Dont know if this has been posted already, have to say I tend to agree with the article.
The Tottenham column: It's hard to escape the feeling that Levy is gambling with the club by replacing Redknapp with Villas-Boas
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By Darren Lewis |
Early next week, everything will become a lot clearer.
The Tottenham's players will return from their summer holidays and Daniel Levy will reveal the identity of the man he believes can do a better job of taking the club forward than Harry Redknapp.
And yet it will be hard for the fans to escape the feeling that their chairman is gambling with the club.
As pointed out elsewhere on MirrorFootball, Andre Villas Boas couldn't handle it at Chelsea .
He couldn't handle the players. He couldn't handle the expectation and he couldn't handle the media.
Yet Spurs have traded a man famed for his man-management skills for a man who showed very little at Stamford Bridge.
And, just as Roy Hodgson and his derided, archaic 4-4-2 has the spectre of Harry Redknapp hanging over him, so too does Villas-Boas.
To be fair, it is not only rival fans of other clubs whose tribalism has branded Redknapp much of a muchness. Spurs fans have done it too.
They have refused to accept the scale of Redknapp's achievement in taking a club with the sixth-biggest wage bill in the Premier League (and, by definition, the country) to fourth, fifth and fourth.
POZNAN, POLAND - JUNE 14: Luka Modric of Croatia looks on during the UEFA EURO 2012 group C match between Italy and Croatia at The Municipal Stadium on June 14, 2012 in Poznan, Poland. (Photo by Claudio Villa/Getty Images)
They refuse to accept that Luka Modric, now so sought after, was treading water at White Hart Lane until Redknapp arrived.
They scoff at the fact that Gareth Bale was going backwards until he worked with Redknapp to become one of the most valued wingers in European football.
And they refuse to accept that Levy had a plan all along. The Spurs chairman didn't invest in the squad and the team in January as he should have done because even then he had been planning for life without Harry.
Had Levy backed Redknapp's big to bring in Carlos Tevez and Gary Cahill back then Spurs surely would have had the solidity at the back and the goals up front to snatch third place.
But then why fund big signings and huge wages when you know you want to ease the man in charge out six months later?
So good luck Daniel Levy with the bold bid for a brave new world at Spurs that few people are convinced by.
Harry Redknapp and Daniel Levy
And maybe those Spurs fans who agree with Levy that the club can do better without Redknapp - and the investment he should have had - need to careful what they wish for.
Villas-Boas has everything to prove and Spurs have everything to lose.
The ex-Porto coach didn't fancy Lampard, Drogba or Ashley Cole. As soon as the door slams shut behind him, all three come back into the Chelsea team and help the club to their first-ever Champions League alongside the FA Cup.
Little wonder then that Spurs fans will be rightly apprehensive about the man who will take the chair next week.
They will look to see which players are in AVB's plans and which are left kicking their heels when the club kick off the new Premier League season at Saudi Sportswashing Machine on August 18.
We've already seen Ryan Nelsen shipped out to QPR. Ledley King's time has run out and the word on the street is William Gallas could be on his way this summer too.
Tottenham 1-5 Chelsea, April 15, 2012: Didier Drogba of Chelsea beats William Gallas of Tottenham Hotspur to score their first goal
The imminent recruitment of Jan Vertonghen from Ajax and Gylfi Sigurdsson from Hoffenheim is a method of operating that would have drawn criticism had Chelsea done it.
The feeling would be that Roman Abramovich is bringing in the stars he fancies and that the man is charge is simply tasked with making it sing.
Well that appears to be the case with Tottenham these days.
Levy is understood to favour moving away from older players and you do sometimes wonder why he doesn't just go the whole hog, get a tracksuit and take training.
After all, Giggs, Scholes, Ferdinand and Neville have all helped bed in young players at Manchester United.
The senior citizens at Chelsea all spearheaded the club's assault on silverware last season.
Arsenal's creaking back four were the bedrock of the club's early success under Arsene Wenger.
But Levy wants to go the other way. Presumably to make a few bob in the process.
All of which means the real fear remains that while Spurs fans enjoyed (during the first half of the season anyway) mixing it with Arsenal in the race for Champions League football, the Gunners are set to move on while Tottenham go backwards.
For that not to be the case, Levy - and Villas-Boas - need to pull some real rabbits out of the hat during what remains of this summer.
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