Tottenham Hotspur completely botched the recruitment of new manager Thomas Frank, who was spoonfed ideas by Brentford and brought the same highly defensive, counterattacking brand of football that would be woefully ineffective with the players, philosophy, and opposing setups that Spurs would face.
And after the Frank hire blew up in their faces, Johan Lange and Vinai Venkatesham took ages to pivot, failing to ever create a real contingency plan. Eventually, enough was enough, and the duo were forced to mercifully can Frank, hiring interim manager Igor Tudor of Juventus "fame" as his replacement.
Well, the Tudor hire is going over about as well as anyone would have expected - well, anyone besides Vina and Lange, apparently - which is to say that he has been a flop. Spurs are yet to win under Tudor, inching ever closer to relegation with just one point now separating them from such dignitaries as West Ham United and Nottingham Forest in the Premier League table.
Igor Tudor was not the right hire for Tottenham
Tudor looks about as good of a fit for Spurs as Dimitar Berbavov would be on the New York Stock Exchange with the desperately screaming traders. His 3-4-3 tactical system is something he has been pretty much married to in his career, and trying to pigeonhole Spurs in that or deviate from it to fit Tottenham is not something that is going to work and not something that has been working - or will ever work.
You can see evidence of Tudor trying to mish-mash it all together, and the result is that Tottenham are as ineffective as they were before at creating cogent attacking play. They do not progress the ball, and they are perhaps even more cavernous defensively, as evidenced by their string of three straight London derby losses.
Tudor's idea of how a team should be set up fundamentally does not match the players Tottenham have, and this goes back before Frank to what was being built up under Ange Postecoglou before it was torn down. And though it was torn down out of necessity, Spurs and their undynamic duo of decision makers have failed to find a way to forge ahead with a real plan under a leader whose ideas suit what is already here.
Tottenham have hired managers who are better in a back four with the players and foundation of a team that, currently, would be best suited for a back four in either a 4-3-3 with a No. 10 or even a 4-4-2 with two forwards playing off each other. That is why we are seeing players woefully out of position like Randal Kolo Muani on the right or in the attacking midfield, Archie Gray as a left or right winger, or Pedro Porro as a center back.