Temporary New Dawn

Article By Shaun Simon

So Andre Villas-Boas has finally cleared out his office at the training centre in Enfield, leaving us either excited or anxious about where our season goes from here. I myself was generally a supporter of our former Manager until the past month when our two recent batterings sapped us of our confidence and motivation.

To be fair on Villas-Boas he was against it from day one. I remember when Redknapp had taken the job and his first move was to convince Levy to abolish the footballing director scenario in order to run the club his own way. A manager of Redknapps stature was nobody to be bullied into doing anything he didn’t want to. He had a great reign where he had taken us as far as he could and the rest was history. From there, a few coaches were mentioned throughout the summer before last but we went for AVB. My feeling at the time was that from the coaches in contention for the job including Brendan Rogers, Roberto Martinez and Laurent Blanc among others with growing reputations, we took a manager whose recent reputation was somewhat in tatters.

I had a feeling that possibly AVB would have been the easiest to manipulate and effectively be put in his place and kept there, effectively the easiest to bully. I never opposed AVB because of the Chelsea link, but I did oppose based on his nightmare at Stamford Bridge. From the start he was denied the clean sheet most managers start a job with, even from the terraces. He had everything to prove such as temperament, tactics, team selection and man-management. He was here to stay so many of us began to force ourselves to back the new boss, initially through gritted teeth. I myself became quite protective of AVB mostly due to every man and his dog having an unnecessary pop at him from all angles. From the beginning I did notice his tactical changes and playing style coming into play from his early friendly matches, bearing in mind many Spurs fans a few months previous were scalding Redknapp for having no plan B, and worse still having no tactics whatsoever (which they tend to forget). I managed to convince myself his time at Chelsea had been a learning curve in his own development and hoped positively for the best.

How does a chairman help his new manager achieve his ambitions of regular Champions League qualification? We had a new manager who was already under intense pressure, scrutiny and ridicule from the media. Our best player and the hub of the team had been tapped up by Real Madrid, not for the first time either. Our Dutch star pining for a move to Germany. How do you try and get your new manager through this? Do you allow him to purchase the few men he feels he needed for the push or do you play brinkmanship with your fellow club owners and chairmen until 23:30 transfer deadline day leaving your new head coach feeling a tad bit mugged off.

Also, are you forced to work alongside a couple of former players who had been brought in by the previous manager, one of the two believing he’s being groomed for the job himself some day, lurking around in the shadows. In previous regimes I totally understood Chris Hughton being around as an absolute club-man who if anything could give his foreign boss the occasional heads-up on the ‘Tottenham way’. Is this former player i.e. Tim Sherwood allegedly having a say in your incoming transfers? Are you given a random assistant such as Stefan Freund to help complicate things? Maybe this is why Levy wanted a young manager, so he can have carte blanche to overrule and cause havoc within his own project. I’m asking myself would Levy had gotten away with these actions against a stronger and better reputed young manager who if was only moving on the up if they parted ways. We narrowly missed out on Champions League qualification and this is where I think everything turned on its head. The power struggle within White Hart Lane had a huge shift. Our often ridiculed head coach was now the toast of Europe amid rumours of interest from Real Madrid, Paris Saint Germain and a handful of other European giants whose managing jobs were looking insecure. It was apparently leaked to the press from the Napoli board that given the job at the San Paolo he could spend the transfer budget any way he had seen fit. To his credit Villas-Boas remained loyal to his project and we looked forward to the pre-season with increased vigour.

Once again the recipe for disaster had that burning aroma floating through the air. It was coming with all the new signings but not necessarily in positions where we needed personnel. That question was always burning with me of who is buying these players. Though I was totally seduced by all of these new faces coming into the club I had that niggling worry in the back of my mind. If this ‘project’ was planned for the long term, why the enormous changes to the playing staff? I’d of thought two marquee signings for immediate impact and a couple of squad members to bed in may have been more fruitful but I’m only an armchair manager sitting behind my TV remote. The giants of World football would’ve had no intention of signing for Spurs and we know that, but there are many top tier players who could be persuaded to join us, a few of those in the right places would have been great but for the fun and games of the board a handful slipped through our fingers. By that time Franco Baldini had signed on as director of football so as to who was responsible for the incoming transfers we’d never truly know. I personally do not believe this system works, as a manager you live and die by your tactics, results and recruitment. All of these excuses about the D.O.F. taking the responsibility of travelling and the nitty-gritty of transfer negotiation out of the hands of the manager are rubbish. If the manager doesn’t have the time to travel the globe for playing staff let the chairmen go. The D.O.F. is not making the job any easier. He’s just a scout with too much power. If in my mind I want an attacking playmaker and you give me Europe's best off-the-ball midfield runner though he may be a great player he isn’t what I want. Then after a couple of these situations I’m forced to integrate them into my own tactical blueprint. When it doesn’t work out I turn my back slowly to my senior staff and allow the daggers to dig deep.

