We are shy of two years ago that senior elements from Tottenham thought their next manager would be Arne Slot. Towards the end of the game on Sunday, the one who got away will probably be anointed as a Premier League winner on the field for them.
A single point is everything that is needed for Liverpool, but given the road that Tottenham traveled under Ange Postecoglou, it would not be roughly incorrect to predict three. Or none. Spurs can be so funny.
But we know that it will be able to go to Liverpool or later a fraction. They have nailed the follow -up from Jurgen Klopp to Slot and he has the title on their Honors Board, a breakthrough for the ages.
So a cent for the thoughts of Daniel Levy about those discussions between intermediaries in 2023. In the end it came down to how far Tottenham was willing to praise him from Feyenoord and the answer formed in Postecoglou.
That was not so much a sliding door moment like a walk in the glass. Afterwards, of course, is great, just like attacking ideals that go hand in glove with the identity of a club, but 18 League nederies is the kind of 'but' you can see from Pluto.
Which means that the question becomes one of what happens next. Or to frame it differently: what should Tottenham do to Postecoglou if he reduces the mess of his domestic form with victory in the Europa League?
That is a matter of growing relevance, given the reporting on these pages and elsewhere this week that the time of Postcoglou will soon be, even if they win a first trophy since 2008. We can call it the Erik ten Hag Paradox or the lessons of Juande Ramos.
Personally, I would find it a sad outcome if Postecoglou would reach such a wonderful moment and go that way. Sad but not wrong.
Sad because of what he has represented. Because of his idealism. Because of the color he brought to our top flight and the route he took to get there. Because of his refusal to bow, even now that he might be the last man in the room who still believes that there is a feasible method in his approach.
There is something to love that refusal to change. About Ange de Evangelist.
But those are conceptual thoughts about a concept-driven man. Unfortunately, the idea of ​​Postecoglou and reality have long since gone away in different directions.
Time will tell how Levy qualifies his decision, assuming that he is acting a change that I was told that he was very reluctant to perish until recently. But the piece of league games between September 29 and December 8 will certainly be when the period in which his ideas first came up.
If you will spoil a small review, we must start with the 3-0 drubing of Manchester United in Old Trafford. They were majestic, first against 11 men and then 10 – James Maddison and Micky Van de Ven excelled. The next time-out in the competition, they led 2-0 after 37 minutes 2-0 and had sent three for the defeat against the 66th. Maddison and Van de Ven Stank.
That kind of swing would be replicated in the stories of staff and results for a full two months. Each game brought a wavy.
Returning after the international break, Tottenham West Ham took 4-1. Then they immediately handed Crystal Palace their first victory of the campaign. De Dr. Tottenham Gags kicked in, but stood parked Aston Villa just as quickly on an unbeaten run of seven games and left with the same scars as West Ham. 4-1. Brilliant performance.
Then they were at home on November 10. And Tottenham was very good at home at the time. The opposition? Ipswich. Winless Ippswich. Spurs lost. And then they having Manchester City 4-0 and followed by taking a point of matches against Fulham, Bournemouth and Chelsea.
In the last of them, they led 2-0 after 11 minutes and lost 4-3, but that is what the cycle demanded. That is the Tottenham of Postecoglou, a team to enjoy but not to be familiar. Admired and never copied. Demons on the ball and thin as hell without, without, time and time again, a constantly swinging garland.
We have said all this since the last watering cans from 2023-24 and the problem of Postecoglou is that nothing has changed. The point is that variance kills in the wild world of management – it is the danger of high ceilings and low floors. They look good in churches, but not in football clubs, especially those run by preachers.
Of course failure has many causes. I used this space earlier to document the determining role of Levy in that farce and the shame of a wage account that lies a mile below the possibilities of Tottenham. But while he had a hand behind the back of Postecoglou, it was the manager's choice to hit himself with the other.
Because how often have we talked about a lack of tactical skill? Even when it was clear in the second stage of their Europa League quarter final against Eintracht Frankfurt-a performance of pragmatism and they followed the last Monday by giving up Nottingham Forest twice within 16 minutes. Again, the same pattern. The same inability to coach some consistency to players such as Cristian Romero, who was the star against Frankfurt and addicted to the forest during the break.
We can attach mitigations to what happened at Spurs, which goes beyond the spending pattern of Levy. That would be the discussion about injuries. But where was the wisdom in Postecoglou his runners at the height of the crisis early in the year?
Where was the hinge to another, less intense approach when it was necessary for the players who were still? A study in February showed that hamstring injuries were 58 percent of Tottenham's muscle-related injuries, compared to 41 percent in the entire Premier League-je can be completely unlucky, and we can properly determine that tax would leave them thin, but you must also ask if different ways of thinking were needed.
That the bad shape has continued since the wounded running wounded as a parallel path to the same conclusion. Together with various others, they feed an escalating certainty about when the relationship with Postecoglou will end. Again, there will be a sadness attached to that. Especially if it follows a victory in Bilbao on 21 May.
That would be a suitable way of football that Postecoglou thanked for the pleasure of the past two seasons. A victory for dreamers. And who doesn't like a dreamer?
But there is a clear problem with dreams, just like with decisions made in the emotion of a ticker-tape shower.
United learned that with Ten Hag in 2024 and Tottenham with Ramos in 2008. Unless we forgot it, Ramos followed the winning of the League Cup by recording the worst start of the club into a Premier League season – Levy did not see the warnings and Ramos did not see the end of October.
The feeling is that he will not make the same mistake twice. Unfortunately, and possibly possibly at the expense of the Premier League, it feels inevitable, such as the set-piece goals of season one of the Postecoglou show.
That aspect actually got a little better. They learned something. But here they are trending in the direction of their lowest points for a season of 38 games.
Intermoing that with a trophy would be fantastic – they talk to the soul of football and Postecoglou is a man of soul. But Levy is a number man and they prefer different conversations.
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