Forget Edin Terzić – Tottenham's next manager decision is obvious if Postecoglu gets sacked

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Edin Terzić has been suggested as Ange Postecoglou’s successor if Spurs change manager - but it’s not the manager Tottenham need to change.

“We’re going down with you!” was the verdict of one of the more discontented fans at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium after Spurs slid to defeat against Leicester City on Sunday, an indictment bawled directly at Ange Postecoglou and one which the Australian seemed, for a moment, tempted to respond to with both barrels as he dealt with the emotional damage of another defeat.

The urge to pick a fight passed quickly, which was probably a mercy. Postecoglou is under quite enough pressure as it is without giving Daniel Levy, who is seldom more than a hair’s breadth away from firing a manager as it is, any more reasons to pull the trigger. Not that Levy is under much less pressure himself – while there are some supporters who are focusing their anger on the manager, it’s the chairman who is taking most of the blame.

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A banner brought into the stadium on Sunday summed up what seems to be the more popular view in the stands: “24 years, 16 managers, 1 trophy. Time for change”. Spurs remains a club which has immense potential, but it remains unrealised during Levy’s long tenure at the top of the hierarchy, and the ratio of seasons to managers to trophies and tangible successes spells out the story of a team which has yet to figure out how to make the most of its resources, chopping and changing direction and style without ever finding a clear path towards the top of the table. Spurs don’t need a confrontation between their manager and an irate fan. They need to have one with themselves.

Sacking Postecoglou wouldn’t address underlying issues

Spurs may well sack Postecoglou. Only rock-bottom Southampton have picked up fewer points from their last 10 matches and while a brutally long injury list has offered a reasonable excuse for their failings, such results are only tenable for a given length of time. Most fans would prefer that it was Levy who left, but he seems unlikely to sack himself, and it’s more probable that the fans who brought that banner in will need to update one of the numbers by the end of the season. After all, you can’t spell Change without Ange.

As is tradition when the pressure starts to pile on a manger whose results are falling short of expectations, the speculation about his successor has started in advance of a decision, with one name – that of former Borussia Dortmund boss Edin Terzić – cropping up with increasing frequency. It may well just be paper talk, an easy link made between an out-of-work coach and a potential vacancy, but it would also feel like a very Levyish appointment, which is perhaps precisely the problem.

The number of managers that Levy has gone through is perhaps less of an issue than the lack of consistency between his appointments. Going from Mauricio Pochettino to José Mourinho represented a total stylistic volte-face, from a passing, pressing game to absolute pragmatism. It was the same when Levy gave up on Antonio Conte to appoint Postecoglou in the first place – tactical chalk replaced by strategic cheese, new managers coming in to find themselves faced with a squad built for a predecessor who did things entirely differently.

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It’s an issue made worse when Spurs only go halfway in supporting managers with the players they actually need. The club have made some signings who line up neatly with Postecoglou’s high-intensity style, Micky van de Ven being a prime example, but the gaps are always filled out with whatever happens to be cheap and easy to acquire. Like Timo Werner, without wishing to put too fine a point on it.

Mourinho inherited a squad set up to play a pressing, passing game which needed a rebuild, but the rebuild was only half-hearted and didn’t provide him with the players he needed to institute his own system. Postecoglou, in turn, will pass on a team that’s mostly (but not quite entirely) geared up to his own high pressing game, and which wouldn’t suit Edin Terzić in the least.

Why Edin Terzić doesn’t make sense for Spurs

Terzić is a completely different type of manager to Postecoglou. He’s instinctively conservative, a defensively-minded coach who likes to get men behind the ball when faced with stiffer opposition. It was a methodology which rankled with plenty of his own players at Dortmund, and he left the club last summer in the wake of rumours of rebellion within the dressing room and a very public falling-out with veteran centre-back Mats Hummels.

Terzić has enjoyed a certain amount of success, and he achieved something unquestionably remarkable in taking Dortmund to the Champions League final, but they finished just fifth in the Bundesliga that season and made plenty of mistakes along the way. There weren’t just question marks over his style of play and his selections (although there were plenty of those) but also over his apparent failure to develop some of Dortmund’s trademark talent. There is no shortage of fans who watch their football by the banks of the Rühr who would wonder whether the likes of Karim Adeyimi, Giovanni Reyna, Youssoufa Moukouko and more shouldn’t be better players by now.

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It would be depressingly on-brand, however, for Levy to sack Postecoglou in order to bring in a manager who plays an entirely different type of football. It would be the move of a club stacking the odds against themselves and yet again asking players signed for one manager to adapt to another who sees the world through a very different lens. It would beg the question as to why losing a Champions League final with an undoubted underdog is a sufficiently strong reference for Terzić when it wasn’t enough for Pochettino to keep his job all those years ago.

It would mean starting afresh, yet again, another stylistic cycle kicked off, another manager who had different needs, who would probably want to jettison parts of the playing squad and who would have to be backed in the market in an expensive manner if he were to have a real chance of success. It would mean asking Levy if he wants to go at his transfer business in something more than a half-cocked manner once more, when we all know the likely answer.

It may well be the case that sacking Postecoglou is necessary. The mood is sour and if it’s half as bad in the dressing room as it is in the stands, then a breath of fresh air could be a requisite for improvement – but Spurs will keep rinsing and repeating this cycle of hope followed by mediocrity unless they pick a lane and stick to it, signing players to fit a certain style of play and appointing managers who can uphold it over the course of years. That’s particularly the case for a club that can be parsimonious when it comes to the transfer market. Consistency of tactical style and fundamental methodology would be cheaper than forcing themselves into persistent rebuilds to meet the needs of yet another manager who has little in common with those that came before.

Liverpool provide a neat blueprint. They built their squad for Jürgen Klopp but when he left, they picked a manager who didn’t have the flashiest name or the longest resumé but who did offer continuity, a coach who could take the squad they already had, highlight its strengths and maintain the forward progress made by his predecessor without the need for sweeping changes. Going from Klopp to Arne Slot made sense and seems to be paying dividends. Going from Postecoglou to Terzić may be a forward or backward step in the long run, but in the short term it’s a series of sideways and diagonal manoeuvres. It would probably be Pochettino to Mourinho all over again.

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If Spurs move on from the embattled Australian, they need to find another coach who wants to play aggressive, high-tempo pressing football. They need a manager who wants a Micky van de Ven in their life. They need someone who won’t put them right back to square one. Eye-rolling marketing speak it may be, but they need to figure out what a Spurs Way looks like and stick with it, or we’ll most likely see another banner listing a few more years, a few more managers, and precisely the same number of trophies.

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