Tottenham Hotspur have made a mistake by sacking Andre Villas Boas
Tottenham have parted ways with AVB
Andre Villas-Boas is the latest manager to get the boot in the Premier League. The Portuguese manager had his contract terminated yesterday after Liverpool trashed his team 5-0 on Sunday. The 36-year-old is one of the many Premier League managers to fall victim to the high standards demanded by top clubs in England. AVB is one of the most talented young managers on the planet and clearly needed more time at Spurs, but time is a luxury that few teams grant nowadays. Tottenham have clearly made an error by letting go of this brilliant tactician.
AVB left Spurs with a win rate of 55%, the highest rate achieved by Tottenham since the introduction of the Premier League, compared to other prestigious former Tottenham managers like Juande Ramos who managed a win rate of 38.39% and the superb Harry Redknapp who averaged a commendable 49.49% win rate.
In spite of starting his Spurs managerial career on a shaky note, AVB redeemed himself and had Tottenham third in the Premier League table by the end of December in 2012 which earned him the Manager of the Month award. AVB continued his success into the new year and picked up his second Manager of the Month award in February. AVB efforts reaped fruit and Tottenham finished the 2012-2013 season with 72 points, 1 point behind arch-rivals Arsenal who prevented them from getting a spot in the Champions League.
AVB had been bitten by the managerial bug from an early age and was guided by legendary English manager Sir Bobby Robson, who helped him get his coaching licenses. Jose Mourinho saw a lot of potential in AVB and made him his assistant at Porto and Inter Milan before they went their separate ways.
Porto were the first team to be completely transformed under the leadership of AVB. The young tactician introduced a blend of excellent attacking as well as defensive football to Porto and led them to a treble in his first season with the club which is impressive for a 33-year-old. AVB left Porto with a win rate of 84.48% which was much more than his mentor Jose Mourinho who had a 72.58% win rate with the Portuguese champions.
AVB was starting to balance Tottenham and made some brilliant transfers in the form of Hugo Lloris, Jan Vertonghen, Mousa Dembele and Clint Dempsey. It was evident that he was trying to bring the same style of football that he deployed at Porto to the North London outfit. The plan was successful and all of his signings helped Tottenham to their fourth place finish. The sale of star player Gareth Bale for around £100 million in the summer transfer window helped AVB secure funds to further balance Tottenham. The acquisitions of Paulinho, Sigurdsson, Lamela, Eriksen, Soldado and Chiriches were seen as a stroke of brilliance by football critics.
The signings did not have as big as an impact as AVB hoped they would have had in the Premier League but you could see that they were slowly starting to grow into the role. Everybody knows that a player needs time to get used to the pace of the English game and seven new players from different leagues would naturally take time to adapt in the Premier League. The new signings were already showing their prominence on the European stage and Tottenham’s unbeaten run in the Europa League is proof that AVB’s plan was successful.
The only shortcoming AVB had as compared to Harry Redknapp was the failure to challenge Arsenal enough. Under Redknapp, Tottenham were Arsenal’s biggest London threat and under his leadership the Spurs managed to best Arsenal thrice, draw them thrice and lose against them the same number of times.
AVB deserved more time to turn Spurs’ fortunes around and his successor will have a herculean task ahead of him with important games in December as well as the London Derby and a game against Manchester United in January. Tottenham will realize their mistake soon enough while AVB will have no shortage of clubs willing to offer him a chance to work his magic.