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I really REALLY wanted him to succeed. I am quite sad.
For anyone who cares, I for one was interested to hear from AVB as I've not read anything about him since his dismissal and felt he gave us more good moments than bad and I actually respect the man so usual AVB bashers are free to stop reading and stop being cunts but I know both is beyond you...
Said he doesn't want to return to management until June, will be scouting in Brazil during the World Cup and is extremely interested in managing in Brazil to see the raw talent coming through first hand.
Was asked about the City mauling, said game plan was basically harder to follow with that 14th second goal but thought we controlled the game upto their 2nd goal. Said Aguero destroyed Kaboul and Dawson - 2 strong defenders and said Pellegrini told him afterwards that the Spurs game was the one he was really worried about prior to the game.
Rated Bale as one of the best players in the world already and justified his one-up front formation saying it works well for Liverpool with Suarez and for Messi and Ronaldo who play in teams who only play one up front. Defended his record at Spurs saying how his points total would (or could?) have won the league in some (one?) of the seasons and gotten Champions League football in 14 other seasons and how things were still positive at Spurs at that point regardless of not attaining what we wanted, still referred to Spurs as 'us'.
Wasn't asked about the Liverpool game - thought Richard Keys asked the right questions and tried to initiate conversation without being disrespectful, talking about Moyes and asking AVB if 'time' is important to be given to managers. AVB side-stepped the question by saying how expectation at a club at Man Utd is incredibly high to compare with other clubs and so Moyes has a difficult job.
Asked some question about Mourinho and how his personality has changed in interviews but said the one constant remained on how he is strives to be a winner all the time or something along those lines.
Was in Doha to see Bayern Munich and Pep who are currently at a training camp there so popped in to the BeIn Sports (previously Al Jazeera) studio for the first half of the City game. Andy Gray said it was the first time he has met AVB and said positive things about him and how during the first half AVB was still making notes on the match even though he's out of work.
Overall wish the man the best in his career even if it didn't work out with us.
Said he doesn't want to return to management until June, will be scouting in Brazil during the World Cup and is extremely interested in managing in Brazil to see the raw talent coming through first hand.
Was asked about the City mauling, said game plan was basically harder to follow with that 14th second goal but thought we controlled the game upto their 2nd goal. Said Aguero destroyed Kaboul and Dawson - 2 strong defenders and said Pellegrini told him afterwards that the Spurs game was the one he was really worried about prior to the game.
Rated Bale as one of the best players in the world already and justified his one-up front formation saying it works well for Liverpool with Suarez and for Messi and Ronaldo who play in teams who only play one up front. Defended his record at Spurs saying how his points total would (or could?) have won the league in some (one?) of the seasons and gotten Champions League football in 14 other seasons and how things were still positive at Spurs at that point regardless of not attaining what we wanted, still referred to Spurs as 'us'.
Wasn't asked about the Liverpool game - thought Richard Keys asked the right questions and tried to initiate conversation without being disrespectful, talking about Moyes and asking AVB if 'time' is important to be given to managers. AVB side-stepped the question by saying how expectation at a club at Man Utd is incredibly high to compare with other clubs and so Moyes has a difficult job.
Asked some question about Mourinho and how his personality has changed in interviews but said the one constant remained on how he is strives to be a winner all the time or something along those lines.
Was in Doha to see Bayern Munich and Pep who are currently at a training camp there so popped in to the BeIn Sports (previously Al Jazeera) studio for the first half of the City game. Andy Gray said it was the first time he has met AVB and said positive things about him and how during the first half AVB was still making notes on the match even though he's out of work.
Overall wish the man the best in his career even if it didn't work out with us.
Very sad. I was an AVB fan boy from forever ago (wanted Harry sacked a year before he was just so we could get AVB before Chelsea did). I think this is a terrible decision and short-termism of precisely the kind that those who are against "modern football" persistently decry, but Levy's done what Levy's done.
Now I expect SFA from this season. From AVB I expected a good shout at fourth and deep cup runs (felt that was entirely reasonable). Winter is fucking coming.
Now I expect SFA from this season. From AVB I expected a good shout at fourth and deep cup runs (felt that was entirely reasonable). Winter is fucking coming.
