still only 31 but set for his second stint as Spurs’ detox caretaker after serial winners lose

Not many 31-year-old managers have precise previous experience of lifting a talented but brow-beaten squad after a serial winner’s constant negging.

In no sane world should Ryan Mason be a better bet as your manager than Antonio Conte.

But this is no sane world. This is Tottenham Hotspur. Mason is still only 31 but this wouldn’t even be the first time he’s stepped in for the run-in trying to repair the damage caused by the toxic narcissism of a serial winner who inconveniently kept losing football matches.

Back in 2021, as the Super League Fiasco swirled around football, Spurs decided to bin off Jose Mourinho six days before the Carabao Cup final against Manchester City and replace him with a 29-year-old who had never managed a game of top-flight football.

It’s become just another brick in the Spursy trophy-dodging wall. They sacked Sir Winalot! In the week of a cup final! Classic Spurs! But here’s the thing. They were right to do it.

Okay, half-right. Let’s not get carried away. Let’s not pretend it was ideal preparation for a final. And let’s also not pretend a big part of it was Daniel Levy trying to score an easy win with supporters after, like the rest of the Big Six, making a great big tit of himself over the Super League.

But there were only two errors. The first was in only sacking Jose Mourinho six days before a cup final rather than far, far sooner. It was clear what was happening.

The second is the unavoidable way it allowed Mourinho (and his vast army of boot-licking acolytes) to grow the idea that he might actually have won that cup final. It’s hard to say with total certainty, of course. The unpredictability is the beauty of sport. But he wouldn’t have won that cup final. He was way into the blame-shifting death spiral by then and the players were broken. He wasn’t focusing on a Carabao final.

This was a manager who had just been outwitted and eliminated from the Europa League by Dinamo Zagreb despite a 2-0 first-leg headstart and the pesky fact Dinamo’s manager had been sent to prison that very week. Mourinho couldn’t get the better of a team picked by a manager using his one phone call; in what world was he about to get the better of Guardiola’s City?

He’d also by this point lost his last six games against the other Big Six teams, including a 3-0 defeat to Guardiola’s City, got knocked out of the FA Cup after shipping five goals at Goodison Park, and overseen a run of one win in six games before…