I think deep down we all expected that Tottenham Hotspur Interim Head Coach Igor Tudor would come to Spurs with a few people he trusts to work with as he seeks to save his new club’s season. Indeed, as Tudor takes the reins at Tottenham for the first time this week, reports are out, including in The Athletic and Football.London, that four of Thomas Frank’s assistants have left the club, with Tudor bringing in a few new people.
According to the reports, Ivan Javorcic is joining Tudor as assistant coach, Riccardo Raganacci as physical coach and Tomislav Rogic as goalkeeping coach. Departing are Justin Cochrane, Chris Haslam, and John Heitinga, along with analyst Joe Newton. The departure of Heitinga is grimly hilarious, as the former Ajax manager was only appointed exactly one month ago on January 15 to replace the outgoing Matt Wells; Heitinga was apparently one of the names considered to be interim head coach if Spurs opted to promote internally. Now he’s gone, without leaving much of a mark whatsoever.
Cochrane also came to Spurs with a pretty good reputation (along with Frank) of developing players, but we saw precious little of that in the eight months he was at the club. I’m not sure you can make a credible argument that any Tottenham players improved their level from last season apart from Archie Gray and maaaaaybe Wilson Odobert. If you want to be charitable, you can also make a case that Xavi Simon’s bedding in worked pretty much as anticipated, though perhaps a little longer than everyone hoped.
At any rate, those four are gone and Tudor will come in with an injury-ravaged squad, but fresh ideas. We’ll see this weekend what those ideas will look like when Tottenham host Arsenal in the home North London Derby.