The end when it came was the complete antithesis of those angry final words shouted by Antonio Conte just eight days before.
It was the briefest of Tottenham Hotspur statements, put out at 10.20pm on a Sunday night to mark the end of a tempestuous and always doomed relationship. It was akin to the simple changing of a Facebook status from 'married' to 'single' via 'it's complicated', published the moment the ink was dry on the paperwork and legal agreements.
Daniel Levy's latest fascination with a manager who boasted a glittering CV honed at clubs entirely unlike Spurs had once again ended in divorce.
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This time the Tottenham chairman's feelings towards his ex were clear. He uttered just three sentences and not one of those few words mentioned the Italian.
"We have 10 Premier League games remaining and we have a fight on our hands for a Champions League place. We all need to pull together. Everyone has to step up to ensure the highest possible finish for our club and amazing, loyal supporters," he said.
Contrast that with Jose Mourinho's departure a little over two years before.
"Jose and his coaching staff have been with us through some of our most challenging times as a club. Jose is a true professional who showed enormous resilience during the pandemic," Levy said. "On a personal level I have enjoyed working with him and regret that things have not worked out as we both had envisaged. He will always be welcome here and we should like to thank him and his coaching staff for their contribution."
Even Nuno Espirito Santo's handful of months got a mention from Spurs' managing director of football Fabio Paratici later that year.
"I know how much Nuno and his coaching staff wanted to succeed and I regret that we have had to take this decision," he said. "Nuno is a true gentleman and will always be welcome here. We should like to thank him and his coaching staff and wish them well for the future."
This time there were no words for the departing head coach other than the standard generic club line at the top of the brief statement: "We can announce that head coach Antonio Conte has left the club by mutual agreement. We achieved Champions League qualification in Antonio’s first season at the club. We thank Antonio for his contribution and wish him well for the future."
There was no mention of Conte's name from Levy and perhaps even more tellingly no involvement of Paratici at all. The mess that surrounds the club's managing director of football from his Juventus time is set to reach a head now with a number of different investigations ongoing and the verdict on the appeal to the Italian football federation set to be decided upon.
There is also a court case against Paratici and 11 other former Juventus executives which was due to begin on Monday but has now been postponed. It was a preliminary committal hearing in Turin, as part of the Prisma investigation. It was to be decided there whether to indict the 12 people accused of overseeing alleged financial malpractice, and whether they should stand trial. Those involved, including Juventus' former chairman Andrea Agnelli and vice-president Pavel Nedved, deny any wrongdoing.
Conte slipping out of the club's history in the middle of the night is entirely in-keeping with the messy eight days that preceded his exit. It ended a week of uncertainty in which the Spurs players had no idea what was happening in the wake of that explosive press conference an hour after the final whistle at St Mary's.
Conte had labelled them all "selfish", "11 players that play for themselves" and he had criticised the culture of the club for the past 20 years. He later attempted to clarify to the board that he was not criticising them but everyone knew exactly what he was saying and few disagreed with him, even if he did omit any potential blame for himself.
With the Italian remaining in his homeland all week, the Tottenham players and the staff around the club expected him to stay there but with each passing day so the thought of an awkward return began to creep into people's minds.
It did not come to pass. In the end it was as meek and understated a departure for Conte as Tottenham's exits had been from the various cup competitions during his 16 months in charge.
What was unusual was that all of his staff currently remain at the club, apart from, understandably, his brother Gianluca, a technical and analytics coach, who has joined him in leaving Spurs. For so many to have remained, the outgoing head coach must have given his blessing.
For Antonio Conte has left, eventually termed as a mutual agreement and he is completely gone. No gardening leave, just a name now etched within Tottenham's long list of former managers - the 12th sacked during Levy's two decades at the club.
There have been no social media posts of farewell or thanks yet from those players he labelled as selfish. Some will come as they process the news in the hours and days ahead but much of what they had known in recent weeks while Conte was recovering from the emergency surgery to remove his gall bladder remains in place.
Cristian Stellini has stepped up as interim head coach and Ryan Mason as his assistant. Both are popular with the players and some might point out that the team was winning under their lead until it was announced that Conte was set to return later that week.
Conte did make an impact at Tottenham and his methods swept them back into fourth place last season and a road back into the Champions League and despite an inconsistent mess of a campaign this time around they do currently sit in the top four.
However, he was struggling to have that same impact in recent months, not helped by the difficult circumstances dogging him off the pitch, and in the end torching his relationship with the players in the most public of ways was always likely to bring a premature close to a tenure he didn't always appear to be desperate to see out anyway.
The appointment of Stellini and Mason brings a continuation in some aspects but also a chance for both men to step out from Conte's shadow and show what Tottenham will look like with only their input. Injuries - particularly Ben Davies being out for up to six weeks - might prevent a natural switch to a back four but the voices of both Stellini and Mason will be the only ones the Spurs players hear now.
Both men oversaw the victories against Manchester City, West Ham and Chelsea, before it was announced that Conte was returning the following weeks and the defeats at Sheffield United and Wolves came before he arrived back in the UK.
When Mason took on the interim job after Mourinho left, football.london asked him what the Tottenham fans could expect from a Ryan Mason Spurs side.
