As Daniel Levy walked out of St James' Park on Sunday afternoon after watching the worst 21 minutes in Tottenham Hotspur's recent history, any thoughts of how to turn things around accelerated.
The Spurs chairman headed down from the stands, through the tunnel and past the dressing room where the post-match inquest was taking place among the players before walking out of the main reception to get to the airport for the flight home. Levy's club needs action, it needs direction and leadership and the supporters need something to grasp on to in order to believe that this was the worst it can get.
Cristian Stellini will not be Tottenham's next manager. He will likely return to Antonio Conte's side when his stint in the hot seat comes to an end and that may well be far sooner than he hopes after Sunday's debacle, with discussions having taken place internally about making yet another change less than a month after his mentor's exit. football.london asked Stellini about his future on Sunday, he grimly said it was not a question he could answer.
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For Levy, the next permanent manager has to bring a new fresh direction and help instil a philosophy that runs throughout the club. In recent years, the football being played within Tottenham's academy has not resembled or mirrored the first team in any shape or form. That perhaps is the biggest indicator that there was never any real belief in the long-term future of the football on display at the top. Spurs did not want their stars of the future playing that way.
The club's dream, as for any side, is to see their academy players progressing to the first team and the easiest way to do that is for them to enter seamlessly into a familiar system that they have grown up working within.
The clearest academy to first team pathways across European football have a defined methodology from top to bottom and that is one aspect that Spurs have tried to reintroduce in recent years with the appointment of Andy Scoulding as Head of Football Strategy and Simon Davies as Head of Coaching Methodology.
Yet it remained noticeable under Conte that while he was using a back three and wing-backs, throughout the academy the back four remained in their teams. Yet if the back three was only a passing experiment for the first team, it's concerning that its squad was built for such a system with seemingly little regard for the long-term.
Levy must now appoint a new head coach who can help define the style of the club with the "attractive, entertaining football" of his unkept promise in 2021.
There are no excuses this time around as there are plenty of candidates who can do that. Mauricio Pochettino was the obvious one but Levy never contacted him and now the Argentine looks set to take on the same role at mega-spending local rivals Chelsea, a move that will only further outrage the Tottenham fanbase.
There are other up and coming options who can help create a philosophy at Tottenham like Vincent Kompany, Arne Slot, Ruben Amorim and former Spurs midfielder Michael Carrick is quickly making a name for himself in the Championship with Middlesbrough.
Graham Potter, no doubt bruised and battered from his Chelsea experience, would also come with his attractive style of play, while Brentford's Thomas Frank has his beliefs on how football should be played. Potter's Brighton successor Roberto De Zerbi is leading the way this season over many with his football style but does not appear desperate at this point to leave the well-constructed project on the south coast.
The standout candidate to tick every box for Levy would be Julian Nagelsmann. The 35-year-old was placed on gardening leave by Bayern Munich last month and although there were questions raised about some aspects of his man management and overloading the players tactically, the young German has retained his wonderkid reputation.
He won the Bundesliga with Bayern in his first season and had only lost three league games all season this time around and his team were in the Champions League quarter-finals after winning every game in the competition with seven clean sheets in eight matches when the German giants parted company with him in March.
Some might now point to the fact that his replacement Thomas Tuchel has won only one of the seven matches since - his first one against Dortmund. Since Nagelsmann's exit Bayern have crashed out of the Champions League and German Cup and remain exactly where they were in the Bundesliga table, second and a point behind Dortmund.
Nagelsmann has links with Tottenham. The club made enquiries with his camp on two previous occasions and received positive responses, before appointing Jose Mourinho the first time and then eventually Nuno Espirito Santo the second. On that second occasion, Bayern entered the picture and Nagelsmann's heart was set.
The young coach did develop a real affinity with the north London club during the Pochettino era, seeing a similar coaching ethos to his own.
However, when Spurs parted company with Conte in late March just three days after Nagelsmann's Bayern exit, the indications were that the German was not keen on the move at that point.
There are suggestions now in his homeland that with him now out of the running for the Chelsea vacancy - both sides insisting it was their choice - and Carlo Ancelotti seemingly set to see out the final year of his contract at Real Madrid, Nagelsmann is more open to the idea of the Tottenham project.
Although Spurs wanted to avoid being anyone's fall back option, the prospect of Nagelsmann ticks every box for Levy. The former RB Leipzig coach is a glamour appointment - one that could revitalise a beleaguered Harry Kane - but also a project manager, able to work with young players, emerging stars and big names, although some at Bayern might suggest otherwise at times this season.
Nagelsmann's tactical flexibility will also bring various formations into play. His Hoffenheim side would switch from a back four to a back three from game to game, as would his Leipzig team.
At Bayern, he would mostly play with a 4-2-3-1 but would occasionally switch to a 3-4-2-1 when the need arose, particularly in his final weeks at the club in response to a lack of goals in January and it duly brought a string of victories and goals before the defeat at Leverkusen that sealed his unexpected fate.
Nagelsmann will often switch formations mid-match with the players loaded up with various systems and tactics to enable them to adapt to his calls from the sidelines. The young German relies on tactically intelligent players who can handle what he asks of them.
That flexibility rather than working within a rigid system could help Levy salvage some of the assembled Conte squad that might otherwise head out.
Pedro Porro, for instance, is a £40m wing-back signed from Sporting in January despite the widespread belief that the Italian head coach was unlikely to be at the club beyond the end of the season. Sunday's debacle showed that the 23-year-old has plenty of work to undergo if he is to become a Premier League right-back but under someone like Nagelsmann, his wing-back talents would not need to be dispensed with and he could be trained to play both roles.
Nagelsmann's Bayern side had scored 112 goals in 37 games this season when he left, conceding just 34. Last season they managed 143 goals in 47 matches, conceding 50. It's not just about Bayern's dominance though. His Leipzig team scored 193 goals in 95 matches and Hoffenheim 257 in 136 games.
Naglesmann's contract situation at Bayern could mean a wait until the end of the season and potentially another Ryan Mason caretaker shift if Stellini does, as is becoming increasingly expected, depart.
However, if Tottenham's interest in the young German is indeed now reciprocated, even after a collapse that would have been shown around the world, then it's a no-brainer for Levy. He should leap at the opportunity and as soon as possible.
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