Tottenham's Nottingham Forest Disaster | Will ENIC Sell? The Refereeing Conspiracy & Keeping Faith

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1:10In by Williams

1:12Jack:A one-e! Off the bench to make absolutely sure this is nottingham forest day

1:24Jack:forest saw away from trouble and plunge spurs right into the mile for the first time this afternoon booze echo around the tottenham hot spur stadium as the fans flood to the exits hello everybody welcome back to rule the roost podcast gavin mate we were just saying prior to recording this is about the mondayest monday in all mondays isn't it what's what's going on man what how are we supposed to make sense of yesterday how have you been feeling starting starting with the hard ones um i'm i'm not sure how i feel after yesterday to be honest i mean obviously I'm really sad Jack but I feel kind of stupefied like I was almost unable to work out what actually just happened I think I'm really bad at analyzing football matches when there's a lot riding on them as well I just feel like I'm just so focused on like the football and where the football's going and I'm almost not really taking in anything else and the other thing I've realized after yesterday is that as much as I was telling everyone that would listen over the last two or three months Spurs are banging trouble I think a small part of me didn't actually believe that because it's only actually now that I think the reality is kind of is kind of hitting me at least that's what that's why I think I feel like that because you know previously I was just kind of lashing out and angry and and upset but now it just feels like miserable I mean the point I was trying to make and it wasn't so much copium and there might be there might be a little dash of copium in there but the point i was trying to make after the podcast after the game yesterday on my podcast was that had we won against nottingham forest it wouldn't have been job done we would have still had to fight hard until the very end of the season yes we'd be a bit closer to the finishing line yeah but the fact remains that we've lost we still have to fight hard to the end of the season to stay up had we won we would have still had to fight hard until the end of the season and i know that is that there is an element of straw clutching there but a lot of the nottingham forest fans for example that i'm seeing online today they're enjoying it they're enjoying their moment and fair play they won three nil away at tottenham especially after the scenes that we put on there yesterday and everything like that that's a huge result for them however a lot of them are talking like they're already safe when in reality they're still they're still banging in trouble um is this kind of i guess the point i would make mate is that you know nothing has essentially changed really every single game is really important we have to take each game on its own individual merit in the lead up to the very end of this season right we have to try and chalk it off move on to the next we go again right as people say yeah i mean and that's and that is fair it's a really fair point and it makes it makes logical sense but also I don't want to be too too negative really but just logically our form is is the worst in the league we haven't won since was it last September is it I think I think it's as far back as last September that that is so concerning I mean our form currently is like as bad as the worst sides that have ever been in the Premier League it's kind of like Derby County level bad and we're breaking it it actually is yeah I know yeah yeah um it's breaking all of these unwanted records so but part of me also thinks you know that has to turn around at some point like surely we're not going to go from now until the end of the season not really picking up any more points even though it's kind of felt like that's a possibility but you know even even Wolves and and Burnley have been scraping results haven't they and even the worst sides do manage to pull something out of the bag but it's very difficult I think currently to look at this logically and not look at it pessimistically if that makes sense I mean I'm sort of I'm uh I'm throwing you under the bus a little bit here mate but we were we were chatting earlier on today and something that you said to me has really stuck with me and if you would indulge me and the listeners on a further explanation of the attempt I'm about to make it's just it's stuck with me all day and essentially it's the point that you're making that one of the key themes of war and peace is that regardless of like the greatest amount of human endeavor to stop something sometimes in life when there's a momentum when something is going a certain way it's almost impossible to stop and the the gradual decline of spurs to this point and there are you know there are fingers to be pointed we can talk about the ownership we can talk about players on an individual basis we can even perhaps in some ways introspect as fans and talk about the own role we've played in this as much as i kind of think that's bollocks i don't really agree with that but it also feels like there is just something behind this right now doesn't it yeah exactly you pretty much you pretty much explained it really it's this this theory of history that essentially there is just all these external forces that are always working sometimes against one another sometimes in unison with one another but at times once once things are put in motion it's like it just cascades forward and you can't really hold what's about to happen and also i mean in this in in that context they're talking about the napoleonic wars but nevertheless um to kind of stretch that theory within an inch of its life i think that there feels like a degree of like we're colliding with an inevitable reality at the moment and it's like almost everything that we we attempt to do from this point onwards is going to end in disaster anyway that's that's sort of how that's how sort of how I feel about it because we we have we've made you know we've made a managerial change probably too late you know Forrest did that and got an immediate manager bounce why haven't we got that that almost always happens to some extent um you know we've okay you know in the January transfer we know we should have maybe done a bit more we should have definitely done a lot more but you know like Gallagher I was never a huge fan of him as a player but it's like he's fallen off a cliff spectacularly and then we're getting further injuries tail went off yesterday despite probably being a you know our brightest player did he i i wasn't even aware of that so i really yeah great um so yeah i think it's just like all of these things working against us and i mean we i'm sure you might mention this but also like with the refereeing i don't want to get all like tinfoil hat either but i feel like there's a they're kind of refereeing our games in a really passive way it's like they're not being proactive they're almost like passively allowing the games to take their natural course and they don't want to have to step in so when it's 50 50 those kinds of decisions are going against spurs and I'm kind of drawn back to that thing that Mark Clattenburg said um you know when we lost to Chelsea in the in that title race and not wanting to kind of be responsible or held responsible for that and it just feels like something similar is happening really where like i don't think decisions are ostensibly going against us but we're not really getting anything either if you see what i mean i mean that's that's the point i was trying to make yesterday in that i would say there were there were three instances of penalties that could have been given for spurs yesterday that yeah you would look at the replays and i think we did all look at the replays and say it would have been soft but i see those given on a fairly routine basis now in the premier league and the other example was as i say when christian romero had gone on one of his marauding runs i mean he seemed to spend the majority of the game at least in the second half in the opposition half of the pitch but he'd been on one of those runs and he kind of run down a bit of a blind alley but he was still managing to hold on to the ball yeah and it just seemed to be that a forest player just ended up hacking him to get the ball and it was just it just it wasn't even a thing it was it just got kind of waved on by oliver and the game continued and you know it's from positions like that where you can get a ball into the box from a free kick and somebody can get on the end of it and and whatever but look i mean i'm not saying the game has been won and lost on that decision or in any of those decisions because Spurs themselves did not play very well.

