Andre Villas-Boas Sacked. Here Is Why He Has Been Unlucky

In the words of one of the greatest bands in history ‘Another one bites the dust!’

Andre Villas-Boas has been sacked by Tottenham by today following the clubs 5-0 defeat at the hands of Liverpool yesterday afternoon. The 36 year old had been in charge since July 2012 but on this wet and windy Monday his reign was brought to an end by that classic ‘Mutual consent.’ As usual I’m a little sceptical about that one myself but there you go.

Although there have been a couple of horrendous results this season namely the Liverpool game and the 6-0 defeat away at Manchester City a few weeks ago I think the Portuguese is a bit unfortunate to find himself on the managerial shelf. He has the 2^nd highest win percentage (53.7% for those of you who care)of any Spurs manager in history and last season led the team to their highest ever points tally in the Premier League era. And yes while some results and the style of play at times this season has been poor they are in the quarter finals of the Capital One Cup, still in the Europa League and 7^th in the Premier League. That’s 5 points from 4^th place and 8 from Arsenal in top spot, and that’s hardly a disaster in anyone’s book.

One of the main issues it seems is that the club has spent around £109 million on 7 new players following the departure of Gareth Bale for £90 million (ish). Take note their net spend (No Rafa) was actually quite low in the Summer. But anyway 7 new players have been brought in from outside the Premier League and expected to perform straight away at that simply hasn’t happened. And I don’t care what anyone says all of the players on an individual level are very good players. And for all the bitching about the transfer fee for Eric Lamela anyone who saw anything of Serie A last season will tell you that he is tremendously talented and that the transfer was so high because Roma are basically broke so took Spurs for every penny. It is even open to debate how much influence AVB had over these signings as the transfers on the whole we handled by Franco Baldini. If the players have flopped and AVB is being blamed shouldn’t he have to take part of the blame also?

The one area that AVB has shot himself in the foot though is tactics, well some of them. Mainly his need to play a suicidal high defensive line. In the two games where they got hammered a large part of the reason why was this high defensive line, especially when the central defenders are totally devoid of pace like Dawson. Combine this with Lloris’ need to rush off his line at every opportunity and what you have is a defensive disaster. I also think that the high line may have contributed to the poor attacking play and lack of creativity. With the defence playing so high this squeezes the rest of the field especially reducing the space in which midfielders can play in as you’re condensing the pitch.

Either way the next man through the door will have it all to gain. He will have a brilliant squad to work with and should most of the signings work out as I expect them to he will have a very good squad. Get the defence to sit a little deeper and you have a team which can finish in the top 4. Simple. As regards to the next man I think Michael Laudrup would be perfect, I think he would suit Spurs down to a tee. They should break the bank for him. Whether they will or not remains to be seen but what is for certain is that despite the fact he changes his mangers like most people change their socks Chairman Daniel Levy will not be shouldering any responsibility for a yet another managerial appointment which he deems not to have worked…. Now you work that one out.