Tottenham job has become a public meat grinder and the fans’ pain is more content

Ritualistic Spurs manager sacking is a marker in the year, but the failing lies with executives responsible for some really vague recruitment

Former Spurs managers Ange Postecoglou (left) and Thomas Frank.

Don’t talk about Spurs. Don’t talk about Spurs. Don’t keep returning to Spurs, bloodshot and shivering. Don’t end up twitching on a Manhattan street corner, nodding at Jean-Michel Basquiat as he drifts past, waiting for your Spurs man to appear out of a fire escape, uncork his Spurs pouch, and say what do you need, while you chatter about just wanting to return to the club DNA, whatever that is, nobody knows, but it’s Spurs, and Spurs is your wife and it’s your life and, you know, sources close to sources say a swoop for German wunder-coach Helmut von Wangerburg may actually be at an advanced … So, Spurs then. It’s true that the media are addicted to this club. But it is also an understandable response to an entity that has become a content machine, perfectly structured to meet the requirements of any moreishly successful streaming drama.

Those requirements are: action that is endlessly repeatable but always essentially the same. Nothing ever really happens. But there is still a strong sense of things always happening. And the main characters must appear to be stuck together inexorably in the same space, at least until they can be replaced by others who are also stuck together in the same space.