9:53Jack:They were quite meek. They definitely didn't give the response from the get-go that you would have thought 10 ,000-15 ,000 of your fans showing up out the front of the stadium before a game with flares and what have you might give them. It's just... it's really it's really it's really hard to make sense of this mate on on number one an emotional level as i keep saying on my pods but also just even when we do consider that enic have they've they've they've not prioritized football right they've they've not prioritized the actual the sport what's happening on the pitch um for quite some time now it's always taken a back seat and you can say to a degree you know you can sit there and you can straight your chin and say well it's elementary that's why Tottenham have ended up in this position but still even within that right and we can have our criticisms about the signings they've made and such but we are still talking about a team and an ownership that okay hasn't brought players with a with a distinct plan of action with a clear identity with a clear style of play but nor have Manchester United for the past few years yeah nor have nor have Chelsea for the past few years and I'm sure a plethora of other clubs you know and we're talking about like right the conversations I have when I'm criticizing players like Dominic Solanke I'm criticizing him through the lens of that's not the type of player that's going to win you a Premier League I'm not talking about you spend 60 million pounds on Dominic Solanke then your relegation fodder it's and this is why I say it's hard to quantify this is this is why i say there is something it just it feels to me like there is just something deeply deeply broken about the place yeah that that you know and i i and i want to throw back to what you were saying to me earlier again is that it feels like fans despite being gaslit by both the club and the media for the past few years and being told that we're entitled and we couldn't possibly understand the complexities that go on behind the scenes at football feels like the fans have had a firm grasp on the trajectory of the club the way things have been going um and that's i don't think any of us like being proven right you know yeah at this moment no not obviously not in this scenario yeah and it's like i say about this kind of sense of momentum again it's like this it's kind of broken negative energy that is just about the place and yeah you know there There are obviously always a number of factors that have led us here.

