48:20Tom Foins:But you've got two full seasons of evidence as to why that approach doesn't work. It lands you in more trouble because the players just can't get a rest. They cannot get a break. And eventually they break down. And this is exactly what happened last season. and it came to the point where Ange had to choose between the Premier League and the Europa League, so he says, and that's... Yeah, it's just not a position that we should be in. And again, I don't want to speak about... I'm really talking about Thomas Frank here, like we're going to lose games and also what Arsenal are really good at. But it's no surprise that the team with the biggest squad is able to rotate it and see no discernible difference in performances and results and they're probably going to win the league because of it.

49:08Tom Foins:They've got two players for every single position in a way that Man City haven't, their nearest rivals. So we don't stand a fucking child. We've got nowhere near that amount of players. We've barely got one player for each position on the pitch, let alone two. So for me, it's a simple maths game and why I was really... I'd fired Langer on the spot for January. But yeah, sorry, it's a long-winded way of saying, yes, we're going to have to play the youth. um just before we go mate obviously there's going to be a lot of conversation about

49:41Jack:Maurizio Pochettino coming back in summer um some people are floating the name Helberg Magnus Helberg at Middlesbrough um very promising up-and-coming coach what do you do you have like an opinion on it what Spurs need right now because I'll say again you know I've spoken at length about my love for pochettino and i've definitely clamored for his return i think prior to ang coming i think that was that was the perfect window for me before we brought ang in before he went to chelsea um i felt like there was a there was a natural place there for us to get pochettino back now in a footballing sense as much as i think his kind of fall off is massively overstated i think he he did much better at chelsea than people give him credit for so on and so forth um i would definitely say that i'm you know i'm i'm hesitant on the idea i will of course be over the moon if it actually does happen if we bring him back i'm going to be buzzing um but i definitely feel like it will be a largely emotional thing i just feel like the past few years there's a real danger of falling out of love with the club all this stuff that you know that we love about the club is is our mates it's our memories with our you know our parents or who you know significant elder that got us into spurs took us to games all that type of stuff but you know that that that side of things doesn't go away but what i'm talking about is the active appreciation for what the club is right now and it gets harder and harder to love that it gets harder and harder to love that entity and i feel like right now there's a part of me that like needs that i appreciate like people say if you bring in somebody like a hellberg right you bring him in and spur start winning games that love comes back kind of fairly quickly but to me it feels like something of a risk to a degree where when we've kind of gone through various different projects we've had a lot of stuff sold to us i think right now i kind of just want to be under the duvet do you know what i mean and and that that is that's pochettino for a while um and i'm not saying he's going to come in and win us the league and all that but equally i'm not saying it's just going to be a vibes experiment i don't really know what it is um and i don't really know what my question is here mate other than how do you sort of feel about what the next appointment is going to be it's probably

52:12Tom Foins:going to be potch isn't it i don't know though i feel i feel like potch is the he's the path of least resistance isn't he he he's going to be available in the summer the club are desperate for any any good news story or anything that will just get the fans off their back for a little bit i think people say about how they don't care i don't think they do care but i think they haven't there's an element of just not wanting to deal with fans constantly moaning and protesting and whatever else and Pochettino at at worst would be the the sticky plaster over the the gaping wound that is the relationship between the club and the fans currently I agree with you it comes with that caveat of he's not gonna he's not gonna have Kane in in the ranks he's not gonna walk into a squad with Lloris, Vertonghen, Danny Rose, Karl Walker, Ericsson and Dele Alli.

53:15Tom Foins:It's not going to happen in the same way as he had before. But I almost feel as if that's quite good, is that he's not coming back to a club that has Kane and Son and all of those big players still there. If he'd have come back in 2023, he would have still had Sonny. That would have been a reuniting of two of the big figureheads of that original spell that he had. So I'm kind of tempted to say that it would feel like it is a brand new manager in some ways. Just someone who gets us and gets... He probably hurts watching us struggle as much as we are currently. And I think he'd have a lot of motivation, probably more so than any other job that he's been in since, to get it right and do well.

