Festive Cheers return to the Lane as Tim’s Spurs Overpower Stoke

On the morning of 16^th December, Tim Sherwood was making his way to the Spurs Lodge to oversee the training of the development squads, Emmanuel Adebayor was still out of the first team picture, Spurs had been plunged back into crisis the day before by the Liverpool trashing, had not kept a clean sheet in the league since the 3^rd of November and had not scored more than two goals in a league game all season. Fast forward two weeks and Adebayor is the focal point of a promising partnership with Roberto Soldado, Spurs have scored three goals in two of their last three matches and also finally kept a clean sheet again with a good, emphatic win against Stoke. Maybe Tim Sherwood is right after all. He had said tongue in cheek at one of his earlier press conferences that if he does well and still loses the job, he'd simply join Real Madrid! Perhaps he knows more about this management lark than his CV would suggest and he might yet surprise us all.

Tim Sherwood has made some bold calls since taking over, not least the decision to switch to 4-4-2. It was a bold although reasonable decision to bring Adebayor back into the team given the lack of goals. He has clearly given the team a licence to attack. There was a feeling that under AVB, Spurs played with the handbrakes on. However the fact that Sherwood has yet to start with a defensive midfielder in his line up shows where his emphasis is. Goodness knows what AVB must be thinking watching Adebayor perform as impressively as he has in the last four games. Considering he has hardly played any football this season, his interplay with Soldado has already yielded goals, assists and looks quite promising. Tim Sherwood deserves credit for that.

Sherwood made another brave call in handing Zeki Fryers his first start for Spurs and also playing him in his natural position of left back. While Fryers still has a lot of improving to do, he gave Spurs a level of natural balance that the right sided Kyle Naughton never did when he played there. He needs games in that position, either at Spurs or out on loan to get better in the same way that Kyle Walker and Danny Rose did. Incidentally, Kyle Naughton, playing in his natural position of right full back had arguably one of his best games for Spurs. For all the tactical trends in modern football, playing footballers in their natural positions can be ridiculously effective. Tim Sherwood will do well to remember this lesson as he moves forward.

Mousa Dembele and Paulinho were highly impressive in central midfield and it is a massive blow that we are now going to lose Paulinho for at least a month due to the thuggery of Stoke City’s Charlie Adam, who is developing this unwelcome habit of injuring Spurs better players whenever he play his team. He had previously injured Gareth Bale as well with an ugly tackle.  Paulinho has impressed since arriving at Spurs and when he plays really well, Spurs tend to play really well. The good thing is you sense there is a lot more to come from him and Tim Sherwood will do well to get it out of him consistently. He will also have to find a way to get Mousa Dembele performing consistently.  He has brilliant dribbling skills and the ability to change direction. His distribution however and his goal ratio for a player of such talent has so much scope for improvement. His well taken goal against Stoke yesterday was a welcome start.

It was also great to see Aaron Lennon get on the score sheet and also making runs off the ball and providing decent crosses. Lennon is an experienced player now and a level of consistency is needed from him on the right and indeed should be expected, with his pace. This is particularly important as Andros Townsend appears to have gone off the boil a bit. Speaking of Townsend, it was perhaps inevitable that after his impressive start to the season and explosion on the England scene, there would be a dip in form. He now needs to knuckle down, learn the lessons and fight his way back to the level that had him almost guaranteed a world cup squad spot. On current form and given the number of right sided young players in form, that can no longer be taken for granted.

All in all seven points from three premier league games and a return to the attacking principles we love is a decent start to Tim Sherwood’s career as Spurs Manager. It means we end a tumultuous year on a high and head into 2014 with everything still to play for. The loss to West Ham in the league cup was an irritant that would probably be forgotten as Manchester City are strong favourites to win it. Managers among other things have to be lucky to survive in this business for long and we are about to get an indication of how good and how lucky a manager Tim Sherwood will be. Tough tests wait in the league as we start the new year with a tasty clash with in form but beatable Manchester United followed by a FA Cup third round tie at Arsenal.  As Tim Sherwood himself said, time to get the tin hats on. Here’s to an exciting 2014 at the Lane.