Can't be bothered to reply to everyone individually since I last posted in this thread, but to sum up my feelings based on the general vibe:
The way some of you are going on you'd have thought we'd just sold Messi, Iniesta and Xavi and replaced them with Rasiak, Dozzell and Acimovic. Of course it wasn't going to be easy losing Modric, Van Der Vaart and King, but FFS it's not like a) we haven't got any good attacking players left and b) we're the only team that has ever had to deal with this.
There are a lot of parallels of us now and Arsenal last season...both teams had been in the title race the year before but slumped massively at the end of February and slipped down to 4th (us on 69 points, them on 68 points). We had had great success with Modric, Van Der Vaart and Parker in central midfield the previous season, but now we'd sold the first two and the latter has been injured. They had had Fabregas, Nasri and Wheelchair in the previous season, now the first two had been sold and the latter injured. They started badly last season, but at no point were they anywhere near as bad at creating chances as we have been at times this season. By this point in the season, they had more points than we have now as well as more goals.
They're also not the only team that has coped with losing players too. Look at Fulham under Martin Jol. Dembele, Dempsey, Murphy, Johnson and Pogrebnyak all gone from last season, yet they're still the league's second top goalscorers and are only 4 points off Champions League. How exactly has he had it any easier than AVB has? How has he managed to cope with the loss of all his best players and yet still put together a balanced side playing attractive, attacking football? It's not like we've lost all our good players - a team with Bale, Lennon, Adebayor, Defoe, Sigurdsson and Huddlestone should be able to create chances, it really is that simple.
The "run around a bit" quote that Harry said about Pavlyuchenko was a stick people used to beat him with as being a poor tactician. Sometimes, being a good tactician means keeping it simple. It means giving good players the licence to express themselves and enjoy their football. In the first half of the 09/10 season, before we'd signed Van Der Vaart and Parker, when Bale was the reserve left-back and when Modric had broken his leg, was our squad any better than it is now? Any genuinely better attacking players? Yet we still managed to stick 9 past Wigan, 5 past Burnley and thrashed Emirates Marketing Project who were supposed to beat us into 4th place that year 3-0. He achieved this because he (almost) always looked at the best set of players he had available to him and picked a balanced team to get the job done, a balanced team of players who were allowed to be creative and unpredictable in their play. He sometimes didn't use his substitutions well, but generally they would made sense, even if I didn't always agree with the decision. With AVB? Most of the time I sit there wondering what he's been smoking when he makes his substitutions.
Those of you saying I should have more patience, did you show the same faith in Pleat and Gross after their bad starts? Were you saying "Oh leave poor Christian alone, we sold Sheringham in the summer and his fitness coach couldn't get a work permit. I know we just lost 6-1 at home to Chelsea, I know the players all hate him, I know he's signed Moussa Saib, but come on, give him time". Were you saying "Leave poor David alone, he's trying to get the team used to playing 4-4-2 again after getting used to 3-5-2 under Hoddle, it's not his fault that we don't have a defensive midfielder, and I know that he keeps starting Poyet and Anderton who have a combined age of about 70 in central midfield and ends games we are losing with seven defenders on the pitch, but come on, give him time." Because that's certainly not the way I remember people thinking. There's always going to be excuses that a manager has, it's up to you to see what are genuine mitigating circumstances and give him the benefit of the doubt, and what is just a get-out clause when things go wrong.
Liverpool are behind us in the league. But at least you can see the effect Rodgers has had on them, they are playing attractive, attacking football for the first time in fudge knows how long, they just lack the cutting edge required because they didn't sign a striker in the summer. I am absolutely baffled as to what effect AVB has supposedly had on our team. Results are worse, we are creating less chances, we are letting in more goals and White Hart Lane is no longer the fortress that it used to be. Ok, we started quickly against Man Utd and he gave a good half-time team talk against Chelsea. What else has he done that Gross, Pleat, Graham, Francis, Santini or any of the other mugs who managed our club wouldn't have also been able to do given the same resources?