12:38But I think every Spurs fan that you speak to and have done over the last two or three years will be telling you that, you know, we're not being competitive enough in the transfer market. We're losing our best players and we're not replacing them. And I think sometimes football has been over-intellectualized, but sometimes it comes down to something as basic as that. you know we've lost players like Kane like Sun you know the entire Pochettino side and like every single replacement has been a downgrade for the last 10 years and this is the inevitable result of that I don't know if you saw as well when um you know recently the Tottenham Supporters Trust met met the club and they they left their minutes off with sorry excuse me um I saw that I think it was Vinay Benkateshin said there were like four pillars that they were focused on and one of those pillars was about sporting success on the pitch and they couldn't even now say they're focused on trying to make Tottenham a team that wants to compete for the Premier League literally the phrase that was used was wanting to compete to get into the Champions League and potentially win trophies that's the exact same attitude that's been taken for the last 15-20 years it's just getting up to that point but never wanting to really break through that ceiling and I can't believe that even now when they're trying to you know they're trying to kind of rebrand themselves as a new ownership and everything else around it that they they can't just bring themselves to say you know what in in 10-15 years time just set a goal you know I'm sure there are plenty of commercial KPIs and everything else that are set in some long-term corporate plan behind the scenes why can't you say in 10 years time we want to have won the Premier League or the Champions League Now, I know that's a mad thing to say right now, but nevertheless, again, I think it's that that's sort of led us to where we are.

14:26And a lot said about the culture, and I've been thinking about this loads, because what does that actually mean? You know, what is it about the culture at the club? And I think maybe it comes down to a degree of accountability. You know, nobody's ever really taken accountability for Tottenham's performances on the pitch. there, there have always been excuses. The players have spent times blaming the fans or blaming the club themselves for not investing. All this outside noise, I think, has led to a club that's basically been built on foundations that are tenuous. And actually, you build any sports club up to a point where sporting success isn't the main goal, then you kind of think, well, what's the point of that club?

15:08Jack:I mean, mate, sorry to jump in here, but you know it was i wouldn't even say borderline farcical it was it was fucking farcical to see one of the suits from tottenham hotspur come out in the middle of a relegation oh yeah yeah with that glib shit on linkedin talking about how we've transitioned past being just a football club yeah come and come and listen to my talk where i suck myself off on stage and talk about these overheads and all these verticals no one cares about that it's no one cares about that at all But it's actually scandalous. Yeah, yeah. It's scandalous that there are people operating within the club that are behaving.

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17:00Jack:Tap the banner to learn more and get a quote at usaa.com slash bundle. Restrictions apply. Giving in that way. You know, we're talking about fans paying thousands of pounds for season tickets. Thousands of pounds. And you have senior people within the club talking about openly saying that football is now an afterthought for us. It's grotesque. Like, it's all the worst. Sorry to go pink out about it, but it's the very worst, most disgusting end of late stage capitalism. Yeah, it is. It is 100%. And I know this is touching on what we were talking about earlier, but it is the inevitable result of monetizing everything.

17:41I don't think that there's ever really been a view of the football has never been taken other than as some kind of commercial arm or some kind of separate but linked vertical to the rest of the overall institution. I think that's why as well, it's left me feeling kind of, this whole thing's left me so dumbfounded because I actually don't feel like there's much of a footballing subculture at Tottenham. I feel like they're doing their best to rip that away. And it was revitalised yesterday due to a lot of hard work that some individuals obviously put in. but I know you've said a few times that you you don't like the new stadium and and you really and you really miss White High Lane maybe slightly tongue-in-cheek but I I kind of I do know what you mean and I just don't feel like anything I'm seeing is is real anymore it all just seems like a psychodrama and even the media coverage all feels like a bit of an affectation on on the radio on on on sky sports it's attempts to generate views clicks of course it is it's also attempts to rile people up and i don't i almost just don't want to be be a part of that that entire media ecosystem at the moment i just almost want to separate myself from it and try and have some perspective but i'm really struggling to do so is this though and i guess this is the crucial

19:07Jack:question because this is where all of these conversations will lead especially if you try to have a conversation of this nature with somebody who isn't a Spurs fan. Do we feel this more acutely because Spurs are shit at the moment? Or is this a problem that lots of people are talking about? Because I'm pretty sure Arsenal fans were saying the same type of stuff just a couple of years ago. And now they're having their time in the sun. They suddenly don't care. For once, I'm not actually criticizing them for that. I think completely fair enough. We weren't complaining about the toils of modern football when we were in Bilbao last year.

