Neil Ashton - Daily Fail - Villas-Boas faces a fight to keep his job as Spurs boss

[tototoner]

I have read some absurd and ridiculous in the past but this is up there with the best of them

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...Andre-Villas-Boas-fighting-Tottenham-job.html

Andre Villas-Boas is under mounting boardroom pressure following Tottenham’s 6-0 mauling at Manchester City on Sunday.

Sportsmail can also reveal that some of the manager’s shell-shocked players are furious with him for saying they should be ashamed of their performance.

Tottenham spent £107million last summer in an attempt to win their first league title since 1961 but after four defeats they appear to have blown their chance already.

There have been repeated clashes behind the scenes over transfer policy and Villas-Boas replacing the club’s attacking approach with more cautious tactics.

Here, Neil Ashton looks at what has gone wrong for the north London club.

High up in the boardroom suite at the Etihad Stadium, Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy and director of football Franco Baldini were deep in discussion. Nobody quite knew where to look.

The intimate old boardroom at Manchester City was ripped out over the summer in favour of an open-plan affair for around 200 well-heeled guests. Now everybody gets to gawp at the misery of the visitors: officials from Newcastle, Hull, Manchester United, Wigan, Everton, Norwich and Spurs have all experienced the insincere, sympathetic smiles this season.

Somehow — with their team pasted 6-0 by City — Levy, Baldini and the rest of the Spurs contingent retained their dignity. Inside, they were ready to explode.

This was the season they were meant to keep City, United, Arsenal and the rest within reach. Instead, they are ninth in the Premier League, eight points behind their north London rivals.

To add to the executive frustration, there is discontent among the players that Andre Villas-Boas came out after the embarrassing defeat and claimed the squad should feel ‘ashamed’. A code has been broken and the bond between manager and players is at breaking point. Villas-Boas will struggle to recover some players’ trust.

All this after a summer when Levy authorised £107million to be spent on recruits to compensate for the loss of Gareth Bale to Real Madrid.

On Joe Lewis’s giant yacht in the Bahamas, where Tottenham’s principal owner conducts most of his business in between courses of freshly caught conch, he has been checking the compass.

Spurs were supposed to be heading north after Lewis sent a message to Levy and Villas-Boas that he was releasing the funds to challenge for the title. Lewis, who made his vast fortune in currency trading, is not a man to mess with. He demands results.

There was enormous optimism. Paulinho, Nacer Chadli, Roberto Soldado, Etienne Capoue, Vlad Chiriches, Christian Eriksen and record signing Erik Lamela were all on board. After a streaky 1-0 win over Swansea at the Lane on August 25, the boardroom was awash with talk of winning the title for the first time since 1961.

Former Spurs manager Glenn Hoddle and ex-Liverpool midfielder Craig Johnston, who dates Lewis’s daughter, were among Levy’s guests. But they were perhaps too intoxicated by success to notice a fundamental change in style.

Tottenham’s game, based on the glory, glory nights under Bill Nicholson in the Sixties, had been replaced with 1-0 wins and defensive substitutions. It’s the way of their Portuguese coach but it’s not Tottenham’s way.

Then there is the hidden side to Spurs where, as ever, everybody is blaming everyone else. The transfer policy is complicated, with various personalities influencing Levy. Villas-Boas is distancing himself from the signings now that Lamela, Chadli, Soldado and Capoue are failing.

Lamela, a right midfielder at Roma when Baldini was there, was bizarrely picked at City to make his first league start on the left.

To imagine the in-fighting began after the mauling by Manuel Pellegrini’s team is wrong. It started in the summer.

Villas-Boas had raised eyebrows on the eve of the season when he claimed Real Madrid and Paris Saint- Germain wanted him. Why would anyone turn down the nine-time European champions or a French team spending money like mad? Instead, Villas-Boas claimed he was committed to putting Spurs on a pedestal playing attractive football.

The ghost of his predecessor Harry Redknapp stalks the corridors. Everybody loved being around his Tottenham team. Now the ebullient Redknapp has been replaced by a clipboard manager who, at times, is beyond intense.

Last season there was the mother of all rows when keeper Brad Friedel stormed into Villas-Boas’s office following the arrival of Hugo Lloris from Lyon. Friedel accused the manager of lying to him over his role in the team. To Villas-Boas’s credit, he apologised and their relationship is solid.

Others, including Emmanuel Adebayor and Benoit Assou-Ekotto, have crossed Villas-Boas too. This has caused discord in a dressing room that once believed they were on the verge of something special.

Against Manchester United on Sunday, they will be fighting to save a season once marked out for great things.

 

[Beni]

It's so easy and laughable that these journalists, ITKS etc are reporting unrest behind the scenes and has been going on since the summer, after one of our biggest defeats.

If you knew about it for weeks, why report it now? Pathetic really, people get paid to write this crap. Even more painful that supporters of our own club make stuff up to suit their agendas.

 

[DEFchenkOE]

AVB has always been an easy target for the media, when we have results like sun happen it's all the ammo they need to shoot him down.

 

[jamesc0le]

daily f mail lol. if anyone still buys this you should be ashamed

 

[Donki]

Its going to be obvious how the players feel after the game on Sunday. If there is a responce, a sign the players have some fire in them we still have a season. If not we could be in for a bumpy Christmas.

 

[Scarlet57]

Why do people keep posting articles and links to that bastion of journalistic integrity?

 

[JUSTINSIGNAL]

Please don't ever post anything from that racist/homophobic/sexist shitrag of a comic book here please. Thank you.

 

[Azazello]

Why do people keep posting articles and links to that bastion of journalistic integrity?

It's got to be the most quoted and apparently the most hated paper on this site. Mostly people who don't like it read it so they can sneer at people who read it and like it. Either way it gets read and is correspondingly a massively popular website and paper.

It's all a bit odd.

 

[CosmicHotspur]

Makes more sense than the Express article though.

 

[Ribble]

Makes more sense than the Express article though.

Was it "Did AVB kill Princess Di? Shocking new evidence"?

 

[danielneeds]

Ashton is a scumbag.

 

[theShiznit]

Was it "Did AVB kill Princess Di? Shocking new evidence"?

No, It was "did immigrant AVB Kill princess Diana"

 

[Ribble]

No, It was "did immigrant AVB Kill princess Diana"

Damn, so close!

 

[parklane1]

AVB has always been an easy target for the media, when we have results like sun happen it's all the ammo they need to shoot him down.

And the reason for that is we sacked their " rent a quote " and do not like it.

 

[parklane1]

Was it "Did AVB kill Princess Di? Shocking new evidence"?

You forgot to add that AVB is to blame for the shocking weather that they have said is coming.

 

[Francis Gibbs]

Ashton is a scumbag.

or a Prince amongst men when he agrees with your pov

 

[theShiznit]

or a Prince amongst men when he agrees with your pov

Or a scumbag that agrees with your point of view...

 

[JerryGarcia]

Last time AVB was put under this sort of pressure we beat Utd in our next game.

 

[MattyP]

There is discontentment in the squad that AVB said the players (and everyone at the club) should be ashamed by the 6-0 defeat.

They fucking well should be ashamed and if the players are discontented, I don't give a flying fuck.

That said, it's the Mail, so it's all lies.

 

[talkshowhost86]

It's the level of evidence in that article that has me convinced.