Ratings Vs Man Utd

[Gilzeanking]

Sorry, I think that's conspiracy theory bollocks. Villas-Boas had £160m lavished on him in just three windows, nigh on as much as Redknapp and Ramos combined. ITK last summer said that Levy had total faith in him.

As for Moutinho, we couldn't start negotiating in earnest until Real had agreed the fee for Modric, so we had just four days in which to get things sorted. That's no time at all for a deal of that magnitude. (I don't doubt that we put out feelers well in advance, but until Real stopped farting about and we had the cash guaranteed we couldn't get serious.) One piece of ITK we had at the time was that Moutinho wanted City-style money, and that Villas-Boas had to talk to him person-to-person in order to get him to accept less. There was also the third party stuff.

For me the big message from last summer's ITK was that contrary to the general view that the biggest danger to truthful ITK was from attention seeking teenagers...... It was in fact club management of semi-official ITK statements that was the most misleading .

You can easily see the advantages to a club of managing ITK...its like making offical announcements but with no comeback if it turns out to be bollocks . Last summer was packed with totally misleading ITK info about how we were going to spend big even if Bale wasn't sold and that Bale wasn't being sold...on and on...all serving the club's agenda .

I'm not blaming the club its just that we need to be fully aware of how the club manipulates our perspectives through ITK....and to get onto 57's points... A club ITK man would say that Moutinho wanted excessive terms
Maybe he did , but lets be very careful about what we believe .

 

[SpurSince57]

For me the big message from last summer's ITK was that contrary to the general view that the biggest danger to truthful ITK was from attention seeking teenagers...... It was in fact club management of semi-official ITK statements that was the most misleading .

You can easily see the advantages to a club of managing ITK...its like making offical announcements but with no comeback if it turns out to be bollocks . Last summer was packed with totally misleading ITK info about how we were going to spend big even if Bale wasn't sold and that Bale wasn't being sold...on and on...all serving the club's agenda .

I'm not blaming the club its just that we need to be fully aware of how the club manipulates our perspectives through ITK....and to get onto 57's points... A club ITK man would say that Moutinho wanted excessive terms
Maybe he did , but lets be very careful about what we believe .

Why yes. It's long been the case that the club has leaked info to 'respected' ITKs and tame journos, most egregiously in the attempted character assassination of Martin Jol in August 2008. There was much spleen vented on Harry's media pals, cheerfully ignoring the fact that the club is a dab hand at feeding the press itself.

Be that as it may, it's an incontrovertible fact that Villas-Boas had unprecedented quantities of dosh lavished on him, and that the club was prepared to spend even more—on Willan, for example. That suggests that the ITK that Levy had total faith in the Bearded Wonder was perfectly true, at the time. It's also an incontrovertible fact that we had just four days in which to conclude what would then have been the biggest deal in the club's history, with a club that's known to be tough to deal with, for a player who was part-owned by a third party, who may have wanted big, big money. I was amazed things went as close as they did, and find the idea that Levy deliberately sabotaged the deal absurd.

 

[Gilzeanking]

Yes 57 , I'm not here to seriously argue against your assertions re Moutinho .

But for me the wildly untrue ITK from the most senior ITKs last summer was the most spectacular period of official
misinformation I can remember . Was a lesson I'm unlikely to forget .

 

[FinnYid]

Of course, I forgot, it's the managers fault that you can't put the ball in the net from clear cut chances...

Look, I agree that it was time to Get rid of avb, but the reasonning afterwords about ade, systems etc is so childish and boll****s that I can't believe my own eyes!

Well I blame him for drought of Soldado wether you think it's childish and boll****s or not. Half a season wandering around aimlessly on system borderlining ridiculous did wonders to confidence. Luckily he now actually gets some good balls to the box and hopefully a goal or two will make wonders and take monkey off his back.

 

[Bus-Conductor]

Managers in all businesses are paid to get results out of the employees responsible to them, and when they don't its the managers who are held responsible.

