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Andre Villas-Boas - Head Coach

Our injuries are the only ones that matter when you want to look at our early performances. Since we're matching last season in terms of points the complaining has turned to them. Now that we're performing much better it might be because our best midfielders are fit and finding form.
 
Jordinho said:
Our injuries are the only ones that matter when you want to look at our early performances. Since we're matching last season in terms of points the complaining has turned to them. Now that we're performing much better it might be because our best midfielders are fit and finding form.
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There will always be something to bitch about.
 
Jurgen the German said:
So even with all the attacking players we still have, regardless of injury, you were happy with the way we played in the first few home games? West Brom have a new manager, and they took the game to us in the 2nd half, and they were the away team.
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First of all, yes, I rode it knowing there was a bigger picture. I was just happy to see a top young manager/coach in charge. He had a lot to deal with. I could see it. A great shame you couldn't. As for the West Brom game, when will the myth end? They took the game to us for the last TWENTY MINUTES!
 
africanspurs said:
[-([-([-( ;)

in all honesty, that comment explains more and all i need to know about the points i keep arguing with you over redknapp. i often wondered how that was the only thing i differed from you SO GREATLY

you just didnt like him. its that simple

now i dont feel anyway about what you say about him. this is progress:)
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You bring out the best in me mate ;-)

The truth is, football makes a hypocrite of every man. I am no different. I hated Redknapp for years prior to his arrival. I knew he was coming a few days before he was announced, thus had time to engage my hypocrite-side and gear up to get behind the man as he was OUR manager (just like I got behind Gallas despite hating him, ditto Ade - love them both now, forgot I ever called them a pair of ****s repeatedly once upon a time!!!!!! :) )

I was always aware of how he deals with things and how he runs his clubs, and was worried from the get-go about trouble between him and Levy (very different philosophies)...I saw Harry reinvigorate our squad, get the money to add the experience and club knowledge necessary and make a few vital signings at their times. In short, I learned to like him beyond football hypocrisy. I then watched him take his eye off the ball and start behaving like he has done at all his other clubs (also when he doesn't get his way in the market)...I got disappointed. The disappointment got greater and greater as some of the stuff he was up to leaked around the back-alleys of N17...I believed in him to get us to great places, and I suppose, if I'm brutally honest, the fact that I checked my dislike of him and invested full faith in him only to see that he was, in fact, not going to be able to deliver precisely because of the style of man/manager he is was incredibly disappointing.

I then found myself seeing all sorts of vehement comments regarding anyone questioning him, and thus (as King and I have discussed -we have similar tendencies in this sense) I dug in and argued the toss from the other side.

I see AVB as a very exciting, ambitious, young, hungry, progressive and hard-working manager/coach, someone who is dedicated to the club, someone who carries themselves well in public and someone who protects the ENTIRE club. He does not drop snide comments about the chairman, he does not drop snide comments about the players, he keeps it all in house and he presents an honest, intelligent front. So I am unashamedly supportive of him, and have been since I first told my mate I hoped he got the job the eve of May 13th 2012.

It really is a chat I hope we can one day have over a pint or few.
Best,
Steff
 
Jurgen the German said:
How many times do I need to say this? I ACCEPT THAT HE HAS LOST KEY PLAYERS DUE TO THEM BEING SOLD. I have said that countless times. I have also acknowledged that Levy mugged him off in the last window. Do me a favour, can you fix it so the above is highlighted in every post regarding AVB? Because I am getting sick of repeating myself.

And why for the love of GHod to you continue to keep banging on about injuries? Are we the only club in world football who has injuries?

What can I say, I still believe regardless of how many injuries we had, that we had the ability to be more adventurous against the likes of West Brom and Norwich AT HOME. Do you think they are better than us? I could accept it if we were playing Man United or Chelsea.

This is the last time I will contribute to this thread as there is clearly no point raising some concerns that we as fans have as you will get instanstly shot down as someone who "can't get over Harry's sacking" or you have some vendetta against AVB simply because were not shooting our load because he won the treble in Portugal.

