Editor’s Note: The following is a guest article from Allan Sharpe on the 2013-14 season for Tottenham Hotspur F.C. We thank Allan for putting this together for LWOS and Tottenham Talkline. Allan is a big Tottenham fan, who has cheered the team since 1958, and brings his thoughts on a disappointing season that has ended with Tim Sherwood’s sacking.
MY VERDICT Tottering Slop Spurs 2013/14
The Men at the Top: The 3 not so wise men
This season started off with so much optimism and has turned into so much despair, more than any other recent season.
So who is to blame ? Well mistakes happen, errors of judgement, unfulfilled potential, in life in work, rest and play. However Tottenham Hotspur is just not any other business making mistakes. It is bank rolled by undenying fan loyalty week after week and television revenue. It can afford to squander money and opportunities and survive, whereas most businesses would struggle in the factory estates or the high street if such a calamitous, greedy regime was in managerial miscontrol.
So with an attitude of we are okay as long as we have bums on seats coming through the turnstiles, it is little wonder that mistakes go unpunished apart from on the scoreboard 90 minutes after kick off.
My cynicism is fertilised by what I have seen live on the pitch, week after week. I have supported this club since 1958, so I have seen many players, many managers, but this time money has been squandered wasted and too many great players let go, to be replaced by expensive wasters.
To be fair to Chairman Daniel Levy, he seems to have a vision, but lets others mess up the delivery of that vision.
Unlike Irvine Scholar who let Waddle go when he could have had Gascoigne, Linekar and Waddle, and the money was NEVER ploughed back into the dressing room in players. Levy reinjected the Gareth Bale money from Real Madrid, trusting his football director with the cash and deals, not his manager, Andre Villas Boas.
It was said at the time that Spurs had sold Elvis and bought the Beatles. Well we all now know it was money totally wasted, except for a young Dane from Ajax named Christian Eriksen. The Beatles turned out to be the Wurzels and did not possess a brand new combine harvester, more a clapped out rust bucket. The rest of the so called professional playing staff have failed to live up to their price tag and their wages. In any other business, they would have been sacked for lack of productivity and incompetence.
Strikers like Roberto Soldado who quite frankly would MISS if he kicked a beach ball from a Valencia Beach into the Mediterranean Sea. Paulhino, a whimp who pulls out of tackles and moves out of the way in a free kick wall, when the ball is coming at him. Vlad Chiriches who is more of a circus act with the ball, than a resolute defender. Lamentable Erik Lamela who has a sore back and a sore thumb from sucking it too much and barely played. Etienne Capoue has hardly laced his boots. Nacer Chadli, who is an in and out player more out than in, even when he is on the pitch.
Franco Baldini bought these players to replace Gareth Bale, who the season before Baled Out Spurs match after match with solo spectacular goals. Without Bale Spurs would have been mid-table. This season without Hugo Lloris in goal they would have been relegation fodder. Time after time, Lloris the perfect sweeper / goalkeeper saved the embarrassment of the worse defence I have seen since Spurs were relegated in the mid 70’s.
So Number 1 for the Job Centre as the close season bargain basement reject sale commences with P45’s is Baldini. I never liked him when he was number 2 to Postman Pat with England. I do not rate him now.
Calls for Levy out, I disagree with. He does want success, he does want a bigger better Spurs and a new stadium. He must invest wisely however, else his new stadium will host 2nd division championship football and not premiership and the bums will not fill the seats. That will be a financial disaster even bigger than selling the world’s most expensive player. Let’s face it we lose Berbatov, Modric, Bale to bigger better clubs, who we are trying to compete with but are nowhere near. The conundrum is how to retain these world class players and build a team round them. Spurs need success and silverware. To do so the Club needs to invest, to clear out the dross and start again, and again, until victory starts to happen.
Andre Villas Boas, hitherto sacked by Chelsea, was a bad retrograde appointment by Levy. At least Levy admitted it and sacked the manager mid season. However Tim Sherwood was only a stop gap replacement. Sherwood, an ex-player, has more passion than the entire squad apart from Eriksen and Lloris. However he expects defenders to defend, attackers to score, and midfielders to be the engine room he was as a player. From this bunch of lily-livered players in lily white, he expects too much. He brought back Emmanuel Adebayor from AVB exile. But Adebayor is a lazy player. Another player who plays IF he feels like it and on a huge wage at that. Also Sherwood plays the same team home and away, has no concept of a central midfield to protect a weak back four. Scott Parker was sold, Sandro was a natural successor but not as good.
