Harry Out!
Monday, September 3, 2012 at 10:03PM 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.
Reader Comments (74)
Must say this gk lark is disturbing... I did think it was strange comments by AVB to insist brad is still number 1 just before a international break and immediately after signing the French no1. I don't think it is good psychology to welcome a new signing with words that seem to cast doubt over whether he is needed. Will Lloris be away with the French team for international duty? Why did AVB say this? Surely keep quite and choose who's between the sticks based on training. If brad starts the next game what odds he has his first mare in years? If Lloris starts and has a mare then we've just wasted a load of dosh.
Two tribes.... Who'd have thought?
Anyone notice, but while you've been typing, an elephant as appeared and is currently stood flapping its ears and eating bananas!
Lloris...... What do we make of VB's comments regarding Lloris having to fight 2 keepers and GOmEs for the #1 gig! Lloris seems a little put out.
What I'm trying to say about our gk situation is I think AVB has put unesscessary pressure on our goalie for the nxt game when that was the one position that HAS performed well thus far. Brad was aware of the situation before the season & spoke wisely. Spurs had to make the choice of buying a new gk now or biding our time with the 3 we had. We decided to buy and these comments were unnecessary.
@Wisky Tom - I make it 3 tribes the faithful, the non believers and the agnostics. Can we please spark a tiresome day long row spanning several blogs over how many tribes there are?
On the GK - seems nothing more than with Brad having played a blinder v Norwich, VB pointing out that there is stiff competiton for that position. If Lloris thinks he has the god given right to waltz into the team and stay there then maybe he needs an attitude adjustment.
When I first became a Spurs supporter, the players were human beings (I remember being in the Rose and Crown in Clay Hill, and seeing Mike England and Ralph Coates celebrating our 2-0 win over Liverpool earlier that day in 1971, and Alan Mullery even offered my 15 year old sister a lift once - though the less said about that the better!) and some of them were even good blokes, Greaves and Cyril Knowles for instance. Now, although I support Spurs and always will, my life doesn't overlap with those of the players at all, and many of them strike me as thoroughly selfish and greedy - typical modern footballers in fact. When you see a player like Adebayor (probably the worst example of the type in the whole league, not just WHL) strolling around ineffectually for 20 minutes in return for £100k+, or scowling thugs like Walker or Livermore, who look as if they'd be happier walking their pit-bulls to the tattoo parlour than chatting with fans, it's no wonder that the team's long, long run of poor performances gets it boo-ed - you make allowances for your friends, or triers (like Peter Crouch, whatever his shortcomings as a player), but not for overpaid, self-centred egotists of the type that we have far too many of at WHL.
'If Lloris thinks he has the god given right to waltz into the team and stay there then maybe he needs an attitude adjustment'
I've gone red with embrassment, no really.
Seems to me in the modern football era, that no team, no matter how successfull, is able to stay together as a unit for
several seasons, simply because there is no player loyalty and the minute carlos kickaball wins a medal or scores 25 a season, he will be off to Man U, Real, Barca, whatever. So come the start of every season,all teams will be 'in transition' and
nowone these days, will be afforded the luxury of having 2 seasons to 'gel' the team together, as half of them will have left.
Asking to give the manager time now equates not to 2 seasons, but a dozen games and it will be no different with AVB if our
'slide' continues, if indeed it is a slide, as opposed to a blip, whatever that is. And if Spurs were relegated for example, I cannot
see history repeating itself and the fans giving the players a standing ovation, as in the 70's apparently, where there was player
loyalty and we identified with them as like us, not the prima donnas they have now become. Rant over.
You've managed to change my viewpoint Spooky. Anyway...that is why I engage in this blogging stuff. I however still believe that the booing - just like the applause after a good game or indeed good move - is a natural form of communication between the fans and their beloved team. Our emotional dispositions dictate how we respond to a disappointing performance. I believe those who boo are often the most vocal with cheering when things goo well.
Besides, the booing is only done on three occasions; At half time - to let the team know the fans are not happy with proceedings and would like a better performance in the next half; At full time - fans are disappointed with effort and result; or when Jenas comes in - to let Levy, AVB or Ramos know that fans won't accept mediocrity without a fight. The rest of the time is spent either in silence or chanting.
