Moving on from Harry to AVB is really the correct move. While Harry’s undoubtedly a good manager, he’s old-school and isn’t going to bring the club to the next level anyways, which is what the club aims for.

With AVB’s man-management of the Chelsea dressing room fresh in everyone’s minds, many people will believe that this move is a gamble, when it isn’t. Spurs is more humble club and that’s not going to be much, if at all, any egos to handle this time around. He had undoubtedly made mistakes at Chelsea, but I think it’s unlikely, though not impossible, that the obviously intelligent Portuguese not come out of that experience and not learn from it.

The main issue I foresee is the unrealistic high expectation of reaching top 4. First, the strength of the competition this season is higher than ever. Last season, Chelsea and Arsenal were weaker than their usual self. This year, they fielded teams that could really contest with the title. The two Manchester clubs are arguably stronger this time around. Secondly, it’s a year of transition, you can’t switch to his elaborate system of play and still expect to get as good of results straight away. He still needs to get all the players he needed for his system to work. And he needs to get his players to get used to his system. Thirdly, probably the most important of all, they fail to adequately replace Modric – a key player in a key position. Missing out on Joao Moutinho, a flag bearer of his system at Porto, will be a massive blow.

It was Harry that shunted Modric left for over a year because he didn’t have a clue what to do with him. Only after injury forced HR to partner Modric with Huddlestone in the infamous 2 wins in 4 days over A*****l and the Blue racists that led to CL qualification did he begin to consistently employ him in the middle. He said himself he thought he was ‘too lightweight’. Only Modric can take credit for the player he is now.

Much like the Gareth Bale ‘breakthrough’ often credited to HR, it was injury that forced his hand, he was off on loan to Forest before BAE got injured.

A very enjoyable read!

I will certainly be reading more

It was an excellent piece of writing

Some friendly feedback – I’m no expert but at times this piece was difficult to read. The use of many long sentences with equally lengthy passages in brackets, that did not appear in natural positions in the sentence, meant that I
had to re-read a number of paragraphs to understand what you were getting at. Apart from that, keep up the good work.

@fearlessgroover