Conservatism, Accountability, Opportunity

It’s been a week. Between Forest and a one-year-old with hand, foot and mouth (plus the looming arrival of baby number two), I’m running on fumes. Forest has me feeling particularly low about Spurs. Because here’s the thing: it came after what you could call a ‘good’ week. If you squinted hard enough, you could see tweaks, changes, signs of life. Sure, it was against poor-quality opposition, but there were glimmers: full-backs moving inside to create passing lanes (and thriving), front-four interplay and connection, Xavi Simons actually, you know, having the ball. And then Forest happened, and it felt like the absolute worst extremes of Thomas Frank’s Tottenham all at once.

Let’s start with the numbers because they tend to cut through the noise: 22 points from 16 Premier League matches. Our fewest at this stage since 2008–09. That isn’t just bad; it’s historically bad within modern Spurs context. The performances have mostly matched the data: sluggish, risk-averse, and lacking in attacking intent. One shot on target vs Forest. Which would be galling at the best of times, but becomes excruciating when set against Frank’s own pre-match KPIs: he said he expected a “front-footed, aggressive, brave and offence-minded” performance. The words sound great; the reality was the complete opposite.

And then there were the subs. Ben Davies, João Palhinha, Lucas Bergvall on for Djed Spence, Archie Gray, and Rodrigo Bentancur. The changes themselves would have raised eyebrows anyway, but Frank’s justification crystallised everything Nathan had been warning us about from day one:

“No, we had four offensive players on the pitch. I think that’s fair to say. So I felt that, just to go back to the bit before where I say we’re disjointed. So if you’re disjointed, you can have 11 offensive players on the pitch. It will not help. So we need to be in sync. And then it helps, and hopefully we can find a way back after that.”

via Alasdair Gold for Football.London

That’s it. That’s the nub. Everything, everything, is underpinned by conservatism. It’s about control, about safety, about risk-aversion, and the players respond in kind: second-guessing themselves, playing within themselves, lacking bravery at the exact moments the match demands it. The result is flat, joyless football that harms both performance, results, and identity. We’re grinding our best players down to the safest versions of themselves and, unsurprisingly, nobody looks better than they did six months ago. In fact, many look worse. You might argue Archie Gray has taken a step — fair, and he’s been good — but that owes as much to him playing in midfield and being a special talent as it does to any structural improvement under Frank.

Bentancur as the Flagbearer of the Problem

I need to talk about Bentancur because he has become, in my mind, the flagbearer for this conservatism. There was a moment in the Forest game that summed this version of Bentancur up. Playing alongside a 19-year-old who had just made a catastrophic mistake that led to a goal, the ball comes to Bentancur — enough time and space to take it down, the whole picture in front of him — and he just helps it on, like Ashley Westwood playing prime Dyche-ball. That’s not leadership. That’s not bravery. That’s not what I expect from any central midfielder at Spurs, let alone one who is amongst our most experienced players. It’s the embodiment of the fear-avoidance loop that is defining our football right now. It sucks the life out of moments that need agency and personality.

This isn’t to say Bentancur isn’t a useful footballer in certain contexts; he can be. But not as the tone-setter in this version of Spurs. And when his selection and usage align so cleanly with Frank’s justification framework — safety-first, guardrails, control — it becomes difficult not to see him as a symbol of what’s gone wrong.

The Accountability That Never Seems to Arrive

Here’s where I pivot (pun intended) away from Frank for a moment, because if we’re going to critique effectively, we must widen the lens. I am continually astonished at the lack of accountability for the people making the decisions above the Head Coach. How are Johan Lange and Fabio Paratici still in jobs?

Our squad building has been incoherent across multiple windows. We are starved of technical quality and — most importantly — passing ability. Glaring needs have gone unaddressed while we’ve doubled down on the same profile: athletic, off-the-ball stand-outs in midfield. Rodrigo Bentancur, João Palhinha, Pape Sarr, Archie Gray. You could even throw Lucas Bergvall in there, though he’s young enough to grow. What we haven’t prioritised is press resistance, progressive passing, or genuine creativity. None of these players are defined by their passing.

These aren’t coaching quirks. They’re structural failures at director level.

