"Excuse, excuse, excuse try to protect them every time, you only do this..." those words of Antonio Conte are still echoing in my and probably a lot of other ears. "Daily Mail" wrote about this deep rooted "excuse culture" inside the club. Two proven winners like Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte couldn't change it. How did this type of excuse culture entered and rooted into such big London club ? Here are my thoughts about it.
I am not the one who will jump on player after he makes first bad mistake or have couple of bad games. I watch football long enough to know that every player will make mistake or have few bad games at some point. They are humans, we all make mistakes. However as long as you make more good than bad things on the pitch you are useful player. If I see you passing ball to opponent and we concede goal, but then you score and make assist you had ok game for me. It's important to do a lot more good than bad things on the pitch. That's what distinguish good and bad players.
However player can have bad game, bad couple of games, he can even go out of form for month maybe two, but if player is bad during entire season then he need to find exit door from the club if that club pretend to be big, to compete for trophies or even Champions League. Fact that he was good or excellent two, three,four years ago should not mean we should tolerate such players. Well in Tottenham if you played good one season or half of season you can be bad until the end of contract after and you will not end up on transfer list. There are plenty of examples for this: Dele Alli, Lucas Moura, Harry Winks etc...
What happen then is that good players who are in form and are trying hard to do the best for club start to think "Why would I do big effort when those can do nothing and are still here for years ?"Then morale drops and you become bunch of selfish individuals and not a team and even excellent players who eventually come in become worse and worse until they become full spursy... I am convinced if Messi prime came to Tottenham he'd soon become mix of Lamela and Gil. Only Harry Kane and to some extent Son are resisting this for longer period of time.
Policy of Daniel Levy I won't sell player for penny less than I bought them or if I can't earn money on every player I'd rather give him for free or torn his contract apart is wrong. You can earn on some players, but not on everyone. Long time tolerance toward bad under-performing players lead to decrease of their value. While you hope they will regain form from 3-4 years ago their value drops to the point that no one wants to buy them until they become dead for football like Sissoko, Rose etc... Those players pull good players down toward their level and you become weaker and weaker team. All of that because of grid, conceit and love toward money and wrong thinking I owner am the most wise man on Earth.
Weak bunch of individuals play of course bad football no matter who the manager is, fans become unhappy and you then just sack manager interrupting cycle of rebuilding and not give time to manager to implement his style and vision and abandon any plan you might have at some point. Did you listen Brighton CEO interview ? LIsten to that over and over again. He talked about 10 year plan, manager who clicked after 3 years, importance of always having in house player who can replace player who is currently playing and stuff like that..
Under-performing group of players start of course losing games, losing becomes soon normal acceptable thing, Sunday league errors become also normal and then you got "excuse culture" with losing mentality. Then even if you are leading on the pitch your legs start to tremble from fear and you concede.
It's cheaper to sack and appoint new manager than get rid of bad players and change them with better. However cheapest solution is not always the best, just like player bought on discount may not always make you earn a lot on them later. I am not fan of throwing money away on players like Richarlison. Big spending also is not guarantee you'll be good. Real knowledge is to identify and buy affordable players which can play good on Premier League level. We're failing in this miserably because Daniel Levy must always get discount on player he wants or he'll abort the deal. Remember Grealish ? Was it 5 million is "to much! Deal cancel!" situation ? I am not talking about 100 million pounds players, but why ask for discount on player who worth 10 or 15 million or less ?
How to get out of this losing culture ? If you ask me by stop tolerating players who are bad entire season and widen interest on players who are not on discount. Those bad players must go to exit door. Those who are bad for ages (Sanchez, Dier...) should become priority on exit door. You must replace them with better. You need to have coach who will be upset when he doesn't win. Ouch we had such, but we sacked him because he got upset during press conference.
Will Daniel Levy do that and get rid of constantly non performing players and show them exit door ? No he will not. He will most likely appoint "Sir, yes Sir" manager who is cool with losing who will be good in finding excuses after such games. If he wanted to do right thing he could do it long time ago.
"Excuse culture" has been established from the top and it's here to stay! If we want to change it we need to get rid of this ownership or at least this chairman "who knows everything the best". Why not try with someone else on top position ? Don't hope he will change and start doing things right because he will not. He could do that long time ago if he wanted to. LevyOut!
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