Nuno was always a no-no for Spurs
DO NOT kid yourself that the decision was harsh.
If anything, Tottenham put Nuno Espirito Santo out of his misery.
Give managers more time all day long if their players are responding to him. Back them if you can see signs of an identity and if results suggest that your work behind the scenes is bearing fruit.
At Spurs, there were none of those things.
Saturday’s failure to score against a Manchester United outfit that previously could not defend to save their lives provided a brutal insight into an appointment that simply was not working.
Nuno, right, had lost authority on the touchline, in the dressing room and within the fanbase. Nobody believed in him.
In his previous post at Wolves he was an upgrade, the man who led them into the promised land of the Premier League.
For many at Spurs he was a downgrade, the manager that the club initially turned their noses up at and then finally settled for after failing to land a string of higherprofile targets.
Ending it after just 17 matches was not premature – it did him a favour. Only rock-bottom Norwich have scored fewer Premier
League goals than Tottenham’s nine from 10 games this season.
No top-flight team has had fewer shots on goal.
Saturday was the first time Spurs failed to have a shot on target in a Premier League home game for eight years – damning when United had previously kept just one clean sheet in 22 games in all competitions.
Players had already grown fed up with Nuno’s safety-first tactics and were openly making that clear.
The signs first manifested themselves after Arsenal beat them 3-1 in the north London derby at the Emirates at the end of September.
Wins against lesser teams in the Europa Conference League and at Newcastle, one of the worst sides in the Premier League, papered over the cracks.
United exposed them last Saturday.
Talisman Harry
Kane’s disinterest in the game screamed that he had switched off. Sky Sports pundits Jamie Redknapp and Roy Keane both derided Spurs as “a laughing stock”, “gutless” and “boring to watch” over the past 72 hours. Spurs had to act. An emergency board meeting was held on Sunday and that was that.
The club’s players, told to expect the arrival of Antonio Conte, are already energised, excited and finally motivated to rescue a season that had been threatening to turn to dust.
They will not know what has hit them of course, with the Italian not a man likely to suffer the kind of moody behaviour and underachievement indulged at the club for far too long. Nuno, a good man, will not be down for long. The potential resurgence of the team under Conte, however, will provide an indicator as to just how much the Spurs players had downed tools on Nuno.