24 Nov 2013 17:43:49
Well sad to say a lot of us who have been at WHL are shocked at the size of todays humiliation but not at the nature of it.Time to face a few unpleasant facts. 1. We can forget about CL this season, we are no where near good enough, the plain fact is that Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United and Man City are all far better than us. 2. We have gone backwards since AVB took over. Andre took over a team that had just finished 4th in he PL, since then he has taken us down to 5th despite having had the advantage of Gareth Bale in absolutely world class form, this season 6-8 looks like a realistic forecast of where we will finished. 3. The Bale money has not been wisely spent. It hurts to say it but possibly only Spurs could spend 100m and become a worse team. Lamella looked class for Roma but imo clearly doesn't want to be in England or the PL.Soldado can clearly score but he is also clearly not the striker to play in the system AVB wants to play so questions have to be asked about his signing. Given his absence through injury the jury must still be out on Capoue. Paulinho I think is a class player but doesn't play at the pace required for the PL and tends to slow us down, I also question whether he was even the type of player we needed. Chadli is very obviously out of his depth and smacks of Levy signing him on the cheap and hoping he would shine so he could be sold on at a large profit. Eriksen has had one very good game and a couple of decent ones so again Jury still out. Chiriches is in my opinion the only player who has truly impressed me so far and I think will go on to become a mainstay of our defence. Looking at those signings one obvious question comes to mind, why was such a huge amount of money spent on players who didn't have a minute of PL experience between them? Did no one at the top at WHL think it might be wiser to mix foreign signings with proven PL performers? 4. AVB is a classic case of a manager succesful abroad but totally unsuited to the PL. Whatever HRs shortcomings as a manager he was canny enough to get Spurs playing a high tempo game where we always looked capable of scoring even against other top 4 teams, AVB seems determined to impose a very slow, ponderous and frankly desperately dull style of football on THFC with no plan B when things are clearly not working. 5 . We have been found out, teams now know that as long as they just do the basics defensively we are unlikely to score and that they can afford to get at us in relative confidence.
Personally I don't think AVB is up to it but I am willing to give him till the end of the season to prove me wrong. In terms of players I say we get rid of Soldado and Lamella in January before their value falls any more, spend what it takes to get Benteke (or Lukaku) and another PL proven creative player and we may salvage something (5th place?) from thi season.

1.) 24 Nov 2013
Can forget Lukaku because he said he will never play for avb again

2.) 24 Nov 2013
I know it sounds drastic but Levy HAS to get rid of AVB NOW or the SEASON is OVER the longer it goes on Saldado and Lamala will have lost all confidence and future value, the team will end up 6/7/8th at best the fans are about 2/3 games away from turning against AVB, the football is rubbish to watch and no BALE to bale us out!! happy days YODDO's

3.) 24 Nov 2013
As I said in my original post I doubt AVB is up to it but who is available to take his place? Hoddle to me seems a romantic choice but he has been out of management a long time so for me a no. Personally I would give AVB till the end of the season because I think whoever we replaced him with now still wouldn't be able to get us CL this season so we might as well let this season go and make sure we make the right appointment in the Summer, my shortlist would be Pochetinno, Martinez or another shot at persuading Klinsmann to take the job.

4.) 24 Nov 2013
Best post I have read on here for a long time, we have been desperate for AVB to succeed so much so that we have all been in denial and have watched a boring side who shift the ball at a snails pace.
We are desperate to love our new signings but the truth is we may have got this so so wrong, I hope not, I still want to believe but when you looked at Our players today you could see that they have lost their confidence and belief Jan looked so fed up and who can blame him, stop passing backwards for gods sake

5.) 24 Nov 2013
Good shout tottenhamluke but Klinsmann is another romantic choice who was helped by Low, a bit early to say about Mauricio Pochettino didn't have a great record in Spain not sure any of us no the answer! I was a Harry lover for the style of play but was hoping AVB would be the next level but after the start o we have had this season I am not sure!