Tottenham stuck with its own chicken before the egg conundrum

As Tottenham searches for a manager, director of football, and viable transfers to strengthen the squad, the club is stuck with a chicken-before-the-egg conundrum.

Time is ticking, and Tottenham still hasn’t hired a director of football or a new manager. While Fabio Paratici is said to be consulting on a superficial, bit-part basis, Daniel Levy and Scott Munn’s priority is hiring a director of football.

Most elite, experienced sporting directors and football directors want to stamp their authority on the team they join, including selecting the next manager to take charge.

Few prospective football directors will be over the moon at the prospect of joining a club whose chairman hired a manager mere weeks before he was brought on board.

Unfortunately, Levy doesn’t have the luxury of waiting to hire a manager. Time is of the essence, and Spurs will want to avoid at all costs the situation they incurred in the summer of 2021 when no manager was in place a week before pre-season training.

So here we are, again, hoping for a competent director of football to swoop in and spearhead the hunt for our next manager. Although that’s about as likely as Levy announcing that he’s leaving the club, effective immediately.

That leads to another correlating issue.

Is Tottenham in a holding pattern regarding player transfers? Not only does the club have less money to spend after not qualifying for Europe, but they don’t have a manager or director of football to influence which players to pursue.

Surely Levy and Munn aren’t leading the hunt on all three fronts. Even the manager hunt, as we enter Day 67 without a gaffer at the helm, is overwhelming Levy and Munn, so how can they simultaneously find a director of football and worthy transfer targets?

And even if they were that productive and proficient, no manager or director of football would want to join a club that has made on-the-pitch personnel decisions without their input.

It all boils down to a complete and utter mess, even worse than the debacle of 2021. Time, however, is still on Tottenham’s side, at least for another week or two.

Then, heaven forbid, we’ll once again enter squeaky but time. And we all know what happened in 2021 when time was against us.