A tricky period for Tottenham as they have a tough of fixtures and managerial issues to contend with. The AVB situation seems like groundhog day after his career at Chelsea went exactly the same way. Perhaps it comes down to the exuberance of youth, but AVB always seems to lower himself to ridiculous scraps, with people he should be ignoring.
To be side-tracked by a few journalists when you have such a big club to run seems very petty indeed. The great managers through history couldn’t give a monkeys about what the press have to say.
On the field, Tottenham still aren’t scoring enough goals. As we all know it is extremely difficult to sign top players in the January transfer window. There are notable exceptions, of course, such as the £50 million at Chelsea shelled out for Fernando Torres. The Guardian today suggests that Tottenham might go all out for a striker in January.
The exceptional Guiseppe Rossi has been linked with a big move to North London over the last few days and The Guardian today says:
….the former Manchester United youngster is currently banging them in for Fiorentina after recovering from two cruciate knee ligament injuries in quick succession and scored the deciding goal in his side’s 4-3 Serie A win over Verona on Monday night. A fee of £30m has been mentioned…
We believe that the only reason this guy hasn’t become a household name in world football is because of those injuries. He was an excellent player Manchester United and it was very strange they got rid of him. Perhaps Fergie thought he was too small for The Premier League.
Rossi has fantastic technique and a wonderful sense of where the goal is. He bangs them in from all angles and has scored goals where ever he’s played – Spain, Italy and England have all seen his brilliance.
Tottenham need strikers and this one is a feasible option if the money is right. Let’s see him in action.
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SP
Dec 3, 2013 at 7:49 pm
AVb handled Ashton perfectly. He was cool, he was calm and he ended the matter exactly when he wanted to end it.
The situation is nothing like the one at Chelsea. Indeed, the situation at Chelsea largely came down to the good folk in the media taking the most anti-AVB stance imaginable. Indeed, the good folk in the media had it in for AVB from the moment he signed for Chelsea, partially, I am guessing, because he dared to do what his boss asked him to do and challenge the undroppable Saints Lampard and Terry, and party just for the bare faced cheek of being not being Mourinho.
And now, ever Sunday, we have to read article after article by folk in the media (well there’s a surprise) informing us that AVB could not possibly have been right or have done the right thing because he is, yeah you’ve guessed it, challenging someone who works in the media.
Let me break it down for you: anyone who doesn’t know that the personal pronoun ‘we’ is inclusive of the speaker, while the personal pronoun ‘they’ is exclusive of the speaker, shouldn’t really be allowed to leave junior school, let alone get a job as a journalist.
As for the other nonsense, Ashton can be seen in his true light in the article he published after the incident. In it, he has somehow miraculously gone from having said that anyone ‘could’ have done what AVB did at Porto, to anyone ‘cold probably’ have done what AVB did at Porto. Just a small subtle change – which, no doubt, he hopes no-one has noticed. Just like he probably hopes no-one noticed that the response to that article was massively in favour of AVB, with literally hundreds of agrees and only a handful of disagrees, but somehow (miraculously, again, no doubt) a couple of hours later, there were only five responses left to the article – all hostile to AVB. Funnily enough, though, they all had hundreds of disagrees and only a few agrees. And these were responses that had already been moderated. Whats more, at least one of those responses was from an Arsenal fan, saying AVB was right – so it can’t be portrayed as only Spurs fans.
And the irony is, Ashton’s article was trying to claim that all he had done was criticise AVB and AVb needed to learn to accept criticism – and he does it by subtly altering what he had said and then removing responses that criticised his article. Yeah, okay.
The notion that AVB has somehow opened the floodgates is also utter tosh – the press have never stopped laying into him from the first second he got the Chelsea job. They have routinely portrayed him as a stats obsessed little geek – no doubt for the heinous crime of never having played football at any real level (unless you are Mourinho, of course), and despite the fact that he has specifically corrected the notion that he is a stats obsessive – he is, as he said, more interested in psychology. One journalist even referred to him as being borderline Asperger’s Syndrome.
The media have never been off his case, and are intent on maximising the extent of any set-back in a way that they do not do with rival clubs. And what is funnier is that he has put up with this since the start of his Spurs career with little comment until Sunday – and straight away there seems to be a media conspiracy to portray it as ‘the wrong thing to do’ (even if he was right), and suggest it is someone who just can’t handle criticism.
The bottom line is this: he was cool, calm and in every way in control – unlike Ashton who, somewhat ludicrously tried to digging himself out by suggesting that he wasn’t sure of AVB’s usage of the personal pronoun ‘we’.
Oh, and if you really believe Sir Alex or Brian Clough, to name but two, never reacted to the press you must have grown up on Fantasy Island. No to mention media darling, Harry Redknapp, who got away with launching into an expletive filled rant at a reporter for suggesting he was ‘a wheeler dealer’, no to mention the several other times that he was short with them. You article just shows you are on the same page as other media folk. How sad for you.
the cockerell
Dec 3, 2013 at 8:45 pm
Well said SP! I’m getting tired of this group think when it comes to the media in general and the press in particular, especially when it comes to dealing with most foreign managers, Mourinho aside.
When it comes to signing ready-made strikers in January, I can’t see why Fiorentina would sell us their main man when their season still holds so much promise. Secondly, if we have that much money to blow in January, I’d rather we spent it on Benteke who is proven in the Premiership, is a leader and does not have a dodgy history with injuries. He is big, powerful, quick and hungry for goals. Please don’t spend the money on another small European striker who doesn’t have the physical attributes to succeed in English football. Never mind Soldado, have we forgotten Rebrov?
OfftheShelf
Dec 4, 2013 at 12:57 am
Sure why not then we can have two small strikers who we can’t get the ball to.
We need a striker who can bully the central defenders and cause them grief, this doesn’t mean a lump who can do nothing else, look at Negrado, good in the air, skillful on the floor and not scared of contact and isn’t pushed off the ball too easily.
A big man with all-round skills, hard to come by but there should be some available at £30m.