Tim Sherwood spent four years at White Hart Lane as a player before falling out with then-boss Glenn Hoddle – but returned to begin his coaching career at the club in 2008.
He was in the right place to take over as Tottenham Hotspur first-team head coach in December 2013, replacing Andre Villas-Boas - but left the role at the end of the season amid criticism from players and fans alike.
He'd led the side to a sixth-place Premier League finish – but he’d also clocked up four-goal defeats against Manchester City, Chelsea and Liverpool.
So perhaps it wasn’t entirely surprising that during his last match in charge – a 3-0 victory over Aston Villa – he invited one of the supporters into the dugout, presenting him with his trademark gilet, and suggesting he might like to try and do a better job.
“That guy’s an expert, seriously,” Sherwood joked. “Every week he tells me what to do. So I have given him the opportunity to do the job.”
The fan in the hotseat rang into BBC’s 606 phone-in afterwards to enthuse about the entire experience.
“It was great humour from him [Sherwood],” he said. “Our season tickets are there so we sit near him every week.
“To be fair to him he's not frightened to talk with the fans and all season we've had good banter with him. He's always happy to chat.
“During the game I called some substitutions that I thought he should make and it just so happened he went on to make them.
"We were 3-0 up against Aston Villa and not really showing much so it was a good opportunity to get some young players on which he obviously agreed with.
“Suddenly he said: 'You know what? You might as well sit in the hotseat'. So I thought, why not?
"It was just surreal - I didn't know what to make of it. I didn't know if I’d get in trouble for going over the barriers."
Sherwood’s account was slightly different.
He said: “That guy sits up there every week I'm here, and he's telling me: 'Get him off, he's rubbish, he's an embarrassment, he's this, he's that', so I invited him down to show what he can do.
“He half-bottled it at first but in the end he took it up.”
Despite the sixth-place finish – and Sherwood’s much-mentioned 59.09 per cent win ratio - it had become increasingly apparent over the previous months that Sherwood would be leaving his job after the match.
“If I knew it was only five months, I wouldn't have done it to be perfectly honest,” he admitted then.
Still, he remains content with his record at Tottenham, sticking to his long-held line: “If I had started the season [as manager], we would have been in the Champions League."
