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Andre Villas-Boas - Head Coach

Re: AVB - Making Tottenham His Own

Do you guys think we'll see a permanent change to zonal marking for corners and set pieces, or was it just an experiment yesterday and we'll be back to the standard marking against Palace?

I can't see AVB just deciding to just experiment like that. He needs them playing one way and getting them used to it.
Its a much needed change after last season's set piece mess.
 
Re: AVB - Making Tottenham His Own

Look how much we improved under Harry, pretty remarkable for a guy that just tells them to run around a bit.
 
Re: AVB - Making Tottenham His Own

Yeah interesting point actually. It's probably why he's been happy to keep Lennon and wasn't overly concerned with a switch to 4-3-3, because the way we are now means we are set up to play transitions quite well.

I just hope that we will eventually become better at imposing our style on lesser teams at home, because we can't always rely on transitions or Bale to get the job done for us.

Agreed. Thing is, having Bale as our no.10 (loosely speaking) made it difficult not to rely on him, because that role is so pivotal to a team's attacking play and he is ultimately a selfish player - he excels at dribbling and shooting, not bringing his teammates into play. Coupled with two strikers with poor movement and / or finishing, I think this made it difficult for us to break defensive teams down through clever passing and movement.

I actually thought we played some really good intricate passing football yesterday, and it's given me confidence that Chadli, Paulinho and Soldado, plus more gametime for Siggy and Holtby as no.10s if we sell Bale, will help us to break defensive teams down much better than we were able to last season.

And we can still excel at transitions / counter-attacking in the relevant games with the pace and / or movement and / or dribbling of Lennon, Townsend and Soldado, and the pressing and tackling and / or forward runs of Sandro, Paulinho and Dembele.
 
Re: AVB - Making Tottenham His Own

Agreed. Thing is, having Bale as our no.10 (loosely speaking) made it difficult not to rely on him, because that role is so pivotal to a team's attacking play and he is ultimately a selfish player - he excels at dribbling and shooting, not bringing his teammates into play. Coupled with two strikers with poor movement and / or finishing, I think this made it difficult for us to break defensive teams down through clever passing and movement.

I actually thought we played some really good intricate passing football yesterday, and it's given me confidence that Chadli, Paulinho and Soldado, plus more gametime for Siggy and Holtby as no.10s if we sell Bale, will help us to break defensive teams down much better than we were able to last season.

And we can still excel at transitions / counter-attacking in the relevant games with the pace and / or movement and / or dribbling of Lennon, Townsend and Soldado, and the pressing and tackling and / or forward runs of Sandro, Paulinho and Dembele.

Agreed.

I don't understand why people are so dismissive of Paulinho and Chadli at this point when crying out for more creativity in the side.
 
Re: AVB - Making Tottenham His Own

Well, beginning to think this is AVB's season

- no question now about if the club is backing him
- And with the players he's letting go, plus the buys, this is the closest a manager at Spurs has been to having "their team" in a long while

Hope he can pull it off.
 
Re: AVB - Making Tottenham His Own

he's certainly being given the opportunity to succeed by the looks of things.

fingers crossed he makes the most of it
 
Re: AVB - Making Tottenham His Own

Lets just hope if things go well this season, that he is not the next one up for being poached.

The way things are going he is getting well and truly backed, has a nice extra layer of help with baldini and must have confidence in the owner and chairmans vision.

Something tells me AVB is a man of morals and honesty. He has a heap of respect and thanks for us giving him the chance after chelsea.

If you think of it logically (the way i imagine AVB would), he is minted as it is, so the money teams may not have that as a carrot. Spurs are a just under top level club, he's getting the players he wants, a young and powerful team, world class training centre and a chance to make us regular CL qualifiers and trophy winners along with leading us into the new stadium. Overseeing a real transition that takes us to the top level. An achievement....a real achievement. That's better than most clubs could offer.

Of course....football may well prove me wrong (and he'll f*ck off to PSG)
 
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Re: AVB - Making Tottenham His Own

Lets just hope if things go well this season, that he is not the next one up for being poached.

The way things are going he is getting well and truly backed, has a nice extra layer of help with baldini and must have confidence in the owner and chairmans vision.

Something tells me AVB is a man of morals and honesty. He has a heap of respect and thanks for us giving him the chance after chelsea.

If you think of it logically (the way i imagine AVB would), he is minted as it is, so the money teams may not have that as a carrot. Spurs are a just under top level club, he's getting the players he wants, a young and powerful team, world class training centre and a chance to make us regular CL qualifiers and trophy winners along with leading us into the new stadium. Overseeing a real transition that takes us to the top level. An achievement....a real achievement. That's better than most clubs could offer.

Of course....football may well prove me wrong (and he'll f*ck off to PSG)

He didn't hang around at Porto, so I see no reason why he would hang around at Spurs once he has repaired his reputation. Nothing wrong with that, managers tend not to stick around and ones that do, end up getting sacked more often than not. The trick is to have a structure in place to minimise the impact when he does move on.
 
Re: AVB - Making Tottenham His Own

He didn't hang around at Porto, so I see no reason why he would hang around at Spurs once he has repaired his reputation. Nothing wrong with that, managers tend not to stick around and ones that do, end up getting sacked more often than not. The trick is to have a structure in place to minimise the impact when he does move on.


Players and manager should think more about staying places in general though, it's the only way to really be remembered.


I can understand why Bale and AVB would want to leave, however they will just become another note in various different clubs's histories, whereas with King, he will be remembered as a Legend.
 
Re: AVB - Making Tottenham His Own

He didn't hang around at Porto, so I see no reason why he would hang around at Spurs once he has repaired his reputation. Nothing wrong with that, managers tend not to stick around and ones that do, end up getting sacked more often than not. The trick is to have a structure in place to minimise the impact when he does move on.

So hopefully, if he does do well , it doesn't happen to soon otherwise we end up in without the structure, more transition and a squad of players the next man doesn't 'fancy'
 
Re: AVB - Making Tottenham His Own

So hopefully, if he does do well , it doesn't happen to soon otherwise we end up in without the structure, more transition and a squad of players the next man doesn't 'fancy'

I'm happy to take immediate success and worry about the future when it happens. I think that we have taken a number of further steps this summer to put a structure in place to help with the next transition when it happens
 
Re: AVB - Making Tottenham His Own

I'm quite happy to see us move to a zonal system, as has been said the stats are no worse for a zonal system. I personally prefer it as all you have to concentrate on is reading the flight of the ball and if you pick it up best you'll clear it. Man to man means the distraction of tracking a player as well as watching the ball. Its reactive not proactive for me. Downside to zonal is being static and allowing attackers to have a run. Of course we could counter that by having our main headers eg the two centre halves go man for man but the rest of the defence zonal, or have blockers around the penalty spot to prevent opposition runs. All in all I think its a positive change from AVB.
 
Re: AVB - Making Tottenham His Own

Modric last summer, Bale this summer....AVB has not had it easy thats for sure

great man and handles everything with dignity and class =D>
 
Re: AVB - Making Tottenham His Own

looks like Moonlit has made a re-appearance
 
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