When asked at which point a club gives up on a “project”, a mixture of current and former directors at Premier League clubs tend to arrive at the same answer.
“When the fans say so,” says one of them, who would like to remain nameless because he does not really want to admit publicly that, in the past, he has helped pull the trigger because of the pressure he and his colleagues were under.
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On that occasion, there had been a well-laid-out plan and the club were convinced they were following the right path. Except there was the small matter of games getting in the way. When results deteriorated and the atmosphere turned, he felt like he had to act.
To save himself? A little bit. Yet he is a reminder it is a results-based business and the smartest clubs always have a succession plan if and when things go wrong — one that involves numerous options because football, after all, is a fast-moving world.
Something to consider, perhaps, especially for anyone with an interest in Tottenham Hotspur.
They face Arsenal in the North London derby tomorrow (Sunday) at the end of a season which initially promised so much — born of the early achievements of a new manager — and, despite perhaps not quite living up to those raised expectations, should still ultimately be reflected upon as progress.
There was a consensus at Spurs at the start of the season that, following the summer sale of one of the greatest players in their history, any form of European qualification at the end of it would be considered a success — and they are on course to achieve that.
For Tottenham fans, the example of neighbours and rivals Arsenal is worth consideration, given this is their second title attempt in as many years.
In Mikel Arteta’s first full season in charge, Arsenal finished eighth with 61 points; one point above where Spurs — in fifth with six games to go — find themselves now. Perhaps crucially for Arteta, he had won the FA Cup at the end of his debut campaign following his mid-season appointment, proving he could deliver trophies and therefore buying himself more time.
Yet, by December 2020, after a year under Arteta, Arsenal were just four points above the Premier League’s relegation zone having played more games than the teams below them.
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That 2020-21 season was almost entirely played behind closed doors because of restrictions on crowds related to the COVID-19 pandemic. One can only imagine the atmosphere inside the Emirates Stadium had fans been present at the time and the pressure that would have heaped upon Arteta, who needed 18 months to really start embedding his ideas, as well as a decent transfer budget, before he started to move the team up the league.
Up the road at Spurs, Ange Postecoglou has done that already, having taken the same number of points as they won last season, when the team finished eighth, with a month of the season still to go. Yet if anything can be learned from the recent history of Arsenal, it is that good managers are judged by good directors on the progress they help a club make off the pitch as well as on it.
When push comes to shove, has Postecoglou done enough to show his chairman Daniel Levy that he can be trusted to spend the sort of money, at some point, that has helped Arsenal reach where they are now?
At football clubs, control tends to be earned through indications of progression and the building of trust. At Arsenal, it is now very much Project Arteta. Though the club have highly-respected directors above him in the hierarchy, he is now involved in everything related to its football operation.
Yet the club have only reached this point after the sacking of Unai Emery, a manager who has since relaunched his career to spectacular effect at Villarreal and now Aston Villa. Emery succeeded Arsene Wenger, whose control over two decades as Arsenal manager had been total and was tied to emotional sensitivities — leading the club to a point where, with the benefit of hindsight, everyone involved in his departure agreed they waited too long to deal with it.
A reflection of their new world post-Wenger was the sign on Emery’s office door, which changed from “manager” to “head coach”. Arsenal were trying to recreate how the club looked and was run. It was now led instead by directors; there were too many egos and ideas and, though it was possible to see what they were thinking, it simply did not work.
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Under Arteta, there is an operation that is more like the Wenger era. While Emery could not take on the suits, the different figures now in charge at Arsenal are happy to be guided and respond well to his fellow Spaniard.
Though he won that FA Cup early on in his tenure to fuel confidence Arsenal were on the right path, the way Arteta handled big personalities — as well as the COVID-19 period — impressed his bosses.
Whenever he wins a manager of the month award, he invites his coaches into the commemorative photographs; he attempts to show that Arsenal’s development isn’t all about him. Yet he has also done a lot of work improving the working relationships with previously disillusioned staff.
In Arsenal’s toughest period under him, the top brass did not bow to pressure even if the particular circumstances at the time ensured that dissident fan voices were confined to angry reactions on social media.
Arsenal have never been a club who change managers often, but it is different across London at Chelsea — who endured the end of an era when Roman Abramovich was forced to sell up in the summer of 2022.
New owners BlueCo, a consortium led by Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital, wanted to change things, and the hire of Graham Potter that September was evidence of that.