So in this case AVB was a muppett.

Read this today in The Times and immediately thought of our conversation a couple of weeks ago. By the way, either Redknapp is lying ("he loved training, never missed a session") or Adebayor was when he said "I liked Harry Redknapp because he gave me days off". I know who my money is on.


http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/sport/football/premierleague/article3972013.ece

Tim Sherwood hopes to have last word in Emmanuel Adebayor story

Most coaches have despaired of the talented but troublesome Togo striker, so why is the Spurs manager keen to build a side around him, asks Rory Smith

Everyone has a story about Emmanuel Adebayor. They are not uniformly positive. Take the one that dates back to 2009 and the first time he faced Arsenal as a Manchester City player. Adebayor, it is safe to say, had an eventful afternoon. He scored, and ran the length of the pitch to celebrate in front of his former club’s fans. He also stamped on Robin van Persie, appearing to rake his studs down his erstwhile team-mate’s face.

He was banned for three games by the FA and fined heavily. What they remember at the Etihad Stadium, with a hint of incredulous laughter, is that Adebayor asked the club to pay the fine for him. He was mildly outraged when City disagreed.

That is not the only one. They do not remember quite what the disagreement was about, but they recall him falling out with the club’s hierarchy over something or other during his tumultuous two years there.

That was it, he said, he was moving back to London. He still had to train, though. He was not willing to go on strike, even though at that juncture in City’s history going on strike was somewhat fashionable. So he commuted every day, from London to Manchester and back again, until his fury subsided. City are not unique, though. They tell stories about Adebayor at all his former clubs.

Jean Fernandez, his coach at Metz, Adebayor’s first stop in Europe from Togo, remembers calling him into his office “25 times” during his time there, eventually losing patience after he reported late from international duty. At the time, Juventus were thought to be tracking the player. Fernandez joked that he was more likely to get a move to the Spanish third division club of the same name.

He went to neither, ending up at Monaco, and was put out when Didier Deschamps, the coach, left him out for the 2004 Champions League final, but it was under his successor, Francesco Guidolin, the Italian, that the toys flew from the pram. Adebayor reported late after an international break; Guidolin sent him to train with the reserves. “You have to be Italian to play in the first team,” the striker snapped.

You get the picture. This is the Adebayor we have come to know: difficult, truculent, belligerent, the epitome of all the worst traits in a modern footballer. He acts as he wants, transgresses as he wants, and then blames someone else.

This is the Adebayor who tends, in conversation, to refer to himself in the third person. He calls himself “Adebayor”. This is the Adebayor André Villas-Boas tried to ostracise at Tottenham Hotspur, apparently after he refused to remove a hat for a team meeting. It is not the Adebayor whom Tim Sherwood, the Portuguese’s replacement, sees as a “warrior”, around whom he is determined to build a side.

For the sake of completeness, though, let us move on to Arsenal, where they remember the time — at the end of his last season for the club — he left the Emirates Stadium with several of his team-mates’ boots as souvenirs, without their permission and for reasons that remain unclear. Even before that, they remember him as a hugely divisive presence in the dressing room.

Theo Walcott, in his autobiography, recalls seeing the forward “laughing and joking” after the club’s elimination at the hands of Manchester United in the 2009 Champions League semi-finals, when Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney cut Arsène Wenger’s team to shreds. “We were all trying to come to terms with what had just happened,” Walcott wrote. “But that was Addy.” The striker would leave Arsenal within weeks.

There are, though, other stories about Adebayor. There is the one told by his former coach with Togo, Otto Pfister, who describes visiting the Arsenal dressing room in 2006 and being told by Thierry Henry that the young striker sitting next to him would one day not just take his place as the centrepiece of Arsenal’s attack, but Wenger’s job too.

There are those told by people around the Togo team, too, that detail not simply his bravery and sympathy in the aftermath of the horrific attack on the team’s bus before the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations — in which three people were killed, including the press attaché, who died in Adebayor’s arms — but his determination to get a better deal for his team-mates throughout his international career.

