Harry Out!
Here's some more pro-Villas-Boas commentary (or should that be pro-Tottenham?) from other apologists, via my Twitter time-line, also taking the balanced approach. No agenda here. Just common sense.
AVB is going to need time. Fixing a "broken" squad, coping with life after King/Modric, introducing new methodology. Can't expect top 4.
The majority of Spurs fans (anyone vaguely level-headed) can see this. The rest expect too much, too soon. We will likely fall back this...
Those "fans" booing Jenas at the first home game, booing at half-time, and booing at full-time need to get a grip & get behind the team IMO.
@WindyCOYS
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I think its important to remember that we have won 3 league games since that demolition of newcastle in mid february
None of these players were performing before avb took over
And we have weakened the squad by selling 2 out of our 3 best players and arguably the 2 most creative players in our entire squad
"there are rich teams, there are poor teams and then there is us". No not something Daniel Levy said - it's a quote from Moneyball but v apt
@DarrenLA
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When you look at the squad Redknapp left, he would have needed to majorly overhaul it for this season if he had stayed.
Only Walker, Kaboul, Daws, Caulker, BAE, Bale, Lennon, Parker, Bale, Sandro & Defoe realistically in his plans for next 2 seasons
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I've gone into the season expecting a step back before we take 2 forward. The media will use the fans booing as signs of trouble.
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Who was the last high profile big name player Spurs brought? Excluding the reasonably priced fluke of VdV
The likes of Rebrov and Bentley have probably burnt Levy. Truth is that we have never been a club to buy a player at their very peak
Without CL it is perhaps completely understandable that Levy remains tight with purse strings
As fans we perhaps expect too much to keep up with the city's and Utds... But in recent years we have always nurtured young talent...
... Or given a final chance to great players.
This is what saw us finish 5th twice under Jol, and 4th, 5th, 4th under Redknapp
If you were Levy with that success you would probably be rightly cagey to spend money.
However as fans we want the best and want that marquee player
Parker and Friedel. Now Dembele, Sigurdsson, Dempsey. All reasonably priced, all proven in Premiership
If players all had exotic Spanish sounding names or were from Brazil or Portugal and cost 2x as much, I think we would all be delighted
... But we get two players from Fulham and a guy from Iceland (no denying Lloris and Vertonghen are great though)
Maybe Harry had a point? "Never had it so good" - wasn't referring to 61/62, but the 90's - fan expectation high compared to recent success
Wanna play in Premier League or spank all our cash and end up deducted points, playing in League One, or worse, bankrupt?
Levy is tight, likes a bargain. Sometimes it works, sometimes it don't. But we still have a club in the premiership. (Portsmouth Leeds)
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Following tweeted (via TwitLonger) by @EwanRoberts. You'll find it's familar as I've been banging the same drum.
Wrote some stuff about Spurs' form in 2012, pre-AVB:
Many people have said that all AVB had to do to succeed was continue the good work done by Redknapp and build upon healthy foundations. But that’s just not the case. Totally ignoring the players we’ve lost for a moment, AVB’s having to repair rotten foundations, re-build the soul of the team, boost confidence and morale, get a losing team back to winning ways.
Our form now is a hangover from our form at the end of last season. AVB was given a team that was rock bottom in so many respects. We may have finished fourth, but that did not adequately represent just how truly awful we’d been in 2012.
If you take the second half of our season – the second set of 19 games – we won just seven matches. A win percentage of just 36%...and three of those wins (none of which were convincing) came in our final four games. If the league existed just over that period of time we’d have been in 9th position, behind Wigan, Fulham, Everton and the usual suspects.
Those figures include an additional game for us compared to all the other sides (the postponed Everton match @ WHL, because of the riots). If those three points are discounted, we drop to 11th place.
There’s been lots of people saying “mid-table here we come” and such, well mid-table’s been beckoning for a while. We’ve had the form of a mid-table side for 5 months prior to AVB’s arrival. This isn’t his fault, our poor early season form isn’t exclusively of his doing.
If you look at the nine game run from the 5-2 loss at the Emirates in February until the 1-0 loss to QPR in April – a period that represents almost a quarter of the season – we were 19th in the form guide. Played 9, won 1, drew 3, lost 5. 6 points from a possible 27. Goals scored = 9, goals conceded = 14. 0.67 ppg. Only Wolves were worse off. Only two sides (Wolves and Norwich) conceded more goals.
Five teams conceded five goals twice or more in a single game in the league last year, and we were one of them. Norwich, QPR, Bolton and ourselves conceded five goals twice, Wolves conceded five goals three times. Two of the five teams are now in the Championship.
We’ve been crap for a while. Not only is AVB having to prepare for life after King, Modric and van der Vaart, he’s also having to turn around the fortunes of a club that has been in a six month slump. Frankly, given the form of the side it’s easy to see why AVB is happy to undertake wholesale changes to the squad. And it’s also clear that it will take time for AVB to mend a broken team. And that's what AVB inherited: a broken team, not a title-challenger.
Want more of that brooding drum?
From The Fighting Cock forum, via @vadimivich:
On 08/02/12 Harry Redknapp was cleared of tax evasion charges. On 12/02/12 Tottenham absolutely smashed Newcastle 5-0 in front of a delerious crowd at White Hart Lane
Since that night...Spurs have won only 4 of 16 Premier League matches:
That's 18 points from the last 16 league matches, which is barely above the relegation mark. And we're talking about almost half a seasons worth of matches now. The frustration setting in with the crowd isn't just for a few matches under AVB, the entire club has been in a very long, deep funk for quite a while now - and under 2 different managers.
We know there's quality out there on the pitch, but it's been a long time since it showed itself. The club is mired playing relegation level football and something needs to happen to snap everyone out of it. I'm not sure what that needs to be, but this isn't just a few games under a new manager kind of funk...it's set in deep at this point.I think the point is that it's not really all on the manager - there's a group of talented players that for whatever reason haven't been playing to their talent level for some time now.
Frankly, it looks like a confidence thing ... the players on the pitch look tentative and lost, not just attacking but also defending. There's not the assertiveness and aggression we saw when this group was playing at their best. I'm sure the nervous home fans aren't helping, I'm sure the negative press isn't helping, but what this teams needs more than anything else is to just go out and smash someone and get that confidence back.
Notice the trend? It's in there. I promise if you look deep enough you'll see it.
It's the international break now, so this civil war is going to drag on for a little while longer. With any luck I'll find something else to blog about by the time the weekend arrives. If you want the flip side of the argument, then please read the comments section on the last few articles published on this blog.
Follow @Spooky23 on Twitter.
