You can tell a lot about a manager's achievements in any workplace by the messages written in their leaving card. One-liners like "Good luck for the future" or "sorry to see you go" invariably really mean good riddance.
The heartfelt paeans of Spurs players taking to Twitter following the news of Mauricio Pochettino's dismissal, on the other hand, speak volumes.
There can be no denying that things at Spurs haven't been right for a while. With each game played this season, the gloss of the club's incredible run to the Champions League final has been flaking off in ever bigger chunks. Two points collected undeservedly from home fixtures against Newcastle, Watford and Sheffield United, combined with the fast-approaching anniversary of Spurs last league away win, would leave any manager vulnerable.
But, as the messages from his players show, Mauricio Pochettino isn't any manager. In his five and a half years in north London, Pochettino has elevated the club to places it hadn't been since before the Berlin Wall was constructed - let alone came down. He has taken players like Harry Kane and Dele Alli to heights they could not have imagined. He has made Spurs genuine title contenders and perennial Champions League qualifiers. He has led the club through two difficult years at Wembley and transitioned them into their new world-class home. All achieved with the most negligible of net spends on players.
Reacting to news of Pochettino's departure George Graham asserted on BBC Radio that the Argentine had unquestionably lost the dressing room. In truth what has happened at Spurs is far more nuanced. The current team peaked 18 months ago. Spurs unable to offer the financial rewards of Europe's other top clubs while building the new stadium have been unable to bring in the players needed to kick on. In-turn several of the top performers in the Pochettino era (Eriksen, Vertonghen, Alderweireld) have decided to plan for futures elsewhere, feeling the club has gone as far as it can within its existing parameters. They are right.
Pochettino is not blameless. His regular briefings to the media outlining his frustrations have sewn doubt. Worse, his pre-Champions League final remarks that a Spurs win would perhaps represent the perfect time for him to walk off into the sunset made a parting of the ways, at his initiation, seem a matter of when not if. Following the disappointment of that final in June the whole club has needed lifting -none of Tottenham's hierarchy has been able to provide it.
And so Spurs have taken the nuclear option. Dispense with a manager determined to develop a longterm culture, a man whose players upon his exit have called him a mentor and friend, a man universally liked throughout football - and appoint Jose Mourinho.
It was fitting that George Graham was asked for comment on Spurs choice of Mourinho. The selection is reminiscent of Graham's 1998 arrival at White Hart Lane. Reviled for his previous associations and perfunctory style of football, Spurs fans agonised whether the promise of silverware was enough to success-wash his past? Even as he won the 1999 League Cup the Tottenham faithful would only allow themselves to sing "Man in a rain coat's blue and white army" rather than speak Graham's name.
Graham had represented the last throw of the dice for then Spurs Chairman Alan Sugar. League Cup win aside it didn't work out. One of Daniel Levy's first acts, following ENIC's acquisition of the club from Sugar, was to jettison the unpopular Graham, ahead of an FA Cup Semi-Final, for Glenn Hoddle. We have come full circle. Levy in appointing Mourinho will hold his nose and hope success follows. How a famously parsimonious chairman, known for transfer window brinkmanship - even at the expense of securing the required players - will coexist with the volatile and spendthrift Mourinho remains to be seen. So too does the adaptation of a squad steeped in Pochettino's paternalism to the dictatorial Portuguese.
It seems a safe bet based on his recent acrimonious departures from other clubs, that when Mourinho leaves Spurs - which he inevitably will in the not too distant future - the leaving messages from players will read very differently to those written for Pochettino. Perhaps though they might just be accompanied by some silverware.