Don't kid yourself that the decision was harsh.
If anything, Spurs put Nuno Espirito Santo out of his misery.
Give managers more time all day long if their players are responding to him. Back them if you can see signs of an identity and if results suggest your work behind the scenes is bearing fruit.
At Spurs there were none of those things. Saturday’s failure to score against a Manchester United team that previously couldn’t defend to save their lives provided a brutal insight into an appointment that simply wasn’t working.
Nuno had lost authority on the touchline, in the dressing room and within the fanbase. Nobody believed in him.
At Wolves he was an upgrade, the man who had led them into the promised land of the Premier League. For many at Spurs he was a downgrade, the guy the club initially turned their noses up at, then settled for after failing to land a string of higher profile targets.
So ending it after just 17 games wasn’t premature. It did him a favour.
Only bottom-of-the-table Norwich have scored fewer Premier League goals than Tottenham's nine from ten games this season.
No top flight team has had fewer shots on goal.
Saturday was the first time Spurs failed to have a shot on target in a Premier League home game for eight years - damning when United had previously kept just one clean sheet in 22 games in all competitions.
Players had already grown fed up of Nuno’s safety-first tactics and were openly making that clear. The signs first manifested themselves after Arsenal demolished them in the north London derby humiliation two months ago.
Wins against no-mark teams in the Europa Conference League and Newcastle, one of the worst teams in the Premier League, papered over the cracks.
United exposed them at the weekend. Kane’s disinterest in the game screamed that he’d switched off.
Sky Sports pundits Jamie Redknapp and Roy Keane were deriding Spurs as “a laughing stock”, “gutless” and “boring to watch” over the past 72 hours.
Spurs had to act. An emergency board meeting was held on Sunday and that was that.
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The club’s players, told to expect the arrival of Conte, are already energised, excited and finally motivated to rescue a season that had been threatening to turn to dust.
They won’t know what has hit them of course, with the Italian not a man likely to suffer the kind of moody behaviour and underachievement indulged for far too long.
Nuno, a good man, will not be down for long.
The potential resurgence of the team under Conte, however, will provide an indicator as to just how much the Spurs players had downed tools on the Portuguese.
