Spurs Banter Archive November 01 2012

01 Nov 2012 21:33:25
KM, that poster was me re Avb. I hope im proved wrong, being an avid Tottenham fan i want him to suceed but the bloke aint learning from his mistakes. Everytime we get a lead he changes it and brings on rubbish like Livermore then we concede and throw it away. He has done this soo many times already its painful. Every game we have looked vulnerable and i cant remember a totally convincing game yet.

Some players looklike they aint got a clue with Avbs tactics eg Dempsey, Siggurdson even Bale aint been all that until recently. Whats he playing at with Friedel instead of Lloris? Deary me.

I know we have Parker, Kaboul, Adebayor and Bae to come back but Levy needs to get
the ffin chequebook out and buy. A striker is a must, Defoe is rubbish most of the time and Adebayor is either injured or off to ACN or doesnt fit Avbs style of play.

spurs guvnor

Spurs Govenor
I cant remember seeing your post about AVB but had I posted about him 12 months ago I would have posted near enough the same comment re his tactics at Chelsea
Time will tell if the gamble of his appointment will pay off at Spurs but my guess is that many supporters will support him not because of much else other than he was sacked by Chelsea.
Harry had a tactical plan, as limited as it may have been but he had a plan and was able to communicate it and get the players to buy into it, AVB is too deep a thinker but his plans(notice the plural) are complex he cant communicate them to a level where the players are comfortable so dont appear to buy into them.

Spurs Guvnor:
I basically agree with you, with a few slight qualifications.

Conceding late goals and dropping points has been a problem for a long time. It has cost us dear in each of the last two seasons. However, as that Chelsea fan said, defending a narrow lead is something that has to be learned and practiced in training. Notoriously, Harry didn't spend much time on the training ground. AVB is more ˜hands on' so I was hoping he might get the problem sorted. So far, he hasn't. I am also worried that his preferred style of play doesn't seem to be working yet and in most of the games I have seen this season, it has had to be abandoned. I know it takes time to completely change the way a team plays, so I will give him the benefit of the doubt on these two issues.

I think Dempsey's problem is simply that he isn't playing very well. On this form he would struggle in any system. I know that he is a much better player than he currently looks, but I am still not sure that he is what we really needed.

I would say the same of Sigurdsson. I always feared we had paid over the odds for a decent squad player who was just ˜flavour of the month'.

Your final point is the most important. A team full of good players, that is well-balanced, well-organized and highly motivated, will take you a long way in football (as Everton constantly prove) but to compete at the highest level you also need some world class players “ and they don't come cheap.

In 08/09 season Levy had to spend massively in order to dig the club out of the Ramos mess. With the country plunging into recession it is understandable that he has been cautious since then, but arguably he is now being too cautious.

In the past 4 seasons, our gross spend on players has been £113m. This is the lowest of the 6 clubs competing for Champion's League football. Over the same period, Man City spent £409m, Chelsea £285m, Liverpool £202m, United £151m, and Arsenal £122m.

Net spend is just as revealing: Man City £296m; Chelsea £243; Liverpool £43m; and United £28m (distorted by the £80m they got for Ronaldo). Over the same period Spurs had a negative net spend (-£6m). Only Arsenal's -£42m is lower than that.

It is to Tottenham's credit (and Harry's) that we finished 4th, 5th and 4th in the last three seasons, but this lack of investment will eventually cost us (as it has cost Arsenal, whose ˜guaranteed' Champion's League place has been under severe threat recently).

Nobody can compete with the bottomless pockets of Man City and Chelsea and it would be madness to try, but a single (expensive) purchase might be enough to keep us in the hunt.

Whether we can actually get the right player is another matter.
KM

01 Nov 2012 12:13:36
Chelsea supporter here.
I dont want to get into a debate about Chelsea this or Spurs that as we all have views but I will get into one re AVB.
The most noticeable thing when he was at Chelsea was he struggled to communicate with players. Yes I know the view re player power and all that but he didnt know how to see games out whe we took the lead. His substitutions left you scratching your head and time after time we were all over the place as the game came to its end.
We were 3.0 up against Man U no need to change anything but he did. The midfield stopped protecting the back 4 and bang the game ends 3-3.
I know that at 1-0 teams are vunerable but the work on the training pitch should kick in. It never seemed to do when he was at Chelsea. He made it up as he went along leaving the players confused and time after time we let late goals in. (sound familiar?)
He talks the talk which buys him support but the evidence is in results.Last season we started like a train but things got worse and worse. Slowly but surely he will fall out with players and slowly but surely the supporters will become more confused by what he is doing.
I know some will say that you are Spurs and the you dont have players with egos the size of JT and AC. You may be right but watch what happens with Ade as he will be a barometer of what is going on in the dressing room.

A few weeks ago, a Tottenham fan on this site just happened to mention that something about AVB worried him. He got jumped on for not getting behind the manager and the team (and I got jumped on for supporting him).

Your post may go a long way towards explaining what bothered him (and still bothers me).

I hope AVB proves us both wrong, but you have certainly given me food for thought.
KM

You're saying this based on the League Cup game where we played Carroll, Livermore and Falque, right? I think that gives an idea of what our priorities were in that competition, and to be honest I support AVB for rotating the squad and giving our younger players a run out. Falque in particular was impressive. We were in control for the whole match, even after AVB's changes. An unlucky deflection and a scrambled-in goal in the last five minutes is not something that really concerns me. It was unfortunate, that's football.

As for Chelsea last season, there was no "slowly but surely" about it. JT, FL, and AC threw their toys out of the pram the moment they realised they were no longer guaranteed starts for every match. This season, the Adebayor situation is being exagerrated by the press in my opinion. He's had injuries on and off since the start of the season and I'm pretty sure he's unhappy about that - not AVB.

Now I'm not saying that AVB is perfect and he takes his fair share of blame for Chelsea's failures (and successes) last season. I can't think of a single manager in the game though that could succeed under the odds that were stacked against him last season courtesy of the over-inflated egos of JT and co.

Adam

How about RDM?

So, did you actually read what I said or..?

Adam

Yes

You wrote

I can't think of a single manager in the game though that could succeed under the odds that were stacked against him last season courtesy of the over-inflated egos of JT and co.

And I said RDM