AVB on Levy and the direction of the club

[Mullers]

He couldn't get rid of him in the summer, it would have looked way worse on the club. He backed him with some top signings and gave him a chance to prove he wasn't all talk. In return we got some of the most turgid and boring football I have ever seen Spurs play. That's before you even mention losing 6-0 to City, 5-0 at home to Liverscouse and worst of all...3-0 at home to West Ham. I can write a fucking dissertation on why AVB wasn't a good manager for Spurs. But you know what, when we appointed AVB I could have written just as much for why he would be a good manager. The guy looked perfect for us and turned out to be something else entirely. Levy, like many of us on here, got AVB wrong. Levy eventually realised it and took the pressure on his own head by sacking him. He could have let AVB go through to the summer and take all the blame when the wrist-slittingly boring season ends in spectacular mid table mediocrity and all our best players want out.

You've all but said it yourself, he's a bottler, he bottled it. He should have done what he thought was best for the club but he didn't because he was scared not about how the club would look but how he would look. He used valuable funds that could have been used for a manager that he did want to keep up his charade.

Pathetic, gutless and fraudulent.

 

[Spurger King]

Pathetic, gutless and fraudulent.

Snow White's least popular dwarves?

 

[idontgetit]

You've all but said it yourself, he's a bottler, he bottled it. He should have done what he thought was best for the club but he didn't because he was scared not about how the club would look but how he would look. He used valuable funds that could have been used for a manager that he did want to keep up his charade.

Pathetic, gutless and fraudulent.

I'll call out his managerial skills all day long but there's no need to say things like that about AVB

 

[sloth]

So let's say, hypothetically, that the top six sides are moved to League two. You'd expect the six Prem teams to pick up a huge amount of points. The difference between them would come down to the results between the top six, and their consistency in beating the weaker teams in the league.

You can't simply isolate the points total and call that a better season. It's not even remotely comparable to the athletics analogy, as running a personal best time is not connected to the competition. A team gains its points by playing other teams, so yes points are entirely dependent upon the performances of other teams. If those teams perform well against you, you get less points. If other teams perform more consistently against the others, they will get more points.

If the division as a whole was generally weaker than the season before, the measure of a team's performance comes down to the final position...not building up a lot of points that four other teams were nevertheless able to do more effectively.

If every team in the Prem was bought by a multi-billionaire, and the best players from the other leagues in Europe were divided up between them, the Prem as a whole would be much tougher. A team finishing in the top four would almost certainly do so with a relatively low points total (due to it being far more competitive), yet it would be a huge achievement.

Good post (although your final paragraph is obviously incorrect, or at least a non-sequitor), but here's what I think:

1. Performance is not the same as outcome, we can easily imagine scenarios in which a worse performance led to a better outcome and a better performance a worse outcome.

2. Other than in direct competition, you can only control what you do, not what your competitors do. Any pre-season coaching strategy which relied on making your opponent's worse (when they're not playing you) would clearly be ridiculous.

3. Due to over-all superior finances and fairer distribution of wealth relative to the other European Leagues, in recent years talent has tended to flow into the PL rather than out. The lower half PL teams have benefited by the increased money in comparison to the top PL teams to a disproportionate degree when compared to Europe's other big leagues. The PL is better coached, boasts better squads in depth and is therefore stronger than ever before.

4. 2011/12 was our strongest PL era squad, the squad of 2012/13 was weaker. We may this season and for the future however have the makings of our strongest ever squad.

5. For whatever reason in 2012/13 the average team scored fewer points than usual, in 2011/12 the average team scored more points than usual. In 2012 there were only 186 draws, in 2013 there were 216 draws. The 'climate' of the PL made higher point's totals harder in 2013 than 2012. We bucked that trend.