Levy and his mid-term revolution

By Sunshine
June 15 2004

With the current optimism coursing through the veins of Spurs fans, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the club are set to take the Premiership by storm next season, with a top six finish well within reach.

Not only has Robinson (England’s number 2) signed, but we’ve also got the Hungarian U-21 keeper under contract, brought in PSV’s Danish Director of Football, Frank Arnesen, the Manager of the French National team, Jacques Santini and a highly rated Dutch coach, Martin Jol, as Assistant Manager.

The medical set up has also been torn down and is in the process of being totally revisited. Many elder or underperforming players (or both), some on sky high wages, have been culled. No more will the likes of Anderton, Poyet and Ziege drain the clubs’ finances for little or no return.

Progress, at last!

….except that the reality is, or might be, somewhat different.

Let’s take things in order:

Robinson is a good goalkeeper, but nothing special. The current crop of English keepers is one, if not the worst ones I’ve ever seen. No Banks, Shilton, Corrigan, Clemence or even Seaman. England’s first choice goalie is the hapless David James. How sad is that? As I said, Robinson is a good keeper, but his presence in the team will not result in markedly improved performances on what Keller was capable of offering (though I make no attempt to hide my dislike for the American – not on a personal level, you understand).

Fulop (what a name for a keeper) is next on the list. Hungarian U-21 goalie. Great, but just how good are the Hungarian team. They haven’t, unless I’m missing something (which may very well be the case) exactly been pulling up any trees of late, either at senior or U-21 level. He’s young and may turn out to be an excellent buy, but he is very much one for the future, not the present.

The first unexpected piece of news, in what will be a very long summer for Spurs fans, was the appointment of Arnesen. Top players have spoken in his favour (Ronaldo, Stam, etc) and his role with PSV has ensured that we treat him with the utmost respect. He is sure to re-organise the club, which is basically an admission of incompetence by Levy, but is he really the ‘Midas’ that we’ve been waiting for? Sure, he discovered the likes of Van Nistelrooy, Stam and Ronaldo (amongst others), but Ronaldo, at least, didn’t exactly come cheap. Unless my memory fails me (again, more than likely), he spent £10m on the 17 year old Ronaldo. Sure, he made a lot of money when he subsequently sold the then starlet to Barcelona, but for that sort of money, claiming (not Arnesen, but others on his behalf) to have discovered the Brazilian talent is a bit much. To further raise doubts in Arnesen’s ability (I’m not saying he isn’t a very capable man, just that I think there is room for doubt), PSV haven’t exactly won back to back Champions Leagues with him in full charge of club affairs, have they? In fact, truth be told, had Levy not offered him a job, he’d have been unemployed come this July. I’ve no doubt that he could easily have found gainful employment elsewhere, but I’ll start believing the hype when I see tangible results.

Biggest shock of the summer so far was the appointment of Santini. Not because we’ve landed the French National coach, but because Spurs finally have a Manager! Santini’s record at the helm of France is excellent, but then again, I don’t think that he was the only coach who could have managed to get France back on track after World Cup 2002, what with the wealth of talent he has available. He managed Lyon for a couple of years and took them to a domestic cup and a league title. Again, very good, but the French League isn’t exactly Serie A, is it?
Speaking about Santini to some French colleagues last week, the first thing they said was “poor Tottenham!”. Santini is not regarded as a great coach, he is regarded as a bore, someone who will start explaining what players have to do at the start of a game and still be talking long after it has ended. He speaks slowly, they told me. Just as well, since I’ve heard that his English isn’t up to much.
Just to put things further into context, he too (like Arnesen) would have been unemployed starting the 1st of July and it is more than a little curious that the French Football Federation didn’t have the faith in him to renew his contract before the start of Euro 2004. True, they didn’t want to commit the same error that occurred with his predecessor, but the fact is that his current deal expires four days before the planned final of the tournament: Hardly fills you with confidence, n’est pas?
Last, but not least, Santini is a man who holds a grudge. Kanouté, by all accounts, has already been told that he can leave the club, since it appears that the two didn’t see eye to eye when they were both at Lyon four or so years ago. Fabulous: Kanouté is our only striker who can actually head the ball. Lord, I hope we have someone else of that ilk lined up, and I don’t just mean Wiltord on a Bosman Free (though I’d be more than happy to see him join us, especially after AFC spent a club record £13m on him four seasons ago – I just don’t see him as a direct replacement for Kanouté).
I think that Santini will be a good appointment, but again, my belief in his ability is not unconditional. As they say in certain quarters of the world: “show me the money and I will show you the camel” (I expect to see results before getting too excited and predicting heavy wins away to Man U and Chelsea).