This isn't a knee-jerk reaction. Read through my posts after every game we've dropped points in this season, I've highlighted clear and obvious things that AVB has got wrong in every game that we haven't won bar Saudi Sportswashing Machine away. Like I've said before, I don't mind the manager making the odd mistake, I don't even mind them making a huge mistake if they learn from it. What I can't accept is a manager who makes huge mistakes week in week out and doesn't learn.
Right, Jordinho's already made a measured response to your 18 points, so I'll just focus on the first half.
Firstly, no it's not like we've sold Messi, Xavi and Iniesta. What we have done is sell the most two of the most technically gifted and creative players we've had this decade (Modric and VdV) and replaced them with Moussa Dembele, who has been injured for this entire iffy run we've had, and Gylfi Sigurdsson/Clint Dempsey, both of whom have been woeful, and in no way mask the shortfall of attacking flair we have in our side post Rafa. We have some great wingers, and we have some great strikers. To supply them, you need inventive, creative midfielders. Dempsey is not one of those. Sigurdsson doesn't appear to be one either. Hudd is our only first-team player who can pick out a through pass for our wingers or strikers to run on to, and he's labouring for fitness and match practice, so his effectiveness is still limited. Dembele's the only one in our current squad capable of making space for our wingers and strikers to operate in, and that's more down to his ability to hold on to the ball while running at pace than his passing. Now, we could have the best orthodox wingers and strikes in the world, but they've still played most of their careers as out and out strikers and wingers. They won't magically start creating chances overnight. Bale and Lennon won't become playmakers, and neither will Defoe. Ade's the only one capable of doing that, and he's still coming back from injury.
So what do we have? Wingers running down the outside, strikers cutting inside, and a tendency to use the counter-attack as a basis for our play. based on our personnel, it seems about right.
Secondly, Fulham bought Berbatov, who is in a class of his own, and are playing under Jol, a man who's been there for a year, and has had time to implement his style of play. Remember Fulham's iffy start to last season, when Jol was still new to the job?
Our 09/10 side played with freedom. Harry's tactics are to let the players play. In 09/10, after we'd finished eighth, teams attacked us; they didn't sit back and try to nick one on the counter, they thought they could get something and went for it. And in that kind of game, Harry was king, because the lack of a clear game plan meant the opposing side had no clear ideas on how to actually contain the threat we posed. We played with freedom, and endeavor, and we scored bucket-loads, because we were allowed to play. It was around that time that Azza also had arguably his best spell of form during his time at Spurs, because he could run into space and devastate opposing defences. However, once teams picked up the fact that we were a dangerous team to go head-to-head against, they tightened up and went defensive. And that's when Harry was found wanting. He could'nt come up with a way to unlock the opposition defence beyond stuffing all the creative players we had into one lineup and sending them out there. During this period, we began to rely heavily on the creativity of Modric and VdV to see us through.
Now both of those men are gone, their replacements are either injured or unable to make up the shortfall, and the result is what you see; a team used to letting its creative players dictate everything being forced to try to beat opponents without said creative lynch-pins. And the results are clear to see.
Thirdly, no-one hates AVB. Not one player (except maybe Lloris) seems even remotely unhappy with him. Even Daws, who was marked for sale by Andre, is still behind him. So he's already better than Gross in that regard. Pleat made mistakes AVB wouldn't have made in a million years. We looked utterly rudderless under Pleat; at the very least, we look better than that shambles. As far as tactical decisions go, AVB's big ones have been pushing Bale and Lennon up slightly and trying to see out leads. Hardly ripping it up and starting anew.
White Hart Lane isn't a fortress; well, shoot. If you expect everything to stay the same after the upheaval we've had, you are the most demanding fan in the world. Also, it would help if the fans got behind the team a bit more, wouldn' t you say? As for AVB's win against United, all the other mugs we've had in charge for about a decade haven't managed to do that.
Overall, your grievances are a bit overblown. AVB's not the clueless young fool you paint him out to be, Harry wasn't the masterful laissez-faire coach you seem to think he was, the squad isn't as dangerous as you think it is (not without Dembele, anyway), AVB hasn't changed the tactics as much as you think he has and overall, your expectations of what can be done with this squad, at this time, in these circumstances, are a bit far-fetched.
