What next for Spurs and Ange?

... do coaches win matches or do players win them?

By the time you read this, Spurs might have sacked Ange Postecoglu.

Or begun work on making a statue of him. Or both.

A season of polar performance opposites has left Daniel Levy staring at his hand with a call to make. All in or fold? He can’t check for much longer.

It’s that moment in Casino Royale when the heads turn to the man holding the cards and the mood music turns edgy. Your bet, Mr Bond.

A dozen managers down the line already, it’s a scene that Tottenham’s ‘M’ is all too familiar with. He’s had special agents go rogue on him before.

The twist in the plot this time is that Ange has just daringly completed his mission. 17^th is the new 4^th and Spurs not only have a trophy to parade but a season (or half) of Champions League football to look forward to. All their clouds suddenly have a silver lining.

Ange was an antidote appointment… he was, by design, a different solution to the same problem. A big part of the Australian’s defence has been that he was charged with putting on a better show. ‘Are you not entertained?’

What hasn’t changed is Levy’s dilemma. To back Postecoglu with further faith and funds at this moment is to follow his manager’s gospel like he did with St Jose, St Antonio, St Mauricio and the rest… follow their creed and doctrine to the letter despite the bible that is the league table saying Ange might not be the saviour after all.

Is one miracle enough to make the chairman a believer?

The thing is that the myriad of different world religions can’t all be right. And so neither can every coach like Ange and Amorim and Maresca that preach their own chosen ideology without any alternative but hell and damnation. They all think they’ve got the answer, the magic formula. But can you really believe in someone that is so certain about the uncertain world of football?

Levy knows that if he rolls the Postecoglu dice again he will be asked and expected to finance further signings that suit the AngeBall approach and style. Should the gamble fail, Spurs will be left with a squad of players that might not fit into the next manager’s system.

It’s the celebrity couple that have hired a wedding planner to fashion their big day only to fall out and break up on the eve of the wedding. What to do now with the Kyle and Annie personalised dinner service and all the other presents?

Just a good job that Daniel didn’t go for the ‘I love Ange’ tattoo on the stag weekend.

Sacking managers is not a barrel of laughs for either party. Nobody could question how much of themselves men like Postecoglu and Amorim give to their high profile, high risk jobs. Manchester United are next at the window to make exactly the same bet and wager more millions on expensive jigsaw pieces that fit into Amorim’s 3-4-3 puzzle. What if it’s not the wonder drug that Ruben seems to think it is? Change doctors again?

It's not a new riddle and there are no easy answers. My only contribution is to say I’m increasingly suspicious of coaches that tell you there is only one. If any single system was football’s cure-all panacea then every team would be playing it. There is no silver bullet in football.

Paris St Germain put on a bold master class of contemporary football in the Champions League final. Their movement, their interplay, their channelled energy, their ‘hang in the Louvre’ goals. Luis Enrique seems to have created a modern monster for every other coach in the game to study and swoon over.

But how did they begin the biggest match of their lives? Like a Graham Taylor team, that’s how!

The first kick of the command performance was a big hoof into touch. At the first whistle, Vitinha launched PSG’s favourite toy out of the pram as far away as he could so that they could begin the exhibition by defending an Inter throw-in deep in enemy territory.

The story goes that the late and lovely Taylor instructed Crystal Palace’s Andy Gray to do the same thing on his England debut and Gray refused. And yet the same pre-historic tactic for which Graham was often derided was Luis Enrique’s opening gambit in his strategic masterpiece. Inter Milan like a long throw. There were no snobs at the top table in Munich.

PSG did not discover Dembele, Barcola and Doue kicking a ball about in a Paris project, they paid top petrodollar for all of their key players. The state financing of this Paris project is an ongoing part of the club’s narrative but it’s been money well spent if you’re a PSG fan or a lover of the beautiful game or Luis Enrique. He has raw material to work with that Amorim and Ange can only dream about.

My media industry has created an analysis culture that affords both too much credit and too much blame on managers. We might even have spawned a generation of coaches that have begun to believe a little too much of the publicity we afford them. I want to believe and I do believe that football is still more art than science. Good breaks and bad breaks.

Good recruitment is vital for Tottenham Hotspur, Manchester United and every other club. But which should come first… finding good players that a good manager can organise and motivate… or finding a good manager with his or her own fixed ideas to specifically recruit to?

If I brought any conclusion home from Bavaria with me it is that players win football matches, not coaches.