Is getting sacked as manager of Tottenham Hotspur necessarily a bad thing for the career of a coach?

Being martyred by Spurs chairman Daniel Levy certainly has its benefits at a club where successive incumbents, and indeed players themselves, have argued that the point of Spurs is something other than winning.

What is that? That Levy gets to run the club his way, and all else takes its place accordingly. All Spurs managers come up against the intractable problems of a fanbase at odds with Levy and whoever might now control what was the Joe Lewis stake in Enic, the investment company that holds an 86.58 per cent stake in the club.

All of which renders supporter patience paper-thin. While they might be up against better-resourced clubs with wealthier owners, Spurs might reasonably have expected to have won more trophies than just three in more than four decades, and only one under Enic.

This has been a bad league season, even by Spurs’ standards. In such circumstances, the accumulation of years of unhappiness at the club who never win anything means the recrimination is that much more brutal.

Naturally, as Ange Postecoglou heads towards his Europa League final reckoning, there is a tendency to believe that the best outcome for him is to effect a great turnaround.

That the heavily trailed post-season parting of club and manager is rethought, with Spurs’ first trophy since 2008, their first in Europe since 1984. Perhaps a reprieve along the lines of Alex Ferguson’s 1990 FA Cup triumph, a similarly dramatic buzzer-beater that changes history. Although for Postecoglou, the alternative is quite seductive too.

Ange........

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