The Engineer dismantles Spurs grand project

The word crisis can often be overused in a football context and no one would deny that life occasionally throws up a proper crisis to put football in particular and sport in general in its proper perspective. However, for Spurs fans everywhere, it would be pretty hard to escape the feeling of a crisis developing at Tottenham in the aftermath an absolutely wretched afternoon at Eastlands.

The last time Spurs suffered such a heavy defeat, John Major was still British Prime Minister, a French professor was in charge of Arsenal, a German driver was dominating Formula 1 and the German football team were beating us at Wembley. Clearly some things haven’t changed. So humiliating was this defeat that by the end of this miserable afternoon, even City fans, perhaps out of sympathy couldn’t bothered to do their now familiar Poznan celebration anymore and were reduced to clapping saves and tackles by the Spurs players.

It’s bad enough that we went into the game as one of the lowest scorers in the premiership, (albeit with the most amount of shots at goal, which in itself does not reflect particularly well on our strikers’ shooting accuracy) at least we could take pride in having the second best defensive record in the premiership. We’ve mastered the art of defending, counter attacking, our away record has been outstanding and Spurs fans were quite happy to sing, ‘one – nil to the Tottenham’ (admittedly through gritted teeth), all the way to the Champions league. Except, someone forgot to tell Pellegrini and his City slickers.

City coach, Manuel Pellegrini was affectionately nicknamed, ‘The Engineer’ during his time in Spanish football because of his studious approach to the game and the methodical way his teams are set up to play football. His team are the highest scorers at home in the premiership by a country mile and in Sergio Aguero and Alvaro Negredo (more on him later), they had one of the form strike partnerships in the country, maybe even in Europe. The Engineer certainly dismantled a Spurs team that has not functioned particularly well in recent weeks.

The rot set in for Spurs as soon as the match kicked off. Hugo LLoris, kicked lazily to a city player and his initial save, although decent was not decisive enough to clear the danger. To give him his due, city winger Jesus Navas still had a lot to do but improvised brilliantly to chip Lloris from a tight angle. Spurs wingers, Aaron Lennon and Andros Townsend could do worse than watch clips of how a speedy winger can bring variation to an attack. Spurs recovered but never really looked threatening despite dominating possession yet again. City’s attack, with their tails up were all over Spurs from then on and by the time Sandro was pictured being sick on the pitch, most Spurs fans probably felt the same way.  

Speaking of City’s attack, Aguero’s class was already well known to premiership watchers. I was more intrigued by the shoot out between the two Spanish strikers, Negredo and Soldado. But for Messi and Ronaldo, these two have would be the biggest noises in La Liga as they have been the top scoring Spanish players for the last two seasons. Both were sold to English clubs last summer, Soldado for £26 million and Negredo for £23 million.  On the evidence of what we have seen so far this season and especially yesterday, it is fair to say that City have got far better value from Negredo than Spurs have had from Soldado.

Soldado scored almost 60 goals in two seasons with Valencia, a pretty impressive tally. However, careful analysis of his record shows that almost all his goals have come from inside the six yard box. He has not looked mobile and able to create chances for himself. Negredo on the other hand has looked very mobile, agile and able to get involved in the build up play. In addition, he is good in the air and able to create chances for himself. Admittedly, it helps if you have the class of Aguero, Jesus Navas, an inspired Samir Nasri and a buccaneering Yaya Toure rather than an ordinary looking Lewis Holtby, an underwhelming Lennon, a strangely subdued Paulinho and a player in Erik Lamela who talented he might be is still adjusting to life in the premier league.

Another issue arising from this and recent performances is the lack of creativity in this side. Tottenham have dominated possession in every match they have played this season. That takes some doing in the frenetic world of premiership football and should be respected. However, almost every game has exposed an alarming inability to manoeuvre the ball creatively into dangerous goal scoring positions. By not scoring goals, the defence is under increased pressure not to concede. When goals are conceded, everyone is under increased pressure to score which then exposes the defence even more and the vicious cycle is continued from match to match as pressure builds. The irony is if Spurs could just fix this and score more goals, they appear defensively sound enough despite yesterday’s aberration to defend leads and pick teams off on the counter attack. This is the conundrum that Spurs Manager Andre Villas Boas has to fix pretty quickly as the pressure intensifies.

In AVB’s defence, although this was his 50^th match in charge of Tottenham (some celebration!), it was effectively only his 12^th match in charge of His own team in only his second full season in charge. Last season, he took Harry’s team, minus star midfielder Luka Modric and took them to within a point of the promised land of the Champions league with a record points tally. He is now constructing a brand new team and as yet, no one has risen up to take the over mantle of match winner or game changer from Gareth Bale. However, as AVB will know too well, a manager is only as good as his last good season. The premiership is an unforgiving coliseum. More successful managers than AVB such as Carlo Ancelloti, Roberto Mancini and even Harry Redknapp have bitten the dust and AVB still has a lot to prove as manager after his miserable spell as Chelsea boss.

With Arsenal, Chelsea and both Manchester clubs in the mix, Liverpool stirring again and even Southampton punching above their weight, qualification for the Champions league while building a new team and establishing a new playing identity was always going to be a challenging task. The sick feeling felt by Spurs fans come from expectations being unrealistically high in a way that England footballers approaching a tournament know only too well. This was as a result of over £100 million being spent in the summer transfer window.

In spite of this poor run, AVB deserves time, even if the mad scramble for Champions league places can sometimes skew the judgement of chairmen and fans that ought to know better. The history of the premier league shows that stable long term management will give better returns in the long run. The open nature of this season means that a few results could put us back in the title race. Then again, we may not even make the Europa league unless we win a trophy. Either way, let AVB, the man with the project plan, lick his wounds and get on with it. That’s out best hope.   

So its Manchester United next. I’m off to the betting shop to place a bet on Spurs losing Six – Nil. If they do, I will win big, if they don’t, it will be an improvement. Either way, I will feel a lot better than I do today. The tribulations of being a Spurs fan.