19:44Jack:Let's put it that way. I mean, in answer to that, firstly, yes, probably, to an extent. And I think it's important to have that perspective. But also, I mean, I talked to a really good friend of mine who's a Sheffield United fan, and he has kind of stopped watching football, not just because they had a couple of decent years in the Premier League under Chris Wilder and things and got relegated. He himself sort of bemoans the fact that he feels like the game is eating itself. And I think for clubs like Sheffield United, who are really intrinsic and really important to the community, they kind of sit in that middle tier of football club.

20:24They probably feel it more acutely than we do, actually. Even I think, even though they're outside of the Premier League, it's still something that I think a lot of people do talk about now. I mean, you know, VAR sort of feels like the beginning of all of that as well. It sort of feels like it's now an artificial veneer, I guess, for a quite artificial product. And that's what it is at the end of the day. But would I certainly change my mind if we were suddenly fourth in the league? I don't know, maybe, probably. I'm a massive hypocrite.

20:59Jack:Do you know, on that note, like, I mean, I think for me, I've got plenty of issues with the stadium and I understand things need to progress. I think the biggest part for me, yes, there's probably a certain element of if you build it, they will come, right? So build the club in the image that you want it to be, what you want it to become. However, when we're talking about things being disingenuous or when we're talking about things being quite fake, like Spurs are in a very good moment then under Pochettino. And I think when we opened up the stadium at that point in time, it felt it didn't feel too ridiculous right but if we had built or opened that stadium at any other point really within our premier league lives it would have seemed again farcical yeah it seemed absolutely ridiculous we we currently you know in my opinion we play in a stadium that manchester united you know like would have been playing in or should the sort of thing they should be turning old trafford into and they've not been great for a few years they've not been the all-conquering Manchester United under Alex Ferguson.

22:03Jack:But the point is, they are an enormous club, huge global brand. They've won everything many times and probably they'll have their turn in the queue. As Arsenal are doing now, it'll be a matter of time. And I think we all know that. There's an inevitability to it that it might be next season, it might be five seasons down the line. But at some point, they will have a season like Arsenal are doing now when it's suddenly Manchester United are back and they're doing their thing. spurs to be playing and operating in a stadium like this that again as i continue to say as much as people say it was a necessity has literally hamstrung our footballing operation now we've built this thing that has either provided an excuse for the ownership or if we're to take it on face value the fact that the stadium like loans were leveraged on a fact that we we had constraints placed upon our spending and especially upon our wage bill then it is then it just it it doesn't make sense it doesn't make sense other than in a commercial capacity yeah yeah yeah and for all this talk for all this talk that if and the kind of excitement and whether or not it's people trying to make themselves feel better or something i don't know i'm not gonna care to sort to jump into the minds of other people that say this stuff.

