Gus Poyet has revealed the shocking manner and timing of his sacking as assistant coach of Tottenham, and has also reflected on the club’s misfortunes since Daniel Levy’s exit.
Levy’s exit from Spurs last summer was viewed as a positive step by many Tottenham supporters, who felt that the former chairman had held the club back.
His exit was accompanied by claims that the Lewis family are prepared to usher in a new era at Tottenham, where on-pitch success would be prioritised.
However, the last seven months have been nothing short of disastrous for the club, with the Lilywhites now standing on the brink of relegation to the Championship.
Gus Poyet claims Daniel Levy left Tottenham at the right time
During his nearly two-and-a-half-decade reign as chairman, Levy set high standards for managers and was not shy of sacking coaches if things were not going to plan.
Many Tottenham fans are understandably wondering if the 64-year-old would have acted swiftly to arrest the club’s slide had he still been in charge.
Poyet has now suggested that his former boss was smart about exiting the North London club at the right time.
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When asked if Levy would have sacked Thomas Frank much sooner had he been calling the shots, the Uruguayan said (via Football.London): “Difficult to know because Daniel was always, always – and I mean always – unpredictable. When I was an assistant coach in the summer after winning the League Cup with Juande Ramos, we had a big issue with [Dimitar] Berbatov until the last minute of the transfer window.
“He [Levy] didn’t want to sell him until the last minute of the transfer window. If Berba was going to go, then go, but we wanted to settle down and then play. But then Berba left, but he didn’t play with us in August, we couldn’t win a game and then we were sacked. How much of that was the reason? I don’t know, I’m not going to blame anyone but it didn’t help.”
“He’s very intelligent about leaving at the right time. Maybe he saw it coming. You know when people talk about when Alex Ferguson stepped down and what happened after? These kinds of people at the highest level, I think they know when is the right time to go.
“They don’t stay there when everything is falling apart, you know? They leave just in time and that’s a quality because he left in the worst Tottenham year in the Premier League for a long time, 17th, but won a trophy. He left as a winner.”
Poyet sheds light on Spurs sacking in hotel on the eve of a match
Poyet spent three years at White Hart Lane as a player before returning to the club as Juande Ramos’ assistant when the Spaniard replaced Martin Jol as head coach in 2007.
While Ramos and Poyet guided the club to a League Cup win in 2008, they were gone just a few months later after the team made a disastrous start to the 2008-09 campaign.
Poyet said about his eventual dismissal from Tottenham: “Listen, he sacked Mourinho one week before the final when the idea of signing Mourinho was about winning a trophy. So, what can I say about Daniel? He was a chairman that was very unpredictable.
“We got sacked the night before our game when we were in the hotel. Tottenham were playing Sunday in a home game, we went to the hotel to sleep overnight with the whole squad. Myself, Juande Ramos and Marcos Alvarez, we got sacked at 10 pm, the night before the game. [What’s] more unpredictable than that? There were not even rumours.
“I was waiting for much of the day in my room and I got a phone call telling me to come down. I went down and we got sacked. We walked out of the hotel with the luggage and got a taxi home. That’s what I mean. I don’t know.
“When you change a coach, I think that was the idea of the owners, it’s to see a reaction and that didn’t happen. The main reason for changing a coach, it didn’t work for Spurs for whatever reason, so it’s a problem.”
Despite all this, Poyet threw his hat in the ring for the Tottenham interim job this month.
He said: “I already done it in Sunderland. I was in that position – oh, sorry, I was in a worse position. I was seven points adrift… do not ask me how, but we stayed up.
“That is what I was saying about the objectives. There is objective; that was the objective.”