Tim Sherwood…gone \o/

[Sandman]

Re: Tim Sherwood - Head Coach

All that's going on here now is, face saving, point scoring nonsense by the want it all , want it now crowd, because short term-ism all they understand.

This is a great point, and is also why I am worried. Tim may have only had 13 league games but he has been in charge for 3 months now or more and I see no settled plan, not formation he sticks with and that he is constantly trying to get a formula that works. I am not in this for the win now attitude. I want to see my team do well. But I also want to see a system coming together even if their is growing pains. I hate to say it but Liverpool went through some pain last season but Rodgers gradually got a system he is happy with that can attack and play the way he wants. Now it almost does not matter who is playing as they have a defined pattern.

Sherwood does not know enough as a Coach to know what he wants to implement. He just keeps throwing things out there hoping something is going to work. There seems to be no plan, no system and just a hit and hope mentality. I have no faith in him at all at this stage. He is losing the players already and its obvious. They know he is a goner. we know he is a goner. The season is done.

 

[diego_maradona]

Re: Tim Sherwood - Head Coach

Sherwood does not know enough as a Coach to know what he wants to implement

Yes exactly! He may turn out to be a fine coach but are we as a club patient enough to let him use is as a testing ground. I don't think Levy would like that and it would makea complete mockery of Enics long term vision for us. Whatever that is

 

[Sandman]

Re: Tim Sherwood - Head Coach

Also his rant about players showing some guts, dragging each other by the scruff of the neck and players at least putting in the effort shows how old Sherwoods coaching theory is. Modern coaches need to work on possession, transition, set plays whilst in possesion and i dont mean dead ball free kicks. I mean player movement all over the pitch when in certain attacking areas. Players positions when we have dead ball situations attacking and defending. Movement around the field when certain players have the ball and tracking back.

I see none of this in our play anymore. Its back to letting the players move where they want no matter what and most of the time they are standing still. I just hope he Levy knows better in the summer. This is one sacking i want to see.

 

[thfcsteff]

Re: Tim Sherwood - Head Coach

Exactly, football management is difficult, at the highest levels its extremely so.

Fans make exactly the wrong kind of decisions e.g. why not play the under 21's in Europa, why not give a completely inexperienced guy a chance.
THFC is a hundreds of millions pound business, while experience does not guarantee success, it certainly is a mitigates some of the risk.

Levy took a punt, it's failing quickly, the best thing he can do is stop it now.

The biggest problem is that Levy obviously didn't give AVB the backing AVB expected early on, because by the time we were getting c unted 6-0 by Mn City, AVB wanted out as much as anyone. The seeds were sown and watered over time…AVB didn't give Levy an option as he didn't want to be here any longer...

 

[BrainOfLevy]

Re: Tim Sherwood - Head Coach

I disagree. Bale saved us against Liverpool at Home, Lyon at Home, Sunderland at Home, Southampton at Home, QPR at Home, Southampton both Home and Away, WBA Away, Norwich Away and Saudi Sportswashing Machine at Home.

Those games are just off the top of my head. I don't just talk about the goals he scored or created in those games but the fact that he was pretty much the only real threat and all we seemed to do was give the ball to him and hope he would do something.

I'll give you liverpool at home, even though as a team we started off really well when we scored 2.

Sunderland..no. It was a good performance and we were unlucky to need bale to win that game.

QPR at home we were crap and Bale was as bad as anyone in that game.

I've given Southampton already. Not away though. He didn't 'save us' then by scoring a header any more than Dempsey did by scoring a tap in.

WBA away...we were well in control and then they had a man sent off, we would have probably won that anyway but Bale had to play proper upfront due to the injury to Defoe, hardly AVB's fault that his striker scored to win us the game!

Saudi Sportswashing Machine at home was a decent performance in parts, not the best but certainly by turgid on the level of Wigan or Soton at home.

Norwich was Norwich, under Hughton they are always solid and make it hard for their opposition. We were ok. Not SHOCKING TERRIBLE TURGID football as some would have people believe we played under AVB.

