Article by e-Spurs Correspondent David LevyFollow e-Spurs on Twitter
Yes. I mentioned him in the title. I feel a little dirty to be honest but sometimes you need to go to dark places to find explanations as to why some fans are still not getting behind the manager.
Spurs supporters are still pretty divided with their opinions of Tim Sherwood, the speculation about selling some new players surfacing over the last few weeks appears to have fuelled the fire of the anti-Tim brigade.
I am neither anti, or pro, Tim like I was neither, anti or pro AVB. I am a Spurs fan, one that is unfortunately cursed with the understanding of circumstance and realistic expectation. I use these tools to formulate reasoning behind situations to make sense of what I see until I no longer can.
The fact is, when you look at it objectively, we bit off more than we could chew at the start of the season. Too many players coming in at once learning to play a very rigid system was always going to take some time to work. That coupled with a manager who was;
• Inexperienced in having to deal with that kind of situation and
• Appeared to be unwilling to bend away from his preferred system to accommodate for the circumstantial issues we were having
It was no surprise that we found ourselves in the situation we did. There have been plenty of situations in the past where more experienced managers have struggled over the first half of a season with less of an influx of new players.
Take Arsenal 2 years ago. Wenger struggled to get his team moulded together after losing his most influential and best midfielders over the course of that summer. They struggled to get any kind of consistency going for half the season and really only finished above us because we did not have what it took to see the season though and dropped foolish points. They struggled at the start of the next season too, after losing Van Persie and having to integrate more new players into their team. Even the ‘mighty’ Ozil has struggled to find consistent form.
I think some people underestimate just how hard it can be to integrate multiple new players into a team, especially when you are doing it with 3 or 4 or even 5 new players simultaneously and even more so when trying to do this by imposing a rigid system that doesn’t allow for a players natural ability to take centre stage.
Fans Expectation = to see as many of our new players in the same line-up as quickly as possible, especially the ones I like the name of or have good youtube clips, and to be playing Barcelona style football competently from the offset.
Reality = Many a much more experienced manager has failed to do this with instant if any success. Players are not robots and have personalities and differing speeds at which they will feel comfortably integrated into their new line up and role. In fact, the only attacking player who was playing in a familiar role in our starting line up at the start of the season was Aaron Lennon.
There is a clear gulf between what some fans think should be happening and what is more likely to happen based on the circumstances. Success doesn’t happen overnight, not even when you have all of the money in the world a la’ Man City. It took them a moment or two to finish in a Champions League place….. I seem to recall a rather tall and not so dashing Peter Crouch ending their top tier European football dream at the end of their first year with ‘Money’.
We aren’t Man City. We spent the money we made from selling one player on what are mostly young, inexperienced Premiership players. They all have undoubted talent in my opinion but they needed to be shaped into a footballing monster, something we know now that AVB couldn’t do.
Tim Sherwood however, is doing it. I'm not saying it has been perfect nor am I saying we haven’t had a bad half of football. All managers and teams have bad halves of football. What I am saying is that Tim’s successful approach can’t be ignored even more so for the fact that this is the first team he has managed.
Coming into a team with low morale and rejuvenating them, showing trust in individuals when perhaps the previous manager was putting all the faith he had into his system. Its possible we are still in some elongated Honeymoon period, the kind that gets spoken about by pundits but seems to happen less and less frequently in real life….but it is unlikely.
Despite what anyone tells you football isn’t about luck, winning or losing games isn’t about that one decision that goes in your favour. Was Puncheons penalty miss for Crystal Palace bad luck? Hell no! It was an awful penalty. Is that what you said to yourself after each of JD’s umpteen penalty misses in the years previous to last? “poor JD, it was just bad luck” I didn’t think so. We had better payers on the pitch and it was our players who won the game for us. Tim was partially to blame for their first half fogginess but he is also partially responsible for our resurgence in the second half.
No luck involved. 5 wins, 1 draw and lots of goals.
Wednesday night we play Man City and Tim has a squad that is now bursting at the seams with fit players. Keeping all these players happy during a world cup year is going to be a huge management task and this might account for the speculation about our player during the window. No one has gone yet though and what I hope to see on Sunday is a team of well rested, hungry looking individuals intent on revenge.
I can see us playing without fear and with the confidence we should have built up over the previous weeks of victories. Sandro or Paulinho in midfield is a must for me but whatever formation we choose to play on the day, whoever gets their chance on the pitch for us, it is time to reclaim White Hart Lane. We have a lot of games left to play there this season and getting a result there against City will rejuvenate us even further. We need our fortress back.
More than anything i want to see us all get behind the Manager, encourage our team to play with passion, pride and for the support to be deafening.
COYS.
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Well said and well written, an article with a lot of sense and (of course) one that echoes my own thoughts on this. Everyone's expectations are high, that's normal for a fan (especially a Spurs fan) BUT you have to have a glass of common sense, a dash of optimism but topped with a large splash of reality - though a pint of Bowland Bitter would go down well too. It'll be interesting to see reactions after tomorrow nights result.
ReplyDeleteMark French