"The one CL appearance was as good as it was going to get" Squeeze every last drop out of it then (if I were you) .
Most clinics are linked to NHS Direct for serious event warnings. HIAGs' is linked to goal.com and La Marca.
The time was right for Redknapp to go. He'd taken us as far as we could go. Yes, he did well for us in some aspects" But he had a few top notch players also, to thank for that. Whether he stayed or went, Modric, VDV, Bale would all have gone anyway. Subsequently, our level of performance would have dropped, commensurately, No side can lose three world class players, such as those, and expect to replace them with similar quality. Let's remember that Bale & Modric are both important cogs in the C.L. champions. That's how good they are!... His most irritating trait, for me, was his absolute refusal to accept any responsibility for bad results, or performances. Whilst being only too ready to grab credit for any successes. Nothing was ever 'Arry's fault!...
You can tell there is no meaningful footie! It's like we've gone 2 years back in time. To add my tuppence worth, I agree with Boss about Harry -was deserving of a chance to continue. Most of us were irritated by his gobbing off, but in the end his job was to manage the team, not the press. And getting us 4th - twice - was fantastic. And if I'm not getting 4th, I want to watch better football than the sterile rubbish AVB served up. Unlike Boss, I am fully behind Pochettino, and really looking forward to seeing what he does with the very good players we have.
Levy did have a influence (will never dispute that) but take out Redknapps four years and replace them four years with one of Levys "Mistakes" and you wouldn't be in such a position to praise Levy. Basically Levy had to scrap his blueprint for success and employ the complete opposite (in Redknapp) for us to get into the CL, that tells you Redknapp deserves more praise as if that team was handed (Minus the improvements Redknapp made) to Jol, Ramos, Hoddle, Santini etc or whoever Levy decided to employ then we wouldn't be talking about Crouch scoring to get us CL football or enjoyed CL nights at the lane. Instead we would be sat here discussing why we have never qualified for the CL with Levy as owner. Thats why if (as I predict), we fail to get back into the CL after sacking Redknapp, then slowly you will start to realise that you shouldn't overlook aspects of Redknapps Management just because you want to pass credit elsewhere.
So if Levy fixes a mistake (hiring Ramos) by a good choice he gets no credit, but one data point of getting into the CL makes Harry a genius. "AVB would have won the league with Harry's team that lost out to Chelsea's CL victory. He got a higher number of points with a worse squad against better opposition." Your statements about Harry have exactly the same data to support them as I have for that
......Avb failed at Chelsea, Failed with us, failed to get top four and was sacked for playing crap football and leaving us in mid table. If he had Redknapps team he probably have lost the dressing room, put Adebayor in the reserves and VDV wouldn't have stuck around.
Power what I'm saying is Redknapp was employed as a "fixer" (as you suggest) but the reality was he went ahead of fixing us and showed Levy, that Levy's way can't get top four and to get top four (and the CL) you need someone that is the opposite of the ideal manager Levy wants, which is why every manager will fail to get top four (apart from Redknapp).
Great now I'm getting dragged into it... It's easy to say with hindsight but if we'd lost a couple of qualifiers and Hodgson was on the brink we'd be right back in the same situation with our manager flirting with the England job whilst the team goes to pot. You can argue about whether him being entitled to tout himself for his dream job but I think we deserved more loyalty after we stuck by him through the trial. The results were good and he gave us many memorable games of football and I'm very grateful for that but I think it was the right time for us to part company. In terms of him keeping the job with us, I think he made his choice when he spent his time planning the Euros with England instead of picking up our team, which was in poor form at the end of the season. He even spoke to Rodgers about him coming as his assistant! Maybe it's just me but I think that's really poor, we'd just won our first game in 6 at that point and he's worrying about a job he might get rather than the one he had. I'm not surprised it's skirted over by the media but considering the criticism of AVB and Sherwood since it really is unfair that this wasn't a bigger issue.
I'll bet my house that AVB finishes his management career with more major trophies than Redknapp. He's already ahead you know....
Harry's way can easily deliver one or two good seasons but it can't deliver a longstanding improvement to the club which is what is needed to get us into the CL as permanent fixture because Harry has taken no long-term actions at any club he has ever been at. In fact I think every club (except us) he has ever managed has been relegated soon after he left. As I said above - he is a great fixer but nothing more.
Which is because his management improves them to a point that was beyond expectations and all managers that follow fail to improve (on Redknapp), Unfortunately for us it also applies as we have gone from 4th, to 5th and now 6th, although we should just avoid relegation!
...and people are saying "right place, right time" about Harry! AVB must have done incredible work in his one season at Portugal's biggest club! And due to the fact that he started his career with one whole season at the biggest club in its respective country which was at the time blessed with some top, top players, AVB will have many years of good credit on his name and will manage several other powerful teams in their respective countries. We've all seen plenty of mangers and players whose profile somehow takes a very long time to fade despite absolute lack of ability or end product.
Oh **** - Harry could only deliver four good seasons?! And only two top four finishes? No proof that he would have got more? Not good enough for this club. We're used to decades of uninterrupted CGlorious CL campaigns aren't we? And of course success over four years is excellent evidence of probable long-term failure. I can't think of a better way to predict future failure than by the fact that methods are currently bringing success! Harry didn't play enough fringe players or youth players. But it mostly worked. Why is it then guaranteed to stop working?
"... I'm not surprised it's skirted over by the media but considering the criticism of AVB and Sherwood since it really is unfair that this wasn't a bigger issue." As I have often said, some of the broadsheets were already writing that with Spurs in PL freefall (in April 2012) , the FA were quite correct not to buckle under the "Arry for England" mob clamour. The reasons for that freefall were moot.
Sandro, Naughton, Walker, Friedel, Kaboul, Adebayor (think it's fair to count him) makes six. But the playing staff is simply not as effective now as it was under Harry, is it? The fact that we had a very much unnecessary overhaul of the squad after he left (cos of The Project, remember?) is neither Harry's fault nor has it resulted in us reaching The Next Level which, apparently, Harry was holding us back from gloriously attaining. OK so he liked to sign tried-and-tested players. Point is a) Did it work? and b) Was it sustainable? I think the answers are "Yes" and "Yes". So what if you're not promoting inadequate youth or not signing players in their early 20s if the players you ARE getting in are doing a job and, actually, still have a decent sell-on price (Parker, Defoe, Crouch, etc) and besides they didn't break the bank anyway. So what if you only get two good seasons out of a Parker-like purchase? Better to have two solid seasons from a proven performer than to have "promising" "world-class" talent come from over-seas and have no idea what to do (see all three of our record-breaking, world stars who were signed last summer). Go through all of Harry's signings and I think you will find that his signings had a higher rate of success than the signings that came immediately before he joined. I expect that time will tell that the same can be said about signings since he left. Football is not just about "building" and "projects" and wonderful futures where the 15 year-old in the academy goes on to be worth 40m in the future (though is worthless and contributes nothing right now). What is number one priority is the present. What players you have available right now to win games. You want a good future for a football club? Win games. Get success. Then you'll qualify for major tournaments. Then players like VDV will want to join, players like Bale and Modric will not want to leave. The future is based on the present and Harry dealt with that pretty bloody well.
I thought that this thread was about Pochettino. Why do so many posters assume that it will be years before we get back into the CL whilst at the same time believing that Manure will do it quite easily when apart from possibly van Persie we have a better team than they have. You all sound like the miserable sods I had to sit next to last season spending more time moaning than supporting. AVB was right when he complained about the home support although our away fans are the best in the league. Let us give the manager our support and OUR team the support they deserve.