"Well I thought Churches had a good game, Lomellie was unlucky not to score, and Dambeelay was solid. Larissa made some top top saves, so I'm happy with the draw - Hull are a good side"
"Good evening everyone"
> Daily Mail's Neil Ashton
Feel a bit sorry for AVB. I think he may get there one day, but he needs to learn from his mistakes and he's clearly not matured enough as a man yet to be able to do so. I think he either needs a break from the game or to manage at a lower level abroad for a few years. He needs more expereince of adaptability and needs to learn pproper man management. Then maybe he'll come good.
Looked like he was going to cry last night in the post match interview, poor bean. Knew his number was up.
Looked like he was going to cry last night in the post match interview, poor bean. Knew his number was up.
You get a manager in , a manager out
In , out , in out & you shake the team about .
You do the Daniel Levy & rake in the pounds ...
That's what it's all about
Oooooh do the Daniel Levy...
Repeat until Hugo gets sold
In , out , in out & you shake the team about .
You do the Daniel Levy & rake in the pounds ...
That's what it's all about
Oooooh do the Daniel Levy...
Repeat until Hugo gets sold
I have been browsing this forum the last few years and have never felt the need to comment before and have preferred to lurk but after whats happened there is something I want to say.
I hope everyone who has booed the team and the manager this season are happy as this is another season consigned to the dustbin as we cope with yet another new manager coming in and needing time and undoubtedly new players to suit their wishes. I agree we really have been poor this season and AVB must take a lot of blame for that but FFS we are 8th in th eleague not 18th. Maybe I'm made but I dont see why someone who has been given 100m to spend on new players is not being given a proper chance to turn things around. We will never be successful if we keep chopping and changing at the first sign of trouble.
I hope everyone who has booed the team and the manager this season are happy as this is another season consigned to the dustbin as we cope with yet another new manager coming in and needing time and undoubtedly new players to suit their wishes. I agree we really have been poor this season and AVB must take a lot of blame for that but FFS we are 8th in th eleague not 18th. Maybe I'm made but I dont see why someone who has been given 100m to spend on new players is not being given a proper chance to turn things around. We will never be successful if we keep chopping and changing at the first sign of trouble.
I wanted to look at this on a results basis.
After 16 games:
2013/14 - 27 points
2012/13 - 26 points
2011/12 - 35 points
2010/11 - 26 points
2009/10 - 27 points
2008/09 - 19 points
2007/08 - 15 points
2006/07 - 22 points
2005/06 - 30 points
2004/05 - 19 points
All in all, 27 points doesn't seem that bad. Historically, we are not used to much better. It's not a blistering start to the season, but hardly terrible. We're currently just 6 points from 2nd place, having played all of the top 8. The 1.69 points per game so far accrued would be good for 64-65 points. In every season in recent memory, 65 points would be good enough for 5th place. While it's hardly ideal, if we were to carry on at this rate without improving whatsoever we would probably finish 5th. And why wouldn't we improve? AVB was attempting to incorporate 7 new signings into a team that was sorely missing one of the best players in the world. He needed more time to get Lamela and Soldado firing. The game against Liverpool which ultimately proved to be the tonne of shit that broke the camel's back was played with numerous defensive injuries and a red card that left AVB with very few options. While the defeat was fucking horrible, as were the two to Man City and West Ham, in isolation they are just defeats. Zero points, move on. It hurts to be spanked but it was basically beyond the manager's control. I'm pretty sure no-one told Kyle Naughton to play like an Asian gambling syndicate had informed him that they had a lot of money on a Liverpool win.
Factor in a perfect season in Europe and a League Cup quarter final in two days time and I was shocked when he was sacked. I really didn't believe Levy would back his man with £100m of signings and prepare for a transitional season then sack him in December, 6 points off 2nd. I was so confident that he would stay for the time being that I laid £40 on his sacking. The win percentages show him to be our second winningest (to use a horrible American sports term) manager of all time, bettered only by a man who left the club in the 19th century. Last season we set our highest ever points total in Premier League history, 7 months later AVB's out of a job. The next manager markets make for painful reading. According to SkyBet, the 4 men most likely to be our next manager are, in descending order of likelihood, a man who has never, ever managed at a professional level, a 67 year old who enjoyed most of his success playing dull football while I was in primary school, a man who has taken Swansea firmly backwards over the past 12 months, and a return for a man whose last managerial gig was 8 years ago with Wolves. And that's not even mentioning his terrifying 532 with Townsend in the hole plan for Spurs, or his disdain for the disabled and their sins in a past life.
