Is AVB the right Choice for Spurs??
The axed Chelsea boss has taken over at London rivals Tottenham, and he cannot allow his methods to fall on deaf ears again.
Will he bring the success days from Porto to Spurs or continue the failure with which he left Chelsea at SpursI personally feel he will continue to have a hard time with Spurs. But having said that, it will come down to the fans and management of Spurs and how much time they’re willing to give him.Let us look at the flaws and merits of AVB.
When Chelsea hired him as the manager at the start of the previous season, he was termed as Chelsea’s next Mourinho. But Villas Boas came with a great Stamford Bridge rebuilding project which was over before the foundations had even been laid. The facts and figures of his short-lived reign made for grim reading; just forty games in charge, which, with the £13.3 million compensation package Roman Abramovich was required to part with in order to prise his man from the clutches of Porto, translates to a cost of £332,500 per game, all for a win percentage of just 47.5%. The total cost to Chelsea of hiring and firing Villas-Boas has been widely placed at £50 million. Everyone makes mistakes, but for Abramovich this was one very costly mistake indeed.He had left Porto as one of football’s hottest names and brightest young managerial talents, but his reputation is now not the greatest.
Reasons why i feel he will fail :
- Ego : Now no one can say for certain that he has or hasn’t learnt from these mistakes BUT judging from comments made recently he still feels the job he did at Chelsea was a good one and he did not deserve to be sacked, even having the cheek to say he deserves some credit for the Champions League victory! When he left Chelsea were 3-1 down after the first leg against Napoli and leaking goals like a pub side! If he continues with the same attitude, he will face even a tougher job at Spurs.
- Tactics : We all know he was a great manager at Porto but he made such basic errors at Chelsea, for instance, alienating Anelka and Alex, not appreciating the senior players, attempting to play a style which did not suit the personal and finally being so stubborn to notice that his tactics were wrong. He is brought into Spurs during a transition phase just like his previous clubs. He should not start off with his textbook strategies from the word go but instead learn the gameplay of the club and follow it for sometime and slowly bring in his ideas.
- Will the ‘older’ players TRUST him? The players at Spurs know how his relationship with the senior members of Chelsea was – NOT GOOD. So his appointment will only confirm the exit of Luka Modric who is undoubtedly their best player and Van Der Vaart has also been linked with a move away, although he somewhat denies this.
- TIME : How much time are the Spurs management ready to give him? It will most likely be more than what their Chelsea counterpart had given him. But in all practical scenarios with Chelsea, Manchester clubs and Arsenal getting stronger by the day and Spurs being linked with more players away rather than in, it will be foolish to consider them as title contenders. And if they do not have a great cup run and end the season trophyless, and out of the top four(which looks likely) one can only wonder if the club would want to stick to him or move on.
But his record in Portugal tells the tale of a man who stepped in to save a club bottom of the table, before steering them to an eleventh-placed finish, for which he was rewarded with one of the country’s top jobs. At Porto, Villas-Boas completed an incredible treble, which included an unbeaten season in the Primeira Liga, only the second time this had ever been achieved, and Europa League glory, which made him the youngest manager ever to win a European competition.
Reasons why he might be the man for Spurs :
- Lesser Pressure : His sudden jump to Chelsea , a club which demands trophies in every competition it enters at such an early stage in his career proved to be an epic failure. But here at Spurs, all he needs to do to cement his place is either reach at least the Semi’s of europa league or finish in the top four of the premier league or win either the F.A. cup or Carling. It may sound simple, but it will need a good mixture of superb tactics along with good relations with the players that will help him ensure that at least one of those is done. Having said that, these targets will at least be a few shades easier than Chelsea’s demands.
- Playing style : He loves playing a high line at the back and demands a free-flowing,entertaining style of football which brought him so much success at Porto. Spurs have just the players with the likes of Bale, Lennon, Van der vaart up front along with Essou-Ekotto and Walker at the back.
- Give him total control : If the players listen to him, if the fans are patient with him, if his ideas are given time to flourish, he might be able to turn this club into something more than an entertaining. The way Spurs chairman Daniel Levy likes to work is to let his head coach take care of on-field matters and for him to steer the off-field business.