Someone needs to take hold of our club and give it a good old shake. We have stumbled from one project to another, now is the time for a plan we stick to. Dave Walters does the pleading.
Time for someone to take responsibility
So once again we are reaching the business end of the season and as normal our beloved team are doing everything possible to make it yet another heart-breaking finale. The result against Chelski was both inevitable and frustrating to the point of asking myself once again ‘whatever have I done to support such a team’.
Of course like all true supporters I am THFC through good times and bad, yet this season in particular has taken me to depths of despair I never knew existed. Something is and has been growing like a cancer within the club. There appears to be nobody willing to take any responsibility for a whole series of mismanaged and knee jerk decisions.
Selling Gareth Bale was a financial decision made from the top. He was under contract to us and could have been made to stay, however unpleasant the aftermath. Having decided to cash in on him who was responsible for spending the booty?
The seven recruits bought by the Bale cash bonanza did not leave us with anything like a balanced squad (you will have your own opinions of who should or should not have been bought out of those seven).
[linequote]Performances under Sherwood have been generally better and certainly easier on the eye but in my view he really is papering over the cracks [/linequote]
We started the season without an adequate left back/reserve, midfield players enough for 3 teams and short of striker cover due to the fallout of AVB and Adebayor. On top of that it was obvious to everyone that attempting to integrate seven players into the team/squad would take time and is hardly the recipe for footballing success.
AVB chose to play in a certain way, which ultimately cost him his job. This was followed by the board scrambling around trying to find a replacement. Enter Tim Sherwood the now proud holder of the poison chalice.
Performances under Sherwood have been generally better and certainly easier on the eye but in my view he really is papering over the cracks as I believe there is a chasm between us and the current top four, perhaps not in squad personnel but in the way in which the club is run.
However our results against the current top four have been pathetic.
For now though, back to the Chelski humiliation. Forget about the slip by Jan Vertonghen and the penalty fiasco. We started the match with a team set out to try and grab a draw at best. That team was without any of the seven players purchased in the summer and had Kyle Walker playing in midfield. Also any confidence that Roberto Soldado may have gained by his recent goal and partnership with Adebayor was quickly crushed by leaving him on the bench.
This brings me back to my main point:
There appears to be no coherent strategy within the club.
Managers are given little time and appear to be chosen at a whim, players appear to be purchased without any thought of the needs or overall balance of the squad. No-one is taking responsibility for what is going wrong. Is it Levy who calls the shots with transfers? Baldini? Certainly it appeared that AVB did not approve of at least 2 of the summer signings.
[linequote]Someone, anyone, please take hold of our club and shake it from top to bottom, then maybe we will have a chance of achieving our potential[/linequote]
As we speed towards the car crash also known as end of the season, please will someone take charge. It needs to be clear to any new manager (I am certain there will be one waiting in the wings) who chooses the transfer targets. Let us have a coherent transfer policy that everyone is happy with rather than the ill thought out fiasco of last summer.
Bill Nicholson used to know his best eleven and would play them at every opportunity. No-one this season appears to have a clue what our best eleven is. This has compounded the problems highlighted.
Bearing in mind that we last won the league in 1961 I am used to failure. I am used to disappointment. What I am not used to is a club like ours being run like someone playing FIFA 14. Someone, anyone, please take hold of our club and shake it from top to bottom, then maybe we will have a chance of achieving our potential.
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11 Comments
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11/03/2014 @ 5:37 pm
We had a manager who called the shots,it was the only terms he would take on the job “I pick the team,buy and sell the players etc” and he was the most successful manager weve had for years.Then he was sacked for probaly the above reasons,I think Mr.Levy likes to dabble,and since then its been all downhill .We now have a DoF,why ,I dont believe avb didnt have quite a large say in who we bought,nearly all midfielders which suited his game “plan” .I agree someone has got to get the club by its balls and get things sorted.WE LIVE IN HOPE !!! COYS
11/03/2014 @ 5:49 pm
It all comes back to sacking a manager who got us 4th playing fantastic football. I hope everyone that wanted Harry gone has got what they wanted.
I can understand some fans were annoyed due to the England links but I would say despite all of the England talk ,the court case etc etc we finished 4th.What Levy should have done if he was as clever as he believes himself to be is keep Harry on until we felt we could trade up to an Ancellotti or LVG. Sacking Harry was knee jerk, childish and cutting our nose off to spite our face.
