It might not mean much or indeed anything at all when the post-mortems on Spurs\u2019 season come to be written, but his first interview as Spurs boss did at least bring one slice of comfort to the fans: he gets it.<\/p>\n
Igor Tudor understands the assignment. It doesn\u2019t mean he will or even can complete it, but he understands it. In a five-minute in-house interview he showed a clearer understanding of what Spurs are, what Spurs should be, and how that chasm might be bridged than Thomas Frank did in eight months.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s\u2026 something. And right now that\u2019s all Spurs have; something, anything to cling to that suggests someone, anyone, in a position of responsibility at the club understands the realities of just how serious Spurs\u2019 current position remains but is also able to project some form of optimism for a better future from a position of hard-eyed realism rather than, well, guff.<\/p>\n
Great care is always needed to avoid falling into the Spoke Well, I Thought trap with any new manager. Spurs fans know this as well as anyone, with memories of Nuno\u2019s \u201cWe will make you proud\u201d still painful and fresh.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s also perfectly understandable for a fanbase that has spent recent months being gaslit by their manager and his baffling media cheerleaders<\/a> to now want to latch on to a manager whose record reveals deep and worrying flaws<\/a> but who does at least appear to understand that wanting halfway watchable football, not to get relegated and maybe even, if it\u2019s not too much trouble, the occasional home win doesn\u2019t make them impatient, cruel or entitled.<\/p>\n We all know by now Tudor\u2019s record, largely in Italy. The kind reading of it is that he is a manager who definitely lends himself to an interim role<\/a>. He does have a track record of being able to make quick, on-the-job repairs to a listing ship. He has no record of being able to build anything more substantial.<\/p>\n He is not the man to turn Frank\u2019s infamous supertanker around. But he might be the man to stop it sinking altogether. That\u2019s clearly the plan.<\/p>\n Yet here comes the next note of necessary caution for Spurs fans. Because while Tudor\u2019s record and Tottenham\u2019s current predicament mean that it\u2019s obvious from the outside that this is the plan, it begs a further question: whose plan?<\/p>\n The only possible sensible answer to that is Fabio Paratici. This is Fabio Paratici\u2019s plan to save Tottenham. And it is his last contribution.<\/p>\n The confirmation of Tudor\u2019s coaching set-up this week, and with it the departure of Johnny Heitinga after being Spurs\u2019 assistant coach for a month, sets off alarm bells.<\/p>\n Easy to jape about Heitinga\u2019s Abe Simpson entrance and exit through the Spurs revolving door to complete an interesting nine months in the professional life of a man who was celebrating his part in Liverpool\u2019s title win last season before deciding to find out what life is like as head coach and then again as assistant coach at clubs that are mental.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s starkly revealing. We all assumed that Heitinga\u2019s appointment to an assistant role in Frank\u2019s team was a strategic move to place a viable interim manager inside the current, struggling set-up.<\/p>\n We now know it was not that. Which tells us a few things that we maybe should have more strongly suspected but can only now know for sure. What it tells us is that the people now in the very senior positions at a post-Levy Spurs really did not, even a month ago, realise quite how f**ked things were.<\/p>\n And that should terrify Spurs fans. They weren\u2019t putting in a contingency, they really were trying to help out a manager that everyone who wasn\u2019t a Spurs board member or senior football columnist could already see was beyond that help. A manager who was dragging Spurs into a relegation fight neither he nor they were equipped to win.<\/p>\n It also paints the January transfer window failure in new light<\/a>. We\u2019d kind of thought until now that Paratici had played Spurs, you see.<\/p>\n When Spurs announced Paratici\u2019s departure for Fiorentina, they also said he was staying on for the rest of the January transfer window. When Spurs did no further business in January, while Fiorentina signed several new players for their own survival fight, it was understandable to think that the Spurs board had had their wallets inspected by a man with notable talents but, let\u2019s say, not an unblemished record of propriety. Paratici is not a man who necessarily earns the benefit of the doubt in these situations.<\/p>\n But right now in this specific instance he does. Because now we know with some certainty that it\u2019s actually worse than we feared. Paratici didn\u2019t play Spurs; Spurs played themselves.<\/p>\n They didn\u2019t sit on their hands in January because Paratici had checked out, but because the likes of CEO Vinai Venkatesham and sporting director Johan Lange really didn\u2019t think they needed to gamble. He didn\u2019t stop trying, the others stopped listening.<\/p>\n When they were publicly patting themselves on the back for being sensible grown-ups and not getting dragged into the silliness of the transfer window it wasn\u2019t an act \u2013 they meant it.<\/p>\n They killed Frank with kindness, having decided that he \u2013 or anyone \u2013 could muddle on with a dozen fit players once they\u2019d failed in their bid to sign Andy Robertson, the only footballer in the world who could improve this squad.<\/p>\n