Well, Spurs chairman Daniel Levy has wielded the axe as expected and Nuno Espirito Santo is the latest head coach to exit the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
The Portuguese coach, who led Wolves to the Premier League and into Europe has been in the Spurs hot seat for just four months but Levy has seen enough. Consecutive defeats to West Ham United and Manchester United, which saw Spurs go over two hours without a single shot on target was enough evidence for the board to sack the head coach.
Nuno is the third manager to fall off the Premier League managerial merry-go-round this season, after trigger happy Watford fired Xisco Munoz, after he led the newly promoted Hornets to a steady start to the new campaign, and wealthy Newcastle potted their manager Steve Bruce. Claudio Ranieri has taken up the task at Vicarage Road and Spurs have moved quickly to confirm the appointment of another former Chelsea boss, Antonio Conte, as their new head coach. Having won the Scudetto with Inter Milan last season, Conte left in the summer and has been a free agent since. Meanwhile, Newcastle are reported to be in talks with former Arsenal and current Villarreal head coach, Unai Emery, to fill their managerial void.
As boards begin to panic when winter sets in, we can expect more departures dominating the Premier League 2021 news. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has been under the microscope at Old Trafford. Ironically, it may well be the 3-0 beating the Red Devils handed to Spurs on Sunday which saved OGS and sacrificed Nuno. The 47-year-old was only hired by the London club in June and his coaching staff have also been sent packing.
It’s a ruthless business!
Conte was said to be keen on the Manchester United job should Ole fall on his sword, so things might have been very different had Spurs won the Sunday clash. Reports were already circulating in Italy that Conte was in discussions with the North London club even as Nuno was clearing out his desk, so you can’t excuse Levy of dragging his heels on this one. Conte has signed an 18-month contract to take him to the end of the 2022/23 season and he takes control of the club for the visit to Rafa Benitez’ Everton on Saturday. Here at SBOTOP we’ll be all over that mouth-watering clash, so keep it here for all the pre-match stats and the best range of Asian Handicap Betting odds.
Apparently, the 52-year-old Conte was targeted by Levy in the summer but there was insufficient time for him to agree on a deal… and Nuno stepped in. But now he’s in the hot seat, Spurs fans will hope the man who led Chelsea to the 2017 Premier League title and the 2018 FA Cup can end the club’s long trophy drought. On his arrival at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium Conte said: “Last summer our union did not happen because the end of my relationship with Inter was still too recent and emotionally too involved with the end of the season, so I felt that it wasn’t yet the right time to return to coaching.
He didn’t wait long though; Nuno was in charge for just 17 games. After winning his first five competitive games in the hot seat, a 3-0 defeat to Crystal Palace ended the Portuguese’ boss’s honeymoon, and a 3-1 defeat to arch-rivals Arsenal was unforgivable in the eyes of many supporters. His team was blown away by the Gunners in the first half and there have been too many lifeless performances in recent weeks as Spurs racked up seven defeats in total.
The latest Premier League 2021 betting odds pitch the Whites as seventh favourites to win the title. They won’t top the league, but a seventh-placed finish will see them in Europe again; though the galling point for the Spurs fans is that Arsenal are widely tipped to finish higher.
So what does Conte need to do to make a rapid improvement on Spurs’ current ninth place? Well, he needs to shore up the defence, a task which he is more than capable of completing quickly. But the Spurs back-line has been in poor shape, with only six Premier League clubs conceding more goals this season. Then there is the obvious issue of a seriously blunt attack. Harry Kane was booed by supporters after the limp surrender to Manchester United and Conte will try to re-invigorate his star striker, linking him up once again with Heung-Min Son.
And for Nuno, well maybe he’ll fancy a return to his homeland where he successfully managed Porto; or he might just wait for the next Premier League sacking!
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