Tottenham Hotspur assistant coach Ryan Mason won’t be leaving for Brussels after all. Reports emerged Thursday morning that the 33-year old Mason and Belgian club RSC Anderlecht came to a “mutual agreement” NOT to appoint him as Anderlecht’s next head coach. Mason returns to Tottenham in his current role as (ostensibly) Ange Postecoglou’s No. 3 assistant.
Yesterday it looked like Mason was nailed-on for his first permanent head coaching position, after two stints as interim head coach of Tottenham. So why the change? We don’t know. It could be that Mason and Anderlecht officials looked at the opportunity and determined it wasn’t the right fit, or wasn’t the right time. Anderlecht are reportedly going to promote interim manager David Hubert as their next permanent head coach, likely for sake of continuity.
Anderlecht are 4-5-1 thus far in the Jupiler Pro League and sit fourth in the table, which is something of a disappointing start for a club used to competing for Belgian league titles. That’s probably why they’re looking for a new head coach, to be fair. It also means no reunion between Mason and former teammate (and Anderlecht club captain) Jan Vertonghen, which makes me a little sad.
Mason reportedly is very happy at Tottenham Hotspur and while he’s an ambitious young manager who will one day end up as head coach somewhere, that day is not today. That’s probably a relief to Postecoglou, who faced the real prospects of losing two of his top assistants to head coaching positions at other clubs, after Chris Davies left to head up Birmingham City earlier this fall. Postecoglou reportedly loves working with and developing young assistant coaches, but that’s a lot of churn for any club and I can’t imagine Mason’s departure wouldn’t have had a deleterious effect on the squad.