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A great write up on our season

Fantastic write up.

To me, the reason AVB decided to abandon the tactics, if indeed he did, was because the board had asked for a faster tempo and the players thought they could do it too. AVB probably did it as a '**** you then, we'll see how well this works' and probably wanted out as soon as people started questioning him rather than backing him.
 
BrainOfLevy said:
Fantastic write up.

To me, the reason AVB decided to abandon the tactics, if indeed he did, was because the board had asked for a faster tempo and the players thought they could do it too. AVB probably did it as a '**** you then, we'll see how well this works' and probably wanted out as soon as people started questioning him rather than backing him.
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There's absolutely no evidence of this. If AVB did do what you suggest, then he's even more incapable of being a top manager than I first thought, as it would prove he was mentally weak and childish and let that part of him cloud his judgement, principles and decision making.

I think personally, it was just AVB desperately trying to come up with a solution to the problem he was faced with. He tinkered with the team quite extensively in his first season, before he settled on the 4-2-3-1 "Bale in the hole" formation that got us consistent results. I remember us starting out playing that formation with VDV in the hole, then Sigurdsson, but switched to 4-4-2 when results weren't going so well and kept going until Bale was moved to the centre.

If AVB abandoned any tactics, it was his belief in 4-3-3, which he abandoned pretty much from day one at Spurs and only played a handful of times.

I think the treatment of Eriksen and Lamela were the worst parts of AVB's reign and had he utilised them better, they may have saved his Spurs career. As it is, if they were left out of the team extensively as an 'up yours' to Baldini & Levy then the guy is a complete tool and this further highlights his lack of emotional intelligence and social skills that were evidence from his time at Chelsea and his second season at Spurs.
 
BrainOfLevy said:
Fantastic write up.

To me, the reason AVB decided to abandon the tactics, if indeed he did, was because the board had asked for a faster tempo and the players thought they could do it too. AVB probably did it as a '**** you then, we'll see how well this works' and probably wanted out as soon as people started questioning him rather than backing him.
Click to expand...

I don't see any evidence for this.

I think that AVB altered his tactics because the team was lacking fluidity and he was searching for an answer. He dropped the high line because it had been exposed and we did not have the personnel to operate it, this worked well against United but he inexplicably returned to it against Liverpool.
 
The article is really good, but I don't think it is fair about context. Sherwood taking over a team in crisis mid-season is self-evidently not the same thing as AVB having 18 months in charge, with players he was party to buying, and with endless hours, days and weeks of pre-season/training-ground work to sort his tactics.

To simply say "AVB did this, then Sherwood did this, and both of them equally screwed up" is apples and oranges, and not really fair.
 
NWND said:
There's absolutely no evidence of this. If AVB did do what you suggest, then he's even more incapable of being a top manager than I first thought, as it would prove he was mentally weak and childish and let that part of him cloud his judgement, principles and decision making.

I think personally, it was just AVB desperately trying to come up with a solution to the problem he was faced with. He tinkered with the team quite extensively in his first season, before he settled on the 4-2-3-1 "Bale in the hole" formation that got us consistent results. I remember us starting out playing that formation with VDV in the hole, then Sigurdsson, but switched to 4-4-2 when results weren't going so well and kept going until Bale was moved to the centre.

If AVB abandoned any tactics, it was his belief in 4-3-3, which he abandoned pretty much from day one at Spurs and only played a handful of times.

I think the treatment of Eriksen and Lamela were the worst parts of AVB's reign and had he utilised them better, they may have saved his Spurs career. As it is, if they were left out of the team extensively as an 'up yours' to Baldini & Levy then the guy is a complete tool and this further highlights his lack of emotional intelligence and social skills that were evidence from his time at Chelsea and his second season at Spurs.
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I agree with the first part but I don't see any evidence that Eriksen and Lamela were treated the way they were as an up yours to anyone. I think that it is more likely that they were struggling for form and AVB was unsure of his best side/formation.
 
there's more to this than meets the eye... i firmly believe it was the disagreement of what to do in the jan transfer window that would lead to avb's exit. it looked to me that he was proving a point about the players we had; something that sherwood contested and was given the job for, but in the end vindicating AVB's judgement that we do have a very unbalanced squad with insufficient depth.
 
