It's not Sherwood!

[joe_c]

I have to admit I've been forced to shelve the many reservations I had about his appointment. It's still early days of course but I've gone from looking at Sunderland as our last chance of picking up any points away from home to seeing nothing to be afraid of in the last four away fixtures.

[not3bad]

Predicting ,hoping and wishing that Sherwood will be saviour and a Legendary Manager for us !

Not because he is a brilliant Manager, but because he is a brilliant Manager compared to his predecessors !

If he became a "legendary" manager wouldn't that qualify him as both?

[Toronto Villa]

Same Joe. We might lose a game or two in there but it won't be because of preparation or attitude. We'll go down fighting and playing without reservation. Our approach will be right which is critical and that is we will play to win. When you think back to a number of our losses this season, it clearly wasn't always the quality difference, it was very much how the manager played not to lose the game. Yet invariably we did because it was so negative. We should never have been in this position and the players are only now beginning to show they might not have been as bad as we thought they were.

[Monty]

I certainly think that about 30% of my concerns - the wildest concerns - were bullshit. There's a good 70% left, but hey, he doesn't need to be perfect to keep us in the league, and that's all that matters now.

[Toronto Villa]

Much of what made him objectionable was a lot of things he said and did that took away from any of the good work he might have been doing at Spurs. That's all we really knew because it was so very public. The rant after Chelsea, the horrible salute etc etc. He was someone else's wanker manager, yet if he sounded more like Martinez but had the same record coming out of Spurs I think our initial view of him would be quite different. It is possible that behind all of the bluster, confidence/arrogance is someone with a bit more intelligence than we gave him credit for. That the games we have seen aren't all about firing up his players. He has genuinely got players to play well and the games haven't been at all haphazard but relatively structered. And even against Albion after a bad first half he made some tactical changes along with a few sharp words to go and win the game.

Again, so far, so good and it will be very interesting how this continues to evolve and then who he buys and sells. There will be plenty to talk about that's for sure.

[peter w]

I was sat behind the dugout today, parks was up on the touch line almost as much as sherwood. Robson popped out occasionally as did KMac.
No sign of Petrov though.

Curious did you happen to hear what Poyet was saying to his players during the injury break in the first half? On TV it sounds a lot like "no wide, do not go wide" which would be strange as fletcher in particular seemed to be getting joy against Bacuna when he went wide.

Don't know mate , chatting with a few SAFC fans today they were furious poyet was playing fletcher on the wing.
They remind me of villa under Lambert. A great club with a poor manager and tactician.

Cheers for the info. Yeah totally agree. Likeable club & fans. They deserve better. Amazing how its like a cloud has lifted around our club. I couldn't be happier

read their fans forums. They all seem to have a big dislike of us. Like Everton. And strangely Stoke really seem to like us. Bizarre.

[brian green]

Mont, when you say 30% of your concerns have gone but 70% remain, is that 30% of every aspect of his ability or 30% of those aspects you considered he was weak.   Expressed another way, did you put his qualities at nought?   Did you really think he was that bad?   I am not being provocative, and I never knowingly cause dissent, I find the subject of expectations very interesting.

[Monty]

Mont, when you say 30% of your concerns have gone but 70% remain, is that 30% of every aspect of his ability or 30% of those aspects you considered he was weak.   Expressed another way, did you put his qualities at nought?   Did you really think he was that bad?   I am not being provocative, and I never knowingly cause dissent, I find the subject of expectations very interesting.

I put his ability at close to nought, but maybe enough to keep us up (Lambert's ability wasn't nought either, but that's mostly because he was decent at transfers - nothing he could do in that sphere between now and May). That said, about 70% of my concerns about Sherwood remain, but they were mostly long-term.

[Marton]

Predicting ,hoping and wishing that Sherwood will be saviour and a Legendary Manager for us !

Not because he is a brilliant Manager, but because he is a brilliant Manager compared to his predecessors !

If he became a "legendary" manager wouldn't that qualify him as both?

No, Legendary status is ascribed by the fans but brilliance is a innate quality and us such can be relative other persons such quality (or the lack of as in this case). 

[Toronto Villa]

I think it was massively unfair Monty if you genuinely considered Sherwood's qualities as zero. If he came with no badges and straight from being a player I might agree with you but he didn't. And how in earth would he have kept us up with almost zero ability? You can't just bullshit your way through PL games. He'd have been found out very quickly.

He is a qualified coach and did his job quite well as manager, albeit briefly. In fact given what he has done with us in a short time and very professionally I might add, he puts the like of a number of so called "experienced" or better established managers to shame.

[The Laughing Policeman]

When he came to us one of my main reservations was his record of public outbursts at Spurs. I honestly thought that it was a publicity car crash waiting to happen. So far I've happily been proved wrong. He seems to have learnt to be a bit more diplomatic in his interviews.
Let's not forget that he is a young manager in his first full time job and there will be cock ups along the way, but as long as he learns from them I reckon he could turn out to be our best manager for a long time.
I well remember the disenchantment when Mr.Saunders was appointed instead of Brian Clough and look at how that turned out.

[Toronto Villa]

I thought he was incredibly measured after such a big win yesterday. And frankly I like his colour, candour and energy at press conferences and interviews. I feel more confident as a fan after he speaks which is a damn sight better than how I felt with Lambert or McLeish.

[Monty]

I think it was massively unfair Monty if you genuinely considered Sherwood's qualities as zero. If he came with no badges and straight from being a player I might agree with you but he didn't. And how in earth would he have kept us up with zero ability? You can't just bullshit your way through PL games.

He is a qualified coach and did his job quite well as manager, albeit briefly. In fact given what he has done in a short time and very professionally I might add, he puts the like of a number of so called "experienced" or better established managers to shame.

He'd had next to no games. You absolutely can bullshit your way through that number of games, especially with those sorts of players, and what's more his tactical record was ominously bad. He started similarly here, with a rigid 4-4-2 with wide open spaces and lumping to the big guy. He's since done what I didn't think he would do: changed it, and changed it to something interesting. We had more men in midfield, and that combined with his obviously actual quality (enthusiasm) to produce something like real football. Long may it continue - it just doesn't feel sustainable to me somehow.

[Rudy Can't Fail]

I don't think Sherwood has yet his Uefa Pro Licence which all Premier League managers require. He enrolled for it with the Football Association of Wales when he got the Spurs job but at least up until last month, still hadn't passed it.

[brian green]

Like many others I have admitted that he was far from my first choice but I accepted that he was the best we could get under the circumstances.   If I were to evaluate him prior to actually joining us I would say on the plus side are his youth, his enthusiasm, the fact that he captained a Premiership winning side, his badges, such success as he had in a short term with Spurs on the debit side are his relative lack of experience, his lack of coaching track record, his cockiness and his seeming lack of football intellect.   I would have given him C- when he came.   Today? C/B-.