You realise this "excellent side" that got us CL footy contained Gomes, Crouch, Lennon, Defoe, Bassong. Players you openly slate, so what you are going on about by saying it's now an excellent side? make your mind up Power, as one minute you're slating players for being crap, players that Redknapp got the best out of and got us CL football, to now trying to praise Levy for that "excellent side". Some of you have memory loss as you forget it wasn't players like Modric or Bale that got us CL football, but it was players like Crouch and Defoe. Redknapp had to fix the mess created by Levys policies and in his final season achieved the season target which was to finish top four, the fact expectations where increased by Redknapps management, doesn't mean you or anyone should attempt to defend Levy and place blame elsewhere.
We've got a perfectly sensible policy of buying youngsters with potential and screwing a fortune out of the top clubs if they come good. But If Harry hadn't blown that massive lead over Arsenal we might have kept Modric and really been able to push on.
I dont ever slate Spurs players and in the case of Gomes I was his strongest supporter. Defoe and Lennon are great players to have around but do you really think they would be in Chelsea or City's team? Our club is stronger now than when Levy was appointed
We over achieved getting CL footy with players you and others call limited. The lead we had over the goons was always going to be cut down as the form to be clear was unrealistic to sustain, especially when Levy was penny pinching. Plus the only reason we had Modric in form was because of Redknapps man management to get the team together after getting thumped by Utd and City in the opening games.
Who said they would play for Chelsea and City? Chelsea and City are title challengers, we're top four challengers so of course Chelsea and City will have a different level of player.
Levy has made some good buys - VDV an obvious case. However, his managerial talent spotting qualities are verging on the non existent. He should clearly stay right away from any more appointments, IMO. City bad Chavski are on another level for one reason only - money! They both have ridiculously wealthy benefactors/owners who are prepared to lavish billions of their own money on them.
Tim but dim's anti football deserved nothing at the Chavs. A disgraceful selection with 120 million of summer signings not in the first 11, shows what a mess the club is in. This must be some record of sorts. This is the future as there is no more money , as we only sell to buy, and nobody is worth anything . No top manager will come with chains tied to his hands with a nutter in charge who believes he is Pontius Pilate . As other's have said "Levy/Enic are the root of all our problems" It is amazing he is the most popular and ridiculed chairman amongst our so called rivals, says it all.
Most managers are average. One or two are utter crap, one or two brilliant. There have only been two really outstanding managers in English football in the last 20 years. Ferguson and Wenger who both led their clubs to new highs without having massive amounts of external money. It would have been nice if Levy had found someone equivalent for us but its hardly incompetence not to have done.
PNP I agree completely that Kaboul shouldn't have seen red and the pen looked soft but in fairness Oliver could easily have shown Lloris and Sandro red at different points in the game. I felt the referee gave us the rub of the green more often than not, but the linesman gave Spurs the benefit of doubt every time. 4-0 obviously wasn't a true reflection of the game and flattered us but at the end of the day you guys stopped playing after the 2nd went in and we just took advantage. Mourinho is doing alright, as you yourself noted last season this was a team entirely unbalanced and almost solely reliant on Mata, you could argue that has now switched to Mata but even when Hazard has off days the rest of the team are still chipping in and unlike last season we are a difficult team to score against. Last season United put 3 past us in the league, Spurs 4 and Pool 3. Now that has changed. The main issue with Sherwood is he has made players "undroppable" when no Spurs player bar Adebayor warrants such treatment. I don't watch enough of your lot to know but from what I've seen Eriksen and Adebayor are your most effective players. Soldado not even featuring yesterday despite breaking his hoodoo clearly shows Sherwood has lost all confidence in him entirely.
Utterly ridiculous. If anything, at the time the first goal went in it was Chelski (the league leaders) playing "anti-football" against us!
Blinkered ignorance, a team full of defenders and players out of position , talentless pedestrian anonymous Siggy recalled , sideways tactics rarely trying to penetrate Chavs defence, zero creation. Comic defensive errors. AVB returns without cohesion . George Graham football must be your passion. Yes Anti football, wake up.