There have been times when Adebayor has paid bonuses from his own pocket, arranged training facilities, medical care, dealt with the country’s government to ensure that everything went smoothly. There have been times when, at home in Lomé, in the north of Togo, he has joined in training with players from the local side and invited them to his home.

This is a less familiar Adebayor, but it is just as true a representation of him as the spoilt, fractious caricature in those other tales. There are few characters so enigmatic, so difficult to read in football as the Spurs striker.

Plenty have tried. City deputed Patrick Vieira, their resident wise old head, to take him under his wing. The two were close, but Vieira could not solve the conundrum. Members of Sherwood’s coaching staff admit that they cannot quite work him out; the theory at the moment is that if he trains badly, he will play well, and vice versa.

They think that he is worth it, though. That is the other thing with Adebayor. Speak to anyone who has played with or against him and they will tell you of his extraordinary natural talent. That is why Sherwood is so desperate to see him as a fighter, rather than, like everyone else, as just a fight.

With one exception, of course. Of all of his managers, only one — excluding Sherwood — has had no problem with him. “He was as good as gold for me,” says Harry Redknapp, who is now at Queens Park Rangers. “He loved training. Never missed a session. He was like a kid out there. I liked him. I tried to bring him here, actually, when Spurs bombed him out. We thought we could do a deal on his wages but he wanted to be in the Premier League. I never had a problem with him.”

So what was the secret? What did Redknapp do that Fernandez, Deschamps, Guidolin, Mark Hughes, Mancini, Villas-Boas and to some extent Wenger did not? “[Players like him] want to be made to feel important, to be respected,” Redknapp says. “You have to keep them onside. People like him won’t be a 7 out of 10 every week. He’ll be a 9½ and then a 4. But when he’s a 9½, he’ll win you games.”

That is Redknapp’s story about Adebayor. It is the one that Sherwood so craves, too, so much so that he has bet his reputation — and Tottenham’s season — on it. He has read all the previous chapters. He is just convinced that they do not know the ending.

 

[Spursidol]

Read this today in The Times and immediately thought of our conversation a couple of weeks ago. By the way, either Redknapp is lying ("he loved training, never missed a session") or Adebayor was when he said "I liked Harry Redknapp because he gave me days off". I know who my money is on.


http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/sport/football/premierleague/article3972013.ece

Tim Sherwood hopes to have last word in Emmanuel Adebayor story

Most coaches have despaired of the talented but troublesome Togo striker, so why is the Spurs manager keen to build a side around him, asks Rory Smith

Everyone has a story about Emmanuel Adebayor. They are not uniformly positive. Take the one that dates back to 2009 and the first time he faced Arsenal as a Manchester City player. Adebayor, it is safe to say, had an eventful afternoon. He scored, and ran the length of the pitch to celebrate in front of his former club’s fans. He also stamped on Robin van Persie, appearing to rake his studs down his erstwhile team-mate’s face.

He was banned for three games by the FA and fined heavily. What they remember at the Etihad Stadium, with a hint of incredulous laughter, is that Adebayor asked the club to pay the fine for him. He was mildly outraged when City disagreed.

That is not the only one. They do not remember quite what the disagreement was about, but they recall him falling out with the club’s hierarchy over something or other during his tumultuous two years there.

That was it, he said, he was moving back to London. He still had to train, though. He was not willing to go on strike, even though at that juncture in City’s history going on strike was somewhat fashionable. So he commuted every day, from London to Manchester and back again, until his fury subsided. City are not unique, though. They tell stories about Adebayor at all his former clubs.

Jean Fernandez, his coach at Metz, Adebayor’s first stop in Europe from Togo, remembers calling him into his office “25 times” during his time there, eventually losing patience after he reported late from international duty. At the time, Juventus were thought to be tracking the player. Fernandez joked that he was more likely to get a move to the Spanish third division club of the same name.