AVB will have to do better though. I'm all for giving him time but you tell me what you made of the Hugo Lloris/Brad Friedel comment. How unnecessary was that? He could simply have said that "We did not buy Lloris because Friedel is a bad Keeper. We bought him because Friedel is 42 years of age and we need someone as good as him to take over and maintain the same level of goalkeeping. He will learn a lot from Friedel and...blah, blah, blah". That way he gets to reassure both keepers and keep the negativity away. Confirming that Friedel is first choice after the club has spent 12million pounds on the protracted transfer of Lloris was just plain STUPID! It's things like that that will get him booed and sacked.
@Ronnie
I saw the interview where AVB was asked if the good performance by Freidel meant that he now was concidered the no 1 goal keeper, - AVB said well great performance by Friedel meant that Lloris would have to fight to get his turn. I see nothing wrong with AVB's comment, - competition is great for the team, - however you are right, - now all the tabloid papers are running with the story, - they would all love for AVB not to succeed and we can expect the journo's to be permanently at AVB's throat !
I'm a bit bemused by the comments about Levy and AVB 'dismantling' last year's team in order to build a new team that doesn't work. As I see it, Modric had to go because he demanded it and wouldn't play for us anymore. VdV asked to go, so that he could return to Hamburg and make his wife happy. I suppose the boss could have forced them to see-out their contracts, but realistically that almost never works-out. Therefore, I don't think Levy had any choice but to replace these two and he almost managed it but for some last second fumbling of the ball. Some have said he did it on purpose to save money. Really? I find that hard to believe, but I suppose it's possible...
Regardless, adding Dembele, Lloris, Vertonghen, Dempsey and Sygurdson was a pretty bit of business given what he had to accomplish. Personally, he has exceeded my expectations and I would have been blown-away if he had signed Moutinho...and we may still get him in January. Who knows? All I was expecting was a re-up for Ade and for Livermore and Carroll to be thrown in at the deep end this year. I am very happy with the business we've done given the frugality of recent years. I am excited at the prospect of the coming weeks as these new players bed-in to the team. I really don't care if we win or lose the next ten games, because I am so intrigued by what they 'could' achieve if they gel properly. I seem to remember knocking-off a potentially world-beating Man Citeh side that were supposed to win it all and consigning them to the Europa League. It will take time for this team to gel and the right coaching to get them there. I hope AVB has it in him. We'll see.
Either way. Win or Lose. I love the shirt. I'll sing for the shirt...even if we get relegated. After all, what else are you going to do? Once you're bitten, you can't help yourself anymore. You're a fan for better or worse. It's even worse than being married, because even if you did replace the missus, it wouldn't be as much fun or nearly enough to keep you happy.
In the meantime..."I can't smile without you....
@ Caterham7
Would you rather clap your club into relegation or boo your chairman into action?
A straight answer please.....
Ok this is going to be slightly of topic and a bit of a rant but I feel I have to get these points off my chest. I don't know about you guys but I am sick and tired of everyone getting on the back of Villas Boas. This Lloris thing has been blown all out of proportion by the media and the manager can't seem to win no matter what he does.
Between myself and a group of fellow Spurs supporters we've developed something of a siege mentality towards VB. The way we see it is that he is OUR manager and we will give him all the support an expect everyone else to do the same. Come on its been three games and the players haven't been bedded in yet, Adebayor is clearly not 100% match fit. So to all the people who are saying why play Defoe as the lone striker, let's see what VB does when Ade is fully fit.
Also why all of a sudden are commentators pointing out we are lacking creativity because VDV and Modric have left? If I remember correctly, VDV was technically superb but he didn't really complement the way we played as he simply isn't mobile enough. Yes he wore his heart on his sleeve and gave it everything but I honestly believe we are better off with Dempsey, Dembele and Sigurdsson. Yes they may not be 'gifted' like Rafa but for what we are trying to achieve in our style of play I believe his departure will benefit us in the long term.
As for Luka, yes we are missing him at this particular moment in time but with Dembele's arrival (and if he plays in CM alongside Sandro/Parker) again who knows maybe we will be better off. Dembele drives with the ball more which in turn means other players start to make runs to get into better positions and so forth. With Modric he was great at ' keeping things ticking over' but rarely did he drive with the ball.
Yes I know Luka is a great player and would complement the squad we have assembled after his departure tremendously but guys it's not the end of the world. I mean Man Utd win titles with the likes of Michael Carrick and Fletcher! Where's the creativity there? I hope we stop booing the team, yes things have looked disjointed but give it time. I genuinely believe VB will come good and take us to the next level Harry couldn't achieve.
Blind faith? At the moment possibly but I think we'll stick with this manager for a while as he will get it right with us! COYS!