Let me say this one more time, I expect us to finish between 4th and 6th this season. 5th would be a good start. Anything lower than 6th is a failure I'm afraid.
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Frankly, I don't see the need for you to keep banging on about any of it.
 
can someone explain the gist of the argument that's going on? ...we are 220 pages & 6 months in to AVB as manager..
 
thfcsteff said:
You bring out the best in me mate ;-)

The truth is, football makes a hypocrite of every man. I am no different. I hated Redknapp for years prior to his arrival. I knew he was coming a few days before he was announced, thus had time to engage my hypocrite-side and gear up to get behind the man as he was OUR manager (just like I got behind Gallas despite hating him, ditto Ade - love them both now, forgot I ever called them a pair of ****s repeatedly once upon a time!!!!!! :) )

I was always aware of how he deals with things and how he runs his clubs, and was worried from the get-go about trouble between him and Levy (very different philosophies)...I saw Harry reinvigorate our squad, get the money to add the experience and club knowledge necessary and make a few vital signings at their times. In short, I learned to like him beyond football hypocrisy. I then watched him take his eye off the ball and start behaving like he has done at all his other clubs (also when he doesn't get his way in the market)...I got disappointed. The disappointment got greater and greater as some of the stuff he was up to leaked around the back-alleys of N17...I believed in him to get us to great places, and I suppose, if I'm brutally honest, the fact that I checked my dislike of him and invested full faith in him only to see that he was, in fact, not going to be able to deliver precisely because of the style of man/manager he is was incredibly disappointing.

I then found myself seeing all sorts of vehement comments regarding anyone questioning him, and thus (as King and I have discussed -we have similar tendencies in this sense) I dug in and argued the toss from the other side.

I see AVB as a very exciting, ambitious, young, hungry, progressive and hard-working manager/coach, someone who is dedicated to the club, someone who carries themselves well in public and someone who protects the ENTIRE club. He does not drop snide comments about the chairman, he does not drop snide comments about the players, he keeps it all in house and he presents an honest, intelligent front. So I am unashamedly supportive of him, and have been since I first told my mate I hoped he got the job the eve of May 13th 2012.

It really is a chat I hope we can one day have over a pint or few.
Best,
Steff
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Well said Steff. I've been very impressed by the dignity AVB has shown despite gross provocation from corners of the press. The jury is still out on how good he's going to be (although I believe and sincerely hope that he will be massively successful), but so far, so good. One of the differences between a good manager and a great one is the ability to spot a problem and change a game with tactics, and while I believe Harry was a good manager, I also think that he'd taken us as far as he was capable of going. Onwards and upwards.
 
Pandy said:
I think AVB has been doing a good job but it isn't really the same. Most expect Spurs to do well in every game, we are trying to become a top club so against anyone bar possibly Barcelona, a shocking performance/result is not acceptable. Also, we aren't that far behind Man U, Man C and Chelsea, but the team we put out on Wednesday was miles better than Villa's - aside from the fact that we were away and that they should have been fired up by getting spanked 8-0 at Chelsea, a 4-0 win is not that surprising.
If we lost 4-0 to any team in the Prem I would be fuming and very surprised. It hasn't happened in a long time (in a league game... Chelsea in the FA Cup was a joke anyway and Crouch got sent off after 10 mins at the Bernabeu!).
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You are correct, of course.

I was really taking issue with the glib use of 'not reading ANYTHING into yesterday's game' which jarred with me.
 
spasm said:
as is most often the case, the truth probably lies somewhere in between.

so long as he isn't 'a" brick.
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But a win today at Sunderland would give AVB 11 wins from his 20 Premier League games in charge of Spurs (a 55% winning percentage).

Harry only managed 71 wins from his 144 games in charge of Spurs (a 49.3% winning percentage).
 
THFC6061 said:
But a win today at Sunderland would give AVB 11 wins from his 20 Premier League games in charge of Spurs (a 55% winning percentage).

Harry only managed 71 wins from his 144 games in charge of Spurs (a 49.3% winning percentage).
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stats...:rolleyes: :)

Personally for me, there is so much more to this than stats THFC. unless you were being ironic.

We could win the league & I would be over the moon but if we accomplished it playing like Stoke or Bolton, a large part of me would also be sad that we gave up part of who we are as "Spurs".

Despite the fact that Harry kept shooting his mouth off & I never really saw a long term plan in place, he managed to get us playing some of the best attacking football in my 30+ years supporting Spurs, which gave me immense pleasure and made me very proud, despite the fact that we won fudge all during that period.

Similarly, although I think AVB has great potential and am thrilled to bits that we are where we are in the table, I am also relatively disappointed that some of our football this season has been dire.

But, a reasonable person would support whoever our manager is and give him time to build a team in his image before passing judgement & that is what I have chosen to do.