23:24Jack:But this sense, this idea that, well, if we go down, we'll get rid of Enoch. Why? Like, it's going to push us even further. They have a valuation on the club around£4 billion. This is what's kind of touted around. They have a£4 billion valuation placed upon this football club. If we go down to the championship, that'll be slashed. That'll be slashed because we quite simply won't be... I spoke to Sean Connell on here. if you haven't heard it I haven't listened a few weeks back a sponsorship expert and everything it was essentially talking about the fact that you know sponsorships are all decided unsurprisingly on the amount of eyes that are on the club the prestige of the club the prestige of the competitions not in the Premier League we won't be in the Champions League anymore so the sort of deals we'll be getting are who knows AIA are no longer going to be our shirt sponsor after this season I would imagine even though we have a deal with Nike until 2036 or something i think we've still got another 10 years it's one of the longest like shirt deals in history um that we signed with them i would be under you know i wouldn't be at all surprised if they have break clauses as well yeah yeah in the eventuality that we're down here because you know are nike going to be paying a championship club 20 30 million pounds whatever it is a season to produce their kit for them and to make flashy promos that what you know what are we what are we going to be hyping up a fixture against lincoln city it's it's it's it's it's astonishing to my original point is that i don't think this pushes us closer to enix selling up the club well enix will you know whatever probably again post on the fact that we're topdenham and this this is this is particularly this is what worries and these are the sort of conversations i know i should be having a bit closer to summer when we know things are confirmed but right now there's a lot going around in my head about all this type of stuff and so it is what it is we got a long time to mull over yesterday's result due to the international break and i'll be more positive when the games start coming again believe me but the thing that terrifies me about us going down to the championship is that i have no faith or trust in this board in these owners anymore to really understand the situation that they're in yeah they haven't they haven't understood at any point this season the peril that we're in they haven't understood they've had this hubris this hubristic approach to everything that we've done that has led us down this path to where we are right now what's to say that if we're relegated they're not just like well you know we've got mikey moore coming back he did a good job and we've got archie gray you know they're not considering the reality of the fact that we are everybody's cup we are everybody's cup final and that's that's not main character syndrome tottenham hotspot is everybody's cup final in championship every single one of those clubs is going to play their fucking hearts out when they come to the tottenham hotspur stadium a stadium that we seem totally incapable of winning at we're going to have probably had to sell most of our key players it'll be gutted there's no guarantee the likes of archie gray and said look i'm spiraling but the point is this idea that we'll go down and then we'll just come straight back up again because whatever it's it's not based on anything there's literally been there's been no demonstrable competency from this football club in fucking years now yeah and the the idea that they'll just sell up they'll sell up what the the family heirloom like it's it's just it's gonna go because what because we want them to i'm just not buying it mate sorry i've said a lot there yeah yeah there's a bit to unpick there I am I really I really feel that you know if if if the worst if the worst does happen it's more likely actually that the footballing enterprise is ignored even further and we focus on revenue streams that are probably going to be greater than playing football in the championship you know like the concerts the NFL which is probably going to be a really important facet of the club you make a really good point about moving into the stadium when we did um sort of making sense at the time and it felt like an optimistic obvious next step but now when that stadium is starting to look half empty at half time um when you're down the bottom of the premier league it feels um it does feel like quite obscene it feels it just feels poorly judged um and like poorly thought out you're you're right about the hubris i mean you're right about a lot of it and and also i uh i'm sort of struggling to make sense of this because a club of our size shouldn't no matter what happens find itself in this in this position you'd have thought that i'm sort of rambling here but you'd have thought that almost if we'd have just done the bare minimum that it would be enough to keep us like between 10th and 15th in the Premier League but we've actually been actively harmful in our dealings in you know in player selling in in acquiring new players in our wage structure in the relationship that's been built and deteriorated with the fans we've been sort of actively harmful and I think that's why I think that's why it's so difficult to really see anything any kind of light at the end of the tunnel I mean if we if we were in even the championship you're right a lot of teams wouldn't only see it as their cup final um they'd also have the same like uh probably vitriolic hate for Spurs that most Premier League sides have as well.

29:11I'm sure that we won't be making any friends down in the Championship. I'm sure that very quickly that we'll develop a few new enemies. So I don't really know exactly if I'm answering any of your questions, to be honest. But I think that what I guess I'm trying to say is that if we end up in the worst possible situation, I don't see an easy way out of it. and this club wasn't built to be a championship side. And I don't think they would know. I was thinking about this the other day. If we go down, who would be our manager next season? Have we got a list of managers that have got a record of bringing teams up from the championship?

29:54Is that something that we do, we start looking at? I mean, that seems like the sort of due diligence that actually the club has sort of ignored for the past few seasons. So I think we're just in a pretty terrible place, really, Jack. It's, the thing is, right, a lot can change in football very quickly.