 

[BrainOfLevy]

Re: Tim Sherwood - Head Coach

The biggest problem is that Levy obviously didn't give AVB the backing AVB expected early on, because by the time we were getting c unted 6-0 by Mn City, AVB wanted out as much as anyone. The seeds were sown and watered over time…AVB didn't give Levy an option as he didn't want to be here any longer...

Winner winner chicken dinner.

 

[Libero]

Re: Tim Sherwood - Head Coach

I'll give you liverpool at home, even though as a team we started off really well when we scored 2.

Sunderland..no. It was a good performance and we were unlucky to need bale to win that game.

QPR at home we were crap and Bale was as bad as anyone in that game.

I've given Southampton already. Not away though. He didn't 'save us' then by scoring a header any more than Dempsey did by scoring a tap in.

WBA away...we were well in control and then they had a man sent off, we would have probably won that anyway but Bale had to play proper upfront due to the injury to Defoe, hardly AVB's fault that his striker scored to win us the game!

Saudi Sportswashing Machine at home was a decent performance in parts, not the best but certainly by turgid on the level of Wigan or Soton at home.

Norwich was Norwich, under Hughton they are always solid and make it hard for their opposition. We were ok. Not SHOCKING TERRIBLE TURGID football as some would have people believe we played under AVB.

Selective memory imo.

WBA being an example. Before Popov got sent off, Bale had our only efforts on goal. It took 10 men and a wonder goal to get three points. A goal that no one else in our side would have been capable of. We looked clueless and this game more than any other in my mind was one where the players just gave the ball to Bale, hoping for something we had seen earlier in the season.

Sunderland at home we did play quite well and were unlucky not to have got in front earlier. However, it took that from Bale to get us 3 points. Something that happened far too often over the season.

QPR at home, Bale was pretty good, not amazing but had a hand in the goals as I remember it, certainly the winner from Defoe. The team were shocking generally in that game and I was considerably worried that QPR were going to break away and get a second.

Saudi Sportswashing Machine at home, we were decent until the equaliser from Gouffran and it took Bale's winner to get us the three points.

Southampton away we got battered in the second half. Bale was our only real outlet although Dempsey had a very good game too. Didn't deserve the win at all.

I am not suggesting that AVB was totally to blame for the way the football panned out but I went to 20 odd games last season and Bale was the difference for us in enough games overall to know had we not had him then we would have been anywhere between 6th and 10th.

 

[Baleforce]

Re: Tim Sherwood - Head Coach

if Bale wasn't playing in those games someone else would have been, we wouldn't have had 10 men, we were setup to make chances for the player in that role, yes Dempsey (for example) may not have scored as many he'd (or whoever) would have still scored some of them

 

[Rossi22]

Re: Tim Sherwood - Head Coach

if Bale wasn't playing in those games someone else would have been, we wouldn't have had 10 men, we were setup to make chances for the player in that role, yes Dempsey (for example) may not have scored as many he'd (or whoever) would have still scored some of them

Did we make chances for Bale though? To me it looked as though the rest of the team were just waiting for Bale to do something. A lesser player wouldn't have been able to do so.

 

[Libero]

Re: Tim Sherwood - Head Coach

if Bale wasn't playing in those games someone else would have been, we wouldn't have had 10 men, we were setup to make chances for the player in that role, yes Dempsey (for example) may not have scored as many he'd (or whoever) would have still scored some of them

I was talking about WBA needing to have 10 men for us to win. with 11 on the pitch I don't think we would have won that game as Bale wouldn't have got the space he did for goal.....he was crowded out as it was.

