{"id":521795,"date":"2026-03-06T05:01:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T05:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/521795\/"},"modified":"2026-03-06T05:01:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T05:01:07","slug":"igor-tudor-enacts-hollow-role-in-the-most-stupid-of-hires-with-tottenham-too-bad-to-stay-up-premier-league","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/521795\/","title":{"rendered":"Igor Tudor enacts hollow role in the most stupid of hires with Tottenham too bad to stay up | Premier League"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tudor is to do. To do is to dur. Something like that anyway. With the clock reading 45+8 at the end of the first half the air inside the Tottenham Hotspur<\/a> stadium had already begun to curdle and turn strange.<\/p>\n

In the space of 18 minutes, 1-0 to Spurs had become 3-1 to Crystal Palace<\/a>. The crowd had begun to turn in on itself. Boos were directed at the players. Boos were directed back at the booers. Birds flew backwards through the sky. The clock struck 13. Beer glasses filled from the bottom up. \u201cYou killed the club,\u201d man in a quilted coat shouted at the directors\u2019 box, with genuine feeling, as though this was not a figure of speech, the club actually was dead, before stamping off towards the thrillingly alive empanada and artisan pickle outlets of the vibrant new retail concourse.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw something here,\u201d Igor Tudor would announce at the end of this game, sat looking hollow and pale and haunted in the luxuriously upholstered situation room in pit of the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. But what exactly? Has there been a stranger, more inexplicable managerial avatar than Tudor in recent times. This was his night-time debut at this ground. In the flesh Tudor is surprisingly lean and gangly, with deep piercing eyes, angular jawline, renaissance-style spiky chin whiskers, car coat and leather leisure-trainers, like a Tuscan Duke on his way to a corporate golf day.<\/p>\n

And he played his part here, enacting the role of Tottenham manager. Watching the figures on that touchline come and go has been a ghostly thing in its own right, a flick-book of pressed men, desperados, hollow-eyed ancient mariners, coats and jackets and gilets, fading out even as they faded in. Could Tudor leave here before his assistant Ivan Javorcic has even managed to get his work permit? His reply to that question was \u201cno comment\u201d. More to the point, are Tottenham going to be relegated? The run is now at seven losses, four draws no wins in the league this year \u2013 29 points. One above the zone. Liverpool next week. Spurs with their missing players, who are also their best players, might be too good to go down. The current version is, frankly, too bad to stay up.<\/p>\n

Although here they started well enough before game turned at the end of a mild, meandering opening half hour. First Crystal Palace had a goal ruled out because Isma\u00efla Sarr\u2019s face was offside. Nose, eyes, mouth. It took four minutes to determine the face-offside. But who knows, his face may have been gaining an advantage.<\/p>\n

A minute later, Tottenham scored, Dominic Solanke thumping in a low Archie Gray cross. Tudor punched the air and carried out a series of chest-bumps with divers men, in tracksuits. And shortly after that, the world fell in. Micky van de Ven being sent off. Is this the worst thing that could happen to Spurs here?<\/p>\n

Micky van de Ven is sent off in the first half as Tottenham imploded. Photograph: Harry Murphy\/Danehouse\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Actually no. Van de Ven sent off and a penalty conceded. Van de Ven had tugged Sarr\u2019s arm as he hared in on goal. He protested a lot. Maybe just don\u2019t grab his arm. Sarr buried the kick. Tudor sat scratching his chin and looking really really filthy, the look of a man who has somehow found himself stranded at a children\u2019s soft play party and is now going to have to sit there for the next six hours.<\/p>\n

In added time it was 2-1 Palace, made by a lovely little through dink from Adam Wharton for J\u00f8rgen Strand Larsen to finish. Sarr made it three.<\/p>\n

And that was pretty much that. \u201cWhy are you so shit?\u201d The Palace fans asked as the game entered its final stretch of time simply passing. It is a very good question deserving of a serious answer. Spurs are not bad because of the current almost incidental manager-style human. They\u2019re bad because of the causes of Igor Tudor, and those stretch right back up the arm.<\/p>\n

The Tudor hire demonstrates two things. First, the stupidity of so many footballing hires. It is hard to think of a more stupid one than this. Stupid because it claimed to have some kind of logic to it. Tudor is, we hear, a short-term specialist. He has impact. This is his record. Is it though? This is how football lets itself down, reveals the weakness of its workings. This is like hiring a manager who has previously won a game in March against a team in blue, or a manager in a brown coat because the best managers wear brown coats.<\/p>\n

What is the exact logic here? Is he? He\u2019s definitely had a lot of jobs. But Lazio and Udinese are nothing like Spurs. These are entirely separate entities and circumstance. \u201cDifferent team, different league, different position, different players,\u201d Tudor sighed when asked about this. Although presumably not at his interview.<\/p>\n

So The Tudor vibe has been the unblinking eye, tough love. It\u2019s good to get someone in who tells it like it is. Unless the it in question is best left unsaid for all eternity. Tell it like it isn\u2019t. Lie to me Igor.<\/p>\n

At the weekend, Tudor said Tottenham\u2019s players were deficient in only three things, defence, attack and midfield. He gave more detail. The players were also weak, un-skilled and not very bright. Is this helpful? It is of course understandable. A temporary manager is always looking to the next job.<\/p>\n

And of course, the problem here is not the interim manager, it\u2019s the ad hoc interim ownership, the interim sense of identity, the interim suits in the interim director\u2019s box, the interim sense of care for anything but the commercial project.<\/p>\n

This feels like a ghost town already, so much so that by the end even the booing had something empty about it, a sense that it might even be disappointing if Spurs don\u2019t go down now; that everyone in this vast sporting unit, would at least get to feel something, that the pain is at least a story, grand and wild and out there, still football.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tudor is to do. To do is to dur. Something like that anyway. With the clock reading 45+8…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":521796,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-521795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}