Would Spurs be a top 4 team with Frank de Boer this year? No.
Would there be frustrating moments just like with Pochettino? Yes.
The difference between the two is Frank de Boer's priority of attacking football and the Ajax way of work smarter, not harder. FdB prioritizes technical, intelligent players rather than work horses. Both men are known for cultivating youth players and bringing them into the senior squad set up. Few academys are more heralded than Ajax and Southampton but Tottenham is slowly joining those ranks.
The most frustrating thing about Mauricio Pochettino is that his Southampton teams played football that most of us were envious of. His teams were fine playing 2-2, 3-3 matches and producing entertaining football. At Spurs, those performances have been few and far between, yet it is early days so I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. What is troubling is the poor standard of defense and midfield play that has been allowed to take place. If Pochettino does truly sell 8 or 9 players and replace them with youth and a few smart purchases then it shows that he does not accept such low standards but you'd have to wonder if FdB would accept them this year at all.
As Dennis Bergkamp said when describing the Ajax philosophy, "I watch everything and it bothers me when I see performances which don’t meet the standards we expect. If anyone – anyone – isn’t pulling their weight, then the details aren’t in order and that is unacceptable. Sure we’re very tough, but we want to be a top club and to accomplish that you have to be ruthless in maintaining top standards." Can anybody comfortably say that this past year we have been "ruthless" in maintaining top standards? 4 central backs playing along the back line versus Stoke, dropping terrible points early in the season to Sunderland, Newcastle and West Brom. What has changed since then? Well, we have started the midfield combination Bentaleb/Mason almost 100% of the time, Townsend has rotated with Lamela and Eriksen has been played out of position multiple times. Hardly a quest for excellence or adjustments needed to ruthlessly maintain high standards.
We are a team that is built for a 4-3-3 with Chadli and Lamela as scoring wingers and in the midfield, Eriksen and Bentaleb are two names that can be written in stone with a 3rd player determined by the manager, something tells me de Boer would love to manage Dembele. What's most impressive when looking at de Boer's past season at Ajax...which by all standards was a failure, is that they only allowed 27 goals in the Eredivisie. The difference between PSV (Eredivisie champions) and Ajax was that PSV managed to claim all 3 points while Ajax settled for more draws, they both each lost 4 matches this past season. Let that sink in, we've lost 4 of our last 8 matches, Ajax scored 68 goals while we have scored 55. That last stat is somewhat irrelevant because of the level of competition but the defensive record difference is massive. This year, Ajax had perhaps its least talented back line in recent years and still didnt concede much because of a strong system and set up. Again, you can always attribute some discrepancies to the level of competition but the top 5 teams in the Eredivisie would be at the very least mid-table teams in the Premier League.
Frank de Boer manages to play an attacking brand of football without sacrificing defensive principles. His teams score, pass and move beautifully and attack. This is what we expected with Mauricio Pochettino but the 4-2-3-1 system shackles some of those principles. Poch has had a year, this summer will be very important but if he gets it wrong, then we cannot afford to miss another chance to hire Frank de Boer.
Marc A. Ashed
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