"I'd hope to think it's what a Tottenham Hotspur side would historically look like. I want us to be brave and aggressive, to play like Tottenham Hotspur," he said before winning four out of his six Premier League matches in charge.
Mason, who was highly rated by Conte, will now have more of a voice and both he and Stellini will know that the Spurs fans will need to see an uplift in performances in the weeks ahead if the duo are not to be simply termed as 'Conte's men'.
For Tottenham, the decision is a gamble. There are still 10 matches yet to be played that will decide whether they can secure Champions League qualification again, with Newcastle and Liverpool leading the chasing pack behind them with games in hand.
If Stellini and Mason can pull it off, they may well hope they can enter the frame to replace Conte on a more permanent basis.
The likelihood is that Tottenham have simply given themselves more time to extend the field of candidates they can select from, while also waiting to see what happens with Paratici, if they do not make that decision themselves beforehand.
It's worth noting that one of the top candidates, Julian Nagelsmann, has not been sacked by Bayern but instead relieved of his duties and placed on gardening leave. There are some suggestions that the compensation figure for the 35-year-old could be far lower in the summer and it would have been a big ask for the young German to suddenly get his head into the mess at Spurs days after his sudden exit from the Bundesliga giants.
Spurs have given serious consideration to approaching Nagelsmann on two separate previous occasions and he will sit high up on their list again.
football.london revealed earlier this week that the young coach forged a real connection with the north London team during Mauricio Pochettino's tenure and became a big fan of their style of play under the Argentine. Nagelsmann is a believer in attacking from the front with a high pressing style and that idea was shared by Pochettino as he transformed Tottenham and turned them into a consistent top four side and took them to the Champions League final. Nagelsmann saw a kindred spirit in the Argentine and kept a keen eye on how Spurs got on.
If they do want Nagelsmann as their next manager then they could still have to move quickly because other top jobs could be available this summer, including the ones at Real Madrid and PSG and a string of vacancies at top clubs in Serie A.
The pause in proceedings will allow Tottenham to speak to managers who would not have been able to leave their clubs mid-season. Brighton's Roberto De Zerbi will enter the running, while Frankfurt coach Oliver Glasner was interviewed by Spurs back in 2021 over the vacancy after Mourinho left.
What say Paratici has if he remains will also be felt. The Italian is understood to have pushed for contact to be made for Thomas Tuchel's camp before Bayern stepped in this week and Spurs' managing director of football is also an admirer of former Spain and Barcelona boss Luis Enrique and Porto's Sergio Conceicao.
Levy also has close contacts in the Dutch game and they will be pushing the claims of Feyenoord's Arne Slot, who plays with a 4-3-3/4-2-3-1 and bears some similarities in style to Mauricio Pochettino. Thomas Frank will also have impressed at Brentford while Ange Postecoglou is drawing plenty of admirers at Celtic as is Vincent Kompany with Burnley.
Then there is Pochettino himself. Logic would suggest that had Tottenham wanted him then as a free agent he would be in place by now, but a resolution to the Paratici situation, with Pochettino not known to be a fan of sporting director set-ups, might bring some clarity to that.
It is also unclear not only just how united the powers that be at Spurs would be in admitting a mistake and picking up the phone to call Pochettino to return and save them but also whether the Argentine believes the time is right to step into the Tottenham experience again, particularly with all of those jobs likely to become available in the summer.
Whatever happens Tottenham cannot afford to have another farce of a managerial search as they did in the summer of 2021. They fumbled around, switching from one list of candidates to another after the arrival of Paratici only to end up with the ineffective Espirito Santo.
Then came the Conte era. There will be little sympathy for either side now as both knew exactly what they were getting into.
Spurs knew precisely what the Italian needs to succeed - they were well aware after talks in the summer of 2021 collapsed - and how he would react when he didn't get it and Conte knew exactly what the limitations were at the north London club.
It was a marriage of convenience at a time when there were no better offers on the table for either party. Now Conte leaves, likely with his reputation still intact as he will say he did what was asked of him, while Levy once again needs to rip everything up and start again under the ever-increasing scrutiny of a frustrated fanbase.
This campaign has been a chore for those Tottenham fans and it will soon be time for the club to announce a date for season ticket renewals. The timing could not be worse, particularly if they push the prices up after such a turgid season with no indication of what is to come next - including Harry Kane's future - and no end to the frustration for those "amazing, loyal supporters".
Conte's exit means that no Spurs manager has had a full season at the club since the 2018/19 campaign. That's an embarrassing fact for Levy and the powers-that-be at Tottenham and it only increases the pressure on them this summer.
The next manager will be the 12th the chairman has appointed in just 22 years, more than a manager every other year, and that ratio is only aided by Pochettino's five-and-a-half years in charge.
Spurs are a club far too used to constant change and upheaval beneath the boardroom level and that only draws eyes to what exactly is going on above.
So much has been done off the pitch and that is mostly why Tottenham Hotspur remains a club that will attract plenty of candidates able to take them forward.
It needs to be the right candidate though, the right fit, someone who wants to be at the club for the long term and most importantly - as events down the road have shown - is able to realise that ambition. He needs to be backed and shown the patience that comes with the understanding that sometimes a step or two backwards allows for huge strides forward.
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