And Paratici’s situation remains extraordinary. He was banned from football following an investigation into financial irregularities, as widely reported in Italy. He later returned to a role at Spurs after a plea bargain was accepted — under Italian law, this does not require an admission of guilt. The club can point to that technicality, but the reality is that a senior executive was involved in a major controversy, sanctioned by the sport’s authorities, and reinstated without any detailed explanation to supporters. For me, that feels less like governance and more like a statement of values. Is his Rolodex really that important?

Those values speak to an absence of consequences. When bad decisions carry no cost, mediocrity perpetuates itself. Recruitment misfires? Keep your job. Repeated managerial appointments that tank? Keep your job. Structural incoherence? Keep your job. Alleged criminality? Welcome back. At Spurs, failure isn’t punished — it’s institutionalised.

Accountability is the bedrock of elite performance, and we don’t have it. Until that changes, everything else — analytics, academy pathways, tactical philosophy — is cosmetic.

The Paradox: We’re a Financial Titan in a Rigged Game

Now here comes the maddening part: the game is rigged in our favour. We are a financial titan. The stadium, the matchday revenues, the commercial footprint, the global brand — we have the capacity to outspend not just most of the league, but most of Europe. We don’t even need to do things particularly well to get back to where we were under Mauricio Pochettino. Spend big, spend smart-ish, and the tide just… lifts you. Look at Arsenal (ugh, I know, but we do have to): they were a punchline not long ago, but money plus a credible plan plus a willingness to clear out and re-invest changed their trajectory rapidly. We could copy-paste 60–70% of that model tomorrow and improve almost by osmosis.  

Of course, I want us to be more sophisticated than “just spend”. But it’s important to acknowledge reality: if you have more money than most and the league rewards scale, you can brute-force your way back to competence. Sustained trophy wins require more, but top-four consistency is squarely within reach if we simply choose to act like an extremely wealthy club.

Competitive Advantage

So what’s the alternative? If we want more than brute force spending — if we want a durable edge — we have to invest. And the clearest path is, still — even after all these years of discussing it — data and analytics. Not a couple of analysts buried in recruitment, but the biggest, best-resourced analytics department in world football. Be ambitious. A proper, multi-disciplinary decision-science unit that touches everything:

Recruitment

• Identify players smarter and faster than anyone else. Use predictive models. Combine different approaches for reliability. Feed them with everything: match stats, movement tracking, biomechanics, injury risk, tactical fit simulations.
• Create catalogues of player types matched to the demands of our system. For example, an inverted full-back archetype might require press resistance, short passing under pressure, and spatial awareness. This lets us check instantly if a target fits the role and even forecast how they’d perform under a different coach, so we stop building squads that collapse when managers change. I’m sure we already do this, but the implementation is visibly off. Hold leadership accountable.

Performance & Tactics

• Live match modelling tracks what coaches currently rely on instinct for: player energy, spacing between lines, passing lanes, pressing cohesion, and risk–reward trade-offs in build-up. It can then recommend real-time tweaks: widen the pitch, adjust pressing triggers, or make a substitution that maximises attacking threat without leaving us exposed. This is proactive, data-driven coaching and doesn’t just rely on the fact that Matt Wells has a knack for this shit.

Medical & Load Management

• Predictive injury models combine training data, match intensity, and historical patterns. Instead of a crude red/amber/green fitness rating, produce scenario plans: how many minutes at what intensity should a returning player play? How does that affect pressing? When is an extra 10 minutes worth the future risk? These decisions should be evidence-based.

Academy Pathways

• Give every academy player a personalised dashboard with clear targets for their role: first touch under pressure, scanning frequency, acceleration over 5–10 metres, aerial duel technique, decision-making speed in tight spaces. Track progress weekly. These dashboards don’t just inform coaching; they roll up into leadership KPIs. If a player hits pathway milestones, that success belongs in the performance review of the people running football operations. Progression of academy players into meaningful first-team minutes should be a core KPI for football leadership. If youth integration is our stated strategy, then measure it — and reward or penalise accordingly.

Hire 40–60 specialists across data engineering, machine learning, performance analysis, tactical modelling, sports science, and UX design for coaches and players. Fund them properly. Give them access. Then measure impact every year: recruitment hit rates, injury reduction, pressing stability, academy conversion, resale value uplift.

Individual Coaches for Every Academy Player

We have an incredible training centre and we should be leveraging it. One individual coach per academy player isn’t excess. Each player gets a dedicated pathway coach responsible for technical and physical development.