At Arsenal's most vulnerable point (2006-2013) and Chelsea's (2010-2013) if Levy had just shown a fraction of the ambition David Dein/Matthew Harding did when they bought Bergkamp and Zola/Gullit respectively then Spurs would be a permanent fixture in the top 4. Once you finish in the CL places 2 seasons in a row it's near impossible to finish outside of it. Like us in that very same season (2009/10) not enough was done in the market to back up a very successful season. We all agree Spurs shouldn't be able to compete with clubs that can go and spend £50m, £42m, £38m and £37m on one player but the fact is all of those clubs have faced vulnerable periods on transitional phases where Levy could have pounced if he wanted to. Spurs were 5 points off the title and Levy went and bought Saha and Nelsen when Anelka, Birame Diouf and Gary Cahill were all available and Pavlyuchenko was allowed out on loan.
Yes, he is incompetent in that regard. He has "managed" to make only two relatively successful managerial appointments, Redknapp and Jol. One he hired in a panic as we were bottom of the Prem, the other he got by default. Both were direct results of yet more of his ****-ups!...
Completely agree, again. A few of us have been saying it for years, but others are now finally seeing through Levy and the way he covers things up. - very good with money and how he's helped the club grow, but footballing decisions at vital times like you mention, have been dreadful and cost us. Nothing will change, so I don't bother getting wound up about it like I used to. However, what I do hope, is that we don't qualify for the Europa next season. I want a year where we only have domestic football to worry about, just to see what difference it makes. If we are in Europa, I want the kids to be given the chance, regardless of how we do. It seems that our youth is where we're investing, so these players need a chance where the results aren't so vital. Bentaleb has been ok for us, but he's been thrown into the team far too frequently for an inexperienced lad, where premier league results mean so much.
"The lead we had over the goons was always going to be cut down as the form to be clear was unrealistic to sustain, especially when Levy was penny pinching." Utter rubbish. Spurs were averaging over 2 pts per game (courtesy of that superb P11 W10 D1 sequence) up to a difficult block of 9 games. Given the opponents in said block, we EXPECTED TO LOSE some games. But Arry, even with this fact and the pts surplus, still managed to put together the following sequence of results : P11 W2 D4 L5 That is the form of a RELEGATION candidate.
Typing utter rubbish doesn't mean anything, nor does typing words all in caps, unless you're struggling to make a valid point but anyhow, Redknapp put us in a position of being ahead of the goons and you have an obsession over this run of games. We all follow spurs and are very aware of that run, yet the fact is Redknapps management put us in a position when you and others had unrealistic expectations, mainly because at one point we where matching the mancs and being viewed as title contenders. During the course of that season we had periods where we had a superb run (title winning form) P11 W10 D1. The period you mention P11 W2 D4 L5, Relegation form. We where neither title challengers or in a relegation fight, understand? you may need try and process the point but what that shows is at one stage we over performed and at another stage we under performed, at one stage everything was going right, at another stage it went all wrong and if you balance out both run of games, a poor run was always going to happen and unfortunate for us the goons went on a superb run themselves. The facts of that season show we finished where we deserved, still top four and that shows how far Redknapp took us, as 4th was viewed as a failure, when today we're desperately trying to regain 4th place.
"We where neither title challengers or in a relegation fight, understand?" PL managers who want to be CL regulars don't have sequences of P11 W2 D4 L5, understand ?? Part of the reason Redknapp got shown the door was the scale of the collapse and not the fact that losses happened, understand ??
We finished top four even with such a sequence so all that matters is was the team good enough to finish top four, yes and in any other season that would have been good enough to get CL footy.
The 10 point lead over the goons being referred to as a yardstick, bear this in mind. The fixture list was kind in that first half, all our difficult away games were the latter half, the season is 38 games long, using portions of a season to suit doesn't work here....we had no Euro distraction either!
Coulda. Shoulda. Woulda. Finishing 4th in 2012 is no different to AVB finishing 5th with Spurs highest PL points total. Both ended up with no CL (the Levy target) . Both failed because at the vital moment, they were found wanting as managers.