Only four years earlier, Potter had been in charge of Ostersunds in Sweden. But his achievements in European competition, especially, led to opportunities in the Championship at Swansea City and the Premier League with Brighton & Hove Albion. After coming 15th and 16th in the 20-club top flight in his first two seasons in charge, he led Brighton to a ninth-place finish in 2021-22 — at the time, their highest-ever — to establish his reputation at that level.
Chelsea considered Potter a central part of a huge rebuild at a club who had previously hired managers with a much higher profile.
Despite regular sackings through the 19 years of Abramovich’s ownership, a culture of success had been maintained — but the new co-chairmen Boehly and Behdad Eghbali wanted to separate from the past. They spoke of creating a more stable environment that would attract the best young players in the world, creating a squad which would serve the club for many years.
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As it transpired, despite Potter signing a five-year contract, he was sacked less than seven months later having won 12 and lost 11 of his 31 games. Potter left Chelsea in a Champions League quarter-final but in the unfamiliar and lowly position of 11th in the Premier League.
It should be acknowledged that, during Potter’s tenure, huge changes were instigated both on and off the pitch. While the medical department was revamped at the club’s Cobham training ground, so too was their scouting department. He inherited a squad filled with 10 new signings from the previous summer’s transfer window, and the club made another seven in January 2023. A bloated first-team squad of 33 players struggled to fit into the dressing room at Cobham.
Given the scale of the transformation, it was always going to take time for things to settle down and allow the head coach to build a new culture. In Potter’s previous roles, as demonstrated at Brighton, he had not changed the fortune of his teams overnight. Yet Chelsea’s new owners were inevitably keen to show they were on the same page as the fanbase and, under intense pressure, they buckled and Potter was sacked.
If Premier League directors agree that good practice is knowing what to do next, Chelsea failed on that front, too. With no agreements in place to secure a replacement, Frank Lampard was asked to return to the club for a second spell as manager and, with a caretaker boss in place, results duly deteriorated.
Lampard was succeeded last summer by Mauricio Pochettino — a manager with the sort of profile that might have seen him earmarked in the Abramovich era. Pochettino has lasted longer than Potter, but Chelsea are only three points closer to European qualification.
Perhaps key men like Boehly and Eghbali can see greater progress being made off the field. Yet, under Pochettino, Chelsea have endured some damaging defeats, with the Carabao Cup final against Liverpool somewhere near the top of that list — especially considering the number of injuries their opponents had to deal with at the time. So, too, was Tuesday night’s 5-0 humiliation away to Arsenal.
Chelsea officials expected the club to qualify for Europe — and, primarily, the Champions League — under Pochettino, and they are nowhere near that. Like Potter, he has suffered from the unavailability of players this season — though that did not prove a mitigating factor when Potter’s future came under scrutiny.
There might be a temptation to consider Pep Guardiola an immovable object considering his impact on the sport.
At Manchester City, there has never been any indication of him facing the sort of pressure experienced by Arteta, Potter and Pochettino. But City had been attempting to secure him as their manager, and Lionel Messi as a player, at various points since the Abu Dhabi takeover in 2008.
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Chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak is, was and seemingly always will be genuinely convinced that Guardiola is the right man to lead his club and has never done anything but be supportive by trying to meet his needs.
Yet in Marti Perarnau’s latest book about Guardiola, he reveals that the manager was worried he would be sacked in his 2016-17 debut season if City — who had already lost 4-0 at Camp Nou — did not beat Barcelona in the reverse fixture a couple of weeks later to give themselves a good chance of progressing from their Champions League group. While there is nothing in the book laying out the club’s point of view, it seems unlikely this would ever have happened.
It is important to note that, according to Perarnau, during contract talks before he agreed to join City, they promised him an overhaul of an ageing squad, particularly in defence. Guardiola subsequently discovered that they could only carry out half of this business in the season after he joined, with the rest of the revamp to be completed ahead of year two.
City knew the first campaign, in which Guardiola led the team to a third-place finish in the Premier League, would be relatively difficult. Added to that was the fact they had revolutionised their academy by asking their youth teams to play the style of football Guardiola had brought to Barcelona and, besides, there was very little critical noise from the fanbase. Guardiola was always going to be granted more time to correct any problems.
There was a time in late 2020 when it seemed it was going a bit stale at City, but the club were determined that Guardiola would stay. Some people think that, if it was up to them, he would never leave.
It would have been interesting to gauge just how far that commitment would have extended had things not gone as well as they have since 2017.
(Top photos: Getty Images)
