S3E26 – Through thick and Tim

2 Comments

1. matt
   12/02/2014 @ 5:51 pm

   My god you guys sound like you’re owing the plot! You felt confident under AVB? You felt like he had a plan? The man only ever played the same 4231v system and his substitutions were not just confused, they were totally bonkers at times. I’ve never seen such deluded in-game decisions being made. I have no clue where your misguided belief in AVB comes from. Did you ever watch his Porto team? No. He had a world class striker in a league where his only competition was in transition, & he had as good as a free-pass in the Europa League. Other than Villareal, who were having a decent season but were in decline themselves & massively reliant on Rossi, “luck of the draw” was never more apt than AVB’s Europa League campaign with Porto.

   In contrast, Sherwood has played 442, 451, 4231 and 433. Before the game v Everton he spoke clearly on BT Sport about how he was setting us up to play, & it was WAY more ‘planned’ than just “run around a bit”! He came into a totally demoralised team and immediately sent us on a League run of 6 games unbeaten, and amassed double the amount of consecutive points than AVB had managed all season with a team he had had all year with.

   Every Spurs fan I know & talk to is being won round by Tim, except you guys on this Podcast. I really enjoy this podcast, but it you really undermine yourselves when you say AVB made you feel confident because he “had a plan”. He was clueless.

   You guys have to appreciate that Sherwood & co have barely had 2 months with this team, right in the middle of the most congested part of our season. Their methods & philosophy are virtually are in total contrast to the previous regime, who had been drumming their boring, technical, “safety-first” drivel into our players over the last year & a half and 2 pre-seasons.

   This whole “Tim has no experience” stuff is equally nonsense. He has been in the game over 20 year, almost half that time spent at Spurs. He is more experienced than AVB, who’s footballing experience in the game amounts to little more than 1 good season at a club where he had no competition, half-a-season of failure at Chelsea & half-a-season of mediocrity at Academica. Beyond that he did a bit of scouting, managed some island in the Carribean and made the tea for Bobby Robson. However, it’s when you look deeper that it gets a little more scary (& your apparent ‘confidence’ begins to look so misplaced). Andre banished the likes of Tim & Les from coaching the 1st team, guys who had huge amount of experience on the training pitch, English football &, most important, Spurs, and brought in his own staff. Of the guys he brought in there was no experience whatsoever of English football other than being with Andre when he failed with Chelsea. Jose Mario Rocha & Daniel Sousa both followed Andre from Academica, to Porto, to Chelsea, to Spurs. That is their ENTIRE experience of football. Basically, the only know working under AVB. At least Andre had been with Mourinho and elsewhere. Basically, our fitness coach & opposition scout only had a total of 2 years experience on the training pitch before coming to Spurs, half of which was a struggle at best. Then AVB hired his 1st team coach, Luis Martins – a man with NO experience of English football whatsoever and was coaching in Saudi Arabia when Andre headhunted him.

   Such information about our training staff would fill me with zero confidence! OK, so Steffen Freund was also added, but this was his first senior coaching job also & was brought in to help Andre, not by Andre. By the end of his tenure, Freund too found himself virtually banished from 1st team training by the Portuguese megalomaniac.

   I’m WAY more calm now Tim’s leading us. What he has achieved so far in such a short space of time is hugely impressive. He’s turned our shot conversion rate from 1 of the worst in the League to among the best, our form under Tim is amongst the best form in the whole League, his points return is virtually double what Andre managed over a similar amount of games at any point this season.

   I find it amusing how you view the “Andros incident” as a negative by instilling it with supposition also. I actually saw it as a positive – I don’t know what Andros was asking (he might’ve been asking when or whether he should switch wings, or whether he should be telling anyone else to switch position – it literally could’ve been anything), however I like the fact that he came and asked Tim the question so that he was absolutely clear what to do. OK, so people might not have asked Andre, but I do wonder whether they ought to have asked because they frequently looked confused and unsure where they should be playing or doing! Maybe they feared being stuck training with the kids tho if they dared ask Andre a question . . .

   . . . that was a joke btw

2. matt
   12/02/2014 @ 5:53 pm

   lol, “owing the plot” . . . what do I sound like!

   That was clearly meant to say “losing the plot”. There might be several crazy word errors in that post, I’m still getting used to Mavericks spellcheck (or rather, “change-word-at-will check”)