It continues to surprise me that people express such certain opinions based on so little. Sherwood will be crap! Why because he is not a famous manager? Famous managers have failed in the past and as so much is based on good fortune it will happen again. The nature of football is that it is full of different opinions and every other bod thinks he is an expert. I'll sit it out and see what happens.
Me as well, if he were to win the next three matches everyone would be saying he's the greatest thing since sliced bread. It's a funny old game, you are only as good as your last result.
In this particular case if he wins at OT and then knocks Arsenal out of the cup then he will have done very well. But you need more than 100 matches to judge a manager really
Interesting picture from this game in the Fail, of all places: please log in to view this image The officials need to clamp down on this sort of thing on set-pieces, as it's clearly got way, way out of hand. There's some much wrestling going on now at corners that they may as well start doing elbow drops and hitting each other with chairs.
Hasn't been said enough IMO, the refereee had a really poor game, and I thought that way before he decided to turn a blind eye to Reid.
Not so sure about that. With AVB, even though he was winning games, a lot of us questioned the extent to which luck was involved (I'm talking about this season, not last, when Bale papered over nearly all of his cracks). I, and others, could see that we won games that we could so easily have lost, and that there appeared to be little in the team that would make us serious top 4 contenders. Take Chavs, as an example. They are not winning convincingly, at the moment, but you can see that Mourhino has got a grasp of the situation, and that when Mad Dog (inevitably) splashes the cash on a proper striker, or recalls Lukaku, they are going to be the only team that has any chance of catching £ity for the title over the next two or three seasons. That's because any fool and his dog can see that Mourhino has got a very decent group of players organised, and has them playing like a team. I never got that feeling about AVB. I don't get that feeling about Sherwood. And here's the thing. Sherwood could lose his next three games, but I could still support, and believe in, him - if I can see an improvement in the team as a team. But, for me, he lacks the experience to be able to achieve that, so he will be relying completely on luck, just as AVB did after Bale left. That is no bad reflection on Sherwood, as I am sure he will eventually turn out to be a very decent manager, it's just that I don't believe he is currently the man we need, and I believe that Levy has sold us short yet again.
I certainly felt that way about AVB last year, even with Bale we could have easily lost some of games which we won. This season, without a couple of dubious penalty decisions we could be 10 pts worse off, that's why AVB had to go, he didn't look like he had control of the situation. So fair play to Levy there, action was needed and he took it. As for Sherwood's experience, what he, Chris Ramsey and to some extent Alex Inglethorpe and Clive Allen did with our youth setup was little short of a miracle, putting teams like Man U, the mousers and the chavs in their place so IMHO Sherwood deserves a bit of faith at least. As for Levy appointing Sherwood, at this time of the season who would you rather, Sherwood or one of the also-rans, McCarthy? McLeish? or some other perpetual failure? As for Maureen, the guy is an opportunist, He took over a great squad (Put together by Ranieri) when he first moved to the chavs and was backed by Mad Dog as you say. Nobody else had the money to compete. He moved to Inter when all of the traditional opponents were in trouble for match fixing etc. Whet to Madrid and struggled despite having an (almost) unlimited budget because he had some opposition and now returning to the Chavs he was expecting a two horse race. IT's proven a little more than that and I think he may be found out.
Why do people keep throwing this up as an excuse for our being stuck with Sherwood? If you want my honest opinion, I didn't want AVB, as I was fairly certain it would end the way it did. Levy should never have appointed him. Why? Because he had very little EPL experience, and from what experience he did have (gained solely at Chavs), he demonstrated that he was way out of his depth. With Sherwood, we have someone who doesn't even have the experience that AVB was able to gain! Would I rather have an experienced EPL manager over Sherwood? You bet, I would! Would I want either of the names you mentioned over Sherwood, no; but that's only because neither any of them nor Sherwood is going to last in the job, so it really doesn't make one jot of difference who's in the seat. Either way, this season is a complete write-off (in the sense that absolutely nothing is going to be learned from it by the guy who is, eventually, going to be brought in). We're stuck with Sherwood, there's nothing I, or anyone else, can do about that. Do I like it? No. Will I pretend that I like it? No. Why should I? Will I get behind the team? Always, that's never in doubt for any true fan. Am I pissed off that Levy has proved himself to be utterly incompetent, yet again? Absolutely.
