The Premier League managerial sacking game is up and running.

 The Premier League managerial sacking game is up and running. 

So here we go again. We're at the beginning of November and fireworks night has come far too early. In fact to be precise three days early. The rockets are screaming into the air, the sparklers are fizzing with some effervescence and the Catherine Wheels have burst into the night sky with the most deafening crescendo. At Tottenham Hotspur the air is thick with cordite, dynamite and the kind of incendiary material that could explode in their collective faces if they're not careful. 

Today Spurs appointed yet another manager after the Portuguese Nuno Esperito Santo sheepishly sneaked out of the back door at Tottenham, the victim of that now customary sacking ordeal that has now become an almost frequent occurrence. The wealthy owners of football clubs have decided that enough is enough. Admittedly it wasn't as if we couldn't see it coming since poor Nuno didn't stand a chance or did he? Spurs are now in the middle of the most depressing sequence of defeats in recent games and the season isn't that old. 

On Saturday Spurs were beaten by a Manchester United side who, the week before, had been on the wrong end of a 5-1 thrashing by Liverpool at Old Trafford. But then Manchester United remembered the gravity of their own predicament and carried out the most traumatic execution since the last time Spurs lost their manager. These are deeply troubling times for everybody within the Spurs hierarchy but today Spurs replaced Santo with the former Chelsea manager Antonio Conte. 

The whole business of hiring and firing Premier League managers reminds you of the baggage carousel at an airport where huge suitcases slowly lumber around in circles and then go through the same rotation until somebody grabs hold of their bag or holdall and finds that it's almost midnight. From the outside it simply looks as though some managers are doing a whistle stop tour of Europe because Jose Mourinho almost ripped out the proud fabric and heritage of Spurs in no time at all. For Portugal read Italy. It's quite the most scenic route if you happen to be a football manager. 

Antonio Conte, Spurs new manager, has been this way before and has certainly got the handbook. At Chelsea things seemed to be ticking over quite nicely and efficiently until things went wrong. Chelsea started losing important matches and Roman Abramovich, their ridiculously rich Russian oligarch, almost notorious for his impatience, rolled the dice again, weighed up the permutations, saw that Conte was struggling and pulled the trigger. Conte had to go and there were no excuses or apologies. It's that way Antonio and there's your P45. 

Your mind travelled back to the beginning of the 21st century when a Swiss gentleman by the name of Christian Gross was shown with a Central Line Tube railway ticket on his way to Tottenham's old training ground in Chigwell, Essex. Gross, sadly, was about as useless as a chocolate tea pot  and the sense of squirming embarrassment was palpable. Sometimes being a football manager at any level can be as precarious as walking a tightrope in the circus or gambling thousands on the roulette wheel. 

Then there was Andre Villas Boas, another highly acclaimed boss at French Ligue 1 club Marseille who was lured to Tottenham because his reputation had been established and he looked the right fit. But Boas seemed to go nowhere, a man entrusted with leading Spurs out of the doldrums and then discovered that somebody had given him a bomb. Spurs last major trophy was a League Cup Final victory against Chelsea in 2008 and Boas was just another experiment that just shattered a test tube. 

At times the older Spurs supporters indulge in wistful recollections of the legendary Bill Nicholson. Bill Nick was Tottenham through and through and he was the one man who guided Spurs to the Double of FA Cup and old First Division League Championship in 1961. 60 years have now passed since those days of Olympian achievement at the old White Hart Lane and the natives are restless.

 Nicholson was a revolutionary, a new broom, inventive, always thinking ahead, progressive, an almost academic student of the Beautiful Game, moving counters around a board that represented his players positions, a tactical and technical genius. He was  a manager of brand new ideas, rich innovation, clever judgements and an avuncular figure who cared for his players and just wanted them to be the best. He even had a road named after him and famously lived next to the ground so devoted was he to the club. 

What on earth would Bill Nicholson have made of Spurs latest pickle. He'd have probably covered his eyes in shame and horror and wondered if the club had just lost its way. When Keith Burkenshaw took over Spurs in the late 1970s everything seemed to hang in the balance. But then in one incredible summer, Burkenshaw went out to Argentina and invested in two glistening gems. One was called Osvaldo Ardilles or Ossie and the other was Ricardo Villa or Ricky. Both Ardilles and Villa injected Spurs with a new lease of life and overnight Spurs became a formidable force, feared throughout the land. 

Tottenham will always have a soft spot for their celebrated young graduates such as Glen Hoddle, Steve Perryman, Terry Gibson and countless others who have squeezed through the revolving door at Spurs. Hoddle's talent was so sublime and natural that by the time he left the club, he was already an England player of some distinction and deservedly so. Perryman, for his part, came straight to the club from school and glided around at the back of Spurs defence like an emperor surveying his empire. 

Now though Spurs are quite literally back at the same drawing board. They came flying out of the blocks at the start of the season with a landmark 1-0 victory at home to Premier League champions Manchester City. They'd also tied down their own prized asset Harry Kane for another season and everything seemed to be going well. Spurs though imploded and unravelled like a threadbare piece of cotton. It was not a pleasant watch.

But more recently both West Ham and Arsenal beat Spurs and the last straw was what looked to be a humiliating and degrading 3-0 defeat at home to a struggling Manchester United side who are also juggling with too many plates. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, the striker who scored one of the winning goals that won the Champions League Final for United against Bayern Munich in 1999.

And yet football managers are still easily dispensable characters who seem to be only one game away from the bullet, the sack and ta ta for now. When Arsenal lost their first three games of the season to Brentford, Chelsea and Manchester City, most of us assumed that their likeable manager Mikel Arteta was about to be shown the exit door at Arsenal. But the club have sensibly persevered, not panicked and just retained their faith in a man who was, after all assistant, to Pep Guardiola at Manchester City. Such credentials could not be questioned. 

Then there was West Ham manager David Moyes, who was initially appointed as a firefighter at the club to stave off near certain relegation. But Moyes didn't seem a reputable enough name for a demanding club who were looking for a much higher profile man in charge. West Ham turned to the man who'd won the Premier League with Manchester City Manuel Pellegrini. Horribly, after a promising start Pellegrini plunged into the darkest hole with the East London club and by Christmas 2018, Pelligrini was about to face the firing squad and then promptly sacked. It was untenable and had to be done. 

From the depths of yet greater mediocrity and mid table buoyancy, Moyes got hold of West Ham, shook them to their senses and last season enjoyed taking West Ham to the rarefied heights of sixth in the Premier League and a place in the Europa League. The critics who wrote off West Ham dismissively as a side with little ambition, would now eat their words. No longer were they just treading water but a side to be reckoned with, a free flowing, quick passing, quick breaking attacking side released from fear and inhibition. 

Meanwhile Antonio Conte is back in London with Tottenham. Still, Conte wears those mournful dark suits and trousers, still animated and excitable at times on the touchline. Conte is still at war with referees, the length of the grass on the pitch and generally grumpy, irascible and fed up. It's hard to tell whether he's mellowed or not and if Spurs do respond to his angry gestures then we could be in for some fun. We'll look forward to those wild exhortations in the technical area and try to imagine how he'll react if Tottenham do win a trophy one day. Who on earth would be a football manager? It's a good question. Answers on a postcard please.