Martin Jol. Very good coach, by all accounts. Then again, so is Chris Hughton, even being given a role with Eire, yet his almost full year in charge of coaching at Spurs produced a series of inept performances which saw us torn limb from limb by modest teams (some even down to ten men) far too often for my liking. Anyway, back to Jol. Sure, he has achieved some good results with a small and unfashionable team, but he was Manager there, not coach and it was the Dutch league, not the fiercely competitive Premiership.

I think far too many fans are calling our managerial appointments a dream ticket before a single ball has even been kicked. It warms the heart to see such optimism and belief, but much the same feeling was hanging around White Hart Lane when Levy did the dirty on George Graham and Southampton and appointed the ill-fated Hoddle.

A few short weeks ago, Levy triumphantly announced that after a lengthy study, the medical set up at the club would be totally revamped. It took over three years and a study to come to this conclusion? I should go into Management Consultancy and send my CV to Levy, I’d make an absolute fortune pointing out the blindlingly obvious.

Perhaps I can impress him, if one of his boys happens to stumble across these thoughts on the web, by revealing that we also need to increase the capacity of the stadium and build a new training facility (please make all cheques out to ‘Sunshine Ltd’). Oh, I hear you say, but Levy already knows these things, it’s just that he’s been turned down by the local council (for the stadium expansion, due to improved transport links not being part of the deal) and refused planning permission for the new training complex, too.
Well, all I can say is boo-hoo: If AFC can get permission to build a ruddy great stadium smack bang in the middle of north London (albeit on a rubbish dump – how apt), then surely if expanding the stadium and building much needed training facilities were considered a priority, some progress would have been made in the three years plus that Levy has been in charge at Spurs.
Instead, no news, none. All quiet on the progress front.
The size of our stadium will soon see us lag seriously behind the clubs we’d like to consider our rivals and our training facilities woefully inadequate.
This just isn’t good enough, objectively speaking.

Onto more a more interesting topic: The playing staff.

During the season just passed, an article I wrote calling for a minimum of five new signings was treated with disdain. Well, I’ve got news for my brave critics: We don’t need five new players, we need six (cue childish name calling and mock horror).

We needed a new keeper and, we’ve got one. Robinson is a new signing, so he counts as one of the six.

Eagle-eyed observers may have noticed that we don’t have a decent left back! Taricco is a useful player to have in the squad, but a left flank player he ain’t. We must do better. Rumours of Lizarazu joining the club abound and I’d be more than happy for him to take care of the left flank for a couple of seasons.

Young master Jackson has quite clearly shown that he isn’t ready (nor may he ever be) for life in the Premiership. He is too slow and he hasn’t got enough quality to make up for his inexperience. Sorry kid.
So, what’s left in the squad to cover the left side of midfield. Er…er…nothing, no one, zilch, sweet F. Sure, Ricketts can act as a (lightweight, inexperienced) back up, but he too (like Taricco) isn’t left footed and his eal position is right midfield.
Not only do we need a quality first choice left sided midfielder, we also need a back up, just in case the Spurs injury curse strikes (I have high hopes that Anderton has taken it with him, though with Redknapp around, you can never be sure).
I make that four players so far.
Next up, has anyone spotted how many central midfielders we have. Yes, that’s right, we have two. Redknapp (excellent when fit, but not exactly the sort of player you can rely upon to play forty games a season….fourteen, maybe) and Brown, an attacking midfielder who comes, at 28 years of age, from the Nationwide and has had to play in a different, more defensive role since arriving at The Lane.
That’s it. Hardly an ‘engine room’ capable of competing with the likes of Keane and Butt, Vieira and Gilberto/Edu, Lampard and Makelele/Parker, Gerrard and Hamann or even Dyer and Speed/Jenas. In fact, it can’t even compete with far less noblecentral midfield pairings.
We need at least two new central midfielders. One who runs and tackles like his life depended on it and another one who does both of those things and can pass and has vision, too.
Unless we land Davids (something which I seriously doubt), these two players are going to be very costly indeed.

There you go, six players, quality players….and that’s assuming we don’t start mucking around with our forwards (which we will, of course).

This isn’t meant to be a pessimistic article, it’s meant to be realistic, get our feet back on the ground.

This year could really be a turning point for Spurs. Levy has done what could turn out to be an excellent job on the management side of the issue, now he has to bring in the right players, in the right positions.

I’m quietly confident, all told, and I’m as anxious as anyone to see how the transfer merry-go-round reshapes our squad.

Sunshine
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