He went to neither, ending up at Monaco, and was put out when Didier Deschamps, the coach, left him out for the 2004 Champions League final, but it was under his successor, Francesco Guidolin, the Italian, that the toys flew from the pram. Adebayor reported late after an international break; Guidolin sent him to train with the reserves. “You have to be Italian to play in the first team,” the striker snapped.

You get the picture. This is the Adebayor we have come to know: difficult, truculent, belligerent, the epitome of all the worst traits in a modern footballer. He acts as he wants, transgresses as he wants, and then blames someone else.

This is the Adebayor who tends, in conversation, to refer to himself in the third person. He calls himself “Adebayor”. This is the Adebayor André Villas-Boas tried to ostracise at Tottenham Hotspur, apparently after he refused to remove a hat for a team meeting. It is not the Adebayor whom Tim Sherwood, the Portuguese’s replacement, sees as a “warrior”, around whom he is determined to build a side.

For the sake of completeness, though, let us move on to Arsenal, where they remember the time — at the end of his last season for the club — he left the Emirates Stadium with several of his team-mates’ boots as souvenirs, without their permission and for reasons that remain unclear. Even before that, they remember him as a hugely divisive presence in the dressing room.

Theo Walcott, in his autobiography, recalls seeing the forward “laughing and joking” after the club’s elimination at the hands of Manchester United in the 2009 Champions League semi-finals, when Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney cut Arsène Wenger’s team to shreds. “We were all trying to come to terms with what had just happened,” Walcott wrote. “But that was Addy.” The striker would leave Arsenal within weeks.

There are, though, other stories about Adebayor. There is the one told by his former coach with Togo, Otto Pfister, who describes visiting the Arsenal dressing room in 2006 and being told by Thierry Henry that the young striker sitting next to him would one day not just take his place as the centrepiece of Arsenal’s attack, but Wenger’s job too.

There are those told by people around the Togo team, too, that detail not simply his bravery and sympathy in the aftermath of the horrific attack on the team’s bus before the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations — in which three people were killed, including the press attaché, who died in Adebayor’s arms — but his determination to get a better deal for his team-mates throughout his international career.

There have been times when Adebayor has paid bonuses from his own pocket, arranged training facilities, medical care, dealt with the country’s government to ensure that everything went smoothly. There have been times when, at home in Lomé, in the north of Togo, he has joined in training with players from the local side and invited them to his home.

This is a less familiar Adebayor, but it is just as true a representation of him as the spoilt, fractious caricature in those other tales. There are few characters so enigmatic, so difficult to read in football as the Spurs striker.

Plenty have tried. City deputed Patrick Vieira, their resident wise old head, to take him under his wing. The two were close, but Vieira could not solve the conundrum. Members of Sherwood’s coaching staff admit that they cannot quite work him out; the theory at the moment is that if he trains badly, he will play well, and vice versa.

They think that he is worth it, though. That is the other thing with Adebayor. Speak to anyone who has played with or against him and they will tell you of his extraordinary natural talent. That is why Sherwood is so desperate to see him as a fighter, rather than, like everyone else, as just a fight.

With one exception, of course. Of all of his managers, only one — excluding Sherwood — has had no problem with him. “He was as good as gold for me,” says Harry Redknapp, who is now at Queens Park Rangers. “He loved training. Never missed a session. He was like a kid out there. I liked him. I tried to bring him here, actually, when Spurs bombed him out. We thought we could do a deal on his wages but he wanted to be in the Premier League. I never had a problem with him.”

So what was the secret? What did Redknapp do that Fernandez, Deschamps, Guidolin, Mark Hughes, Mancini, Villas-Boas and to some extent Wenger did not? “[Players like him] want to be made to feel important, to be respected,” Redknapp says. “You have to keep them onside. People like him won’t be a 7 out of 10 every week. He’ll be a 9½ and then a 4. But when he’s a 9½, he’ll win you games.”

