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27.10.2008
Well, that was a shock
wasn't it ?
A change had to be made,
as when Woodgate and Bentley coming out with their comments last week it
forced the club's hand a bit. I am a bit concerned about the
amount of power the players have in deciding that the manager has lost
the dressing room, as it only takes a player to become a bit disgruntled
and if they are influential in the dressing room, it can soon lead to
the manager being on his way out.
From the outside, it
appeared that Ramos had not worked out the best way to play in the
Premier League. Playing with one forward is fine, if you have the
structure and players behind him to support that lone front man.
It is not a way that English players are familiar with and if he
intended to play that way, why didn't he start after the Carling Cup
win, so that the players had time to get accustomed to it ??
Whether his lack of
English was a problem, I don't know. His decision making was
probably what cost him his job. His look at the end of the Stoke
game spoke more to the Spurs supporters than any of the words he came
out with. "Rabbit in the headlights" is how some described it and
the stories that followed his sacking perhaps back that up, with late
changes to the line-up despite having trained with one eleven all week.
Perhaps he wasn't getting too worked up about Tottenham's position, as
he had a poor start with Seville in his last season there and moved them
up the table before he left. But that was Spain and here things
are a little different.
Levy was forced to take
action with rumours of protests against him and the AGM coming up ...
not to mention the poorest start in the club's history. The
constant chopping and changing of management is quite unsettling, as
they bring in their own back-room staff and want their own players and
then there is the added expense of paying them off and paying their
"transfer fee" to bring them in.
Consistency is what the
club need and as this will probably be "Hangdog" Harry Redknapp's last
job in management (although you can't pout anything past Tottenham
Hotspur), it might be a few years of stability. If he can get
Spurs out of this current predicament, then he can help the club go
forward.
However, some sections of
the media have been bigging him up a little too much, saying he has a
great record. Well, that might be in relation to the clubs he has
managed, but his FA Cup win with Portsmouth last season was his first
major trophy. He has kept teams up when it looked like they were
heading down a division, which is where we are at the moment, but he has
not been able to challenge at the top. Therefore, it remains to be
seen what he can do with a "top club". It is something he has been
calling Spurs for a few years now. Even this season he was saying
we were too good to go down and had quality players who would get us out
of the situation we found ourselves in. Well, now is his chance to
prove it.
It should not be
forgotten that Redknapp has had some issues in his past. The
police action where they raided his house and their subsequent apology,
when there were lots of police raids over corruption in football.
Through the years there have been rumours about transfer dealings his
clubs have been involved in, but they have only been rumours.
There is no doubt that Harry is good at getting the best out of some
players. Some he hasn't had so much success with, but he has a
record of brining talented youngsters through at West Ham and has
introduced quite a few at Portsmouth. Some of his transfers have
been hits and some have been misses, but they do come and go in great
numbers.
Let's not forget that he
was slagging Spurs fans two weeks ago over the Sol Campbell abuse.
Does he still want those fans banned now ? Probably, as he is
quite a moral man. However, he has already acknowledged that Tony
Adams would not be following him to White Hart Lane as he is an Arsenal
man and wouldn't come to Tottenham, so he must understand why the Spurs
fans are so upset about Campbell's departure ... however many years ago
it was. It is just the boundaries of that criticism that need to
be looked at. And Harry has said that he was a Spurs fan as a kid,
although stories have circulated previously that he regularly went to
Arsenal when his Dad took him to football. Who do you believe ??
As for the others who
have made way, I feel a little sorry for Gus Poyet. I think he is
a good coach and one day will make a very good manager. Perhaps he
will be tarred with Ramos lack of success, but I hope not and the fact
that Manchester United and Newcastle United were courting him show what
esteem he is held in. One of my worries is that another former
Spurs midfielder Tim Sherwood (and mate of Jamie) is being linked with a
place in Harry's coaching set-up. An outspoken pundit on Setanta
and one who was not very fan-friendly (claiming they knew nothing about
football), he was one of the players who was rumoured to have lost Glenn
Hoddle the dressing room in his time as manager and lead to the sacking
of the Spurs legend. Hopefully, if he is now poacher turned
gamekeeper, he will take a different tack.
Damien Comolli will go
down in Spurs history as the man who took the Director of Football role
into the shadows. Was it his lack of a good enough scouting
network or that he was not a great judge of players ? It has
emerged since his departure that the only player he discovered while at
Arsenal was Gael Clichy. None of the other young stars who have
broken through. Big money was spent on a lot of players it has
been reported he was responsible for bringing in and they have not
broken into the team or have moved on. Some players appear to have
been panic buys (Rasiak, Rocha, GIlberto) who all seem to be players not
of the quality required. It was interesting that our former Head
Scout Ronnie Boyce who was sacked some months ago is an ex-West Ham
United team-mate of Redknapp's. Will he be back and has he got a
representative in each country of the world to find out who the up and
coming players are ? That is what is needed in this time of all
the top clubs in the world trying to find the next big superstar.
As for Marcos Alvarez, I
don't think that there is any doubt that he made the players fitter, but
was it at the expense of making the players more tired ?? The
fitness regime in pre-season seemed to work a treat, but when it came to
the real thing it all went wrong. Why ?? Who knows.
Did the players feel the need to eat more heartily and thus decide to
have an English manager in after a number of years ??
While Levy had probably
decided enough was enough with the Sporting Director role, one of the
things that crossed my mind was that Redknapp wouldn't have come with
someone in that role. He raged against Avram Grant doing that job
at Pompey when he was there. This new structure might improve things,
but there has not been an on-going commitment to running the club
without a Director of Football again in the future, as he has said he
will not return to it as long as Harry is manager at Tottenham.
Levy had to return to a system that suited an English manager, as
Redknapp knows the clubs involved, having put teams up against them over
the years and knows the game in this country, so could hit the ground
running, which appear to be two aspects of the Head Coach's job that
Ramos were unable to adapt quickly to.
Ironically, it makes you
wonder whether he was more successful at Seville because he had a better
Director of Football ??
benny
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