I had a short twitter convo a few days ago with @
tehTrunk
about who was to blame, as he was riding BAE very hard. At the time, I said that the bulk of my ire was at Levy and the fans, but I'm not sure I fully believed what I was typing.
Now I do. Levy turned his back on his promises to build something long-term with a young manager. If AVB was the wrong young manager, then that was something to be solved either before hiring him or doing a close season. Not less than halfway through a season when we're on the treble. I've been a big apologist for Levy, but this really smarted… Redknapp's short tenure can be explained (he was clearly a stopgap and wore out his welcome by actively alienating the fans), as can Ramos's (lost the dressing room), and Jol's is another mark against Levy.
But this… AVB had done nothing wrong by the supporters except commit seeming aesthetic atrocities. As I said on twitter around the same time, the aesthetic case ('we've been playing dire football despite getting results') against AVB holds little brief, because it ignores any manner of ancillary problems (which are, possibly, AVB's fault… like not having cover for LB). If a painter sold all his blue pigment for drugs, you can't really say, 'this painter is worthless because he doesn't use blue'. You say, instead, 'this painter would be much better if he used blue; it's a shame he has a drugs problem and sold his blue'.
Yet perhaps because all we can ultimately judge is the product on the field, all of our ire gets directed on that final result, and even there, bizarrely, the standards are slippery if not incoherent (results matter only sometimes…). And now those standards held as etched in stone by harumphing posters here and twitterers elsewhere, injecting the hot air of self-satisfied vindication into their heads while dancing on AVB's career's grave. The celebration suggests that our club has been ridden of some huge weight. As though as soon as that man was out the door, a million blossoms would bloom. An Woolwich relegation party would not have had as eager a guest list.
I've found that response, in a word, despicable. In part because it's disrespectful to a man who clearly did everything he could to make Spurs something worth supporting (even saying no to the far easier—perhaps—job at PSG along the way… would St. Harry have acted similarly? Would any of us?). But also since it acts as though the head coach is the only thing wrong with this club. Last night we saw that wasn't the case… there are deeper problems in play, like a famously aloof chairman who now seems to be meddling, yet to many of our fans, our season's decapitation opened the Christmas season a few days earlier than expected.
All this celebration because AVB's football wasn't up to our
aesthetic standards. Ludicrous.
