I see quite a few posters arguing that AVB has had to suffer the loss of his stars and has had to bed new ones in twice in the last two years, so too much shouldn't be expected of him early on.
I agree.
But know this: if this is the inevitable reaction to us losing our stars, then it will happen every season. That is simply reality for a club of our size. If AVB's early stumbles end up costing us a CL spot, we will almost certainly see one of Verts, Lloris (likeliest, imo) or Sandro leaving in the summer to either our parent club or another side, which will lead to him needing to rebuild again (Especially in Lloris' case: for the life of me, I cannot think of one sweeper keeper who plays like he does and would be an option for us, necessitating another tactical change to adapt). This will spark another round of laboured results and unsatisfying performances while the team adjusts, which will in all probability cost us another CL spot (because the likes of Liverpool don't have to deal with this ****, judging by the way they told Suarez to shut up and stay put), which will lead to more stars leaving, cue endless repetition.
If we are to succeed we need to break that cycle. And if we are to break that cycle we need one of two things: a manager who can set a team up in a relatively quick amount of time to compensate for our inevitable transfers away every summer, or a system that survives the loss of even key personnel without significant adjustment.
I highly doubt AVB is the former: he seems a relatively regimented, rigid thinker who needs his system to be in place before he can gain enough confidence to let the team play. So that means we are dependent on him creating a system, i.e the latter.
Problem is, those systems take a lot of time to create (see Ferguson or Wenger for examples) and need just the right ingredients to truly explode into life, which also takes time. But AVB has said his ambition is to manage in Brazil and then sod off to the Dakar Rally in a decade, so will he be around long enough to implement his system? And even assuming he gives up on that Dakar ambition, what's to prevent him having one half-decent season with us (a la the nearly season last year) and then leaving for PSG (owner is his personal friend), Monaco, or any one of the many continental teams still enamoured by his reputation?
All questions, few good answers, imo. Levy was right to get rid of Redknapp: once the individual star quality of the side departed (Modric and VDV), we would never have been able to recreate the free-flowing football we managed to play throughout 2011, simply because Harry depended on his players to produce, and had no input to offer them when the going got tough beyond his famous 'run abaht a bit' quote. So it would very possibly have been a disaster if he was allowed to stay but given the intensely functional side we inherited once Modric and VDV left (both inevitable, for differing reasons), since he'd likely have done little better than AVB's doing now. But AVB was supposed to be our great young hope (for what it's worth, I think he still is), but the circumstances around him are darkening, and questions are arising about both the viability of his long-term system and his long-term commitment to the club necessary to implement that system. Will they be answered? I hope they will.
