Harry's been a little bit unlucky this season, because we out-played most opponent's, but just fell short by the ONE POINT. One single point thats all that was needed, at the end of the day, to guarantee Champions League. 'All in all' I think Harry's done his job. We the fans have been also unlucky. I say this because, If not for the 'Arabian money at Manchester City'., Spurs have achieved CL every season for the passed three. So lets congratulation Manchester City, on their premiership title.... they deserve it... they bought it.
I think that's the point many are making, Notso. We went from being championship contenders to finishing 20 points off the pace. The start of that decline "coincidentally" came when Harry started his love affair with being England manager.
I guess we need to understand that with redknapp in charge we expect to be top four and that shows progress. Who is to say another manager would do as well? as we only need to look at chelsea and avb to see what happens with a talented manager with different ideas can cause more problems. Redknapp isnt perfect and annoys me at times, plus we all get frustrated by some of his tactics and lack of squad use but overall if we look at redknapps time with us, we have to be pleased and accept we have a manager in charge that the players love and if we buy some top quality this summer then we could well push on.
All very reasonable. It's a shame he does not appreciate that. Only the players he likes love him. The squad have mixed feelings I'm sure.
I guess the one plus point is that we don't seem to get many squad issues, even if players appear unsettled and not many managers would have dealt with Modric in the way he did and i'm sure arry does appreciate the job but he clearly likes "Pushing" levy to try and get more funds to buy big name players.
For a start there's a very, very big difference to saying we were lucky and saying we punched above our weight. The first is mostly false the second is true. I bet you're gonna say that finances don't matter and you're bored of hearing about other teams' wage bills and transfer fees. Well sorry - but that is HUGELY relevant. Liverpool went and spent, what - £80m in the last year? Chelsea have a team they've spent HUNDREDS of millions on and on some bloody good players too. Teams like Chelsea spend twice as much as us on wages. This stuff IS relevant. Yes we're a very good team and better than Liverpool. But that is partly down to luck in that Liverpool spaffed all those millions up the wall and got very little in return. We can't keep expecting teams like them to spend tens of millions more than us and not come up with a team which is very, very dangerous. Chelsea aren't always going to spend £50m on a mysteriously crap striker every year. To say you expect top four is just amazing. You really want any old stick to beat Harry with, don't you? I hope you were proportionately as furious with Ardiles, Hoddle, Jol etc who came nowhere near building a team like the one we have now. I think your last sentence : "someone who has the courage of the fans' convictions have a go" sums it up. The last person I'd want in charge is someone with some of the fans' convictions. Nothing that Harry says in that article is even close to being arguable, never mind controversial.
If we hadn't have been where we were a couple of months ago, I think most would have taken fourth last August. However, it was galling to see it all turn to ****. Coincidentally, at exactly the same time as Harry was busy fluttering his eyelashes at the F.A.
Exactly HOW much fluttering took place? Was it not mostly the players' fault? Did it have nothing to do with a very difficult run of games? Nothing to do with, let's be honest, mostly out-playing teams but not quite being able to kill them off? Yes it looked bad at the time - it seemed like all teams had to do was soak up some weak pressure from us and then score with one of their three or four attacks and they'd win. But you know that we ARE talking about a game here. Luck does have a role. I was as gutted as anyone to see us lose that lead in third (the lead that Harry earned us). But to stamp my little feet and hold my breath until we get top four next year BECAUSE WE JUST SHOULD is all a bit much.
Have to disagree. I don't buy into " coincidences" whilst Harry boy was busy trying to impress the FA with his "tactical acumen" by trying to stuff square pegs into round holes, we had Modric on the left wing, VDV on the right, and Bale just about anywhere. We lacked conviction and gumption for several games also. You could see that the players were unsettled, and probably many of them didn't buy into what they were being asked to do out on the pitch. We went on a run of Something like 2 wins in 11 games. Our first choice Eleven is a match for any Premiership team, except City, so why shouldn't we have high expectations? Granted, we lack depth, and hopefully something will be done about that in the summer. Our return to some kind of form also " coincidentally" happened about the time Hodgson was given the England job.
Forgive me if I'm wrong but wasn't HIAG one of the biggest supporters of the "Play Bale inside more - Bale likes it, Harry likes it..." school of thought? Yes - the tactics did get a bit messed up but it's a bit much for someone to go on about how necessary/desirable they are then moan about our form slipping away due to the very changes they were advocating. I think it's true to say that playing Sandro and Parker in the middle with Bale wandering around ineffectively was a bad call from Harry. But how much of that was "auditioning" for England. Surely if he really wanted to impress the FA he would just concentrate on winning games. Maybe not. Maybe he thought we had such a big lead he could try some things out and show he was not just a one trick pony (pacey wingers). Who knows? It's all speculation on our part really, isn't it?
