Football's worst kept secret was finally revealed on Tuesday when Tottenham Hotspur announced Andre Villas-Boas would be their new manager for the upcoming season. Or rather, head coach, as they put it. Will the Portuguese manager be the right man for a team who capitulated towards the end of last season?
There is no doubt that Villas-Boas is a talented manager. It's easy to see that, just look at his incredible record at Porto. He had a win percentage rate of an unbelievable 88%. His team went unbeaten all season and won 45 of their 51 matches. No team in Portugal had done an unbeaten season in the whole of the twenty first century. He won the Europa League, with his team playing some great football on their way to that success. This was when he was just 33.
However, it's fair to say that his tenure at Chelsea was a total disaster. Villas-Boas won less than half of his games in charge of the Blues and left them fifth in the Premier League, out of the Carling Cup, and on the verge of exiting the Champions League and FA Cup. He had also managed to alienate many of the senior players at Chelsea. Frank Lampard openly admitted things weren't ideal and Ashley Cole was left out of the 3-1 defeat to Napoli. Chelsea had been thrashed by Arsenal and thrown aside by United, while Liverpool had taken three points from the Bridge and knocked them out of the Carling Cup too. They had suffered defeats to Aston Villa, QPR and Everton as well as drawing to Wigan, Fulham, Swansea and Norwich. The final straw for AVB was the defeat to West Brom in March.
Villas-Boas has to learn from his errors at Chelsea. He came to a club and tried to build success over a long period of time at a club where if success isn't instant you are history. He will have to make sure he doesn't lose the dressing room like he did at Chelsea, make sure the big players like Modric and Van Der Vaart are happy. He also needs to realise that he isn't always right and is still extremely young.
However, he is a top manager. This is proved by his time at Porto. You don't do what he did there by fluke. Every manager has a bad period. But most get a second chance. Here is his second chance. But no-one in football gets a third, and he won't deserve one if this goes wrong. However, personally I don't think it will. Tottenham are more focused on stability than Chelsea will ever be and if he can learn from his mistakes this could be a very good appointment.
Daniel Daykin
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