30:16Jack:And it is trite and it's a bit of a cliche, but it's true. It doesn't make it any less true. If this team can rally from somewhere, if something can happen, if a Kudis gets added back into the mix after the international break, Like if a Madison comes back into the mix and he puts himself on the line, you know, against doctor's orders, then who knows? Who knows what can happen? But right now it's just looking pretty bleak. I mean, look, I think, and I've sort of spoken about this stuff quite a bit at the moment, about the separating real-life concerns from footballing concerns and how I think it's quite a trite thing to say and quite an unfair thing to say to people.

31:03But I think, you know, we can't go through this podcast

31:08Jack:without talking now about the very painful, very horrible and very complex situation that has now arisen with regard to Igor Tudor. Obviously, he got a word in the ear at some point in the second half yesterday that his father had passed away. I don't know, you know, I'm not saying this would lessen the blow or anything but I don't know if it was expected or not I'm not sure um or if at least it was something that was in the off it look it either way that doesn't make it any better but you know there's a different context that's applied if that's the case he saw out the game went straight down the tunnel and then you know didn't do any of his post-match duties as you would imagine and I know this is right but yesterday was not very good I don't I think a lot of it was on him I I think the changes at halftime were not particularly great.

32:02Jack:And unnecessary as well, really. Yeah, I couldn't really see much sense to it. Obviously, Liverpool was great. Atletico Madrid was really great. But this sort of seemed to be a bit of a reversion to the sort of Tudor that we'd seen in the first couple of games at Spurs where I think we would have been happy to let him go. I'll reference, as I often do, other pods, but Flav said on his post-match Patreon pod, I think for everybody hoping that Spurs have got a card left in the deck to play with regards to this managerial thing, I'm probably wrong. I think Tudor was the card and this is how things are now.

32:42Jack:Unless maybe he says, I don't know if I can do this right now with everything that's going on in my life. Who knows? But I can't just say let's shelve the sentimentality because I don't think it's sentimentality and I think you have to be human about this stuff. But I mean, irrespective of his personal circumstances, I don't think I could sit here right now and say, definitely get rid of him because I don't know who comes in. Yeah, I agree really. I think we saw, I think we have been playing a bit better recently. I think, you know, arguably in the first half against Forest, We showed a fair bit of endeavour.

33:27And this is kind of where we're at, isn't it, really? Like the current ceiling, it feels, for this team is pretty low. And you did see some really positive signs. Like, again, with yesterday, I think, you know, naively, I thought that we were going to win because there was just so much emotion attached to it before the game. And that may have been naive. but I think that we felt like, I just feel like this team, like in those kinds of heightened, pressurised emotional situations, they really struggled to play. I think we kept doing some really bizarre things that I don't really recall seeing before from a Premier League side where one of our players, for example, would get the ball, shield it and he might have two or three easy passes where he can just lay the ball off to keep possession but he'd try and sort of turn into the opposition or try and turn out of trouble.

34:20I think it really spoke to maybe a confused tactical plan or maybe just a degree of desperation of what we were trying to achieve. So, yeah, the other thing that I wanted to mention is that when I saw the lineups yesterday, he keeps sort of playing with us, doesn't he, and assuming that he's going to be playing a back three, this 4-4-2. So, you know, Forrest in comparison, actually, I was looking at their side and thought, is their first 11 stronger than ours on paper? Like yesterday when you've got Gibbs-White, Ndoy is a proper right winger. You know, we have Poirot obviously playing on the right wing.

34:58Yeah, Anderson gets into, I think, most midfields in the Premier League. Zengare, not a bad player. I was kind of looking at it and thinking, actually, I forgot that these are decent opposition who have also had a similarly tumultuous season. And so I just really do, I feel that that sort of uptick that we had was carried on slightly through into the first half. But I feel like the moment with Spurs, games sort of bleed into one another. I feel like we end the game poorly, then we almost start the following game poorly as well. And the same way that form concerns bleed from season to season at the moment, we just seem like such an emotionally fragile side.

