Who the f**k is Maureen Ho?

November the 20th, 2019. A date which will live in infamy….for Spurs fans at least. Because on this day, Tottenham Hotspur and in particular, Daniel Levy, committed arguably the most outrageous piece of self-sabotage witnessed by the footballing world since Sunderland’s Adam Johnson inexplicably starting volunteering to do the morning school run! You know what they say, if you are scared of paedophiles……grow up. Anyway, let me cast my mind back to those traumatic events of last Wednesday, before my world came crashing down around me. I was snoozing in bed, desperately trying to ignore what sounded ominously like a dinosaur orgy going on outside my bedroom window (seriously, Aussie birds are absolutely fucking mental) and as I rolled over to pick up my phone, I realised immediately that something had occurred. On any normal day, I might wake up to a couple of WhatsApp messages….yet another cat meme from my mum or an inappropriate dick pic from my cousin. But today, my phone was blowing up like a BP oil rig. On closer inspection, it transpired that Tottenham, in their infinite wisdom, had decided to sack Mauricio Pochettino, the man who had not only guided the club to their first ever Champions League Final (and most likely our last) but had also overseen the most successful and enjoyable period in our recent history and most certainly my lifetime. I was mortified….and also a little horny from the aforementioned garden orgy. But mostly mortified.

From MoPo to NoPo: Mauricio Pochettino has gone……lock, stock and barrel.

I am sure that most Spurs fan will concur that the decision to sack Pochettino didn’t really come as a massive surprise, especially when you consider how we have performed for most of 2019. In fact, over the last couple of months it has become apparent that the only forward line in the league that wouldn’t trouble our increasingly leaky defence is, ironically, our own. What was shocking however, was the rather cold and clinical nature with which he was despatched. I will be the first to admit that after 5 years of loyal service, I felt both upset and aggrieved for the man who, after years of neglect, had somehow taught us Spurs fans to love again. The majority of that anger was predictably reserved for the man who pulled the trigger, Daniel Levy. But after a couple of days, as the dust started to settle, I realised that there really wasn’t any point in being angry at Daniel Levy…..we should all be used to his shithousery by now.

Levy has certainly done some great things for this club behind the scenes but in base terms, he is a ruthless demagogue, renowned for treating people like objects and objects like…..well, also objects. The point is, I genuinely don’t think he knows the difference. Criticising Daniel Levy for making controversial decisions is basically the real world equivalent of taking a Grizzly bear to a toddlers birthday party and then getting pissed off when it inevitably mauls half of the kids and makes off with the picnic basket. It’s a fucking bear, how did you expect this to play out? Bears will always do bear things in much the same way as Daniel Levy will always do Daniel Levy things, such as prioritising the health of the club’s balance sheet over the health of the club’s team sheet. Let’s not forget, this is a man who reportedly once failed his annual physical because doctors discovered an abacus where his heart used to be and who famously once pinched a penny so hard that he gave himself copper poisoning (Disclaimer: these things may or may not have actually happened in real life, Poetic License number POE45985JK-0).

The Good Old Days: When Tottenham were not owned and run by Amazon Prime and being a Spurs fan wasn’t like living in a perpetual episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians.

So let’s disregard my PTSD for a minute and return to the cluster fuck that was Wednesday morning. Mauricio Pochettino hadn’t even had time to eject his Game of Thrones boxset from his office DVD player, when Sky Sports News announced who his successor would be. In a dramatic twist, Daniel Levy had inexplicably appointed a 56 year old lady of Chinese descent, Maureen Ho. A quick google search revealed that Maureen was the proud owner of a moderately successful nail salon in Enfield and had once made it into the local paper after discovering a kettle chip that looked an awful lot like Benjamin Disraeli. Not really the appointment that most Spurs had hoped for. But thankfully, it turned out that Sky Sports News had made a mistake and just minutes later, they announced that Pochettino’s actual replacement would be a 56 year old gentleman of Portuguese descent, Jose Mourinho. Once again, not really the appointment that most Spurs fans had hoped for. I am still in two minds as to which one would be the better fit in the long run. Jose has the experience but Maureen seems to have some very progressive ideas around zonal marking and the utilisation of the high press.

But of course, we went with Jose and bearing in mind that he has always been so disparaging about Spurs in the past, this seemed like a rather odd decision to be honest. The man has essentially become a walking meme in recent years and I have no doubt that our physio’s will already be hiring expensive lawyers in preparation for the inevitable sexual harassment claims that we will soon be reading about in Danny Rose’s weekly newspaper column. As we have seen on more than one occasion throughout his career, Jose is very much a short term solution and in recent years, he has turned out to be positively toxic for team morale once the 2 year honeymoon period is over. Unless of course, this is just a very small part of a much bigger, more ambitious Daniel Levy master plan, where he has invested most of our transfer budget over the last two years into a fully functioning Delorean and having finally managed to convince Mourinho to join Spurs, he will transport him back to 2009, when all of this might actually be relevant and/or impressive. Because nowadays, I’m afraid that Jose is not so much “The Special One” as he is “The Special, Once”. What could possibly go wrong, eh?

WHere’s your maureen ho, wHerE’s your maureen ho etc etc.

Unfortunately, what’s done is done. Poch was an absolute legend for us and he helped us achieve things that we never thought possible only 5 years ago. He worked under near impossible conditions for the majority of the time but ultimately, has ended up being the sacrificial lamb in Daniel Levy’s pursuit of building a world class stadium. If you couple this with the increasingly ludicrous contract situations of Eriksen, Alderweireld and Vertonghen and the prolonged lack of investment in the team, it would appear that Levy created a mess that Pochettino simply could not fix. And for that, he paid the ultimate price. Part of me feels that Daniel Levy got so carried away with his boyhood dream of trying to own an NFL franchise that he completely forgot that he had a day job to perform. Now, I am fully aware that my views on this debacle do not represent that of the entire Spurs fanbase, as many people seem happy that Poch has gone, so this is really just me speaking personally…..as well as correctly and objectively.

From my perspective, the biggest criticism of Spurs prior to Pochettino taking over was that we didn’t have a coherent long term strategy and that was valid. But then Poch came along and almost overnight, we finally had one….and it was working. But as soon as we encounter the first prolonged sign of trouble, Daniel Levy blinks. I think that this is the most disappointing part of all this. Pochettino had worked miracles on a shoe string and if anyone deserved the time and patience to turn things around, it was him. But unfortunately, with all of the money flying around in the Premier League nowadays, time appears to be the one thing that nobody can afford anymore, least of all Chairmen with big, chunky mortgages. Rightly or wrongly, we now have Jose Mourinho in charge and we have to pick ourselves up for a trip to West Ham on Saturday and for once, the much lamented Mourinho bus might actually come in handy….to smash up a load of pikey caravans!!! And even though it may take years for us to get over the disappointment of this heart wrenching break up, I guess the moral of the story is this: If you love something, let it go…..to Bayern Munich by the looks of things. COYS.

West Ham away this Saturday, lads. Don’t forget your tetanus shots!