54:06Tom Foins:And managers all have massive egos. It doesn't matter who they are and what club they're going into. Thomas Frank would have felt it coming through the door. They all feel as if they can be the guy that can take the club on and do good things with them. well we've seen that with Poch he can work in difficult conditions and he can he can bring something incredible out of it but football is a very different game to when you know his peak era was 10 years ago with Spurs and that is a long time and we are a very different club but at the same time we shouldn't be since that point the whole the whole reason why it all went to shit was because we we just didn't back him and it's not to say that they would do now but they have the means to do that now and there would really be no excuse not to and you just hope that if it does happen we continue with this with this sort of this i wouldn't i'm not going to say there's a lot of conviction in it but just this commitment to improving things on the pitch by improving our wage structure or you know paying more into our wage structure putting more money into investment into the first team etc if those things marry up we could have something as you say not league winning but certainly putting us back in the position where really we should be which is top six this is a this with a ninth ninth or tenth richest club in the world and we've got a foundation and we i don't it's only a couple of seasons in the last 20 years that we've finished outside of the top six like that is a strong foundation to us for us to be building on and it is a complete failure of leadership that we haven't done so so why don't we just all use it as an opportunity to get someone in who has got a head start even if it's just a head start with the fans even the biggest skeptics of pochettino and there are people out there that i think just for clout you know say that he failed at spurs because he didn't win anything with that team whatever man like you say what you want but if he came in and he won his first three or he won a couple and then we went to the emirates and you know won one nil everyone falls in love with him straight away all over again and we could ride the vibes train so i i just think it's a it's one of those things i get it it's the simplest and easy solution for them but it doesn't mean that it's a bad solution still we could sit here and try and pick out the next pochettino i get that but it's difficult to do that so why don't you go and get the the pochettino like say the one that would have this massive head start of a foundation level of love with the majority of the fan base to at least at least feel like something in the club is working in harmony and gives us something to cling to because if it ends up being just another frank or another content you know someone without any sort of real connection or someone we just don't click with because the ownership isn't prepared to really back them or it just doesn't work within the first like all of those different scenarios why bother doing that when we've got the opportunity to sort of cut a corner a little bit get him back back him see what we can do this time we'd all want to see how it how it turns out

57:33Jack:i'm sold imagine imagine imagine how it hits mate the first is magic you know the whole stadium singing it the big flag up there again with him with his arms crossed just stab it you know just

57:45Tom Foins:do it like it's gonna it's gonna be the answer until it's not and that's what i've stolen that line from a few people that i've seen it from but it really is it's the it's it's not going to solve it's not going to solve everything and it's probably not going to be as good as it was but it's been bad since he left really really bad and if he if just someone comes through the door who loves us and wants to do well for us and you feel genuinely will fight tooth and nail to make this team better and to play the way that we want to see them play, to play the youth and play the attacking football that we are desperate to see, it's there.

58:29Tom Foins:The opportunity is there for us. Just do it and back him and just see where it goes. It could just be so galvanising for us and it could finally make things like the stadium feel like a proper stadium, a big club stadium with supporters who want to be there and want to sing and want to make it loud and intimidate him because that's exactly what Pochettino's style of football and his style of management.

58:51Jack:He's a stadium he built after all.

58:53Tom Foins:Yeah, exactly, man. He's got so much stock still at Spurs that, yeah, I just think we owe it to him and ourselves to try, if nothing else.

59:08Jack:It's Kim Helberg, by the way. I chose Magnus. It's like the most stereotypical Swedish name, isn't it? Sven or Magnus or whatever. It's some bloke called Hurdy Gurdy. I've never heard of him. He does all that stuff with ABBA and all that in training. Tom, I'm glad we managed to get through this podcast without me wrongfully actually-ing one of your tweets earlier about the Irish comedian Bloat of Saracens. I dived in and then I re-read your tweet I was like oh I'm actually agreeing with him aren't I as usual Spurs fans, tetchy I mean that whole thing's a bit

59:48Tom Foins:it's probably not worth talking about that but I don't want to give it air just stop biting he's a professional comedian this is literally what he does I'm not saying he did it for Ragebait but it's pretty middle of the road pattern it was a wiffy joke though wasn't it, it was awful, it was weak that's it you know but yeah i don't know i mean if you if you listen to any of his podcasts like he's yeah that's that's like the tip of the iceberg for for some of the content i really like him i really like vittorio and i think he's great yeah okay there we go i am a massive fan i think he's he's yeah he's a decent guy actually and i think he'd probably i don't know where i've got this right i think he might have a bit of a soft spot for spurs but it might just be the ang thing because he's there's a couple of stand-up people in stand-up that i know some of my mates and they've done some podcasts with him and it might just be that the ang factor made him quite sympathetic to spurs which i know was sort of the joke of the video and that he's sort of anti-spurs now but whatever like the whole thing was the whole thing is just a load of nothing that from the fans point of view we shouldn't care i just i just wish the club did or it felt as if the club did because that is just another one on a very long list of kind of corporate partnerships that publicly mugging us off it's not quite the Dulux dog but it's still a bit annoying oh mate right well Tom it's been a pleasure mate back at you mate good to speak to you

1:01:17Jack:not so quizzy today are you quizzy man

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