Sherwood Needs to Change

Article by David Coates

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The dust has settled on the departure on Tim Sherwood, if in fact the dust ever moved. All Spurs fans expected Tim to go on Tuesday and it duly happened. Daniel Levy and the board didn’t hang around and put us, and Tim, out of his misery very quickly. We are now waiting for our new coach. Hopefully Levy will work with the same speed in appointing Sherwood’s replacement as he did with his dismissal.

I expect Tim to get a job back in football rather quickly. I think he has impressed chairman around the Premier League and the Championship. Norwich, WBA and Brighton are all clubs who need a manager and Tim’s name is being linked with all these clubs. Most people in the game think that Tim will be a success in the game, but I don’t. Most of these people have not experienced Tim Sherwood, we have.

The reason that I have this view is not because of Sherwood’s football knowledge or tactics, which have been poor in his time as first team coach with us, it’s based on his personality and attitude. Sherwood is a football throwback to the seventies and eighties as a football manager. They were brash and emotive characters who could be at logger heads with the board. All the great managers had this in their DNA. But that was then and this is now. Sherwood is working in a different era. I’ve previously labelled Sherwood as a Harry Redknapp mark two. This isn’t said in the positive and they have negative similarities.

Harry has never had any morals in football. This started with how he got the manager’s job at West Ham. He was one of Billy Bonds closet friends and worked as his assistant. In general Bonzo did a good job with the Hammers, but when he hit a more difficult patch Redknapp turned against his friend and brainwashed the board. The result. Bonds was sacked and Redknapp was named the new manager. His final season at Spurs was centred on a court case where we fully supported him. He repaid us by touting himself for the England job and openly asking Brendan Rogers to be his England assistant when we played at the Liberty stadium. Sherwood has that treacherous streak in him. It’s common knowledge that most of the media stories about Spurs over the years have come from Tim. It’s also common knowledge that when AVB was in charge, Tim saw an opportunity and took it, sending his journo contacts word that AVB had lost the dressing room. We all know the conclusion of that episode. The same conclusion as what had occurred at Upton Park all those years ago.

Redknapp was on TV and radio at the start of the season claiming we has a 'great squad', and how we had invested the Bale money wisely. After Tim was sacked Redknapp’s column in The Sun on Monday featured a headline along the lines of “whoever agreed the spending at Spurs in the summer needs to face a probe”. Tim stated in January that Daniel Levy had offered him the chance to buy new players but he didn’t need them, he was happy with the squad. Then a couple of months later, while the pressure started to increase on him, he stated that the squad was not up to scratch and he had to work with what he had been given. The similarities in behaviour here are clear.

Redkanpp is the media darling in this country. Always ready for a quote. Transfer deadline day should be renamed Redknapp self publicity day. Sky Sports and the written press adore him. That’s why the news of Tim’s dismissal really wrangled with the inept football Journalist’s in this country who saw Tim as Harry’s reincarnation at Spurs. Sherwood’s press conferences were party time for them and an embarrassment for the club and the fans. Post game interviews were a lust fest for quotes from Sherwood for the media but a source of demotivation for the team. Sherwood’s media training was given to him by Harry and he suffered with his job as a result of that. The board consequently had enough of his public slating of the team and the club.

The point I want to make here is that I have no axe to grind with Tim Sherwood. I would love Spurs to have a world class British coach in charge of our club, but when you look at the candidates this won’t happen for a long while. Tim Sherwood believes the hype surrounding him by the media and the likes of Harry and Gary Lineker who think he was hard done by. Tim would be better off listening to individuals such as Chris Perry who have said that for Tim to succeed he cannot say publicly what he is thinking in his head. Sherwood has always been an arrogant man. When he was a player he stormed a board meeting at Spurs to remonstrate that he was being frozen out of the club by Glenn Hoddle. He was sold soon after.

Sherwood needs to change. He has aligned himself to a character such as Harry Redknapp who is outdated. Redknapp’s time has gone. With all the managerial changes in the Premier League this season, Harry wasn’t mentioned for one of them. To be a manager or Head Coach now you need to have the full package. You need to be a leader, a great manager of men, tactically astute, manage the media well, keep club issues in house, manage the board upwards but discretely and above all be the figure head of the club. Pretty much like any senior manager in any other business. Football is no different.

Initially I was concerned at the apparent reasons for going after Pochettino, but the more I think about it I can see why he fits the bill for Daniel Levy. Looking at the list given above, Tim doesn’t fit any of it. Unless Sherwood dramatically changes, I predict he will fail miserably in his career as a football manager. I wish him luck.

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