 

[Baleforce]

Re: Tim Sherwood - Head Coach

I was talking about WBA needing to have 10 men for us to win. with 11 on the pitch I don't think we would have won that game as Bale wouldn't have got the space he did for goal.....he was crowded out as it was.

sorry, that was't aimed at you or anyone, it was a general point

 

[chancer]

Re: Tim Sherwood - Head Coach

if Bale wasn't playing in those games someone else would have been, we wouldn't have had 10 men, we were setup to make chances for the player in that role, yes Dempsey (for example) may not have scored as many he'd (or whoever) would have still scored some of them

This is always said, but I never really understand it. In what way was the team specially set up for him?

For me, all that really happened was we passed him the ball a lot and let him do his thing. Maybe there was some covering-in behind him when he went forward, but that's standard. I can't really see what other specific tactics or plan was employed because he was there.

 

[Baleforce]

Re: Tim Sherwood - Head Coach

There is a video knocking around (Murmorn posted it in the former players thread earlier) with all his goals from last season. Yes there are quite a few long range efforts and some lovely solo runs but there are plenty of goals where we worked the ball wide before delivering it to the D for the late arriving player to tap in, this seemed to be the position Bale would take up a lot, much in the way Scholes did for United for so many years.

I'm not saying it was specifically set up for Bale, i'm saying that the way we rotated the ball meant chances were more likely going to come to players with good movement and timing with the freedom to roam rather than an out and out forward, this role is who we made chances for. The first Villa game was a good example as our deep lying attacker that day scored a hat trick after being fed cute balls into the penalty spot area by Dempsey and Defoe who had picked up possession down the flanks before moving inside.

 

[Gutter Boy]

Re: Tim Sherwood - Head Coach

'Absolutely no man-management skills'

Simon Burnton
theguardian.com, Friday 14 March 2014 16.32 GMT

TIM

Tim Sherwood, a "source" told the Sun in January, "is not afraid to speak out". Thanks, "source". We hadn't noticed. As the man himself said this week, "I am singing it from the heart, not from the script – I'm not an actor, I work on impulse." On Thursday night he impulsively declared that Benfica's finger-waving manager Jorge Jesus "lacks class", and what's more he thinks it would be a good idea to ignore him completely when Spurs are in Lisbon for their Big Vase round of whatever second leg. "Nah, not for me thank you," he declared. "I have no intention of speaking to him."

Good plan, Tim. If you don't much like someone, it's often best to avoid them completely. And he wouldn't be the first Spurs manager to refuse to talk to a person he considered disrespectful, after all. Glenn Hoddle did it once, when one particularly insolent player criticised him in the press. Midfielder, this player was. Name of Sherwood. "The day after the article came out I tried to have a meeting with Hoddle," he sobbed. "He just said, 'I don't want to talk to you.' And those were the last words he ever said to me … In the end, the situation got so bad I wrote a formal letter of grievance."

OK, but a man's allowed to change his mind, isn't he? And to his great credit, Sherwood seems a principled chap. Take, for example, his criticism of Dimitar Berbatov in 2007, towards the end of the sulky Bulgarian's time at Spurs. "He is a big character in the dressing room and if he starts poisoning the rest of the boys you've had it," Sherwood said. "You need players in this situation, players who are going to fight for you." Like Sherwood himself fought for his managers. Take, say, Mr Roy at Blackeye Rovers, who wistfully recalled: "Tim became very disenchanted with the club. Being such an important character, his discontent was able to spread to a lot of other players. These people didn't have the strength of character or experience to stand up to somebody who was finding fault with most things."

Finding fault with most things, eh? Doesn't sound like Tim. He just sings from the heart. And, besides, he was younger then, and still learning. He's older now. Wiser. "When you get to this late stage of your career," he said a full decade ago, "you do start to think about the possibility of management and what you have learned from your different bosses." So, let's see exactly what he's learned, and how well he learned it:

Thing No1: "George Graham has a simple philosophy: 'If you don't lose goals you don't lose games.' If there's a secret behind his success, I think that's it." Result: Spurs, having kept a clean sheet in 54% of games this season before his appointment, have been running at 29% since.