AVB was no angel either, during his first season he worked well with what he had in hindsight. No playmaker, a decent team let down by our main striker at a vital point of the season who decided that because he had signed on a permanent basis he didn’t give a damn anymore. We won’t know until the dust truly settles with time what happened between Villas-Boas and Benoit Assou-Ekotto, but to banish him and Adebayor to the youth team to train without either buying replacements or lobbying with the board to buy them was criminal. Within any squad if you start the season with only one man in that given position and assume he’ll stay injury free until next transfer window sods law he’ll get hurt. If you go into a game and cant decide which of two strikers for example to warm the bench then decide to gamble, name them both and travel with no back-up goalie, sods law your goalkeeper is going to have a freak injury during the first half of that mammoth match. As far as Adebayor is concerned, I can understand why he was banished, then again I don’t know the ins and outs of what happened between them. There comes a point where your man-management skills come into play. There came a point where the tactics weren’t working so sometimes you have to make a decision for the team. You have to work the player back into the team quickly if it’s for the greater good and if he doesn’t perform you’re justified in letting him really rot in the reserves. Redknapp was great in that respect regarding Assou-Ekotto, he made a few remarks in his early days as manager on BAE’s general attitude but somehow managed to squeeze every bit of ability from Benoit and made him one of the leagues best full backs during his last season in charge. He brought in Adebayor on loan from city and worked magic with him too, but a mathematical brain has no chance of getting the best out of your players. I couldn’t even say he got the best out of Gareth Bale. Our former flying winger had such an attitude that couldn’t be coached, he found a burning desire within himself to be as good as Messi and Ronaldo and eventually play at the highest level with or without us and thus relentlessly took his own path terms of his own professionalism so no matter who had been in charged Bale would have progressed. There are a few players throughout our recent times who would have profited from that type of attitude.

I’ve heard so many say AVB should have been granted more time, I definitely thought that after the Manchester City beating as I understand everyone takes a hiding at some point. I thought if he can be a bit more flexible in his tactics he can get us firing again, it would have never been a rapid change of fortune but we scraped two wins against inferior opposition leading up to the Liverpool game. We can’t win every match so losing that game respectfully wouldn’t have been crime of the century. We we’re still among the leading bunch within a tight league but it was the manner of that loss.

We’ve seen every team in the top four take a proper beating, that’s just football. AVB was always on the defensive off the field. Every loss taken would be under the microscope, so to get so heavily beaten twice in a month it was always going to be curtains. After the Man City game it was basically back him or sack him, and eventually they did the latter. I look at those two beatings, I look at players being used out of position, and I look at last season. Last season aside from Bale and his final kick winners we looked awful at times but at least we had fight. I’ve spoken a lot on players being used incorrectly but last year they had a very decent seasons as battlers. When a team with the individual quality such as ours get humiliated in the fashion of those two games in the space on a month something is wrong. We had two scenarios, either he was no longer able to motivate his players or the players themselves let him down behind the scenes, either way its irreparable damage, there is no coming back from that. I couldn’t see AVB continuing with us winning narrowly until the next six-pointer then failing miserable again. After the Liverpool game if the board were serious AVB had to go.

All in all, I’d say it was sour from day one. In the end egoism ruined the season, a chairman who can’t allow his employee to do his job and be his own man. Then a manager who lacked the ability to look at situations from the outside in and embrace his errors with improved judgement and humility. We witnessed a working environment in which we failed to see everybody pulling in the same direction. Through all this not one of the main protagonists was prepared to give in and just as in the legendary fantasy tales and movies throughout the generations, everything comes crumbling down in an epic mess.

There was a point a couple of weeks ago where I decided I didn’t care who really played and didn’t, looking at the bigger picture we have a great squad regardless of our problems. I only wanted AVB to fuse his intelligent formulae with our brand of champagne football and to let it develop slowly over the next few years with the odd tweaking here and there for full effect. Now he is gone and all we have is the chairman.

What can the chairman do to take us forward? Evaluate the non-playing team. If he had that much faith in Sherwood he should have appointed him instead of AVB but he didn’t and shouldn’t have either. Let him cut his teeth elsewhere in the lower leagues and if he proves himself as this future wizard of football management bring him home. Think hard, think slow and bring in someone he can trust from day one to be his own man. Let that man choose his own management team of trusted and equally qualified coaches to play great football and improve the players we have already. Give that man a budget to use on the players he thinks he needs. Make sure Baldini is not in a position of conflict with our new manager, that he acts as a master scout who the manager can look to for information on players on the radar and use his negotiating skills to bring the agreed players in. The chairman himself, keep doing the great job with the numbers that he’s been doing and often doesn’t get full credit for and let Baldini liaise with the selling boards, keep up the work all football chairmen should be doing in keeping us strong and healthy from a financial viewpoint and lets get this new stadium built.

The season is not dead yet. This is a stutter in our progression. This is a transitional season for everyone bar Arsenal and Liverpool. I still have warm feelings for AVB and hopefully some day he’ll come good, but I just hope and pray that the next manager that walks through our doors is given the adequate tools and support in order to take us to the Promised Land.

Come On You Spurs.

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