Re: Sherwood Thread
**** sake - Sherwood b2b Ferdinand. Thats the dream team right there.
Know nothing about Ramsay - anyone?
I have been lucky enough to have spoken to two of them at reasonable length....
Sherwood: Very respected within the club. Has a good network of contacts within the game and (despite opinion to the contrary on this board) certainly knows his stuff when it comes to football. I think sometimes people think about how somebody played the game and assume that their view of how to set up a team or manage would reflect their playing ability. Whereas in reality a player that is less gifted technically will have to be more advanced tactically to make it in the game. Even that is rather harsh on Sherwood who was a very good player in his prime, captaining Blackburn Rovers to the Premiership title in 1995 despite Daglish having Jack Walker's open cheque book to go out and buy pretty much whoever he wanted.
Ramsey: Seen as a massive coaching talent. The young players he has been working with absolutely love him and the junior coaches at Spurs also love him and say they learn loads off of him. It will be interesting to see/hear about how his methods translate to the senior squad.
Ferdinand - I have only ever spoken to in passing so cannot truly comment (other than to say that he is a genuine, nice guy). I don't think that he was that heavily involved previously. I would imagine that he will be helping with day to day coaching duties now that Sousa etc have departed along with with AVB.
Something else worth noting in this thread is that our youth teams have played 4-3-3 since well before AVB. I was actually surprised that when Redknapp took over he didn't seek to change the formation and tactics of the youth/reserve teams to reflect what he wanted in the first team. It meant that promoting players to the first team became more difficult than it needed to be. One of the reasons why Arsenal (for instance) were always able to bring in their youngsters for the Carling Cup and still achieve decent results was because they knew exactly what their role would be.
I also find it interesting to read some reports on here that Freund and Sherwood don't get on. I say interesting because Freund's appointment at Spurs was Sherwood's doing. AVB had his own team of coaches and was pretty much forced to amalgamate Freund. Hence AVB's backroom team all also getting their marching orders yesterday but Freund staying.
To move away from our new trio and back to AVB. I think it was clear that he had a reasonbly clear philosophy over the way he wanted his teams to play. His problem was that he would stick with that view even when we didn't have the players available to implement that philosophy. For example no natural left back to get on the overlap and yet still persisting with inverted wingers. Or two centre halves with the turning circle of a large oil tanker and an entirely new back 4 playing the high line against a team with 3 pacy forwards!
AVB may have ideas and a clear philosophy and this is always a good thing, but not when they become the ONLY way, no matter what.... A truly good manager will adapt his team shape and tactics to the players he has at his disposal.
I also see lots of comments about AVB needing more time as he had 7 new players to accomodate. However we only really lost one first team player from last season (as well as Ekotto and Adebayor that AVB decided to sacrifice completely of his own choice). If fitting in 7 new players is too much then DON'T!.... Put in just one or two new players in the league and introduce the others gradually via the UEFA/Carling Cup and then gradually accomodate them with sub appearances in the league.
