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Sherwood: Some of my players think they are doing Spurs a favour!

avonspurs

MoPo's lover
Apr 28, 2006
4,072
4,100
It won't be over until he's gone.

AVB's gone and his name continues to be raised; as does HR's. Unfortunately, out of sight doesn't mean out of mind. As soon as the new manager loses a game, just watch them come crawling out of the woodwork ("wouldn't have lost that game with Sherwood in charge", etc) ;)
 

CrazyHeart

Well-Known Member
Oct 26, 2013
3,702
4,288
AVB's gone and his name continues to be raised; as does HR's. Unfortunately, out of sight doesn't mean out of mind. As soon as the new manager loses a game, just watch them come crawling out of the woodwork ("wouldn't have lost that game with Sherwood in charge", etc) ;)

Yes, however in almost every case - the AVB straw man is invoked to defend Sherwood in some twisted fashion. It all comes back to Tim and his supporters.
 

davidmatzdorf

Front Page Gadfly
Jun 7, 2004
18,106
45,030
It seems increasingly obvious to me that the issue here is less that the players don't respect Sherwood than it is that Sherwood doesn't respect the players. And I don't mean that in a critical or dismissive sense. I think that, since Sherwood has started working regularly with the senior squad, he has found that he basically dislikes quite a few of them and does not respect their approaches and attitudes to the game.

Being prone to calling a spade a bloody shovel in public and also being aware that he is not long for the job, he doesn't really see why he should refrain from telling the world that he reckons his squad is full of prima donnas.

I reckon there are a few. He's not wrong.

But his supposed mentor, Harry Redknapp, would never have dealt with the squad in the way Sherwood has. He would have used his people-skills to bring the more difficult characters onside, as he did with Adebayor and Assou-Ekotto, and to fulfil the ego-requirements of self-regarding players like van der Vaart, without permitting it to disrupt the squad's implicit hierarchy. Sherwood doesn't have the skill or subtlety to do that and the result, according to a veritable hailstorm of persuasive rumours, is that the notional 'dressing room' has become a pretty toxic place.

Contrast this with the atmosphere between 2009 and 2012, when it seemed that the players were queuing up to tell journalists, with audible enthusiasm, what a positive, supportive, enjoyable squad it was and what great team spirit they possessed.

And it was visible on the pitch. Contrast the determination and mutual support under Harry with the blame-game and the defensive collapses this season - under both managers.

In any business, it takes a manager with real personnel-handling skills to build up that kind of togetherness and team bond. And it takes about 5 minutes to fuck it all up. 'Under-rated' is not a strong enough word.
 

Chris_D

Well-Known Member
Feb 24, 2007
2,652
1,278
At times I've felt this too. I'm not in the dressing room and I'm not the manager but there are games, such as West Ham, when it looks to me like they want to win more than we do. Hence I won't be critical of Tim for thinking this because I think it too, not always but sometimes. I thought he had a point about "lack of guts" and some of the other things he's said in the press. However it's his job to motivate the players and I do wonder what they think when they read this stuff. If he thinks giving Vertonghen a private bollocking will help then that's his job. I don't recall this sort of management by media from Ferguson or Wenger and I have to ask if it gets the desired reaction. It's not the first time he's tried it and it hasn't worked brilliantly so far.
 
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