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Redknapp

thfcsteff said:
I'll take that one on Mick.

As the season gets longer, as you play the same teams again, as players get more and more tired, as you pick up small injuries and as you face increasing pressure approaching the finishing line, players need a strong manager who can change things up, rotate inclusively and pull a tactical rabbit from the hat with regards to certain teams who he will know have watched us once and will thus combat our perceived, expected style. From August to Christmas is still relatively fresh and spritely, so yes, a very talented side sent out in a basic 4-5-1 or sometimes 4-4-2 can certainly perform with minimal interruption. But those last 2 or 3 months of a season require strength AND something a little different if you're in the mixer at the top.

Ironically, Wenger very nearly did what Redknapp did, and in a sense, you could say the goons have papered over cracks. He had bad luck with injuries in the last month of the season, but nonetheless he was struggling big-time to find a plan 'B' and rode enormous luck. Had we not shown such massive ineptitude at Villa (where Helen keller would've known how Villa would play) this conversation would likely be happening on goner message boards too...

IF HR stays/is kept, I can only pray he has learnt from the last two seasons...more likely you will hear him hammer the point over and over that we finished top 4 and 'ooo could've predicted Chelsea?' blah blah blah...again, if he remains.
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(actually shamefully i have been skim reading. its 55 pages of people really complaining about what level of a good thing we have going for ourselves. if i was involved in this i would be utterly knackered)

right so, what we can sum up is that, it IS because we had a bad run of form in those 9 games. thats basically what you just said in a nutshell...the part of the season where you felt we had to dig deep and pull stuff out is the part of the seasons where we struggled and had low form and confidennce (a least IMO)

here is a question for you. adebayor aside.....whats the BIG difference with how we played last season to this season just gone? our team is by and large the same so teams should have been ready for us this season as soon as the gates opened...what changed? and i'm not sure about 21 or so games in before teams suddenly figured us out in a two months stretch only..where conincidentally it fell in lin with uncertainty of whether or not we would have a manager or not....., where we looked void of direction or decisiveness on the pitch , etc etc etc...that teams cutting edge was blatantly skewed in a bad direction and players didnt play with bravery and cuting edge......

..but my point is that, the level of incompetence , though great in english sports when compared to american sports and analytics, is not THAT much that people dont look at other premier league teams and figure out how to play them straight out of the gate. do you honestly believe that you have to play a premier league team before you devise a plan of how to counter how they play? personally i would hope not...cause it means alot of poeople are getting paid to much money for doing basically fudge all but watch live games and do nothing about it....then factoring the in the idea that you've said that Harry pretty much plays the same team, and plays the same way, and plays the same style etc etc..then once anyone watches ONE games then technically they would have seen ALL of our games...cause we do the ssme thing according to some here..i.e we have no plan B.

speaking of which, i know it isnt your place....but how would you think in your mind Harry should have done things differently? and what would you consider to be a plan B? (i hear this stufff alot but i havent seen anyone , save nayim, actually say anything tangible on it)

EDIT:- The main Gist is this , if we had say split our results in that difficult period...and finished like 5 or 6 points clear of arsenal and come third...would anyone here be yelling "sack harry and bring in 'a high risk / potential high reward' unproven at top flight football manager by the name of Brendan Lambert Martinez"

would you?
 
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Just saw this qoute in the Mail "Redknapp stalled on new contract talks in February as he was keen on the England job," if this is true it just points out again that there is no loyalty in the game, Levy assured Redknap of his future at the lane by offering Redknap a new contract and Redknap thought he was getting the big job and did not respond, the only doubt for me in this story is that in the period between xmas and April in various interviews I heard Redknap asked about his new contract at Spurs and he said nothing had been offered or discussed, will we ever know the truth, I doubt it.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...dknapp-tempted-Middle-East.html#ixzz1wWftvbU1
 
Golfball said:
I dont know why you dislike Redknapp so much, he actually does so many of the things you call for. Playing Rafa with Ade is one of them (a lot of top managers would (or have) ditch VDV for the stuff he doesnt do, rather than HR appreciating him for what he does do), just getting Ade to the club is all down the HR - if he goes then Adebayor will not play for Spurs again.
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Yeah hardly any premier league managers would want Van der Vaart in their side :rolleyes:

What most wouldn't do is play him as a right winger :lol:
 
Golfball said:
And its embarrassing reading posts from people who really do have no clue about football, talking about formations and tactics.

If losing 5-2 was a regular thing, then have a go at Harry for being poor tactically. But HR transformed the team and it wasnt down to being mates with the players, it was through good organisation and tactical awareness.

And we went 2 down the season before and beat Arsenal at their ground. Selective memory from the idiots again. Are you lot going to say Wenger is a brick manager as well?

Judge harry over any period of time at spurs and he has been a great success. Select certain games to go with your agenda and you could make a case for Mourinho getting the sack at Madrid.
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Firstly, people who don't share your opinion are idiots? Who the hell are you again? I don't appreciate being called an idiot for sharing certain views on a football message board.

Secondly, no Wenger isn't a brick manager. He has made the champions league final, the competition itself for the last 14 seasons, won the double, FA Cup about 4/5 times and went through a season unbeaten.
Last season he managed less resources than Redknapp had at his disposal to the Champions League.

What the hell are you on about with Mourinho? Thats the worst analogous argument I think I've seen on this board. Nonsense. But what do I know, I guess i'm just one of 'the idiots'.
 
elltrev said:
A good post, I don't think I disagree with anything. Except that I don't particularly 'like' Harry in that sense of the word... I don't necessarily dislike him, but I don't feel the same warmth towards him as I did towards Jol, for example, or that I do towards Martinez (even though he has nothing to do with Spurs!)