Its a decent article, nothing more. I think it completely overlooks the often ignored truth that we didn't look solid even during the run of clean sheets: teams came to defend, sat back and let us play in front of them knowing we had no penetration. As soon as any team came forwards we looked shaky, and this was exploited more and more as the season went on. Decent teams started having a go and getting joy, whilst the good teams saw straight through the supposedly great statistics and simply took us to the cleaners.

I maintained throughout the whole time we were keeping clean sheets we looked susceptible at the back, and only reputation/nature and tactics of the opposition ensured we had minimal defending to do.

If you can't score and you can't create chances your on to a loser. All that happened was the evident problems came home to roost in spectacular fashion.
 
BrainOfLevy said:
Fantastic write up.

To me, the reason AVB decided to abandon the tactics, if indeed he did, was because the board had asked for a faster tempo and the players thought they could do it too. AVB probably did it as a '**** you then, we'll see how well this works' and probably wanted out as soon as people started questioning him rather than backing him.
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Do you literally just sit there and think of reasons that will exempt AVB from any blame?
 
milo said:
I agree with the first part but I don't see any evidence that Eriksen and Lamela were treated the way they were as an up yours to anyone. I think that it is more likely that they were struggling for form and AVB was unsure of his best side/formation.
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There is definitely evidence for Lamela.
 
Armchair Expert said:
Its a decent article, nothing more. I think it completely overlooks the often ignored truth that we didn't look solid even during the run of clean sheets: teams came to defend, sat back and let us play in front of them knowing we had no penetration. As soon as any team came forwards we looked shaky, and this was exploited more and more as the season went on. Decent teams started having a go and getting joy, whilst the good teams saw straight through the supposedly great statistics and simply took us to the cleaners.

I maintained throughout the whole time we were keeping clean sheets we looked susceptible at the back, and only reputation/nature and tactics of the opposition ensured we had minimal defending to do.

If you can't score and you can't create chances your on to a loser. All that happened was the evident problems came home to roost in spectacular fashion.
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Made this point in the TS thread the other day. Glad to see someone else on here who actually knows anything about football ;):lol:
 
Armchair Expert said:
Its a decent article, nothing more. I think it completely overlooks the often ignored truth that we didn't look solid even during the run of clean sheets: teams came to defend, sat back and let us play in front of them knowing we had no penetration. As soon as any team came forwards we looked shaky, and this was exploited more and more as the season went on. Decent teams started having a go and getting joy, whilst the good teams saw straight through the supposedly great statistics and simply took us to the cleaners.

I maintained throughout the whole time we were keeping clean sheets we looked susceptible at the back, and only reputation/nature and tactics of the opposition ensured we had minimal defending to do.

If you can't score and you can't create chances your on to a loser. All that happened was the evident problems came home to roost in spectacular fashion.
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=D> agree wit all that
 
milo said:
I agree with the first part but I don't see any evidence that Eriksen and Lamela were treated the way they were as an up yours to anyone. I think that it is more likely that they were struggling for form and AVB was unsure of his best side/formation.
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Thats why i said "if" they were. I don't believe AVB did anything as an up yours to anyone
 
Kingdawson said:
Do you literally just sit there and think of reasons that will exempt AVB from any blame?
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No, I do it to rile you up :)

Seriously though, I don't blame Sherwood much for what has gone on either (other than him contributing to the lack of stability and faith in the previous manager). His ability as a coach I'm pretty much on board with. I consider football to be a series of choices that had to be made against a myriad of external factors all meaning that it's tough to settle on one particular course of action that works 100% of the time. And every manager is different. I don't blame them unless they do something ****ish, like Harry wanting England more than Spurs or Sherwood not allowing stability (which even though has not been 100% confirmed, I'm pretty much certain he contributed to). The abilities of both AVB and Sherwood though, I don't doubt them as managers.

I don't think AVB was seriously doing a '**** you' to the club and players, showing them how their ideas wouldn't work. What I think was that when players/club questioned the high line/pressing and started moaning about how they don't have enough space to operate in, AVB should have been backed rather than told to change. If it was AVB's idea to do it and he genuinely though it would work, then it went very wrong. But since I'm pretty sure he didn't want to be here any longer, I'm not sure he thought changing tactics was suddenly going to launch us on to a crazy good run of form, I think it was a Hail Mary to give everyone what they wanted, and he probably knew he'd be showing them up because it wouldn't work.
 
AVB was all show/talk, classic guy who worked amazing brick out on a whiteboard but no clue once reality kicked in.

What he was advertised to be was what we wanted, just turned out he wasn't really that guy.
 
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