That is Redknapp’s story about Adebayor. It is the one that Sherwood so craves, too, so much so that he has bet his reputation — and Tottenham’s season — on it. He has read all the previous chapters. He is just convinced that they do not know the ending.

So you are the manager of a side which is averaging less than a goal a game in the PL.

You have a star striker (Soldado) who is not scoring goals from open play and a striker who doesn't fit your formation (Defoe) who scored (I think) one goal in the PL in 2013.......and a striker who you have ostracized who could solve your goalscoring proble,

Would you ignore the chance of solving your (lack of goals) goalscoring problem ?

 

[Bus-Conductor]

So you are the manager of a side which is averaging less than a goal a game in the PL.

You have a star striker (Soldado) who is not scoring goals from open play and a striker who doesn't fit your formation (Defoe) who scored (I think) one goal in the PL in 2013.......and a striker who you have ostracized who could solve your goalscoring proble,

Would you ignore the chance of solving your (lack of goals) goalscoring problem ?

I am just presenting the other side side of the argument. AVB is not the first manager by a long stretch to grow tired of Adebayor's behaviour.

Adebayor was played by AVB last year and looked less than his best self (still better than Defoe) and didn't solve any goalscoring problems. So AVB was probably thinking he's not only a pain in the arse off the pitch, he's not exactly producing the goods either.

If you are Ferguson, do you sell the best defender in the league because he called the Neville's a pair of busy ****s in his autobiography ?

Manager's have to carry authority, otherwise their position can become untenable, if a player takes to much piss and constantly challenges that authority then I can understand why he finds himself ostracised. Mancini with Tevez and Balotelli etc.

When that player is good, it's a fucking headache and a manager is in a lose/lose scenario.

 

[Spursidol]

When that player is good, it's a fucking headache and a manager is in a lose/lose scenario.

Agreed its a bugger of a problem.

However if a team cannot score goals the manager needs to find a way to bring back the striker who he hasn't used - the art of the good manager (in business and football) is to find a way to do that without losing face. If you don't do that its putting your pride above the good of the club or business.

FYI I've had a similar problem in business with a man with rare skills but notoriously difficult to manage, so I had to find the compromise to get him to work without losing face. Not easy but had to be done.

AVB did not. .

 

[Dinghy]

If you are Ferguson, do you sell the best defender in the league because he called the Neville's a pair of busy ****s in his autobiography ?

I didn't realise that Ferguson ostracised Stam, made him train with the youths and got rid of him without getting in a replacement?

 

[Bus-Conductor]

Agreed its a bugger of a problem.

However if a team cannot score goals the manager needs to find a way to bring back the striker who he hasn't used - the art of the good manager (in business and football) is to find a way to do that without losing face. If you don't do that its putting your pride above the good of the club or business.

FYI I've had a similar problem in business with a man with rare skills but notoriously difficult to manage, so I had to find the compromise to get him to work without losing face. Not easy but had to be done.

AVB did not. .

How do you know he didn't. He played him last year, ahead of Defoe (the model pro).

I am not saying AVB was right or wrong, and I don't know how you can if you don't know the whole story, especially with his history.

 

[Bus-Conductor]

I didn't realise that Ferguson ostracised Stam, made him train with the youths and got rid of him without getting in a replacement?

He skipped stage 1 & 2 and went straight to stage 3.

 

[Legend10]

But its well known that Ferguson admitted to making a mistake in selling Stam but the money for a player of his age was too much to turn down.

 

[Spursidol]

How do you know he didn't. He played him last year, ahead of Defoe (the model pro).

I am not saying AVB was right or wrong, and I don't know how you can if you don't know the whole story, especially with his history.

All I am saying is that AVB did not find a solution to getting Adebayor to play (and score goals) this season - and that was bad management given that his other attacking options wre not scoring enough goals.