Thing No2: "I've learned a hell of a lot from Glenn Hoddle – and all of it his how not to do the job. His biggest fault is he has absolutely no man-management skills. The art of successful management involves keeping everyone in the squad happy." The result: Sherwood accuses his players of being "lazy and unprofessional" and "too nice to each other". He shouldn't have to worry about their feelings, he reveals: "They are men. I'm a manager, not a babysitter."

Thing No3: "Kenny Dalglish's great managerial talent was that not only did he know every one of his own players but everybody else's as well. He would study the opposition and tell us what their players were good and bad at. He was a genius, the absolute guv'nor." Result: Luisão left totally unmarked by an ill-prepared Spurs defence at set pieces and scores for Benfica. Twice.

In summary, don't pay any attention to anything the man says. Or does. Many moons ago, when the Fiver was just a glint in Tim Berners-Lee's eye, the PFA used to publish, on actual paper, an annual guide to England's professional footballers. One of them once attempted to summarise Sherwood's character in two words. The ones they chose? "Previously enigmatic".

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/mar/14/the-fiver-tim-sherwood-tottenham

 

[Baleforce]

Re: Tim Sherwood - Head Coach

can't say the Guardian are biased, they posted this around the same time

http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2014/mar/14/tim-sherwood-plain-talking-tottenham

which is quite positive

 

[Lost Mango]

Re: Tim Sherwood - Head Coach

can't say the Guardian are biased, they posted this around the same time

http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2014/mar/14/tim-sherwood-plain-talking-tottenham

which is quite positive

Quite positive?

It is totally over blown hagiography. Positive to the point of being ludicrous.

 

[Modric THFC]

Re: Tim Sherwood - Head Coach

'Absolutely no man-management skills'

Simon Burnton
theguardian.com, Friday 14 March 2014 16.32 GMT

TIM

Tim Sherwood, a "source" told the Sun in January, "is not afraid to speak out". Thanks, "source". We hadn't noticed. As the man himself said this week, "I am singing it from the heart, not from the script – I'm not an actor, I work on impulse." On Thursday night he impulsively declared that Benfica's finger-waving manager Jorge Jesus "lacks class", and what's more he thinks it would be a good idea to ignore him completely when Spurs are in Lisbon for their Big Vase round of whatever second leg. "Nah, not for me thank you," he declared. "I have no intention of speaking to him."

Good plan, Tim. If you don't much like someone, it's often best to avoid them completely. And he wouldn't be the first Spurs manager to refuse to talk to a person he considered disrespectful, after all. Glenn Hoddle did it once, when one particularly insolent player criticised him in the press. Midfielder, this player was. Name of Sherwood. "The day after the article came out I tried to have a meeting with Hoddle," he sobbed. "He just said, 'I don't want to talk to you.' And those were the last words he ever said to me … In the end, the situation got so bad I wrote a formal letter of grievance."

OK, but a man's allowed to change his mind, isn't he? And to his great credit, Sherwood seems a principled chap. Take, for example, his criticism of Dimitar Berbatov in 2007, towards the end of the sulky Bulgarian's time at Spurs. "He is a big character in the dressing room and if he starts poisoning the rest of the boys you've had it," Sherwood said. "You need players in this situation, players who are going to fight for you." Like Sherwood himself fought for his managers. Take, say, Mr Roy at Blackeye Rovers, who wistfully recalled: "Tim became very disenchanted with the club. Being such an important character, his discontent was able to spread to a lot of other players. These people didn't have the strength of character or experience to stand up to somebody who was finding fault with most things."

Finding fault with most things, eh? Doesn't sound like Tim. He just sings from the heart. And, besides, he was younger then, and still learning. He's older now. Wiser. "When you get to this late stage of your career," he said a full decade ago, "you do start to think about the possibility of management and what you have learned from your different bosses." So, let's see exactly what he's learned, and how well he learned it:

Thing No1: "George Graham has a simple philosophy: 'If you don't lose goals you don't lose games.' If there's a secret behind his success, I think that's it." Result: Spurs, having kept a clean sheet in 54% of games this season before his appointment, have been running at 29% since.