I think it's quite simple really. Harry is a very good manager, but not a great one. We've got an amazingly good squad given our resources and finishing third or fourth is about right. We would have been third if just one of Adebayor's wrongly disallowed goals had stood or if Webb had 'seen' the Balotelli stamp at the Etihad (or indeed if we'd never swapped Fulop for Alnwick!). If we had a really top manager, the current squad would probably have made third quite easily. Under some other managers we might have been fifth or sixth as usual. I don't think our so-called bad run was really as bad as all that. We could easily have won at the Etihad, and played quite well in a lot of other matches without being able to finish. The only really dire game was away to Arsenal.
Firstly, I don't think it was me that was advocating all these dramatic changes. I do like to see Bale switch wings from time to time. I think it helps to try and keep the opposition defence on the back foot - unless he has the obvious beating of somebody. Like Skrtel at WHL early this season. However, talented as Bale is, I don't see him becoming some sort of midfield libero. Secondly, I said I thought Harry was "trying" to impress the FA with his tactical knowledge. It failed spectacularly, and to our cost, IMO. There was also playing Modic wide left, etc - all completely bizarre. For next year, I would hope we can somehow hang on to Ade, bring in another top striker, reinforce our defence - including goalkeeper. And, if he'll come back, I personally, would like to see Pienaar back, and used more often. Oh, and can we PLEASE clear out the dead wood!
Hold up, no one, & I mean no one, expected us to perform as well as we did this season. I remember reading on this board before the season that a Cup & place in the top 6 would be good but knew we needed CL to keep our better players. This was the norm. No one expected us to be up there fighting for the league going into the 2nd half of the season with Liverpool spending more than man city, Man U adding good players, Chelsea with the new 'special one' & all the great signings he'll bring from porto. Even Arsenal with selling their best 2 players at the time, we knew they'll be too lucky to slip out of the top 4. We weren't to know that Liverpool were going to have their worst Premiership season (that I can remember), RVP would go the whole season without injury or doing things to women and basically carry the arsenal team to CL & Chelsea managed to find Christian Gross mk2 instead of the special 1 mk2. Fact is we are pissed off big time because of how our season went and it all seems to come after Harry allowed, not only the England job, but the court case & his health affect the team. We thought we had 3rd in the bag and some dared to believe (I didn't tho) that we could win the title. Fact is we managed to get 4th which at the start of the season we would have taken. Flip our form and it would look like we had great run to get 4th not that we did because we did enough to limp over the line. Yes Harry has made mistakes and needs to sort out his short comings otherwise Levy will give him the boot, and yes we should be enjoying 3rd & knowing we have CL football next season but just remember what you wished we would do at the start of the season & ask your self if you think this season has turned out with what you hoped? I wanted 4th but felt a good cup run and 5th was more realistic but would be kicking off big time if we ended up with a season like Liverpools. I would want Harry's head on a stick outside WHL. Shame we have to rely on a german team to make 4th not just a fancy 5th... Anyone find it odd that we can't enjoy 4th yet?
I will say this now though, if we keep our better players and seeing what we can do, clear out the 'deadwood' and bring in some quality and good cover then I will expect a top 3 finish or a Cup & 4th. Either way I will be expecting big things next season. If we drop off again in the 2nd half of the season then it's clearly Harry and not the players getting 'tired' like he likes to say so he'll need to go. Harry only has 1 more season on his contract non? Wonder if Levy will be thinking the same. No payout if the contract ends...
This is simply not true. I for one felt we were the 3rd best team Last Season and said so. If we performed to our potential we should be third this season. I said that as well. We almost did and I will not argue about 1 point (it could have gone either way) So I think we have played fairly much to our potential this season, despite the horrible 'blip' and the Harry 'coincidence' with England. It does not alter my views as expressed on posts 9, 14, and 18. If I were Levy I would be making plans NOW to replace Redknapp with a more effective 'Manager'. Redknapp has little loyalty, he has shown that, he uses us for his ends, so we should use him. He has built a good squad, now we need a complete manager who can take it on.
MOTS might have over-stated it when he said "No one, & I mean no-one..." but I certainly remember a lot of people saying that 5th and a good cup run or two would be doing well. Which, at the time, seemed reasonable.