Hey Whisky Tom!! Step back from the bottle! We've only played 3 games so far.
Anyone who thinks buying Moutinho would have solved all of our problems is DELUDED. Seriously. Get. a. grip.
we need collective booing to organise on our next home game if we lose !
'Anyone who thinks buying Moutinho would have solved all of our problems is DELUDED'
Phew.....that puts me with the non-deluded then!
Still waiting C7?
It will be intersting indeed to read the slant of this site in a few months time if things dont improve dramatically methinks. Words of support are cheap, its a lot harder to finish 4th, 5th and 4th in 3 seasons. Best record of any spurs manager in living memory and you couldn't wait to ship him out for a more fashionable model. Time will tell. Hope the author will have the guts to say "I was wrong". I hope i'm wrong but i'm seriously concerne. In the meantime i will support and not boo, idiots boo. Idiots also have short memories.
There you go, distorting the facts that are relevant to his dismissal but focusing only on the finished places.
Look, the fact we blew it last season, considering how we've looked in recent years, it shouldn't be seen as a disaster. It's just disappointing but not the end of the world. Yet Redknapp's under playing of the situation and his inability to avoid criticism by a hefty slice of the media means he gets away with things others wouldn't. I know we've been spoilt when you remember the days before Jol. But that shouldn't be an excuse to lose focus. We backed him during and after the court case and yet he was happy to flirt for the FA. It run it's course. I showed plenty of support for Redknapp so I have nothing to be ashamed of. He was hardly hounded out of the club. He forced it himself.
We took a punt of Harry. We've taken a punt of AVB. It's not like Harry had anything aside from an FA Cup on his CV, aside from relegation and escapes from relegation. That punt worked. Why is it cheap to support the new punt? Or is it cheap only up until we start winning and progressing again?
@Wisky Tom earlier - if LLORIS thinks he has the god given right to waltz into the team and stay there then maybe he needs an attitude adjustment. Fact is he should waltz straight into the team. Point is Brad was our M.O.M on saturday and therefore needed some man management. If Lloris gets crocked who we going to turn to? Yes, Brad. We have a very experienced goalkeeper and an other who is international captain. I would expect them both to be up for the challenge for their place, not so precious that they are bothered about the manager keepeing them on their toes.
Clearer?
I will be happy if we come just outside the Europa league places this season. Then we can come back next season without that hindrance. COYS
Then we can come back next season without Bale
Evening mate
Lloris is a totally different keeper than Brad. Brad stays put, whereas Lloris acts more as a sweeper, which is apparently why we signed him. VB wants to play high, and not 442. Picking Brad over Lloris purely because Brad's playing well is a kin to cutting your nose off to spite your face! If VB wants to play high, then play high with the right keeper..... otherwise we become disjointed, and become a bit keystone.
I don't know, but aside from the fact that he just signed a new contract and Levy won't let him go at the end of the season, if Bale doesn't pick it up there's not going to be anyone who will pay £40 mil for him. Since about March he has been a shadow of his former self.
@Wisky Tom
Why, yes! I am straight.
It does seem that anyone questioning AVB's credentials automatically gets 'get over Harry' thrown in their face. We are a good side, not a struggling outfit - he should be given some leeway but we should be at least playing to a decent standard. The football so far has been awful and AVB's selections, substitiutions and tactics have been a big factor in it - i'd have preferred 0pts if we were playing well but had been unlucky, but that hasn't been the case. Not Spurs football in the slightest either so far, 2 holding midfielders who don't have a passing range between them and a preference for Livermore of the two
Some of us wanted Harry out but didn't want AVB either - they weren't the only two choices in town. Don't confuse worrying about AVB with loving Harry. Don't tar every doubter with booing at the match either. We all want Spurs to succeed, whoever is the gaffer.
Let's get past the 'only 3 games' malarkey too - he had over half a season at Chelsea and his time there is looking like his first few games with us so far. The way he sets his sides up looks totally unsuited to English football, and he is loath to change.
There is no knee-jerk here, my stance on him hasn't changed from the get-go. How many of our fans were saying how rubbish AVB was when he was at Chelsea? Out of his depth etc? Probably singing 'We want you to staaaaaaaay' to HR at the Newcastle game, and have now gone full circle? A fair few I imagine.
From where I stand there is as many people desperate for AVB to be good to justify their loathing of Redknapp as there is Reknappophiles wanting AVB to do badly to prove HR should have stayed. Plenty of us in the middle who just want us to do well.