I think Harry was very good. Excellent in fact. He was also very bad at other times. Many of the 'same old Spurs' throwing away of leads happened under his watch. People talk as if he was consistently excellent the entire time. Very romantic. I liked Redknapp a lot but I can't ignore the epic mistakes either. I also don't understand why every time we have a questionable moment, we spiral into Redknapp worship.
Nor can I, I would much rather we focused on discussing Pochettino but some fans can't help but bring up Redknapp so you can't then have an issue if the debate turns into fans discussing his positives and negatives.
Boss your participation on this board has a terrific effect in terms of debate. I might and do disagree with you on many issues but I am always glad to see you taking part.
Sentiments like... * Making snide comments about his response to a journalist's question about bringing in another striker * Calling him a "prat" for taking Kane off - even though anyone with eyes could see he had cramp * Regularly making snide comments about his appearance That's somebody looking for an excuse to have a pop, and don;t pretend otherwise.
His obvious pro is his willingness to give youth a chance, and on a regular basis rather than say a one off in the Europa. This is something which has a positive effect throughout the club as a whole as here is visible encouragement for those just embarking on a career at Spurs, plus the obvious attraction to other youngsters of joining our club. Unfortunately, I see far more cons than pros. I have already expressed my disappointment at the quality of entertainment his style of play offers. Aside from this, I see his tactics was far too rigid, our possession stats are good enough but so much of our passing around is in areas of the pitch where we are not hurting the opposition. Even yesterday when we were on top, we still had spells when the passing was between the back line defenders and Lloris without any real intentions of moving the ball forward. If we were to play this game even 20 metres further up the field, then this would be far more positive, but this doesn't happen often enough. I also find his substitutions are often wrong and yesterday's decision to take Mason off was bizarre.
Pros: Belief in young players, which not only allows our current players to develop with first team experience, but gives hope for players coming through. Good relationship with players Cons Lack of a plan b Lack of ability to read a game Team set-up doesn't allow support for Kane His appointment allows the club to focus on long term planning while ignoring the experience we need for our immediate targets I view him as a yes man/safe appointment Learning as a manager in a job that i view him as being out of his depth. So you can argue that much of the cons could turnaround if Pochettino was to learn/improve as a manager, yet I don't believe that will be possible, and overall he is an average manager but great for our young players coming through the academy.
OS don't you think that many modern managers are very rigid, Mouriniho, for example has built a career on it and a hugely successful one. He must be a model for many young managers like Poch and AVB. I , like you do not like it too much we would surely need to be looking at men like Alan Pardew if we want a difference and I'm not sure how that would go down.
Apologies for not toeing your party line HIAG, but as I said earlier, I am going to say it how I see it. I don't like Poch, I don't like the way he talks, I don't like what he brings to our club and what he doesn't bring, I think hrs frequently looks more like a scarecrow than a football manager and I beg your pardon over the Kane substitution, but it was not quite so blatantly obvious inside the stadium yesterday why he has been removed. In fact I didn't have a big issue with that decision, my real astonishment was with the removal of Ryan Mason.
I'm guilty of bringing up Redknapp. It's just that I think it's only fair that, while I thought the whole "next level" thing was massively crazy nonsense at the time, it's only fair to give it three years or so before passing judgement. I'm sure all those who were pushing for "the next level" will also make themselves known. I could say the same about the post-Bale signings. I said at the time that we could expect 2 or maybe 3 of the 7 to be successes. Now, two years down the line and two of our record signings sold after failing miserably, our record signing looking far from a top Prem player and only one of the seven really being a clear improvement I think I can, in a slightly frustrated way, say "See?!" And all I want is for Spurs to do well. I don't want to be proven right or win arguments. It's just annoying that the drop in quality over the last 3 years was obviously predictable. It's not just that we lost Harry. I think Harry would offer effective, simple fixes in the transfer market right now. He did it many times for us. But that is only half the story - the overall squad is nowhere near the quality he had. What would he have done if losing King, VDV and Modric? Struggled a bit TBH. Personally I think it's not a question of the squad *or* the manager dropping in quality - they both have! Quite a lot! Would Harry have let the squad get like this? Would he have purchased as poorly as AVB and Poch have? Doubt it. But he couldn't perform miracles and the biggest praise I can give Poch is that he got us 5th and a cup final with a squad that would have had Harry waking up in the middle of the night in cold sweats.
