It turns out the Spurs hierarchy were right all along. Well, half right.
Hiring a specialist interim boss to dig them out of the relegation mire was sound logic to make after sacking Thomas Frank in February. It’s just they didn’t find a manager in Igor Tudor with the right profile to do the job.
Only time will tell if their change in strategy to go for Roberto De Zerbi as a permanent solution is the right call. Recent trends suggest it’s a risk.
In a world where clear playing philosophies are coveted currency for clubs, a successful mid-season hire for underperforming sides is rapidly taking on a different identity. And a short-term fix may be exactly what a team near the bottom of the table needs when the games are running out.
Looking back over the past decade in the Premier League, there’s a broad trend that shows the mid-season hires that make the most immediate impacts at their new clubs typically end up having shorter tenures than the slower starters.
The slow burners – the ones picking up fewer points in their opening six games – tend to be the names considered to be more in-demand bosses. Whereas the ones that typically claim a quick flurry of points usually tail off after their initial razzle dazzle.
Dig a little deeper and the profiles of most of the rapid starters prioritise psychological benefits over intricate technical overhauls, aiming to change the atmosphere and simplify tactics to make an instant impact.
The managers who have gained the most points in their opening games after taking over a struggling team in the past decade was Roy Hodgson at Crystal Palace in March 2023. The Eagles were in 12th but only three points above the relegation zone and had been on a 12-match winless run under predecessor Patrick Vieira.
With a number of simple tweaks, Hodgson led Palace to a quickfire 13 points in his first six matches to quickly quell any fears of the drop, although he couldn’t maintain that from and lost his job less than a year later.
It was a similar trend for Jesse Marsch at Leeds the previous year. Back-to-back defeats in his opening matches were followed by a run of three wins in a five-match unbeaten run, sparking a run of 15 points from 10 league games to stay up on the final day.
His positivity and motivation skills took centre stage in his early days, but eventually ran out of steam the following year. Perhaps that’s why Marsch was touted for short-term survival roles at Southampton and Leicester in the spring of 2023, with both moves falling flat over the duration of the contract.
Some managers have quicker drop-offs than others, though. Carlos Carvalhal took 17 points from his first eight matches at Swansea in 2018 before slumping to a winless nine-game run that saw go down; while Nigel Pearson won 15 points in eight with Watford in 2019/20 before form deserted them – albeit with the Covid lockdown interrupting them.
Both Carvalhal and Pearson spoke about valuing psychological methods in their quick bursts of form, indicating how they picked up those early upturns.
Conversely, the slower starters who go on to have longer-term success normally fall on the side of a more process-driven approach. They want time with their players to get them playing how in their vision – normally making them more coveted because they’ve enjoyed sustained success in previous jobs. Only, they need time to deliver.
Take Nuno Espirito Santo’s last two jobs at Nottingham Forest and West Ham, as he forges a reputation for being the closest thing to a survival expert in the Premier League currently.
But the Nuno effect isn’t immediate. He won only four of his first 18 league matches with Forest after taking over in late-December 2023, picking up less than a point a game over that time before seeing a sustained upturn in results. He got the Hammers job in September this season and presided over a run of 13 points in 16 matches before things picked up. Hire him any later and he’d run out of runway.
Eddie Howe at Newcastle (seven points in his first nine, before 12 wins in the next 18) and David Moyes’ escape act at West Ham in 2019/20 (eight points in his first 12, before 12 points in the next seven matches) needed time for their methods to bed in before going on to have success.
Moyes, though, shows that if the fit is good, then long-term decisions can still deliver in the short. While he took a while to organise a West Ham team that was technically gifted but defensively poor, his impact was significantly quicker at Everton when inheriting a squad more in keeping with his tactical DNA.
The Toffees were already defensively sound when he took over, so required smaller tweaks to give them new impetus to help them lose only once in Moyes’s first 11 games to pull well clear of the drop zone, before continuing up the table in a similar vein.
It’s a crumb of comfort for the late-season permanent hire, but since Moyes only had to make light-touch changes to improve things, it takes a precision appointment to achieve.
That’s what Tottenham hope will be the case with De Zerbi. They need a quick hit with only seven games remaining, but since the interim solution failed despite the theory being strong, there’s an element of gamble behind the latest strategy switch.
Trends suggest the later in the season a club lingers towards the bottom of the table, the less appealing a bigger reputation manager should be – it’s a time for unfashionable specialists to step up.
It’s just important to find the right one.