But then I tried to decide if it really was all a results business. Were the performances we'd regularly put in over his 16 month tenure really worthy of lots of positive results? If replicated into the future would we continue to see the same good results? In other words, there are only so many times we can win games 1-0 with a Soldado penalty. I think we've used our quota up for this year. Eventually, putting in the same type of performance against similar opposition is just going to end up 0-0. Last year we were 'Bale-d out' (haahahhahahahahahaha) repeatedly in games where we'd look dire for the majority of the match only for the simian looking motherfucker to shift past 3 defenders and unleash a 30 yard thunderbastard. Spurs 1 Lower Midtable Team 0. We have 8 league wins this season. Only two are by a margin of more than one goal (both 2-0 wins against Norwich and Aston Villa). Three are three 1-0 Soldado penalty wins. One was a cumbersome performance saved by a 90th minute Paulinho winner. One was decided by a John O'Shea own goal. One was won by two screamers. Swansea are the best team we've beaten this season (1-0 Soldado penalty, but you guessed that). There is an argument to be made that AVB's incredible looking win percentage is made to look very high by winning games we didn't really deserve to win. By sheer luck that will eventually run out.
Often when we played we simply seemed to lack ideas. The players appeared to have very little idea what the strategy was. What the team was trying to do. How we were going to win this game. In no single game did this seem more apparent than the Liverpool defeat that saw him sacked. The lack of ideas in the final third was an issue for the entirety of AVB's reign. Soldado, Adebayor and Defoe have scored 1 goal from open play in 1534, minutes of league football this season. That's one goal every 1534 minutes, maths fans. Last year Adebayor and Defoe scored a combined 16 goals in 4009 minutes, a goal every 251 minutes between them. Combined, that's a goal every 326 minutes over the course of AVB's tenure, about one every four games. While many felt that AVB was let down by a terrible year from Adebayor last year, pointing to his tendency to lose interest after signing a new contract, was the reverse actually more accurate? Let's not repaint history, Adebayor looked dreadful at times last year, but no striker since Falcao was terrorising the Portuguese league has thrived in an AVB system. In any case, if the 2011/12 Adebayor really was consumed by a lack of giving a shit, isn't it AVB's job to motivate him?
And can you really excuse him of blame with regards to the Liverpool game just because of injuries? The lineup he selected was about as good defensively as was possible given the players available, but there were still many steps he could've taken to avoid the thrashing that occurred. Firstly, loaning out Assou Ekotto seemed ridiculous in August, and seems more and more ridiculous every time Kyle Naughton starts at left back, or Jan Vertonghen is forced to play out of his favoured position, weakening our back four and giving him reasons to want to leave the club in the summer. Furthermore, the lack of defensive alternative meant that, in the two months prior to his injury, Vertonghen had played 1039 of Spurs' 1110 minutes, rested for just 71 minutes; on the bench away in Tromso. In spite of the necessity to play a central defensive pairing of Dawson and Etienne Capoue against Liverpool, AVB didn't change anything. He still played his usual high line. And Dawson and Capoue were ripped through time and time again. At 0-2, AVB took off Moussa Dembele and bizarrely brought on a third winger in Andros Townsend, leaving a midfield partnership of Lewis Holtby and Paulinho to protect a low on confidence, makeshift back four. £30m Erik Lamela, who has some experience of playing in a central position for River Plate, was left on the bench, along with Gylfi Sigurdsson.
Against Inter Milan last year, AVB showed a stubbornness to change his preferred tactics when personnel simply don't fit them, as William Gallas and Brad Friedel struggled with the high line they were instructed to play. Time and time and time again Antonio Cassano lofted balls over the defence for Palacio to rush on to. It's a miracle we won that tie. Fans such as myself, who wanted the manager to succeed so badly, pointed to AVB's youth as an indicator he would learn from naive mistakes and improve in the future. I think that's really the issue. For nearly the entirety of AVB's stint at Spurs fans have been assuring themselves things will pick up. The football will improve, the mistakes will become rarer, the goals will flow. Give it time. When things didn't improve excuses were created. Bedding in new players takes time, injuries have crippled us, the tactics will start making more sense. But they haven't. And in his sacking, the harsh reality I am left to face is that AVB hasn't learned from his mistakes. We weren't improving. There was no evidence to suggest we were close or even able to improve from the turgid performances being played out every week. With him sacked I realise I have spent weeks creating poor excuses for him and trying to convince myself he was working. I can't really do it any more. I can't excuse how bad we really have been for a long time.
