Stick or twist? Tottenham face huge decision over Igor Tudor amid new crisis
As afternoon made way for evening, you could hear impassioned cheers from inside the bars and pubs along the High Road as jaded Spurs fans celebrated Nico O’Reilly’s goals against Arsenal in the Carabao Cup final. Truly, this was a day for schadenfreude and silver linings.
Many feel they should have removed Tudor long before this point and many more will now feel they have no choice, with the club spiralling towards relegation after a humiliating defeat in their six-pointer with rivals Forest.
Spurs had been good in the first half against Forest, undone by switching off from a corner but otherwise tidy and the better team. Tudor’s decision to replace Micky van de Ven and Djed Spence with Destiny Udogie and Lucas Bergvall made Spurs worse. Their second-half performance was error-filled and sluggish, and Tudor’s record of making substitutions that make little impact or a negative one is desperately poor.
Tudor meddled with the formation yet again and, with the possible exception of Xavi Simons, substitute on Sunday played worse than the man he replaced. Simons was the one bright spark who did come off the bench and there are some fans who fear Tudor not fancying the Dutchman is hurting their survival bid.
If they wish to act then Spurs must do so now, to give maximum time to get a replacement in and for them to work on the grass with those players not heading off on international duty. Free of Cheltenham, Harry Redknapp returns to the rumour mill. But, like after Thomas Frank was sacked in February, the options out there are few and far from ideal.
Equally, Spurs have been ravaged by injuries all season. Only a shell squad is available to Tudor, and, like their league campaign, the situation has threatened to get worse before it gets better. Mathys Tel, Spurs’s brightest spark on Sunday, went off with a suspected injury in the second half and will be scanned to see if he can still report for international duty. It prompts the question: dismal though Tudor’s record is, is it certain that a third manager of the season would do a better job with the players available?
And there is the obvious point, too. Would the players really benefit from yet more upheaval and another managerial change? Perhaps they would. Perhaps it would be third time lucky as Spurs make a late beeline for safety.
Or perhaps Tudor’s replacement would not have enough time to instil their own identity and get a tune out of them, too little too late. The Tottenham hierarchy will know they would risk taking one step back but never quite getting the two steps forward.
Spurs hired Tudor as a sergeant major to kick some life into a failing troop shot of confidence. More often than not, though, what players stuck in a rut need is an arm round the shoulder, not a crack of the whip. Whatever they decide, it is patently clear in this will-they-won’t-they moment that Tudor at Tottenham is not working.
