Why Tim Sherwood Can’t Win

Article by Jon Lewis

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Tim Sherwood doesn’t want any new players … good thing, because he’s not going to get any. From Levy’s POV, why bring in players to suit Sherwood’s style when he won’t be our manager next year? Why give him players that might help him get 4th place when the big picture calls for a name manager who better sells and suits the Spurs brand? And that name manager will only be available after the WC … after this season’s over and done. What about the fans? Well we’ll still be here, supporting the team, even if Levy could give a rat’s ass about us. Sure I’m cynical … I’m a Spurs fan.

I think firing AVB was a dumb move, so we can start there. But you can’t change what you can’t change. I have started to like Sherwood, if only because I have a weakness for lost causes. (I’m a Spurs fan.) But now that the window has closed with no new left back and no reinforcements in central defense, the cause is for sure lost. I wrote in an earlier blog that sometime soon all we’ll have to talk about is who we want to manage us next year. Well, after watching Liverpool dispatch Everton, and City absolutely kill us, then watching and waiting for some surprise transfer-in all day today and coming away with nothing, that time is right about now.

Doing so means giving up on Sherwood, who never had a chance anyway -- this EPL season was over when Levy sold Bale. Firing AVB was a PR move to shift the blame – and I for one am not buying it. And when we finish 6th (if Lukaku doesn’t come back quickly) or 7th (if he does) this slip in form will be put on Sherwood. And that’s really too bad.

Management was always looking ahead to next year. Levy fired AVB with no Plan B because he didn’t need one. He hired the guy managing the youth team who apparently didn’t get to see the senior team play much, doesn’t own a DVR and doesn’t have access to game tapes to see what the heck all these midfielders can do. He was “surprised” that Paulinho is so skillful; was he absent the day they showed the Confederations Cup? And he apparently still doesn’t know much about Etienne Capoue (who was terrific until he got hurt against Arsenal), except that he doesn’t much like him. Capoue has gone to the press to say that he feels cheated. Well, Etienne, join the club…

You can’t blame Sherwood for taking the gig (it was an unreal chance) and for insisting on a real contract with guarantees (a man’s gotta get paid). And you can’t blame him – wow, you’ve got to give him credit for – rolling the dice on the 4-4-2 in those first few games, on banking on Adebayor (who no doubt killed it practising with his youth team), on promoting Bentaleb (whose luck ran out in dramatic fashion on Wednesday; he’s 19! And he’s not a top 4 centre-mid … yet), and on instituting an attacking style even when a sane manager might have hedged that bet to prevent a massacre – which is what we got on Wednesday.

Assuming we can believe the injury reports, I want to add that Sherwood showed real class in not playing (and risking) Vertongen and Paulinho on Wednesday – these guys have careers ahead of them (I hope with Spurs) even if he (that is, Sherwood) doesn’t (that is, as the manager of Spurs past this summer).

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