AVB needs to earn his Spurs

Football columnist

Sunday 8 July 2012

If it's true that you often learn more from your mistakes than from your successes then Andre Villas-Boas 2.0 ought to be a much better version than the one who rocked up at Stamford Bridge a year ago.

Andre Villas-Boas failed to prosper at Chelsea Photograph: PA

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Gabriele Marcotti

That Villas-Boas evidently believed his own hype a little too much, while also mistakenly thinking Roman Abramovich's faith in his talents was absolute.

Because he was just 33 at the time, we can chalk it up to naivete. Just as we can blame inexperience for his aloof and sometimes prickly personality which led him to clash with senior players and treat others like unwanted stepchildren.

Those bits, presumably, he can fix. In fact, maybe he's been working on them since his dismissal. The concern remains whether he can develop a style which is both coherent and effective and get his squad to buy into it. At Porto he obviously did, though he walked into what was essentially a "turn-key" operation: a strong club with savvy leadership at boardroom level which left him free to focus exclusively on coaching the first team. At Stamford Bridge, he came up short and that was perhaps the biggest disappointment. Chelsea simply didn't play well, even with his handpicked guys on the pitch.At Spurs he will have plenty of raw material to work with. Harry Redknapp's side may have tailed off badly in the latter half of the season, but two top-four finishes in three years tell their own story. Few managers divide opinion like 'Arry – he's either a genius or a quack – but there is no doubting the talent assembled at White Hart Lane. And, incidentally, the pool just got deeper with the addition of Gylfi Sigurdsson.Villas-Boas will likely be given time – more so than at Chelsea, in part because Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy isn't a fan of paying managers to go away – and he already has most of the resources needed to compete. This is the job where we learn – and he learns – whether that 2010-11 season at Porto is destined to remain the high point of his career. Or whether he is the wunderkind many of us thought he was.Anyone get a feeling of deja vu last week? Let's see: superstar centre forward at a big Premier League club, contract winding down, stalled negotiations with his iconic manager, official statement saying it was time to move on because the club's philosophy/ ambition differed from his own.Sound familiar? Yes, Robin van Persie's announcement last week that he would not be signing a new deal at the Emirates offers an uncanny parallel with Wayne Rooney's transfer request 18 months ago. We know how that one ended: Rooney soon found 200,000 reasons a week to stay at Old Trafford. And if you're very cynical, you might conclude Van Persie's future will be resolved in a similar manner.How come? Because, simply put, the Dutchman may well be over- estimating his value in the open market. Sure, he's been devastating for the past 18 months. But he's also been injured for most of the previous seven years. He turns 29 next month and he's reportedly looking for Rooney-type money, which means north of £10 million for five years. Throw in the transfer fee Arsenal are likely to demand and you're looking at a commitment which could be as high as £70m, with no resale value.Who is ready to roll the dice like that? Not many, especially when you factor in van Persie's injury record. While plenty have been mentioned, the only clubs who have taken any concrete steps are Juventus and Manchester City. The former are looking to make a statement and see him as the final piece in the puzzle (but, while they're willing to push the boat out on wage demands, they're unlikely to meet Arsenal's valuation). The latter, as ever, rarely see a superstar they don't want to sign, though in this age of Financial Fair Play, accommodating van Persie, Carlos Tevez, Sergio Aguero, Edin Dzeko and Mario Balotelli is a big ask, especially when the rules only allow you to play with 11 men.Van Persie could well find he is the first victim of Financial Fair Play. Which is why you can't rule out a Rooneyesque ending to this transfer tale.For once, the powers running world football showed common sense. Fifa's International Board, the body who decide the rules of the game, approved the use of goalline technology last week. And, crucially, they chose not to abandon the "goal ref" experiment, despite the "ghost goal" in the Ukraine v England match at the Euros.This was important. Uefa president Michel Platini, an opponent of goalline technology, had long champ- ioned the additional referees. Sepp Blatter, the Fifa supremo was ambivalent on the goal refs and, until recently, opposed to goalline technology. Of course, his stance was likely determined by what was politically expedient. Popular sent-iment among Fifa voters was against technology. And the fact that "goal refs" are very much Platini's baby meant there was no point in Blatter backing them. In fact, Blatter's orientation seemed to be to depict the issue as an "either/or" – you're either with goalline technology or you're against it. This may have seemed politically judicious for Blatter (defeat "goal refs" and you defeat a possible future challenger for your post like Platini!), but it was also foolish.Despite what you hear, goal refs have led to a significant decrease in shirt-pulling and other penalty box infractions (which, in turn, has led to more headed goals) in a classic case of deterrence. They made at least 21 "key decisions" at the Euros, according to Uefa. And, sure, while they got the Ukraine decision badly wrong, the good far outweighed the bad. It would have been a shame if the experiment had been sacrificed to the Platini v Blatter feud.

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AVB needs to earn his Spurs

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