AVB

I'm a little bit of a rare species. I'm a Chelsea fan and I like AVB. I'm not entirely sure why but I felt he was harshly treated at Chelsea.

Yes he tried to do too much too soon and managed to alienate a dressing room that was as powerful as those at Bayern and Real, it was folly.

The players felt that being paid six figures sums was not enough reason to give their all and duly downed tools before the most famous of stories with the caretaking of Roberto Di Matteo leading to an improbable Champions League win.

The British (London based) press got their teeth stuck into AVB again when Daniel Levy had the temerity to call out Harry Redknapp for the managerial charlatan that he was and is. Even after today's events I still believe it was a sound appointment.

Despite all of that, AVB has duly been relieved of his duties today and his resurrection last season seems to have been a short lived one. Again, stories of disgruntled players have risen to the surface.

Much has been made of the huge sums of money that Spurs spent during the Summer but what people are not necessarily appreciating is the effect of the 'net' transfer spend.

There is no doubt that several of AVB's purchases this Summer have been poor such as Lamela who has barely played. Soldado has done little other than score penalties also. The fact that Luis Suarez has given Spurs a six game head start and still scored more goals than them is an amusing statistic but it's also very telling.

Last year, Spurs had say 15 very good players and then they had a match winner in Gareth Bale. This season they have maybe 20 or so very good players but they have lost their match winner.

This was part of my reasoning for my calling their finishing 6th this season in an earlier article. You can only put 11 of those players on the pitch at once and therefore their first eleven was weaker than last season, in other words by losing Bale they went backwards and lost the capacity to win games they would not have otherwise.

It's not clear where AVB goes from here nor who will replace him. There are early calls for Glenn Hoddle to return to the game, that would either be inspired or a disaster.

I wish AVB well. He clearly is lacking (for the moment) something to allow him to operate at the highest level, maybe he just needs the right no 2. He also needs to learn that picking fights with the British media hounds is not the best idea. Even if he is right they are not, they simply wield to much unchecked power and answer to almost no one.

Good luck AVB, it might be a long(ish) road back to the top but I hope you get there - No Nonsense.