The text indicates that there should be an image of a "cartoon cowboy jumping up and down" with a six-shooter, but I can't see it!
Blimey! How weird is that! It doesn't show in your post, Spurf, but it suddenly appears when I quote your post!
Given Villas-Boas' inexperience in general and in the Premier League in particular, it might've been an idea to employ a number two who had both. We did the opposite and employed an inexperienced coach who'd only worked in Germany in that capacity and even then it was only with youth players. Meanwhile the likes of Carlos Queiroz was pissing about with Iran...
People quote the also-rans because that is all that is currently available. Look at it as glass half full, at least we have got rid of AVB. We are all pissed off that Levy tends to be a ****wit but that's part of being a Spurs fan, the highs and the lows. I look forward to the football because we are passing the ball forward again, surely that is a plus. If we win that's an added plus.
A short list of managers who were available: Guus Hiddink Thorsten Fink Frank Rijkaard Marcelo Bielsa Jupp Heynckes Giovanni Trapattoni
The good: Credit to West Brom. They set up correctly to stop us, executed their strategy with energy and discipline and had by my count 4/4 of the best chances from open play. We were lucky to get a point. We tried hard to attack, and played some decent stuff at times. Walker and Rose comfortably our best players, partly because they were the only wide ones. West Brom tried to transition smoothly between clogging the middle, parking the bus and hitting on the break, so wide was the weakness, and part of the reason why Walker and Rose looked very good. Bentaleb again looked calm and composed as DM/deep lying playmaker. Lamela looked assured and decisive when he came on (I'm reaching here.) Eirksen's free kick. The bad: Buildup too slow. We had to move fast to keep West Brom, who tracked back well, from parking the bus. We didn't, with Chadli being exceptionally slow to almost everyone else's just plain slow. Huddlestone's accurate balls over the top would have been another excellent possibility, if only we'd kept him. Holtby-Eiriksen as the midfield two a bad idea, clearly. I rate Holtby, but only as an attacking central mid. Farther back he tends to scamper around frantically and to no effect. He's not a good deep-lying playmaker, surprisingly, considering I've seen him play well in a deeper role for the German U-21s. Aside from shielding the back four, the advantage of a DM. especially Sandro at his best, is that they create changes of possession which lead to breaks. Too few runners in the right places at the right times. Walker and Rose got into excellent positions that were wasted for lack of a runner into the box for a cutback (Paulinho might have been useful here). Too many crosses found nobody at the back post. The ugly: Can't we beat anyone at home? Even a relatively weak, manager-less team, after we've gone and sacked our manager and everything? Can't we even score a goal at home from open play? One more time, after scoring, we roll out the red carpet for the other team and give one right back. Second time in two games, and seems like our pattern all year. We have no belief, it seems. When we should be pulling away, we're going straight back to square one. If a manager ever wants an advertisement for banning goal celebrations, it would be Eiriksen.'s First I was afraid he would hurt himself. (Celebration injuries do happen.) Then, quite possibly because he was either knackered or strained something, he gives away the free kick that led to the equalizer. As to the players: The fact that we can all find the gelling process fantastically slow when it doesn't happen in a couple of months doesn't change the fact that teams continue to gel after a couple of years. It's still early to render verdicts on any of our signings, but I'm more encouraged than not, particularly about Paulinho, Holtby and even Soldado. (If we had a team of 11 Soldados I think we'd be leading the league.) On the manager: Deserves time and patience. As long as he stays true to his brief (have a go), I'll have patience with him. We're much likelier to get better at anything if we have the patience to stick to it for a while. One system, one manager, most of the same players is the difference between Arsenal and us right now, not more talent. (IMO). If we had millions to waste, we could be successful changing things frequently, but I think Chelsea is succeeding in spite of the turmoil, not because of it.
