Written by Craig Lucock
Andre Villas-Boas, Tottenham’s recently departed manager.
Good day to you all. I have made the decision to write this article in the wake of a high profile managerial sacking, the one that i am talking about is obviously Tottenham’s decision to sack manager Andre Villas-Boas. I’ve had strong feelings on this subject for a good while, however this, and numerous other sackings throughout the season have been incredibly frustrating to see and i would like to express my disappointment in the sheer impatience that some Premier League (and some Football League) chairman seem to have.
Now, it is very clear that Spurs have been playing exceptionally poorly recently, including the result which sealed AVB’s fate, the 5-0 defeat to Liverpool. Just weeks ago, they also suffered a 6-0 defeat at the hands of free scoring Manchester City, who have scored 4, 3 and 6 goals in each of their home games in all competitions since the win against Tottenham.
However, you have to look at the state of the current Spurs squad, and their recent transfer dealings to see why this decision to sack Villas-Boas is a poor one. First of all, their squad right now has been ravaged by injuries and suspensions. Arguably their most high profile signing of the summer, Christian Eriksen, their stalwart centre half/left full back Jan Vertonghen, Younes Kaboul and recent signing Vlad Chiriches are all absentees through injury.
Their defence which faced Liverpool included Kyle Naughton, who, with all due respect to him, is not up there with the best full backs in the league. They were also forced for the second league game in succession to utilise Etienne Capoue as a centre half, due to the aforementioned injuries. Kyle Walker kept his place at right back, and it’s fair to say he is far better going forward than he is defensively. Their only shining light in that defence was captain Michael Dawson.
The second thing, and this is quite a big one, is their summer transfer dealings. You quite simply cannot give a man £100 million to spend (which, on a side note, was largely funded by the sale of Gareth Bale, this isn’t a man spending money he doesn’t have here) and only allow him half a season for them to gel together. Tottenham started their season exceptionally well, albeit with very few goals, but they were getting the results. I personally find it ridiculous that Villas-Boas has been sacked this early on in his Spurs career.
Another thing that must be pointed out is that it is strongly rumoured that Villas-Boas did not choose to sign all of the players that he did, their technical director, Franco Baldini, made the decision on the majority of the players. So the question arises, why has Villas-Boas been sacked, while Baldini remains at the club? I certainly couldn’t provide a logical answer to that.
People say he was out of his depth, both at Spurs and at Chelsea, i disagree, for me it’s quite simply a case of over-expecting chairmen demanding far too much in a short space of time. A couple of interesting statistics:
Andre Villas-Boas has the highest winning percentage of the last 13 Tottenham managers (55%)
Tottenham are 1 point better off than they were at this point last season, and are only 8 points off the top of the league
Not really a crisis, is it?
The second recent sacking i wish to look at is the sacking of West Bromwich Albion manager Steve Clarke.
Steve Clarke, who was sacked by West Brom recently.
Admittedly, West Brom are not having the best of seasons. At the time of writing, they sit 16th with 15 points from 16 games. What absolutely baffles me is how this is apparently all Clarke’s fault. Cast your mind back to last season, where West Brom finished in 8th under Clarke’s guidance. This is a very impressive feat, especially given West Brom’s ‘boing boing’ tendencies in the past. Their squad is arguably slightly better than last season, barring the absence of Romelu Lukaku, now loaned out to Everton from Chelsea.
Clarke is evidently a good manager, one who was worked with the so called ‘Special One’ Jose Mourinho at Chelsea, while also spending time as assistant manager under Kenny Dalglish at Liverpool, where he was highly credited with turning Liverpool’s season around. Unfortunately for him, it doesn’t seem to be possible to place West Brom’s players on gardening leave, like Clarke has been. They’ve put in several gutless and uninspiring performances over the last few weeks, whether this has been down to Clarke is not clear to me, although as an outsider it’s not a view that i would take.
That’s the way it is in football however, if the team gets a great result, the players get lauded as some sort of demi gods. If the team gets a poor result, all eyes turn to the manager. West Brom have gotten some fantastic results against the big teams in the Premier League, a 1-1 draw with Arsenal, a 2-2 draw with Chelsea, in which they were punished with a shocking penalty decision in the last minute of the game and a 2-1 win over Manchester United. Unfortunately, the players don’t seem to be able to motivate themselves to play against some of the smaller teams in the league.
I personally don’t see who could come in and turn their season around, maybe i will be proved wrong, and i hope i am, but with little resources to rely on i don’t see who or what will be able to stop this downward spiral.
Overall, these two sackings in my opinion display one of the major things that is wrong with football these days, chairmen who simply don’t give their manager’s enough time. Some fans get on these managers’ backs, but what they have to remember is that the replacement will be picked by the same people who hired that manager in the first place! I could look at countless more examples, from various levels of English football, but i feel that these two are by far the most striking.
David Moyes has not yet been sacked at Manchester United, and they are one position worse off in the table than Tottenham are, Moyes will likely keep his job no matter what, due to Alex Ferguson’s influence. Which team will be better off in the long run? If i had to put money on it, it certainly wouldn’t be put on Tottenham.
Don’t get me wrong, there are instances where chairmen have been perfectly right to sack their managers, but many, including these two, don’t seem right to me.
Fact is, if a chairman wants his club to become one of the big boys in the league, he either needs to provide his manager with half a billion pounds to spend, or give them a good ten years in charge. Sadly, the latter never seems to happen.
Under The Floodlights 