Thing No2: "I've learned a hell of a lot from Glenn Hoddle – and all of it his how not to do the job. His biggest fault is he has absolutely no man-management skills. The art of successful management involves keeping everyone in the squad happy." The result: Sherwood accuses his players of being "lazy and unprofessional" and "too nice to each other". He shouldn't have to worry about their feelings, he reveals: "They are men. I'm a manager, not a babysitter."

Thing No3: "Kenny Dalglish's great managerial talent was that not only did he know every one of his own players but everybody else's as well. He would study the opposition and tell us what their players were good and bad at. He was a genius, the absolute guv'nor." Result: Luisão left totally unmarked by an ill-prepared Spurs defence at set pieces and scores for Benfica. Twice.

In summary, don't pay any attention to anything the man says. Or does. Many moons ago, when the Fiver was just a glint in Tim Berners-Lee's eye, the PFA used to publish, on actual paper, an annual guide to England's professional footballers. One of them once attempted to summarise Sherwood's character in two words. The ones they chose? "Previously enigmatic".

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/mar/14/the-fiver-tim-sherwood-tottenham

I've no problem with Sherwood saying Hoddle had no man management skills. Hoddle doesnt.

Sherwood obviously has some. Adebayor is evidence of that.

 

[glorygloryeze]

Re: Tim Sherwood - Head Coach

Guardian article tonight:

http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2014/mar/14/tim-sherwood-plain-talking-tottenham

Tim Sherwood's plain talking delivers the message to Tottenham[/B]

Manager's forthright manner and uncomplicated approach is moulding a new mentality in the White Hart Lane dressing room


If a Tottenham Hotspur player misses an easy pass in training, Tim Sherwood will not hold back. If the Benfica manager makes a patronising gesture on the touchline, Sherwood will not hold back. If the "silence is deafening" at boardroom level about his prospects in the job, Sherwood will not hold back.

It is fair to say that a picture has formed with regard to Sherwood's management style. Players, opponents, employers; they are all the same to him – to be treated with respect when they merit it and delivered unsugared truths when they do not.

There has been something gloriously unreconstructed and off-message about Sherwood since he succeeded André Villas-Boas at White Hart Lane in mid-December and it has been made all the more eye-catching by his status as a managerial novice.

The Capital One Cup quarter-final at home to West Ham United on 18 December was his first game as a manager at any level. And this is not just any level. This is Tottenham, the club who have finished in the Premier League's top five in each of the past four seasons and have pretensions to do even better.

The 45-year-old has attacked what has to be considered as a daunting challenge with wisecracks and conviction and it has been on his terms at every turn. Confronted, initially, by the chairman, Daniel Levy, and contractual negotiations (a combination to have anybody reaching for those squeezy stress balls), Sherwood made it plain that he would be no caretaker or interim appointment. He wanted an 18-month deal. And he got it.

In January, when Levy wanted to horse-trade players, Sherwood said that the squad needed streamlining. Chopping and changing, he suggested, tended to bring more problems and it did not take a genius to deduce his views on last summer's wholesale changes, when the technical director, Franco Baldini, oversaw the arrival of seven new faces. They have not been so magnificent and, of them, Sherwood seems to have faith in only the midfielder Christian Eriksen. There were no signings in January.

Sherwood has demanded that his players reflect the force of his personality and the depth of his desire, and the dynamic with them has been the most fascinating aspect of his tenure. The message has been consistent and, normally, extremely quotable but it boils down to what he said on 26 February, before the Europa League last-32 second-leg tie against Dnipro. "You can either play for a big club or you can't," Sherwood said. "Some of them have to still prove that they have got that character to be able to play for Tottenham."

Sherwood, characteristically, has not hidden his reservations. He has dished out some hard-hitting criticism after poor performances – most recently the 4-0 capitulation at Chelsea last Saturday, when he accused the players of lacking "guts".