Other players were loaned out, at a time when injuries were many and replacements made fewer. Frederics is a good right back, better than Kyle Naughton. Lewis Holtby plays with desire. Carrol is skillful almost a Modric. Assou Ekkoto is a better left back than Danny Rose.
These loans were wrong, in hindsight. Of course hindsight is a wonderful thing, but consequences for actions should be paid for with your job. Decisions like that should be made forecasting ALL possibilities. Too many bad players had been bought, the squad was too big to rotate, so some were loaned out, but the wrong ones were loaned out.
Human beings can have off days. But professional footballers, get paid for what most fans would give their right arm for. They only have to kick a round thing between to white wooden posts for at most 90 minutes a week, work three quarters of the year and have 10 other people helping them. For that they get paid every week the sort of money some elite people might earn a year for a 60 hour week 52 weeks a year. In fact they don’t even have to play but can have a note from their mum saying they broke a finger nail getting out of bed. They don’t even have to kick a ball with either foot, and still get called a PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALLER.
Their manager, Sherwood, fell at the first fence in Domestic Cup Competitions . Against a better Benfica side in the Quarter Finals in Europe. His side threw in the lily livered white shirts in surrender against the top 3 sides in England, disgracefully humbled and humiliated as were their fans against Liverpool , Man City and Chelsea. In fact he carried on in that role from his predecessor, so no change there. Sherwood also failed to play a balanced side balance right and left, playing midfielders on the left and not a winger as on the right. AVB made that mistake too.
Sorry, I like Sherwood, he says it as it is, but the job and the task was too much for him, with no managerial experience prior to appointment. He too had to go to the job centre and a new manager will yet again be appointed, until there is silverware and consistency on the pitch. Only then can consistency continue in the management and coaching of the team. It’s called the never ending search for the right formula.
Next the players , who not not do and dare and do not deserve their fans, like me, any more and that badge on the shirt. These players have betrayed the legacy of Bill Nicholson and this club. White Heart Lane should be a fortress, players should come off the field exhausted having given their all. That is what Bill Nicholson expected. It is what most fans expect after paying a fortune through the turnstiles for so called entertainment. How many times do they trot off, no sweat, as if they had been out playing golf.
The majority of Spurs players this season, gave up often, were devoid of skill, endeavour, pride, passion and purpose. They lacked pace, they gifted goals to their opponents as if they were colour blind. Spurs were top of the league for giving goals away by individual error 44%. They had a dreadful goal difference, because they seldom could score, seldom hit the target and often let in, despite Lloris, the best keeper in the Premiership and my Player of the Season. Eriksen also escapes my wrath and criticism, except he is light weight and easily knocked off the ball.
The rest can all go to the Job Centre as far as I am concerned. Some like Vertonghen clearly want to leave, well let them, get what we can for them at the scrap yard, or rubbish dump and try to recycle them to another unwitting club. Fryers I would keep and Kane . In fact the youth policy should have been furthered, they would not have been as bad as the foreign expensive mercenary imports, nor all the English players sold last summer.
I would also invest in a Michael Jackson Oxygen Tent for the walking wounded that never put a Spurs shirt on except on the injury table. These whackos should also be sold for scrap complete with a set of spare plasters..
That would be a huge clear out and why not, they do not deserve to be paid wages, wages paid for by the fans they fail miserably in front of week after week. Over paid under achievers.
Thrashed home and away, scratching out a few results, goal difference minimal, played well at Newcastle away, Sunderland at home, could not even beat relegation material canaries. That is what Tottering Hotspur has become, a sloppy team, that cannot make possession tell. That lacks skill in passing and shooting. That lacks tenacity in the tackle. That ball watches as much as the paying spectators. A poor side, who poorly perform.
At the end of the season, there may be sacrificial lambs in Baldini and Sherwood, by the Man at the Top. However, all the players have to look in the mirror and ask themselves, did I play to my potential, did I give 100% for the team and my manager and the fans, could I have played better???.
I know what the mirror would say, the answer NO you did not, and it would crack if it lied.
RIP Audere est Facere, Come on You New Spurs season 2014/2015 minus the riff raff.
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