35:37I don't know if just changing the manager is really going to change anything. I mean, again, it kind of comes to me, this sort of degree of momentum. What actually can we do? I guess this one final Hail Mary, what would that be though? This idea of bringing in Harry Redknapp terrifies me. I heard him talking on BBC iPlayer about how he got into horse racing and talking about how his nan was collecting bets when horse racing was illegal down in the East End. just post the second world war i thought this guy is probably too old for management like this

36:12Jack:this seems this seems like madness um you could only do that with a mason or somebody backing him up or yeah keen or who do you know what i mean he's the media friendly face of it he had some vibes to everything but it's again it's i'm using this word a lot today but it's it's farcical isn't it it's farcical to be in this position where we're talking about a guy who's 80 years old or just short of who hasn't been managing seriously for over a decade yeah and I kind of by almost I'm really I really want to make light of this situation at the moment like I'm really trying to view it with some degree of humor but I'm really struggling to I feel like you know in Pete show and Jeremy goes to uh like see the Scientologist and he's like yeah I'm gonna really mess with their heads and he gets in there and just starts crying and talking about how his dad left in and stuff like that i must feel i always feel like that where i'm like yeah i'm going to go into this and these like conversations sometimes with like a degree of good humor then as soon as you start thinking about it and about the situation and about um what our options are i quickly start falling into a bit of a pit of despair because it feels like we're in the kind of death throes of this now and i mean i'm actually i think i'm i'm kind of broadly to answer this in roundabout way quite keen to keep Tudor in for at least a couple more games actually.

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38:40Jack:Choose from creamy chipotle or jalapeno honey mustard. Well, there we go. Life still full of choices. The new crispy chicken crunch wrap slider. A brand new classic. Only at Taco Bell. And participating in those Taco Bell locations for limited time and while supplies last. I don't really see what the point is in changing coaching. Like I say, I thought there was like a slight uptick. I don't know I don't know I don't know if I know anything I don't really know if I know anything about football anymore Jack to be honest it's totally shifting like my perceptions of like what the impact of football manager has and Tottenham and what our expectations should be I think the biggest the biggest Hail Mary that maybe Tudor should just do now is just chucking more of the academy boys I think really that that is that is and look I've had my own sort of feelings about this in the past saying it's probably unfair to do that to young lads at the start of their career to chuck them in to give them their first experience of playing for tottenham hotspur many of them who probably supported the club and it's a dream come true to play for the club to have them embroiled in a relegation battle to have them there on the last day of the season when we're playing everton if we've gone down and there's just utter contempt from the fans that's been spewed out onto the pitchers oh it could be off as well you know it's like is that fair to do to young academy players probably not on a human level but you know in a in this sort of grim way they're sportsmen it's their job it's the kind of it's the environment that they're coming into and they can they can probably help save the club every single time i've seen an academy player play for us this season they look like one of our best players yeah have you seen by the way that Troy Parrott now is linked with a move to like Inter Milan because he scored something like 28 goals this season and got like 12 assists.

40:29He's got some insane output and how often do we see that with one of our academy kids that we've let go or whatever that we've just managed poorly? We're totally unable to integrate our academy into the first team. I don't know why because our first team has been mostly fucking atrocious for like five years, six years. So you've got to assume again it's some kind of weird cultural thing i don't know why we don't have any trust in it i agree

40:55Jack:with you i think that is an option but um to be honest i think it's generally just because most of our managers are given that remit you have to reach champions league you have to play in the champions league and so managers will be thinking and fair enough i'm not going to play a load of academy boys then i'm going to play this guy that we spent 60 mil on last year the last manager couldn't get a tune out of him but maybe i can and the cycle continues yeah yeah whereas Because I've turned my nose up. And this is just an example. I'm not saying this is the guy. But a lot of people for a long time have said, bring in Kieran McKenna.

41:30Jack:He's an old Tottenham Academy boy himself. He got a hip switch playing some lovely football. Yeah, it fell to pieces the second they came to the Premier League and it got a bit exposed. But you could probably put that down to the quality in his team, whatever. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But he is a Spurs fan by all accounts. By all accounts, I don't know what does that actually mean. but you know that he you know he is an academy boy he knows the journey he likes young players he plays expansive yeah front footage football he's a modern manager all these types of things you know i've i've always been against that i've always been against the sense of that because i too have always had that thing of thinking spurs are a season or two away from a couple of signings away from being back in the mix again yeah back in that kind of pochettino heyday and i think i I think to a degree, like, all right, there's been an air of pessimism from some people, but I think for the most part, most people have always maintained that quiet optimism.

