by James Willis
The tender-aged Andre Villas-Boas is already somewhat of a storied manager. Perhaps it is largely because of his youth, but more likely than not it’s because he has managed to build a storied career for himself.
Admittedly by now we’ve heard every possible angle, Mourinho 2.0 perhaps being the most irritating of them all.
It’s left many fans a little unsure what to really believe about the manager. It’s common knowledge that he has great ability and insight into the game, seen during his time at Porto, but that didn’t translate well at Chelsea.
Say what you will about egos and players running the club, Villas-Boas’ time at Chelsea can go down as nothing but a failure. Admittedly he may have avoided ‘flopping’ with more time, we’ll never know for sure, but there wasn’t anything about that tenure that could be labelled a real success for a club of that size.
So we come to now, White Hart Lane, Spurs lodge and the new facilities at Bulls Cross. We will only know after time whether “AVB” will be a success or failure, but it should be remembered that win or lose the short term future of the club does not hinge on him. Unless Tottenham win big, in which case it might. But it’s hardly do or die quite yet.
The Portuguese coach will have help from new signings Gylfi Sigurdsson and Jan Vertonghen too.
Sigurdsson, one of the few Icelandic players people actually know of, will be set the goal this season of proving that he is more than just temporary hype. His talents he displayed at Swansea last season were very eye catching and he’s played well for Hoffenheim too, but asking him to play a starting XI role for a club with Champions League and maybe eventually title ambitions is a whole new challenge.
Vertonghen looks like the closest to a sure thing Spurs have gotten so far this summer. For those that missed his performances with Ajax, England’s Euro 2012 warm up game against Belgium proved another opportunity to watch the much talked about defender in action.
The ability to play as a left back if required will also come as a boost to Tottenham’s squad, as they currently rely on Benoit Assou-Ekotto and youngster Danny Rose, who may be on his way out this summer.
Personally, I’m excited. I won’t sit here and do the usual prediction making. There are far too many variables for me to even begin to analyse what might happen to Tottenham this season. I’ll leave the embarrassing previews to the professional journalists. They get paid to make foolish calls like that.
For me, I’m just going to sit back and enjoy the ride. It’s a very, very uncertain season ahead for Tottenham, but that’s what makes it exciting.
Still, the club have made their ambitions very clear and as the great Bill Nicholson once said: “It is better to fail aiming high than to succeed aiming low. And we of Spurs have set our sights very high, so high in fact that even failure will have in it an echo of glory.”