I thought your discussion with BoL regarding the two opposing styles of management was interesting. I agree that letting players play with freedom can be great when things are going well, and can certainly play a part in them going well in the first place, but that when things are going badly the players actually need some direction and discipline. Saying that, I do think that people might underestimate the benefit of Harry's approach, and are being overly-critical of it because of our poor run (much of which was due to other factors IMO). And that they might underestimate the negative aspects of playing under someone with a much more strict and 'scientific' approach to the game.

Ultimately I think the key for any manager is probably to find the right balance between the two.
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Thats only really the case if you see a strict/scientific approach as somehow restrictive - look at Swansea last season - fantastically well drilled and disciplined - and yet they clearly enjoy every minute of every game and also are allowed a lot of freedom within that structure. If its worked on daily it comes naturally, rather than being on the pitch thinking "Where should I be now" a player will go intuitively due to training...

Of course thats the balance to be struck, as you say, a system to work from - a foundation - is my ideal, not one to be constrained by
 
elltrev said:
To be fair we went 2-0 up playing 4-4-2, and neither of their first half goals had anything to do with us playing 4-4-2 I would say. One was a great finish from the best striker in the league from outside of the area with us defending deep and in numbers. The other was a great header from their right-back, again when we were defending deep and in numbers. Bale just wasn't tight enough (he was actually too deep, so it wasn't as if we were playing too attacking and open).
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I cant vouch for anyone else, but hand on heart I didnt think we would get anything from that game the moment I saw the line up, and when we were 2-0 up I felt we were lucky and were hanging on. Arsenal dominated throughout and the result was inevitable IMO.
 
Armchair Expert said:
why oh dear, Mick?

In my opinion playing Rafa out of position was detrimental to team performance. You'll probably have noticed by now that I'm a huge fan of playing your best players in their best positions.
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I dont know about mick's oh dear, but playing VDV off the playmaker wing position is perfectly valid, it works and its been done before he joined tottenham.....................so i'm not really sure what redknapp has done wrong in that regard?
 
Armchair Expert said:
why oh dear, Mick?

In my opinion playing Rafa out of position was detrimental to team performance. You'll probably have noticed by now that I'm a huge fan of playing your best players in their best positions.
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because it makes no sense to level an accusation like that, VDV is too good a player to drop and is versatile enough to plug gaps left by injured specialists like Lennon.
HR if faced by a fully fit squad will always try to play players where they are most effective, and when he loses equally key players then he is quite at liberty to make the best of the players he has at his disposal.
 
mick cooper said:
because it makes no sense to level an accusation like that, VDV is too good a player to drop and is versatile enough to plug gaps left by injured specialists like Lennon.
HR if faced by a fully fit squad will always try to play players where they are most effective, and when he loses equally key players then he is quite at liberty to make the best of the players he has at his disposal.
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I think that's one of Harry's biggest tactical weaknesses.

He'd make a great England manager - they always seem to pick the best 11 players and then find a way of getting them all on the pitch at once. IMO that's not always the best way to get a result.

I'm a big fan of VDV and he's one of the first names on the teamsheet for me, but if our first choice right winger isn't available, I'd rather play a right winger who isn't quite as good than the best player we have out of position.
 
scaramanga said:
I think that's one of Harry's biggest tactical weaknesses.

He'd make a great England manager - they always seem to pick the best 11 players and then find a way of getting them all on the pitch at once. IMO that's not always the best way to get a result.

I'm a big fan of VDV and he's one of the first names on the teamsheet for me, but if our first choice right winger isn't available, I'd rather play a right winger who isn't quite as good than the best player we have out of position.
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Indeed.

Whereas when Redknapp loses say Lennon to injury, he ends up moving Rafa, Bale and/or Modric out of their best positions to accomodate a second (not even very good) forward.

The best way is surely to throw in someone like Gio or Fredericks as a direct replacement and kept the system that was working so successfully and our best players in their strongest positions.
 
africanspurs said:
I dont know about mick's oh dear, but playing VDV off the playmaker wing position is perfectly valid, it works and its been done before he joined tottenham.....................so i'm not really sure what redknapp has done wrong in that regard?
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He had a few bad games on the right in a 442 so half the board jumps to the conclusion that he can't play on the right in a 433!
 
If Redknapp is going a good job, why are there very strong rumours coming out that Tottenham themselves want to get rid ?
 
Wriggly said:
If Redknapp is going a good job, why are there very strong rumours coming out that Tottenham themselves want to get rid ?
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Because a lot of people are very anti-Harry. The "rumours" of a poor Harry/Levy-relationship have been there since he first came.
 
Jordinho said:
Because a lot of people are very anti-Harry. The "rumours" of a poor Harry/Levy-relationship have been there since he first came.
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Why give him nearly 4 seasons ?

We hear the rumours, The club will not get rid of a manager based on them.
 
nayimfromthehalfwayline said:
Thats only really the case if you see a strict/scientific approach as somehow restrictive - look at Swansea last season - fantastically well drilled and disciplined - and yet they clearly enjoy every minute of every game and also are allowed a lot of freedom within that structure. If its worked on daily it comes naturally, rather than being on the pitch thinking "Where should I be now" a player will go intuitively due to training...

Of course thats the balance to be struck, as you say, a system to work from - a foundation - is my ideal, not one to be constrained by
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Swansea is on example, but Chelsea under AVB is another. Of course in the latter there were a lot of other factors at play, but in general I think it's fair to say that such an approach will take more time to become effective, and that it might be less suited to some players than others. Though it's hard to say without seeing and hearing exactly what goes on on the training ground and in the dressing room.

Overall I would probably prefer this kind of system too. Though it could be a 'grass is always greener' effect.
 
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