Sherwood: Is He Any Good?

And so, brave children of the revolution, we enter The Sherwood Years.

Or as the great, spectacle-wearing football historians might later refer to it: Daniel Levy’s Experimental Years.

Nothing useful can come of jabbing a stick at the bloated corpse of AVB’s Tottenham career as it drifts awkwardly up the river, bumping into rocks and scaring the fish, but it does feel like something of a shame that the young Portuguese coach was removed so abruptly and at the first sign of trouble. For one thing, as my good lady quizzed soon after Villas-Boas’ departure, how on earth will Spurs ever hope to find someone as handsome?

Exactly the right line of enquiry we should be following, I’m sure you’ll agree.

However callous and short-sighted the nature of the sacking was, it is possible to understand why the decision was made by them cowards upstairs and why it was necessary for Villas-Boas to burn off into the sunset on his supercharged Ducati 1098. Modern football being as it is. A heartless b*stard. There’s only so many thumpings one side can take delivery of before a few questions need to be asked.

Namely, hey, boss, what’s with all the thumpings?

This is clearly no barometer of sanity against which to compare but Chelsea fired Carlo Ancelotti the season after he won them the double. Indeed, better coaches have fallen for much less.

The charge now, of course, is deciding whether Tracksuit Timothy is the right man to guide Tottenham through the Valley of Death (5th place) and into the vibrant, luscious meadows of One Position Higher.

Well, he’s a man which is a start and on first inspection league results appear to have taken a turn for the better. Southampton, Stoke and fellow mid-tablers, Man United, have all been beaten under the brief stewardship of Sherwood, and some pleasingly attack-minded football has been thrown in along the way.

Look, I can’t say I’m totally won over by the Redknapp-lite Everyman aura of Tim. The press-conference gagbanter, the fact that he reads the Daily Star, (at least he can read, I suppose) his penchant for a Bisto brand 4-4-2* and it’s hard not to be mildly alarmed by the fact that he’s literally not qualified to manage a Premier League football club.

That said, however, there’s plenty of stuff that I have liked about Sherwood’s tenure so far. The faith he’s put in some of the youngsters like Bentaleb, Fryers and Fredericks is encouraging and always likely to go down well with the locals. I’m pretty sure I saw Obika on the bench against Arsenal. Obika! I presumed he’d joined a travelling circus. Getting Adebayor back in the team and performing is obviously a big thumbs up, too.

And, as much as the end-of-the-pier wisecracks make me recoil in horror, it is quite fun to see a guy not take himself too seriously- even if he’s all too aware that most sections of the media love a self-deprecating jester. No matter how incompetent.

So, get behind him, I say. If he keeps up the steady improvement and gets the best out of players like Eriksen and Adebayor while introducing more of the development squad, then who cares what he says in the pressers or how many of The Big Papers he reads. One thing’s for certain it’s going to be compelling.

 

 

*In most cases a flexible 4-4-2 is a workable formation, with Adebayor and Soldado taking in turns to drop deep. But as we saw against Arsenal- a side whose midfield is overloaded and, you know, good- it’s suicidal.

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