Tottenham Hotspur, Managers,

A few weeks back we spoke of the early signs of a crisis at Tottenham Hotspur since then I’ve read a dozen articles about Tottenham over the last couple of days. Eight games in and only two points on the board and you’re going to get a lot of people commenting and offering solutions and advice. None were very revealing with most churning out the same old clichés about everyone at the club being responsible, lots of hard work needed, only a matter of time before things get sorted etc etc. Premiership betting fans have heard it all before and want to know more than this.

There are three ways in which a team can perform well, or at least more or less get away with it

1. Limited skill with but with maximum enthusiasm and intention to win. Hull, Bolton etc

2. Lazy and uncommitted but full of highly skilled players who are bound to get the odd goal. Pre-Capello England.

3. Top skills with enthusiasm and commitment. Man Utd, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea.

And then there’re the teams with moderate skills and little sense of direction or commitment to the team effort. Newcastle and Tottenham spring to mind. In both cases the efforts of the manager have been undermined by the presence of a figure in the form of the ‘Director of Football’. No longer confident to place their faith in the manager, the moneymen require an individual that they control and whose responsibility is the buying and selling of players with the shareholders in mind and whose allegiances are not to the state of play on the field.

These director characters would be useful if they reported to the manager and took some of the pressure off rather than putting it on but, until we return to the days when owners understand the game of football and who create an environment in which manager, coaches and players can do what they do best for the good of the club, then we will see more and more frenzied buying, selling and sacking going on in a futile effort to fix the unfixable.