He seems a lovely chap. He's definitely done a lot of things right. But we were not playing well. We haven't put in a really good performance against Premier League standard opposition since early March. Watching Spurs has almost been a chore at times, even when not watching Michael Dawson turned by a world class striker for the 5th or 6th time. I wish AVB all the best in the future but the sacking is what's best for Spurs. My only fear is the dire lack of good alternatives we are likely to hire. Maybe anything would be better than AVB? Tim Sherwood faces West Ham at home on Wednesday in what seems our best chance at silverware this year. Surely he can't do worse than his predecessor did in the same league fixture?
After 16 games:
2013/14 - 27 points
2012/13 - 26 points
2011/12 - 35 points
2010/11 - 26 points
2009/10 - 27 points
2008/09 - 19 points
2007/08 - 15 points
2006/07 - 22 points
2005/06 - 30 points
2004/05 - 19 points
All in all, 27 points doesn't seem that bad. Historically, we are not used to much better. It's not a blistering start to the season, but hardly terrible. We're currently just 6 points from 2nd place, having played all of the top 8. The 1.69 points per game so far accrued would be good for 64-65 points. In every season in recent memory, 65 points would be good enough for 5th place. While it's hardly ideal, if we were to carry on at this rate without improving whatsoever we would probably finish 5th. And why wouldn't we improve? AVB was attempting to incorporate 7 new signings into a team that was sorely missing one of the best players in the world. He needed more time to get Lamela and Soldado firing. The game against Liverpool which ultimately proved to be the tonne of shit that broke the camel's back was played with numerous defensive injuries and a red card that left AVB with very few options. While the defeat was fucking horrible, as were the two to Man City and West Ham, in isolation they are just defeats. Zero points, move on. It hurts to be spanked but it was basically beyond the manager's control. I'm pretty sure no-one told Kyle Naughton to play like an Asian gambling syndicate had informed him that they had a lot of money on a Liverpool win.
Factor in a perfect season in Europe and a League Cup quarter final in two days time and I was shocked when he was sacked. I really didn't believe Levy would back his man with £100m of signings and prepare for a transitional season then sack him in December, 6 points off 2nd. I was so confident that he would stay for the time being that I laid £40 on his sacking. The win percentages show him to be our second winningest (to use a horrible American sports term) manager of all time, bettered only by a man who left the club in the 19th century. Last season we set our highest ever points total in Premier League history, 7 months later AVB's out of a job. The next manager markets make for painful reading. According to SkyBet, the 4 men most likely to be our next manager are, in descending order of likelihood, a man who has never, ever managed at a professional level, a 67 year old who enjoyed most of his success playing dull football while I was in primary school, a man who has taken Swansea firmly backwards over the past 12 months, and a return for a man whose last managerial gig was 8 years ago with Wolves. And that's not even mentioning his terrifying 532 with Townsend in the hole plan for Spurs, or his disdain for the disabled and their sins in a past life.
But then I tried to decide if it really was all a results business. Were the performances we'd regularly put in over his 16 month tenure really worthy of lots of positive results? If replicated into the future would we continue to see the same good results? In other words, there are only so many times we can win games 1-0 with a Soldado penalty. I think we've used our quota up for this year. Eventually, putting in the same type of performance against similar opposition is just going to end up 0-0. Last year we were 'Bale-d out' (haahahhahahahahahaha) repeatedly in games where we'd look dire for the majority of the match only for the simian looking motherfucker to shift past 3 defenders and unleash a 30 yard thunderbastard. Spurs 1 Lower Midtable Team 0. We have 8 league wins this season. Only two are by a margin of more than one goal (both 2-0 wins against Norwich and Aston Villa). Three are three 1-0 Soldado penalty wins. One was a cumbersome performance saved by a 90th minute Paulinho winner. One was decided by a John O'Shea own goal. One was won by two screamers. Swansea are the best team we've beaten this season (1-0 Soldado penalty, but you guessed that). There is an argument to be made that AVB's incredible looking win percentage is made to look very high by winning games we didn't really deserve to win. By sheer luck that will eventually run out.
