Ange Out

The overwhelming feeling that comes from this having happened is, well... obviously?

To cut to the chase, the most striking thing about the sacking of Ange Postecoglou as the Spurs manager is that it doesn't take much hindsight to see how inevitable it was.

Winning the Europa League was was both lovely and necessary. It honestly dug the club out of a hole from which they may never have otherwise emerged. Which players that would have improved the team would have signed this summer had they not done so?

And of course, there's always the possibility that we've gotten a little bit cosy with this idea that the three promoted clubs will get relegated straight back every season. It only takes one of those three to be any good again next season for an incumbent team to have to fall, and there weren't any above that dotted line who were worse than Spurs were, last time around.

The ramifications of a worst final league position in 48 years are not-insignificant. The club may be set to make a hundred million quid from the Champions League, but the price they've paid to get there is huge. Premier League prize money alone is £2.9m per position. If Spurs' expectation at the start of the season was top four (and whether that was possible is not the point here, really), they've lost £37.7m of that Champions League money without even kicking a ball.

And how appealing is the prospect of Champions League football to players if it feels as though they may end up making fools of themselves if they turn out for this rabble next season? There are no guarantees that players will be dragged in by the gravitational pull of the Champions League, beyond the most mercenary.

Ultimately, 17th in the Premier League, and the sort of performances the team were putting in week-in-week-out, are surely unacceptable at a club which has just built a 62,000-capacity Enorm-o-Dome on Tottenham High Road. To expect any different is to wilfully overlook the very nature of professional football.

And the sting in the tail here is that I'm not an #AngeOut type. I'm one of those who doesn't mind wildly over-ambitious attacking football and you end up losing. My relationship with that club isn't about silverware. Good job too, for the state of my mental health. I am sad that this particular experiment failed.

But the criteria used to determine success these days isn't ‘being fancy, brittle and budgie-hearted’. Money matters. Success matters. The Premier League is the bread and butter, and Daniel Levy should be thanking his lucky stars that there were three such bad newly-promoted teams last season. He may not get so lucky again. There's probably a lesson to be learned in all this about the limitations of idealism, but I'm far from certain it's a healthy one.

And don't get me wrong, I kinda hate saying all this. I hate the realpolitik of modern sport. I hate that you have to surrender your principles, bit by bit. But it is merely unrealistic to paint their Premier League season as anything other than an unmitigated disaster. This, of course, means that the all-important question became, was winning the Europa League enough to cover that deficit? In strict financial terms, the answer is obviously yes. But in many others it doesn't feel like it was.

Thomas Frank is the odds-on favourite to be the next fool, and it might just work. Frank is experienced and has been in the Premier League a few years. And it is notable that we take Brentford being in the Premier League for granted a little, nowadays. There was a time, which lasted for many decades, when they were really not like this. They've only been at this level four years. That they seem like such a normal part of it says a lot for how the club has been run. He's done a good job, but they’ve smacked head first into the glass ceiling. I approve.

The appeal of Spurs is, for all the laughter that accompanies them nowadays, obvious. The Champions League and the Enorm-o-Dome are too, but there's also the challenge of getting a club of this size to heights they haven't seen in decades. And there is something romantic about Spurs, about the game being about glory, about the double team and those European nights. And anyway, who am I to call him a ‘fool’ when he makes £90,000 a week and I'm aiming towards earning half that in a year?

(He hasn’t accepted it yet. Best to remember that.)

The same goes for Ange, really. He'll be fine. Someone will pick him up. And the good news is that they're all so wealthy nowadays that they won’t materially suffer for it. He’s not going to have to visit a food bank. For personal reasons, I wasn't in a position to be able to enjoy the Europa League final much in a meaningful sense, but I appreciate the end of the trophy drought, and I appreciate coming good on the promise of winning a trophy in his second season.

He's not my favourite Spurs manager of all-time. That'll forever be Keith “There Used To Be a Football Club Over There” Burkinshaw or that maniac Ossie Ardiles. What can I say? The heart wants what it wants. But it has been fun. Winning 4-0 at Manchester City in the Premier League, a thing which happened within the last twelve months, was fun. Beating Manchester United four times in one season, including a cup final, was fun.

But it was a fling, and perhaps it was never going to work out, and in the long-term… Well, at least no-one got hurt.