Spurs shambles is not all Nuno’s fault… stars’ poor attitudes have already cost Poch and Mourinho, says Harry Redknapp
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I’M as baffled as anyone about what’s gone wrong at Tottenham - but certain about the one thing they shouldn’t do to put it right.
And that is to listen to all those who think Nuno Espirito Santo should carry the can for how poor they’ve been in the last three league games.
Of course Spurs should be doing far better but pointing the finger at Nuno and plonking it all on the manager is unfair and too easy.
It makes me laugh when people say how much these players - and the bulk of them are still there - loved playing under Mauricio Pochettino.
Well, if they loved him that much, you’d have thought they might have tried a bit harder and he wouldn’t have got the sack in the first place.
They weren’t exactly pulling up any trees in his last season, any more than they were under Jose Mourinho.
Jose is up there with the best managers around and I honestly felt they had a squad to challenge for the title, but he couldn’t unlock it either.
There are certain times at certain clubs when you just can’t do anything about it, no matter who is in charge.
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That’s Tottenham right now. You can talk about tactics but when the situation is like this you want leaders, you want players standing up and putting in the effort... and there’s something badly missing.
Poch couldn’t get a tune out of them in the end, Jose couldn’t and Nuno is finding the same.
Is that because all three of them are no good? Of course not.
I remember Graham Taylor saying once that your manager is never as great as you think he is, or as bad as you reckon either. The truth is always somewhere in between.
These days everything is immediate. Lose a few games and you’re useless.
Look at Norwich as an example.
When they strolled the Championship, Daniel Farke was fantastic. Get relegated and he’s out of his depth. The same with Scott Parker at Fulham.
If you put Pep Guardiola in charge at Norwich, they still wouldn’t be in the top eight. Put Farke at Man City and they wouldn’t be out of the top four.
The problems at Spurs have to go deeper than the manager. For a start, the players obviously aren’t as good as we all thought.
What Nuno must not do is start chopping and changing every week. He has to find a system he wants them to play, work on it and stick with it.
That’s Tottenham right now. You can talk about tactics but when the situation is like this you want leaders, you want players standing up and putting in the effort... and there’s something badly missing.
Harry Redknapp
You hear talk about managers being great coaches, but I can tell you the best ones rarely are.
It’s not down to something clever on the training ground or working on special patterns.
Sir Alex Ferguson was the best because he knew how to build a team, how to fit the jigsaw together, how to get the best players in the best positions and how to motivate.
What Nuno has to do is get the belief back into the players - and that isn’t easy.
It’s also about getting the belief back into yourself because when you lose, you do ask questions.
But stopping the rot isn’t simple and it can take the strangest of things to spark a change in fortunes, as I found out over the years.
One time at West Ham we looked like we were going down, so I arranged a trip to Cheltenham races.
We had a meal, a few drinks and a sing-song and suddenly we went on a run.
Then at Portsmouth during a poor spell, Pedro Mendes hit a 30-yarder in the last minute to beat Man City.
The dressing room was like we’d won the league, so it can be one single thing that turns it round.
What you do need is great characters and great leaders - neither of which, Harry Kane apart, I see at Spurs.
Three or four years ago I looked at them and thought, ‘It’s only a matter of time before they win the league’.
When they had Kyle Walker, Jan Vertonghen, Toby Alderweireld and Danny Rose, they had a really strong nucleus. Not any more.
They’re not playing well and not getting results, but to dump it all on Nuno’s doorstep is really tough.
It could be there are one or two bad eggs in the dressing room and that can affect everyone, whether they are in the team or not.
Tottenham have spent a few quid but the recruitment hasn’t exactly been brilliant and they brought in someone especially for that.
Maybe the fingers are being pointed at the wrong man because Nuno isn’t the one who brought in those players last summer and, by and large, they look bang average.
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Maybe that’s the person who deserves the tin-tack, because it shouldn’t be Nuno.
It took them long enough to find a manager and looking for another one now certainly isn’t the answer.
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