Why Do The Press Have It In For AVB?
Football365.com
You'd think it'd be hard not to like Andre Villas-Boas. Here's a successful, multilingual man who is charming, bright-eyed and intelligent. As a manager his methods are evolving and he's learning all the time. Already his achievements suggest in time he could become a great manager.
In interviews he is attentive, concise and doesn't employ waffle or obfuscation. Already in his career he is a European winner. Indeed, he couldn't be more different to the man he replaced at Tottenham, which is presumably what Daniel Levy liked him about. He has employed the anti-Redknapp and good on him for doing so.
Yet despite his obvious qualities, he is not universally liked. The fact his first name isn't Harry appears to have worked against him to a stupid, unjustifiable, but all too typical degree in the last two months. Just a couple of weeks ago, some in the Sunday papers were telling us he was a couple of games away from the sack after, what they quickly declared, was a poor start. The sort of football Spurs played in those couple of opening games was also criticised for not being what the fans had got used to under Harry, itself surely a dubious standard to employ given the disastrous last four months of last season. But no matter. AVB: bad; Harry: heroic victim - that was and still is their agenda, it would seem.
As only a couple of games had been played, to the rest of us, this attack seemed, to say the least, like a madness.
But from the moment he unexpectedly took the Spurs job, there seems to have been, in some press quarters, an agenda against him, just as there initially was against Roy Hodgson when he took the England job, likely from the same people and for the same reason.
These two men took what was seen as Harry's job.
For this sin, these men must pay. It is not and will not be forgiven. Critics pens are dipped in poison, forever poised to try and kill them both off. This must be the reason for the unjustifiable, unstinting attacks on him.
Sadly for these critics, on both these occasions, the public broadly rather liked these non-Harry men even despite being shamelessly told by a one-sided media that in fact they, we, us, everyone, all loved Harry and all wanted him to be England manager and to remain as Spurs manager if that wasn't possible. Didn't you get that memo?
The campaign against Hodgson, petered out quickly when it became apparent that the pro-Redknapp brigade had misjudged the public mood in giving him a kicking from the get go. They have since shut up - but they wait, still with the aim of installing their man, have no doubt of that. They are deluded but they want revenge.
Similarly, there had always been a significant proportion of Spurs fans who had doubted Redknapp's abilities beyond a certain point of achievement. They had not forgotten the second half of last season, which, if AVB should get anywhere near to emulating in its rubbishness will quickly lead to him getting the sort of severe critique Redknapp deserved but did not receive. Rather, his supporters actually blamed the FA for it. Anything to keep their man in the golden light of a blame-free existence.
So now it's the end of September, Villas-Boas is still in a job and for what it's worth, last year Harry's Spurs were 6th with nine points, this year, they're 5th with 11 having played one game more. They've scored more goals and let in less and they've just had a historic win at Old Trafford (imagine the heinous fawning if Redknapp had done this).
So, not too shabby. But as I say, the critics have a short tether and will strike again soon enough.
Some of this resistance to AVB's charms seems to have been formed in his nine months at Chelsea which is painted by critics as a rule of disastrous proportions.
There was the ridiculous business, perhaps significantly about another Redknapp relation, Frank Lampard. An appalling brown-nosing media sided with poor, poor Frankie who suffered the indignation of only starting the vast majority of games and not being loved-up to by his new manager. We were told Frank was written off - which he wasn't - mostly so he could then be puffed up as a hero when he scored a few goals and played for England. He's back, we were told, though most of us hadn't realised he'd even gone. All utterly ridiculous.
This is the same poor, poor Frank who was on the bench this weekend without the same wails of protest on his behalf. Funny that. But when AVB decided to occasionally leave him out, this was The End Of Frank and Frank was not happy and so his fan boys were not happy also and set about making trouble. His tormentor had to pay for this idiocy. Who was this silly little man anyway?
He was accused of being 'borderline Asperger's' by journalist, Ian McGarry, who, like a teenage boy with a crush, sometimes seemed to be holding Lampard's coat in this scrap.
So AVB was rubbish and possibly mental. That was the story. Having been tasked with upgrading Chelsea to a younger, more attacking version, and he tried to do just that. He didn't do everything perfectly but it was always going to be a bumpy ride. When Roman Abramovich bottled the project he was inevitably sacked. So it goes. It was all a bit weird.
Presumably, Levy understood this and so, unlike the press people who had spent so many months painting him as a slightly mad clueless idiot that they ended up believing their own hype, saw his qualities and decided he was an ideal man to take Tottenham forward and make them compete with the best.
The critics thought they'd seen AVB off. But here he was at White Hart Lane, squatting, quite literally, on their man's turf. The bloody cheek! There was nothing many in the press wanted more than for him to fail so they could declare that Levy was mad to let their man go and to re-establish poor poor Frankie's tormentor as a nut-job.
Ex-pros and journos queued up for a go at kicking AVB as soon as he didn't win the first games handsomely. They have totally manufactured a drama around the signing and deployment of Hugo Lloris - well documented by F365's Mediawatch for the past few weeks - in order, once again, to suggest that AVB is a loony who doesn't know what he's doing.
It's a concerted attempt to undermine and create doubt about him. Why? Do these people think that Levy will see the error of his ways and invite Redknapp back or is it just some perverse form of revenge on behalf of their man, just as their attacks on Hodgson seemed to be.
Thankfully, both the Spurs chairman and the FA see through this bias and have made their decisions based on more rational and less blinkered assessments.
The contrast to his predecessor is huge. Andre Villas-Boas is sharp, inspiring, interesting, charismatic and sexy. Spurs now have one of football's rising stars in charge; a man who is fizzing with ideas and energy. He excites.
We must all hope that this time his bosses give him the chance to succeed or fail on more reasonable terms and that his poisonous critics are made as redundant as the previous manager who is now in the Match Of The Day studio.