Which is surely of paramount importance for a club on the brink of a gargantuan expenditure that currently cannot hope to keep pace in the transfer market with the 5 clubs who regularly finish around or above it. As I said in an earlier post, the only chance we have of landing the next superstar is through sheer fortune in the transfer market, risking relatively large amounts of money for a club our size along the way, or the relatively inexpensive method of nurturing the youngsters up from the academy into world beaters. I think it's abundantly clear which approach reaps dividends more consistently; despite a range of scouts, DOF's and managers coming to the club, our transfer policy has been exactly what it often is for a club our size - completely hit and miss, whereas our academy has started unearthing some real gems with promising consistency - which is precisely why we need a manager who can get the most out of it. If the Smug One were our manager, Kane would probably still be out on loan somewhere in rural Belgium and Mason would be playing for someone like Ipswich.
Question, what do folks mean exactly when they describe a manager as 'rigid'? Is Wenger rigid? Rodgers? Pelligrini? If there were managers a rigidity league, what would it look like?
And as for Crouch! I cannot believe your trashing of him, Spurf! Worst Spurs player in recent times or whatever you said?! Besides the fact that he is the epitome of the footballing cliche "good feet for a big man" and is a hugely under-rated, very skillful player I will now name 5 strikers (just strikers - won't even need to get to all the other positions) who have played for Spurs in the last 10 years or so who have been clearly worse. I have not thought about it beforehand and I expect it to be easy. Here we go: Pavlyuchenko Bent Rasiak Soldado (hate to put him on the list but facts are facts - he was pretty **** for us) Rebrov Easy. And no need to go a bit beyond my self-imposed 10 year limit to get into the Iversens or Rosenthals if this world. Did I not mention Docherty? Please. Crouch is a bloody good player, did great for us and you're well off the mark if you say he's one of the worst players to wear the shirt. Sheer nonsense. If I were to open it up to players of any position and still limited it to players I saw play I could name literally hundreds of worse players.
We have seen the result of short term planning (with Redknapp) and the successful period, while now I agree bringing through youth is a smart decision when we have talented youngsters, but unless we add experience then I see us becoming a club that can't finish top four, develops youth players but refuses to sign players that are in many ways beneath us, like we have an arrogance of which players we should sign. If Pochettino is part of a long term plan which leads to his dismissal and a more experienced manager adding to what Pochettino doesn't offer and that leads us to that next level, then I guess you can argue that the "plan" has worked...BUT I know that isn't our plan, we're hoping Pochettino and the team will grow together and add experience by having players develop with the team and eventually finish top four and that I don't see happening.
Lenny I have made my views on Crouch as clear as I could. Rebrov and Soldado are far better players than there time at Spurs suggests and Crouch was a great fit at Pullis's Stoke. Any one who has to juggle the ball to get control can never be a great footballer IMO if any of our current crop show the same level of ball control as Crouch they would not get into this side. That's my opinion and I stand by it. Crouch and Crap are interchangable as far as I am concerned.
Hmm - Poch did handle the fall-out of the squad last November pretty well and managed to accelerate the removal of the 'old-guard' (Kaboul, Adebayor etc.) A yes man implies weakness to enact change, something Poch has at least assisted with (the situation did rather fall in his lap to be fair). He could have sided with experience but didn't.
I may be reading too much into this but I thought I detected a slight annoyance by MP on the transfer situation. Like all things arrived at by committee( And committee is how we appear to conduct our transfer business) often nobody ends up with what they want.
