Reviewing our season: The Manager

Andre Villas-Boas came to Tottenham Hotspur as a disgraced manager, his reputation damaged by his 8-month tenure at Chelsea. When he was sacked after Chelsea's 1-0 loss to West Brom in March, I laughed at the club and the chairman for living up to their monstrous reputation and, I won't lie, I laughed at Villas-Boas as well. Too bold I thought. Too idealistic, could never be respected by English football.

AVB on his first day as our manager. 

So my reaction when he came to Tottenham? Confusion. Distress. I questioned why Levy removed the first manager
to put us into the Top 4 and replaced him with what I thought was a joke of a manager. I thought to myself right there 'we're losing key players, we don't have the funds, other teams will capitalize: sixth at best'.

11 months later, I feel ashamed of myself for what I thought in July.

We did not start well (but when do we ever?). Three last minute collapses against teams we would usually pick up points against. Analysis showed slow play, long balls, poor final balls. Compare this to last year's football and the future looked bleak for Spurs. I was swiftly proven wrong.  Four weeks later, we beat Manchester United at Old Trafford for the first time in 23 years. From then on, I believed in AVB.

What a day. 

Throughout the course of the year, we have seen AVB utilize the players at his disposal and turn them into a solid team, a team with a backbone. He made Mousa Dembele, an attacking midfielder, into a defensive midfielder who could abuse the opposing midfield. Wilshere, I believe, is still firmly lodged in his back pocket. Partnered up with Sandro, the beast, labelled by AVB as 'the best interceptor of the ball in th
e Premier League', you had a feared midfield pairing.

He chopped and changed the centre backs: Gallas-Kaboul; Gallas-Vertonghen; Vertonghen-Caulker; Caulker-Gallas. It turned out that Vertonghen-Dawson was the right partnership. Maybe it took him three-quarters of a season to work that out, but it was no easy feat, considering last years pair of King-Kaboul was no longer an option. Vertonghen was the best centre of the season and the skipper is on the verge of being England's centre back.

Bale started on the left, with the option of switching to the right if things looked stagnant. But throughout the season, AVB has gave him more of a role in the team. At the start of the year, he was not the player we boast as 'world class'. AVB understands Bale, his strengths, his limitations, his ambitions, his limitations. He could not be just chucked in the middle and told to have some fun, take some shots, or else last year he would've scored just as much. Under AVB, he is a goal-scoring machine, the best player in the league. He will do even more next season.

When it came to strikers, it looked like Defoe upfront could do the job. With 14 goals in the first half of the season I think, he looked liked the striker we had always wanted. He has scored just one goal in all of 2013. Inconsistency is Defoe's limitation. Adebayor has scored 8 goals all season, despite starting many of our games. He and Scott Parker are two players who have not benefitted from AVB. Yet in the final stretch of the season, we have seen the excellent player Adebayor can be. The funds were never there to go out and buy the striker AVB wanted. It was either buy a Louis Saha for half a season or wait till the summer. He made the right choice, although if it were me, I would have been tempted to resign Gregor Raziak.

Everything about this moment was glorious. No league
 position can take that from us.

Some of AVB's team selections this year have been brilliant, pure and utter class management. Bringing on Holtby, Huddlestone and Defoe against Manchester City changed the match on its head. It broke apart the best defense in the league. Sigurdsson's selections in the second half of the season won us vital points, especially against Arsenal, where he looked for large parts the most comfortable player on the pitch. He understands every player in the squad, their strengths, their limitations. Let's just say some have more than others...

In other seasons, 72 points would've been more than enough to get Top 4 and we'd be labeling AVB's first season as the best of the lot. We have lost only 3 games in 2013, 2 in the league. Compare that with last year's collapse, and we know just how solid we have been this season. However, AVB could do nothing to prevent our opponents' form. Arsenal didn't lose a single game since losing to us on March 2nd and picked up 39 points out of a possible 48 since January 23rd. Chelsea's overload of games never led to the collapse we predicted many times. I guess £90million buys you that at the very least.

You have some football fans out there that have said us losing a 7 point gap over Arsenal in the last 10 games warrants AVB's first season being labeled a failure. Believe me when I say it does not. He has exceeded what has been expected of him from after his appointment. Some pundits predicted us to finish below Newcastle and QPR this year! AVB took a broken squad, struck with long term injuries, retirements and big-money departures, and turned it into one of the most feared in the league. We competed for the Top 4 from the first day to the final day. 72 points is the most we have accumulated in the Premier League. And yet somehow, we expect more. It can get better.

Andre Villas-Boas did not want to come to Spurs to restore his reputation. It's just a happy coincidence then that it has turned out that way. I believe he can take us further as a club than we have ever gone before. I believe in AVB.

AVB's Blue and White Army