AVB didn't want him and VDV wanted to be near his wife. Great shame he went, but he was struggling to last matches near the end (always coming off after 70 odd minutes). Proper player though.
He was having trouble with his marriage. His missus stayed in Germany. They split up anyway and his form and fitness have been poor since his return, unfortunately. He's now with Khalid Boulahrouz's former wife, IIRC.
As others have said, he was having his own problems, plus he spoke several times about how he liked that Harry didn't spend ages focusing on tactics and was never the hardest worker without the ball. Great player and rightly loved by Spurs fans but I don't disagree with selling him, the trouble was we were trying to sign Moutinho as a replacement(not direct) and we ran out of time at the end of the window. WOuld've been nice to have him back but I think that chance went in the summer and I'm not sure Pochettino's tactical focus would've gone down well with him.
Footballing wise it was one of the worst decisions we made to let him go, we lost King and Modric that Summer so selling Rafa was suicidal. However the reasoning behind it was understandable as he wanted to be close to his wife back in Germany (not that it worked out!) and he always mentioned how HSV held a special place in his heart. One of the best players I've seen down the Lane. I'd actually still welcome him back even if he is getting on now and past his best, still a great player in my opinion with technical ability to rival the best.
Great player for Spurs, Levy even managed a couple of million profit out of him, and at his age it was a sensible move. From a footballing point of view it was a mistake to sell him as it weakened us, but from a business point of view the right time and a good decision to sell. And as we know, the business side comes before the football with Levy and ENIC.
Business may come before football but the best thing for any business is success. Look at Chelsea and Man City, yeah they've spent loads but look how much they have increased their income in the last 10 years.
No place for VDV at Spurs any more. Why have forwards who can control the ball, read the game, pass, shoot? A forward's job is to close down or, if you have the ball, to pass it sideways to bring someone else into play who can then pass sideways themselves so that eventually the ball can get to a fullback who can then pass to a centreback who can then pass it to Loris, thereby bringing our best player into the game. Ability on the ball was very suspicious to AVB. It's why we sold Huddlestone - too much of a liability having people around who can play football when they're supposed to be running up blind alleys for 90 minutes. (In truth I believe the stuff about his wife but it fits AVB's methodology to not fight hard to keep a quality footballer cos they can't run around as much as AVB'd like).
Zenit St. Petersburg P13 W10 D2 L1 F35 A9 GD26 Pts32 7 points clear of last season's winners. AVB can't be _that_ bad.
Well there's many, many a manager whose CV looks good based on teams I don't know in league I don't know. I'll reserve judgement til I see what their methods and effectiveness is at Spurs. And in the year and a half of seeing AVB's Spurs his method seemed to be "inherit a team with Gareth Bale in it" - the football was dire and that highest points total was purely due to Bale rescuing unlikely points from games where we deserved little or nothing.
In all fairness lennypops, VdV wasn't looking like finishing a game towards the end of his time with us even under Redknapp, and what with VdV personally wanting to move back to HSV at the time, Levy seeing a good fee, and AVB perhaps anticipating Bale moving into a more fluid role (and VdV not being suitable to rotate to the flank when Bale moved insider for a period) it was probably the right move for us and him. Great player in his short time for us and although it was sad to see him go, I'm kind of happy that he went out playing well, so thats how we remember him. Rather than him staying, and unhappiness and being asked to play a role he wasn't suited for making us remember him as a shadow of his most effective self. On Huddlestone, its easy to say in hindsight now he's performing at Hull that we shouldn't have sold him, and it was a divisive issue on here at the time, but at the time he was coming off the back of a long time out of the team and there was no guarantee that he'd return the same player. He needed time to play himself into form and fitness and we couldn't IMO afford him a run of games in the team to play himself back to his old effectiveness. Sandro and Dembele had looked a very effective partnership the previous season, we had signed Capoue and Paulinho who would likely have been ahead of Hudd in the pecking order due to the latter's fitness. Considering we made some good money it made sense to do the sale for a player who was understandably down the pecking order at the time. If you were saying that at the time then fair play, you were right. But I maintain that the sale did make some sense at the time, unless Levy and AVB had access to a crystal ball.
well if the criteria for being a good manager is having done it at Spurs i guess there must be what, 2 good managers ever? Redknapp won **** all and underachieved with the squad we had for example.
No, of course I don't think that. The same as I don't think that every manager who wins a trophy or two must be a great manager. AVB won the league with one of the two teams who always wins the league in Portugal having inherited an amazing squad. Now he's had half a decent season with a team who have finished either top or second in their league for 5 out of the last 7 years. So, you know - I'll judge him on the best information I have available - the formations, tactics and choice of player that I saw once or twice a week for a year and a half. And that wasn't good. I do, however, believe that more than two good managers have existed in the world ever. Of course Harry Redknapp is not one of them. Thank God we got rid of him and moved on to The Next Level. (And how I love hearing how Spurs under-acheived when he was with us. Rival fans must **** themselves laughing when they hear stuff like that).
Yeah - TBH I think there was some inevitability and probably good sense to let VDV go when we did. I do, however, feel that his leaving was indicative of a general trend from the Harry years of having and encouraging technically gifted players like Krankjar, VDV and Huddlestone and even Corluka (and yes - I know it was Harry who started putting Walker in the team ahead of Corluka) who were gifted footballers though not as athletic as their replacements. It just seemed at the time, and still does, that systems and formation and workrate were more highly rated than genuine football class. I mean - we really have signed a bunch of huff-and-puff midfielders since selling VDV. When your record-signing Brazilian midfielder is best known for being "box-to-box" and all the clips of him I see from his "amazing" Confederations Cup include at least one part where the ball bounces off his shin then these are worrying signs. On Huddlestone - I remember posting on here how I didn't like the sale and blame Hudd's innate footballing skill as a reason why AVB might not have liked him. So I can feel smug about that but I don't think you needed a crystal ball to come to that conclusion - you just had to witness how he changed the game v Man City towards the end of his time with us. When he came on it was like we finally had someone on the pitch who knew how to play football, not just close down the opposition and pass the ball sideways. Not a starter for Spurs but someone who had a little bit of something special that you need in a squad. Also - it's not a good argument to say "Well we signed player x, y and z so had to sell him". Point is that we didn't need to sign player x, y or z! (See the "buy Capoue so have to sell Sandro" theory). (Bear in mind, though, that my bemoaning of players leaving Spurs has a chequered history - I confidently stated that Wolves had got a steal when they bought Jamie O Hara).
I take your points lenny, although again on Huddlestone as you said - if he wasn't going to be starting, was that enough for him? He clearly wanted and needed regular football and its not too much of a leap to suggest that if it was made clear to him that he'd have his work cut out to start games, that he might be more open to a move away than otherwise. And regardless of whether we should have signed said players, we did sign them, and that would have further impacted Huddlestone's chances of regular football. I don't quite get why you don't see that as a good argument, surely signing players in Huddlestone's position (even if signing the players isn't the right thing to do, in hindsight or otherwise) is going to force him further down the pecking order, and this closer to a move away from the club.
Oh yeah - I totally agree. But, as you understand, I just don't think some of those players needed signing anyway. So the argument that we need to sell a player cos we bought new player x is essentially just kicking the can further down the road, argument-wise. Cos then the question just becomes "Well then why did we sign the replacement, thereby making the original player's departure much more likely?". It all, eventually, comes down to the assessment of the player who is being replaced. And to me that assessment was wrong in Huddlestone's case. But hey-ho - at least I won't be bitching too much about us selling any of our current players if bids come in!