He wants to create the culture where players dig each other out after lapses, whether in training or matches; of creative tensions firing standards. "You must not want to be someone's mate all the time," Sherwood says. "They need to drag it out of each other." The message appears to be getting through. The players held a lengthy and heated inquest after Chelsea.

Sherwood has stood accused of going too far with his views, of breaking the unwritten rule about keeping such things in-house. Glenn Hoddle and Gary Lineker, the pundits, have suggested that this is the quick way to lose the dressing room.

The manager brooks no argument, not least with people who "haven't been in the game for a long time". The players are either with him or otherwise and those who are not are "probably the ones you don't want anyway", as he said on Thursday after the 3-1 Europa League last-16 first-leg home defeat by Benfica.

It is plain that there are those he does not want. Who are they? Sherwood has not named names and, broadly speaking, the squad have shrugged it all off. There are quibbles within the group, such as the prominence that Sherwood has afforded to the 19-year-old midfielder Nabil Bentaleb. The public criticism has not yet overstepped a line, largely because it has remained collective. The players are, it should be said, used to hearing Sherwood speak his mind at the training ground.

And yet the targets know who they are. They are the players who know they are playing badly and/or are not selected regularly. They need not study the tea leaves; rather, look at the team sheet. Sherwood's gunboat diplomacy, particularly as Levy actively explores the possibility of taking the Holland manager, Louis Van Gaal, after the World Cup finals, is not without risk.

Sherwood has been and will continue to be true to himself. What you see is what you get and it is easy to see certain parallels with Harry Redknapp, the manager who brought Sherwood back to the club he played for, initially as a coach in 2008 and later as the youth technical co-ordinator.

Sherwood's arm-around-the-shoulder, I-believe-in-you routine has served to revitalise the striker Emmanuel Adebayor, while he is no clip-board manager, obsessed with heat maps and statistics. He is unafraid to make bold selections –witness the attacking line-up in his first league game at Southampton – and, generally, to go for it.

Results have dipped since the 5-1 home defeat by Emirates Marketing Project on 29 January and Sherwood approaches the derby against Arsenal at White Hart Lane on Sunday in desperate need of victory. Pull it off and the quest for Champions League qualification would be back on; lose or draw and it could appear to be over.

Sherwood's openness with his emotions has been a refreshing feature, even if they have boiled over in the past week or so. First, there was the touchline row with the Chelsea assistant Steve Holland and then the verbals with Benfica's Jorge Jesus, who followed up his Dr Evil dance moves on his team's first goal with a scoreline signal after the third.

The pressure is relentless; the experience utterly draining. Sherwood, though, is not a man who will be nagged by regret.


Within the comments was something that was interesting, written by a user called HollyWoodPass:

http://www.theguardian.com/football...wood-plain-talking-tottenham#comment-33095472

"David Hytner, it should be noted, somehow had a magical mystery conduit into the back room troubles at White Hart Lane during the last couple of months of AVB's reign. While everyone else was wondering, somehow Hytner could scoop the pack with unattributed quotes about player unrest, Levy's doubts, AVB's anxious state of mind, etc etc.

I believe it was Hytner who first announced AVB's departure.

Someone in the WHL hierarchy was clearly feeding Hytner his material. Presumably someone who would benefit from it being made public.

Now, flying in the face of common sense and with ridiculously blatant timing, Hytner's farcical puff piece announces that:

Sherwood has demanded that his players reflect the force of his personality and the depth of his desire, and the dynamic with them has been the most fascinating aspect of his tenure.

Of course, we commenters are aghast. Does Hytner really think we're that stupid? That we can't see exactly what's going on here?

Jeez, that clown Kevin McCarra couldn't write to save his life, but at least he has some integrity."

===========

Interesting comment...

 

[glorygloryeze]

Re: Tim Sherwood - Head Coach

Apologies - I see the article is already being discussed

 

[glorygloryeze]

Re: Tim Sherwood - Head Coach

I just read somebody write in the Benfica OMT that Tim had 'been deal a **** hand"