 

[Stavrogin]

All I am saying is that AVB did not find a solution to getting Adebayor to play (and score goals) this season - and that was bad management given that his other attacking options wre not scoring enough goals.

Indeed. In theory ostracizing Adebayor shouldn't have been too much of a risk, we had plenty of options.

Therein lies the problem. Even if AVB had have played him, he would most likely have been abysmal.

 

[sbrustad]

All I am saying is that AVB did not find a solution to getting Adebayor to play (and score goals) this season - and that was bad management given that his other attacking options wre not scoring enough goals.

I somewhat agree, but in Adebayors case there has been so many false dawns. I think what we're seeing currently is another one although obviously I'd be delighted if that wasn't the case and he turns out to be a monster for us the rest of the season.

I can remember some ITK about Adebayor and the fact that loads of the players in the squad dislike him, couple that with some questionable work ethics and a pretty relaxed attitude towards getting fit/getting on a plane/letting his coach and teammates know he intended to go to ACN last winter and it's clear that there was no way AVB could win.

Adebayor needs to be pampered for and is the kind of player that may work (until he finds something to be upset over) under managers that tell him to "fuckin run about a bit" and at the same time are willing to massage his undeniably huge ego. One strike and you're out, kind of. You just can't win, and I feel certain that Adebayor was willing to collect his pay check training with the reserves because he just strikes me as a Winston Bogarde kind of person.

He can be a fantastic player on his day and I'll always support him when he's on the pitch for us, but personally I think Adebayor is a bit of an immature tit.

 

[Bus-Conductor]

But its well known that Ferguson admitted to making a mistake in selling Stam but the money for a player of his age was too much to turn down.

You reckon ManU needed 16m more than they needed the best defender in the country ?

 

[Spurger King]

You reckon ManU needed 16m more than they needed the best defender in the country ?

Are you comparing Fergie to AVB?

Fergie could afford to cut off his nose to spite his face, because with his and United's rep he could easily bring in another top class defender.

The truth is, neither AVB nor Spurs are/were so big and powerful that he could afford to give one of our major assets the cold shoulder. ITK suggests AVB had a completely distorted idea of the kind of money we would be willing to throw at new signings (whether through inexperience, or through being played by Levy), and it showed in his treatment of Ade.

I don't think AVB was realistic in the way he handled the situation.

 

[Bus-Conductor]

All I am saying is that AVB did not find a solution to getting Adebayor to play (and score goals) this season - and that was bad management given that his other attacking options wre not scoring enough goals.

You keep repeating yourself but you don't know the facts. So how can you be sure.

You let a player take the piss, giving others the green light to take liberties or lose respect for your authority, and before you know it you have a dressing room, full of millionaire babies with big egos that are running the gaff not a manager.

If AVB's a bad manager for that then so is the championship winning (Italy and England) Mancini and a few others before him.

 

[Bus-Conductor]

Are you comparing Fergie to AVB?

Fergie could afford to cut off his nose to spite his face, because with his and United's rep he could easily bring in another top class defender.

The truth is, neither AVB nor Spurs are/were so big and powerful that he could afford to give one of our major assets the cold shoulder. ITK suggests AVB had a completely distorted idea of the kind of money we would be willing to throw at new signings (whether through inexperience, or through being played by Levy), and it showed in his treatment of Ade.

I don't think AVB was realistic in the way he handled the situation.

Yes I am. They are both football managers, both faced difficult choices involving important players, for non footballing reasons, I think that's an acceptable comparison.

 

[Spurger King]

Yes I am. They are both football managers, both faced difficult choices involving important players, for non footballing reasons, I think that's an acceptable comparison.

Context is everything. Fergie or Mancini running major title contenders can't be compared to AVB running a team trying to break into the CL.

Like it or not, player power (if they're good) is greater, the smaller the team is. When we're able to throw money around and are regularly challenging for titles maybe we can afford to isolate key players without worrying about the consequences. Until then, our managers need to tread carefully. AVB didn't, and now he's gone.