• Technical: first touch on the move, directional first touch, receiving under pressure, weak-foot competency, manipulation of tempo. All the things you hear people like Harry Brooks (specialists actually doing the work with Premier League players) talk about.
• Physical development: movement mechanics, acceleration, deceleration, hip-load management, core strength patterns — tailored to role demands.

Meanwhile tactical and psychological are taught collectively:

• Tactical literacy: role principles in our model and two adjacent models (because coaches change); what your responsibilities are in each phase; how to recognise common opposition solutions.
• Mental skills: situational resilience, error-recovery routines, leadership behaviours, communication in pressing structures.

The assigned coach also aligns with loan managers to ensure the role-profile matches the player’s pathway; we stop sending dynamic, modern attacking midfielders to teams that demand traditional chalk-on-boots wingers for 90 minutes of low-touch slog-fests.

The goal is twofold:

1. Make academy contribution a consistent pipeline to the first team.
2. If a player’s ceiling is below our threshold, increase their market value through demonstrable progress and clarity of role. Either outcome benefits the club.

What Needs to Change

So what does fixing this look like in practice?

1. Clarity of Football Philosophy. The Head Coach is a custodian of principles. If they leave, the football doesn’t collapse. Our recent history has been a pendulum swing of ideas; stop the swing. Pick the principles and stick to them.
2. Accountability in Football Operations. Evaluate Lange and Paratici against clear performance metrics: squad construction coherence, recruitment hit rate, wage bill efficiency, and alignment with the stated principles. Include academy progression as a KPI alongside recruitment hit rate and wage efficiency. If they fail, change personnel. After years of drift, continuing as-is is unjustifiable.
3. Spend with Role Integrity. We’re a financial titan in a rigged game. Use that to our advantage. But buy role profiles that fit the style, not simply names that Fabio recommends. If the model says we need a press-resistant six and a right-sided 1v1 winger, deliver that — not “nearest available player with vibes.”
4. Empower an Analytics Department. Make it the biggest in world football. Integrate, don’t silo. Get the data out of slide decks and into coaching sessions, into recovery plans, into academy drills, into boardroom decisions.
5. Create Opportunities for Young Players. Don’t wait for crises to hand opportunities to academy talent. Use them because their profiles suit the role. Pick them in functioning teams, not reserve-team mash-ups. Give minutes with purpose.

Back to Forest, and Why This Matters

Frank’s explanation of the subs is the system talking. It says: we value control more than risk. We’d rather avoid disorganisation than chase momentum. But football at the top level requires courage at the right moments and coherent structures that enable it. One shot on target is not a tactical footnote; it’s a culture problem. It’s the manifestation of a safety-first ideology that leans away from expression. And it’s why our best players look worse. Players need permission to be the best versions of themselves. Systems can constrain or unleash. Ours constrains.

When your environment is telling you to play within yourself, you play within yourself. And when the flagbearers of the environment are your senior players, conservatism becomes self-reinforcing. That’s how you end up with Rodrigo fucking Bentancur flicking the ball aimlessly into space instead of taking responsibility. That’s how your “front-footed, aggressive, brave” becomes one shot on target.

Frank’s philosophy isn’t changing overnight, which means he’s probably doomed to fail. Now it’s up to the c-suite to ensure this doesn’t happen again — to stop hiring coaches whose principles don’t align and to build a structure that outlives any one man

It Doesn’t Have to Be Like This

We don’t need perfection. The game is rigged in our favour. But if we choose to be deliberate — to build the world’s strongest analytics department, to fund individual coaching for academy players, to impose clarity on football operations — we can be better than just “rich enough to be fine.”

Look, I’m an amateur blogger with no inside track beyond what we all read and what I know from my own professional life in director-level operations, and I’m making this sound easy. I know it’s not. But we are rich enough to hire the very best and make it look easier than it currently appears.

And yes, I know this sounds like football-by-spreadsheet. It isn’t. It’s football with better information. The human element must always be central — bravery, leadership, creativity — but supported by evidence so we stop guessing and start optimising.

So, yes, I’m low after Forest. I’m exasperated by Frank’s conservatism. I’m tired of watching players second-guess themselves. But I also look at what Spurs could be — with money, with infrastructure, with a talent pipeline — and I see a path back. Spending gets us to competence quickly. Intelligence gets us past competence sustainably.

Here’s to 2026. COYS.