What needs fixing: 1.) Management Sherwood's rapidly turning into Alan Pardew, so he'll nut someone by the end of the season. Before him, AVB messed up royally: he was doing a reasonable job with the squad he inherited, then decided to change too many players at the same time which has never worked out well for any manager in any league, so why he thought he could succeed when so many failed was baffling. We need a manager with a clear vision of what he wants from his players, and if we're lacking in certain areas he needs a clear vision of which players he needs to bring in to do this. 2.) Coaching There has never been any reasonable or logical explanation as to why Freund was brought in as assman, AVB seemed to agree as he just ignored Freund and had Luis Martins as his default #2, and the fact that Freund was coaching our forwards beggars belief. Similarly, I have yet to see what Ferdinand offers us as a coach - he's been at the club a few years, often on a part-time basis, and doesn;t seem to have imparted any knowledge to our various misfiring strikers in that time. 3.) Management structure AVb requested a DoF, and Pleat recommended Baldini...but AVB isn't manager anymore, so does this mean Baldini is drawing a salary until he is presumably fired in June? All too often we've gone back to the DoF structure and we get it wrong - not least because the DoF recommends the manager to be hired, and time and time again we install a DoF when a manager is in place. The DoF system worked for us when the brief was clear and concise - Pleat was told to scout youngsters with potential in the lower leagues, and Arnesen had a brief to bring in young talent who would develop into first team players as well as reasonably-priced English talent (i.e. Michael Carrick) The issue with Comolli and Baldini is they had a scattergun approach, sometimes brought in players we didn't need, and acquiesced to the other clubs' demands rather than negotiate. 4.) Players we don't need Worryingly similar to Comolli's summer of madness, we overloaded with players in some positions yet are light in others. The positions where we're overloaded included... Central midfield (Sandro, Dembele, Paulinho, Eriksen, Capoue, Bentaleb, with Carroll and Livermore out on loan) Wingers (Lennon, Townsend, Chadli, Lamela, with Falque and Ceballos out on loan) Attacking midfielders (Eriksen, Sigurdsson, with Holtby, Pritchard and Mason out on loan) Yet on the other hand we are lacking in terms of... Left back (making do with Rose, Naughton or Fryers, or playing Vertonghen out of position) Goalkeeper (Friedel will be retiring this summer, Gomes is out of contract, so we have no real cover or competition for Lloris) 5.) Injuries There's two reasons we haven't settled on a first xi this season - partly because of AVB's ludicrous amount of chopping and changing, but also because I can't recall any point where we haven't had at least one player who would be in our first xi on the injury list. Although, frankly, even if our first xi was fully fit would they really perform with such a lack of direction from the dugout? 6.) Lack of direction AVB had an idea of what he wanted, but lacked the tactical nous to implement it properly, and exacerbated this by his constant tinkering meaning that no player could have a run of form Sherwood, on the other hand, doesn't seem to have any idea of what he wants the team to do nor the tactical nous to get across what he expects from the team 7.) The Man Upstairs The reason Levy has made a hash of it this season is because he managed to undermine himself with the DoF system. Think about it for a moment: when Levy had the last say on transfers, we were one of the canniest operators in the transfer market - which happened to coincide with good seasons when Jol, Redknapp or AVB were in charge. But when Levy doesn't have last say, and hands over that authority to a DoF, we get seasons like 2007-8, 2008-9 or this season, where things fall apart on the pitch with alarming regularity. While the usual sentiment is that we do best when the manager is allowed to get on with their job, and there's a certain truth to that (although Jol always worked under a DoF - it's only when Comolli sabotaged him in the summer of 2007 that the system failed), the indication is that a poorly-handled DoF causes problems for manager and chairman alike, as also witnessed by Comolli's stint at Anfield a couple of years ago. Levy's handling of replacing AVB was poor, too: as a World Cup is coming up that means several coaches were eyeing up potential employment come July so didn't want to commit to club football (for example Guus Hiddink) while other coaches don't want to take on two jobs in the lead-up to the event (like Van Gaal or Prandelli), meaning that while AVB probably deserved to be sacked after his long list of bad judgment this season he was sacked at a time where replacements would be thin on the ground compared to other years so we hired from within (just like when Pleat replaced Hoddle in 2003-4, in other words) and that pretty much said we were looking to keep the ship steady for the rest of the season and if we happened to achieve anything that would be an unexpected bonus...and any hopes of an unexpected bonus went by the wayside remarkably quickly, with us out of both cups within Sherwood's first three weeks as manager.