42:28Jack:Yeah, definitely. With the resources we have, with the stadium, with the stature that we now have, so on and so forth, that we are, we're footsteps away from once again being a force in English football, being a great side. And so it's kind of been easy to turn one's nose up at Akira and McKenna, a less experienced manager who probably wants to play a load of youth team players because we're not that team anymore. You know, we're not that team anymore. We've moved past that. That's what we did in the old days of Lennon and Huddleston and all that lot. Like now we're the team that is supposed to be buying superstars and all that type of thing.

43:11Jack:But guess what? we don't do that either. That's what I was going to say. I don't know what team we are anyway, to be honest. And actually, football was way more fun when we were playing Lennon and Huddleston and Rose and everyone else. That was kind of the start of a pretty golden period for Spurs, I would argue. As a fan, I just thought that was just incredibly enjoyable. And that fundamentally, I think, is the biggest problem, isn't it? Is that it's been so miserable all year. there hasn't been a single I mean maybe I guess maybe the the result against City like early in the season other than that it's been so dire that you you just you're like grasping for something to cling on to some like enjoyment again and so I think almost like these kinds of like wild Hail Marys you want to play it's partly just because I'm desperate to feel something um like pleasurable again almost that I want football to give me something because I feel like I've like all of us football Tottenham means so much to us and when you're actually in this situation is horrible it kind of stays with you it permeates through everything that you're doing it permeates through your day and I actually I have quite a lot of sympathy for a lot of fans that have had to go through similar instances I actually really feel for fans have had to go through like their club being in administration and things like that as well you know like if you're a Sheffield Wednesday fan that must be a pretty horrendous um you know like a pretty horrendous emotional feeling and I don't know um I you know I just I want I want football to be escapism again I don't want it to have to be these kinds of conversations that that lead us to looking at like wider structural inequalities I'm happy to have those conversations but also like I enjoyed it when I could talk about how good Harry Kane was and what a brilliant striker he was and what brilliant football we're playing under Pochettino I mean I know you've already mentioned that Pochettino about four times in this podcast it's such an obvious reference point because it's in such stark contrast to what we're doing now and like where we're at it's funny though you know just talking about him i flip-flop so much on the idea of bringing him back and i was so pro it not long ago and i think i'm actually really against it again now i've sort of i've turned that corner purely because i want to see the people that run this football club especially do you know what especially if we go down actually start to really think about how they are going to make this football club successful how they're going to do that what structures they are going to put in place what kind of ethos they want to build here and one might say pochettino is the very person to do that but what comes with it as well is an element of hoping he can recreate the same magic that he did during his first tenure and it's also let's be honest a way of pacifying what will be an incredibly angry fan base yeah and i don't think they deserve it mate i don't think they deserve him ultimately it might be cutting off your nose to spite your face and all that type of thing but i don't think they deserve that option to be able to just that easily have something that will at least sand off a lot of the pain for a lot of the fan base because that's not something that they will have achieved that's not something that they will have warranted or like I say deserved they need to make things better off of their own backs they need to work on solutions they need to find a way to make this football club healthy again to make this football club happy again um and most importantly to make the football club function properly again because right now I don't think it does any of that yeah I um yeah you know I think that's that's probably that's a fair point I am you know whoever makes those those kinds of decisions though it definitely shouldn't be Langer or Vinay because I think we've surely seen enough of them already to be hounded out this summer it's you know we almost need to start from fresh I don't I don't have any trust that those particular individuals will will make the correct decisions and I know that it may maybe be a bit trigger happy to jettison them right now.

47:42But I kind of feel like, well, if we did do that, it would send a pretty strong message, right? If we just said four games from the end of the season, actually, you know, we've made a change here. We appreciate this has gone terribly. I mean, I know it's not exactly the sort of thing you probably shouldn't do and cause even more instability, but nevertheless, you know, whoever makes that decision, it shouldn't be them too.