What I cannot understand is how many fans hated Redknapp way before the England job raised its head these fans in the main were the same people calling AVB the 2nd coming. It amazes me that some Spurs fans must have been in some mad twilight zone season when we finished 4th and AVB destroyed Chelsea because they were happy with sacking the successful manager to be replaced by the loser( and a boring loser at that).
Well Harry haters thank you lets hope Levy goes all out for LVG we’ve never had anyone with his CV before and although Im not dead against Sherwood you can’t turn down a manager like LVG if there is a sniff of getting him when were in the position we are now.
11/03/2014 @ 7:10 pm
I didn’t want Harry gone before the England job that never was. I thought he was great for us, and could have taken us further.
But I agree that Levy did the right thing booting him out at the end of that tragic season.
Like too many Spurs fans who feel it all went ‘wrong’ when Harry went, you conveniently forget that it really all went wrong 10 weeks earlier in late February of that season!! The day when Harry finished his court case, after the club’s loyal support of him, and Capello resigned! OK, we celebrated Harry’s return with a thrashing of Newcastle (and like this season too, funnily enough, that result was as good as it got) but then we went from one of the best teams out there (challenging for the title and a nailed on 3rd at least, considering we were 11 points ahead of 4th) to a faltering mid table club. Getting 4th somehow, yes, but snatching defeat from the jaws of victory because of Chelsea winning the CL. For that fall in form, I blame Harry and his meandering eye. Think of the status we could have grown to now if Harry had simply brushed aside thoughts of England and continued concentrating and focusing on his fine attractive side!!! But everything was dashed to pieces by the end of that season, and despite Bale’s exploits the following term, the side was unbalanced after Modric left. Harry had this club in the palm of his hand, and all our dreams …and they were dashed! It’s been tragic to witness the waste ever since.
11/03/2014 @ 8:06 pm
“but I would say because all of the England talk ,Arry’s ego, lack of loyalty to Spurs etc etc we missed out on 3rd and finished 4th”
Fixed to reflect the facts and not your blinkered Arry apologism
11/03/2014 @ 10:01 pm
but we still finished 4th?and he was the line that got us to 3rd in the first place.
12/03/2014 @ 12:23 am
Lordy. He had the best squad and definitely the best first team we’ve had in the Premier League era. That’s why he got 4th. It wasn’t down to him. It was the players. He completely took his eye off the ball. How do you go from 2.2 points per game in the first half of the season to 1.42 points per game in the second half of the season? He had a collapse the previous year too and is overseeing a similar one at QPR this season. He’s a chancer.
12/03/2014 @ 3:53 pm
didn’t he take over a team that was close to relegation? Well I hope your happy now,
12/03/2014 @ 4:56 pm
Spurs finished 4th that year because AVB mucked up the first half of Chelsea’s season. That top 4 spot was supposed to belong to Chelsea.
When AVB got sacked, RDM took over, found it mathematically impossible to finish top 4 in the league, and so out of pragmatism he sacrificed certain league games in order to keep the squad fresh for CL.
And the rest was history. Chelsea won the CL, Spurs denied a CL spot despite finishing 4th.
Spurs could have finished top 3 but ‘Arry got distracted by the England manager job.
13/03/2014 @ 8:44 am
I completely agree with that. However, I think a lot of the spurs fans felt that Harry couldnt keep his mouth shut about anything and that used to wind them up but under Harry we played the most exciting football in recent years and since then we have continued to go backwards. Selling our best players and replacing them with average! How we have allowed Liverpool to catch up and play the football that we used to play is beyond me! For me, there is only one man that needs to look at himself and that is Mr Levy! I am grateful to have a chairman like him because he is a fantastic businessman and has invested a lot in to the club in terms of training facility etc. and hopefully a new stadium!!! hmmmm. However, 9 managers in the 13 years he has been at the club is pathetic! The next manager needs to be given time and money to spend on his own players, it may not be pretty at first, just like Rodgers for Liverpool, but give the manager time and he will get it right. We always live in hope…. COYS
11/03/2014 @ 5:50 pm
I have to agree. While being firmly in the club’s corner, we have to question the foresight of those making decisions. My main problem this year has been the apparent knee jerk reactions coming from various levels of management. I think we all like the feeling that there is a steady hand at the wheel.
Almost amazing we’re in fifth place, considering the turmoil. Speaks to the quality in the squad if it can achieve these point totals with fractured continuity.
11/03/2014 @ 10:18 pm
Never felt so disillusioned with the club I love and I was at notts county, Middlesbrough, Grimsby Bolton (burnden park) to name but a few. The