'He's the Baldy, Beardy Pound Shop Mourinho'

"Nuno!  Nuno! He's the baldy, beardy pound shop Mourinho! Nuno-no-no-no!."  Which is as far as my attempts to come up with a suitable 'Nuno' terrace chant got before Spurs sacked him. Which means, of course, that despite losing three nil, we actually won the 'El Sackico' against Manchester United as they are still saddled with Ole as their manager.  I hate to celebrate someone losing their job but, really, it was a mercy killing.  It was better to put Nuno (not to mention Spurs fans) out of their misery at this early stage - he was clearly floundering and his standard tactics of boring the opposition to the stage where they'd make a  mistake then try to snatch a late goal for a one nil victory, just weren't going to cut it. But is Antonio Conte the answer?  I have no idea, but I like the thought of him and Daniel Levy trying to co-exist - that inevitable clash of egos promises to, eventually, explode into a shit show of epic proportions.  But it could well be a fun ride until we get there. To get back to Nuno, his appointment and rapid dismissal once again raises questions in my mind as to the actual competence of footballing professionals.  He was apparently appointed after our 'genius' Managing Director of Football, Fabio Paratici, apparently convinced Chairman Daniel Levy that, in spite of the evidence of four years of his managing Wolves, Nuno was the manager capable of delivering on Levy's post-Mourinho promise of 'attacking football'.  I mean, anybody who had watched Match of the Day could have told them Nuno's specialty was boring, defensive football.  So, even I could have advised Levy better (and less expensively) than the 'expert' Paratici.

But what has most interested me about this sorry saga has been the way in which certain sections of the Spurs fandom - you know, the ones who don't actually seem to like their club of choice, let alone football as a whole - have used it as a bandwagon for their eternal complaints about the club's ownership.  'Enic out!'  Levy out!' they keep crying, laying the blame for decades of underachievement at the feet of the  owners and chairman.  Yet who do they want to replace them?  Who, nowadays, could possibly afford to buy a Premier league club, (particularly one with assets like the new stadium)?  The answer, of course, is only a multi-national corporation like Amazon or, more likely, some billionaire or cartel of billionaires.  Worse still, it could be a front organisation for one of those oil rich Arab states.  Does anybody honestly think that any of them would be any better owners than Enic?  The club would be merely a subsidiary to a corporation, or a plaything or a cash cow for the billionaires or oil states.  Then there's the moral aspect - the way in which these corporations or billionaires make their money or treat their workers are often highly dubious.  The oil states are even worse with their appalling human rights records.  Sure, Joe Lewis, the power behind Enic might well have obtained his fortune by means some find questionable, but I don't think that playing the markets or (allegedly) shorting the pound, ranks on a par with the oppression of workers rights, the denial of women's, not to mention LGBQT rights, let alone state sanctioned murder of dissident journalists.  Not even Chelsea's Roman Abramovitch registers on that scale.  So these 'Enic out' types should be careful of what they wish for - they clearly don't recall the pre-Enic ownership days, of Alan Sugar and, before him, the Scholar family, who consistently failed to spend on the club and were happy to let it languish in mid-table mediocrity. (Or even relegation, in the seventies).  Still, they'll soon have a new chant, I'm sure: 'Conte out!', no matter how well or badly he does, but just because, if he comes, he'll be an Enic signing.