Often when we played we simply seemed to lack ideas. The players appeared to have very little idea what the strategy was. What the team was trying to do. How we were going to win this game. In no single game did this seem more apparent than the Liverpool defeat that saw him sacked. The lack of ideas in the final third was an issue for the entirety of AVB's reign. Soldado, Adebayor and Defoe have scored 1 goal from open play in 1534, minutes of league football this season. That's one goal every 1534 minutes, maths fans. Last year Adebayor and Defoe scored a combined 16 goals in 4009 minutes, a goal every 251 minutes between them. Combined, that's a goal every 326 minutes over the course of AVB's tenure, about one every four games. While many felt that AVB was let down by a terrible year from Adebayor last year, pointing to his tendency to lose interest after signing a new contract, was the reverse actually more accurate? Let's not repaint history, Adebayor looked dreadful at times last year, but no striker since Falcao was terrorising the Portuguese league has thrived in an AVB system. In any case, if the 2011/12 Adebayor really was consumed by a lack of giving a shit, isn't it AVB's job to motivate him?
And can you really excuse him of blame with regards to the Liverpool game just because of injuries? The lineup he selected was about as good defensively as was possible given the players available, but there were still many steps he could've taken to avoid the thrashing that occurred. Firstly, loaning out Assou Ekotto seemed ridiculous in August, and seems more and more ridiculous every time Kyle Naughton starts at left back, or Jan Vertonghen is forced to play out of his favoured position, weakening our back four and giving him reasons to want to leave the club in the summer. Furthermore, the lack of defensive alternative meant that, in the two months prior to his injury, Vertonghen had played 1039 of Spurs' 1110 minutes, rested for just 71 minutes; on the bench away in Tromso. In spite of the necessity to play a central defensive pairing of Dawson and Etienne Capoue against Liverpool, AVB didn't change anything. He still played his usual high line. And Dawson and Capoue were ripped through time and time again. At 0-2, AVB took off Moussa Dembele and bizarrely brought on a third winger in Andros Townsend, leaving a midfield partnership of Lewis Holtby and Paulinho to protect a low on confidence, makeshift back four. £30m Erik Lamela, who has some experience of playing in a central position for River Plate, was left on the bench, along with Gylfi Sigurdsson.
Against Inter Milan last year, AVB showed a stubbornness to change his preferred tactics when personnel simply don't fit them, as William Gallas and Brad Friedel struggled with the high line they were instructed to play. Time and time and time again Antonio Cassano lofted balls over the defence for Palacio to rush on to. It's a miracle we won that tie. Fans such as myself, who wanted the manager to succeed so badly, pointed to AVB's youth as an indicator he would learn from naive mistakes and improve in the future. I think that's really the issue. For nearly the entirety of AVB's stint at Spurs fans have been assuring themselves things will pick up. The football will improve, the mistakes will become rarer, the goals will flow. Give it time. When things didn't improve excuses were created. Bedding in new players takes time, injuries have crippled us, the tactics will start making more sense. But they haven't. And in his sacking, the harsh reality I am left to face is that AVB hasn't learned from his mistakes. We weren't improving. There was no evidence to suggest we were close or even able to improve from the turgid performances being played out every week. With him sacked I realise I have spent weeks creating poor excuses for him and trying to convince myself he was working. I can't really do it any more. I can't excuse how bad we really have been for a long time.
He seems a lovely chap. He's definitely done a lot of things right. But we were not playing well. We haven't put in a really good performance against Premier League standard opposition since early March. Watching Spurs has almost been a chore at times, even when not watching Michael Dawson turned by a world class striker for the 5th or 6th time. I wish AVB all the best in the future but the sacking is what's best for Spurs. My only fear is the dire lack of good alternatives we are likely to hire. Maybe anything would be better than AVB? Tim Sherwood faces West Ham at home on Wednesday in what seems our best chance at silverware this year. Surely he can't do worse than his predecessor did in the same league fixture?
putting defoe up front really fucked up the stability of the team
If John Terry doesn't like him, he's here for life as far as I'm concerned. When I start liking people that John Terry does, I'm going to jump off something very fucking high.