Thoughts? A fairly accurate tongue in cheek summary perhaps? It could have all been pretty much copied off of here.
It's only been a month since the last Premier League manager rankings, but we had David Moyes above Mikel Arteta then so an update was needed.
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7) Ange Postecoglou, Tottenham (3)
Just a few worrying signs of the sheen coming off Postecoglou and his football and his team.
It really has been quite a long time since they’ve produced a decent complete performance. The 4-1 win over Newcastle maybe? It probably is. That game was well over two months ago now.
We might be wrong, but we get a sense that Spurs rather complacently felt that getting the band back together would automatically make it the autumn again with performances and results to match. Results had, until last weekend’s limp surrender against Wolves, been okay. But that was a defeat that any Spurs fan could tell you had been coming after a run of unconvincing home wins against Everton, Bournemouth, Brentford and Brighton.
The football just isn’t anywhere near as fun as it was. Against Wolves, dare we say it, it was almost Conte-like. James Maddison has returned from injury nothing like the player who was probably the standout in the entire division before limping off on that fateful night against Chelsea.
Spurs remain bafflingly on course to become
only the second team in Barclays history to score in every game of a season, but the football comes only in patches now rather than irresistible waves. The 10 minutes after half-time against Brentford were a reminder of what they can do to anyone when it all clicks, but for the most part the last month has been spent waiting for a click that never really comes.
Most worrying of all, though, was the aftermath of the Wolves game. Postecoglou’s “I’m not a magician, mate” was just the first slight glimpse of a manager reaching the inevitable point in the Spurs managerial lifecycle of growing sick with the players at his disposal. While that moment is inevitable, it has come far earlier than anyone could have predicted back in the autumn.
It’s not all doom and gloom and nothing is f***ed. Postecoglou is still in his first season and deserves far more patience than we’re affording here. The season as a whole still represents positive and definitive progress. But still, Postecoglou and his team are either in the midst of an extended funk that needs snapping out of quick smart, or they’ve been worked out. If it’s the latter, they’re in trouble.