Don't think we are that bad,i belive we have a good ,maybe not great team in place,i alway's though we wouldn't do much this year.All we need now is the right man to manage the team,and the time to get it right
We may have such players in people like Paulinho or Erikson & Lamela but you are right we have seen no stand out players this season. No player to my recollection has hit any kind of form except Adebayor. How ironic is that!
17th net spend in 5 years is strangling the clubs ambition . A club like Spurs should have a conservative net spend of 12 million each year not 650,000. This is why we will always go tits up and Levy intention is to pay himself one of the highest chairman salary's in world football.
Sorry, but can't entirely agree. Who was responsible for hiring Santini, Ramos, AVB? Levy, as far as I know. All three of them utter disasters. I don't dispute that he means to do right by the club, although I suspect the motives are financial as much as anything else. Yes, finding that magic man is not easy. But that doesn't mean that we can't make an effort to hire THE right man this time. It would also help, as has been discussed, if that man were given time to implement his ideas, etc. I seem to remember a certain Alex Ferguson was one game away from being sacked by Utd in the early days.
I like Paulinho but for me he is now really a consistent match winner. Most teams have players like him that you need but aren't that hard to come by. He's kind of similar to Ramires, Lucas, Flamini even. Essential players in the engine room but as I say, not really a match winner. Erikson looks a fine player but has struggled with the P.L a bit, may be better next year. Lamela who can tell? I Never see him play in the league.
True but you've always got in some good money for them. You get all that money for Bale and spent it on a load of players when perhaps 2-3 really top players in key areas would have been the better move. Though to be fair, you can't account for how badly Soldado and Lamela have turned out so far. Although he's struggling now, you do wonder whether a swap for Ozil could have been looked at. Real would have obviously gone for it.
We don't have the man in place capable of making the correct decisions . IF the team shows star quality it will be stripped again of any assets so back to round one.
Lamela has'nt been bad really,he's been injured almost all the time he's been at Spurs.so maybe if we keep him and he get's fit,he maybe the creative player we are looking for since Modric left
Fair points. I would say we need to build our team around Sandro and Eriksen. Soldado will come good and Vertonghen and Kaboul are top class if injury free and committed. We also have a top keeper - though he is occasionally scary!!!. Lamela could be the player we need, that you describe - but that remains wishful thinking.
He hardly played before injury because he was ineffective , lightweight and like many in the team anonymous. In my book that's a 3 million player . I am not saying that there is not talent in him but a record signing should make an impact not a major flop so far. His Spurs time has most probably broken him , so we unlikely to ever see the talent , remember attitude over talent is the new Spurs way.
How did he manage to get it so wrong 3 times? Going for 'names' in foreign leagues. Gross was another one the only foreign manager I can remember who did a good job was Jol from the Dutch league and therfore much closer to our English style. It would suggest to me that we either need a British manager or one that has a proven record in the PL, but that's no guarantee. Van Gall could be a good fit provided he is given time and not sacked at the first run of poor results. I know he's not British or with experience in the PL
In one way there isn't anything wrong. There are three teams in our league with more resources and three more with the about the same, all of whom have better historical records than us. Nevertheless we are averaging about 5th. The problem is that the difference between 4th and 5th is so big. I think Levy keeps thinking that we will get there with one last heave but actually patience and stability would work better. But its a tricky choice. We had to sell Bale and it seemed right to reinvest the money in the squad but that left the management with a difficult problem.
That doesn't change the lack of fight vs chelsea, the ****ty performance against most other teams this season (win or lose) or the fact we were comprehensively and deservedly beaten at home but a portugese team built for peanuts
I've been saying for months that we didn't need to sign Chadli: Townsend was penciled in for a role this season, Sigurdsson was already at the club, we were obviously looking at Lamela at the time (and for £25m he clearly wasn't a last-minute deal), plus we have Falque and Ceballos out on loan so we could've spent that £7m somewhere it was needed (i.e. a left back), whilst also getting someway towards a more settled side as there would be marginally less tinkering from AVB as he tried to accommodate everyone.
Ozil going to Arsenal on the back of Madrid signing Bale was disgusting. I'm not sure if Ozil would have wanted to join Spurs but i'm 99% sure we didn't try to get him, £40 plus Ozil would of softened the Bale sale massively.