It is baffling that we are still arguing about AVB 6 months into his tenure.

Provided, we don't suddenly free fall, surely it is too premature to judge him particularly given the fact that we sit fourth in the table. I really hope to see progress and improved performances but the man needs time and by GHod, he should get it.
 
Last edited:
THFC6061 said:
But a win today at Sunderland would give AVB 11 wins from his 20 Premier League games in charge of Spurs (a 55% winning percentage).

Harry only managed 71 wins from his 144 games in charge of Spurs (a 49.3% winning percentage).
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I think its a bit early to compere AVB's record to Redknapp's, but the signs are really looking good and i would hope/expect to see a trophy once he has been here as long as Redknapp was.
 
thfcsteff said:
You bring out the best in me mate ;-)

The truth is, football makes a hypocrite of every man. I am no different. I hated Redknapp for years prior to his arrival. I knew he was coming a few days before he was announced, thus had time to engage my hypocrite-side and gear up to get behind the man as he was OUR manager (just like I got behind Gallas despite hating him, ditto Ade - love them both now, forgot I ever called them a pair of ****s repeatedly once upon a time!!!!!! :) )

I was always aware of how he deals with things and how he runs his clubs, and was worried from the get-go about trouble between him and Levy (very different philosophies)...I saw Harry reinvigorate our squad, get the money to add the experience and club knowledge necessary and make a few vital signings at their times. In short, I learned to like him beyond football hypocrisy. I then watched him take his eye off the ball and start behaving like he has done at all his other clubs (also when he doesn't get his way in the market)...I got disappointed. The disappointment got greater and greater as some of the stuff he was up to leaked around the back-alleys of N17...I believed in him to get us to great places, and I suppose, if I'm brutally honest, the fact that I checked my dislike of him and invested full faith in him only to see that he was, in fact, not going to be able to deliver precisely because of the style of man/manager he is was incredibly disappointing.

I then found myself seeing all sorts of vehement comments regarding anyone questioning him, and thus (as King and I have discussed -we have similar tendencies in this sense) I dug in and argued the toss from the other side.

I see AVB as a very exciting, ambitious, young, hungry, progressive and hard-working manager/coach, someone who is dedicated to the club, someone who carries themselves well in public and someone who protects the ENTIRE club. He does not drop snide comments about the chairman, he does not drop snide comments about the players, he keeps it all in house and he presents an honest, intelligent front. So I am unashamedly supportive of him, and have been since I first told my mate I hoped he got the job the eve of May 13th 2012.

It really is a chat I hope we can one day have over a pint or few.
Best,
Steff
Click to expand...


I thought Harry and Levy were quite pally for years before he finally appointed him?

Anyway I think its a shame we can't all just look back and enjoy what Harry did over his time at the club. It was a time of wonderful football, stunning results, great players and memorable CL run. Tinged with regret? Absolutely - no doubt he took his eye off the ball last year and it was a real real shame that we didn't pick up a trophy because it would have been fitting to see the likes of VDV/Modric parading silverware. That is as much down to the players as the manager of the time.

I was 50-50 about his sacking. I was eternally grateful to him for what he'd done but the tipping point came with the home performance against Norwich, the cup semi disaster and then losing at QPR. He was interviewed and struck me as a deer in the headlights - he seemed to have run out of ideas on how to get the team up for the last few games. Then as quickly as our form had gone it reappeared and we were a cigarette paper's width from 3rd.

AVB? I didn't like him or rate him following his Chelsea stint. Frankly I wanted Martinez. I was extremely concerned about his appointment and those early performances, coupled with selling VDV (which I now accept was for VDV's family) made me think he was ripping something up that wasn't broken. However I've watched since then and I think he's doing an excellent job. His selections seem generally positive and we must be doing something right as we score first in 90% of the games we play. All we need is to finish the job sometimes. I think he's handled the goalkeeping situation well and bringing Dawson back into the fold was also spot on. There are flaws but that is as much that we're missing some key personnel to help change games. If we get some in the January window then I think we'll go on to great things. The players have bought into the manager and his ideas which is the most important thing. I think that has been clear on the pitch in recent weeks.
 
Back him Levy in January. Top 4 is definitely possible this season again and Arsenal will not do a Chelsea.

He was the one I wanted after Redknapp. He did a few worrying things in the first few months and of course things are nowhere near perfect but I think he's been doing a great job so far.
 
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