It was coming, we could all see it coming, like the Di
Matteo sacking a few seasons ago, you just knew like Abramovich Levy didn’t
have much faith in Tim Sherwood to take the club to where he envisions it to
be, only seeing him as a stop gap, a band aid on a bullet wound, water instead
of milk on your cereal…you catch my drift a means to a end. I think Sherwood
did a good job, it was never going to be an easy one and I believe he did well.
I also think the way in which Spurs have treated him during his tenure to be
utterly disgraceful. Sherwood was one of their own, a much liked figure at the
club who was a Spurs player during his career, going on to work at the club as a technical co-ordinator,
to then to answer the call to take over from AVB to only be much maligned and
treated with contempt during his managerial reign.
Do I
believe as Sherwood said himself If he was in charge for the whole season he
would have guided Tottenham to a top 4 finish ‘No!’ I don’t believe anyone
could have got Tottenahm fourth place this season. Not even Paul Daniels and
his a magician. It would have taken a
miracle, a Derren Brown magic trick of epic proportions for Tottenham to finish
fourth, for one sole fact, the sale of Gareth Bale. You can’t expect to sell
your best players and push on, Bale was their match winner plain and simple, he
scored 8 winning goals last season, literally winning games for Tottenham
himself. Then you sell him, going on to buy 7 players, 7 players who have never
played in the Premier league, if the addictive football simulator game ‘Football
Manager’ has taught anyone is that ‘too many new signings in a short space of
time can upset the balance and rhythm of your team’. This was ever so apparent in the early stages
of this season, Tottenham were out of sorts, the balance of the team was all
over the place. Couple this with the
fact AVB didn’t want half of these players makes a recipe for disaster.
Sherwood
came in and steadied the ship. He said he felt like a "supply
teacher", with players being told by their agents he would not be at the club next
season. How any manager could work under
these conditions is a mystery, you wake up to endless sport gossip columns of
this manager and that manager being linked with your job, while your barley
into a 12 month contract, your fending off questions about ‘will you
still be the manager next season?’ on a
regular basis, it’s embarrassing and it comes from the top. If Levy was
supportive of Sherwood squashing all qualms, it would have stopped the
humiliating questions and articles, but he didn’t which I see as disrespectful
to Tim Sherwood.
Sherwood
was the 12th Manager to be sacked this season, in a climate where
it’s the done thing to hire foreign managers for the top teams rather than
English ones. I believe Sherwood will be back at another club to showcase his
evident managerial abilities.
