Earning
“Spurs have sold Elvis and bought the Beatles!” Unfortunately, as fans and pundits alike learnt very quickly, these signings were more S Club 7 than the Beatles.
Only three remain with Chadli and Eriksen regulars in the first team setup and Lamela still leaving Spurs fans with a sense of wanting more. These suspect signings managed to see off Villas-Boas within four months of the transfer window closing, following hefty defeats to Manchester City and Liverpool.
The appointment of a young, English manager in Tim Sherwood, promoted from working with the very successful Spurs under-21 side, gave rise to a feeling of quiet optimism amongst the Spurs faithful.
There were many that thought the straighttalking, no-nonsense style of Sherwood’s was exactly what some of the multi-million pound brigade needed.
However, the 18-month contract that Sherwood had agreed when taking on the job only served to undermine him, despite some improvement on the pitch.
Frank de Boer and Mauricio Pochettino, Ajax and Southampton managers respectively at the time, were constantly being linked to the managerial hotseat. The rumours weren’t coming from thin air.
Within a week of the season ending, Pochettino replaced Sherwood after Spurs stuttered to a sixth-place finish.
So why bother to even highlight Sherwood’s reign as manager? On the surface, it appears like he failed just as badly as Villas-Boas did in his attempts to coax the best out of the new signings.
As a matter of fact, the appointment of Sherwood was significant. It was a sign that Levy recognised the work taking place behind the scenes at the club, developing the young players.
It signalled a moment of realisation that a more sustainable way of progressing the club was to promote youth rather than buy big foreign names who were just as unproven in the English game. After all, you don’t have £100m to spend every transfer window.
As expected, during his short managerial tenure, Sherwood did promote youth players into the first team set-up.
Nabil Bentaleb and Harry Kane became first team regulars by the end of the season. However, it was Sherwood’s managerial inexperience that was his undoing.
Levy would not have felt comfortable with Sherwood’s very public rants about his players (his post-match interview following a 4-0 defeat to Chelsea in March 2014 comes to mind) and the rumours surrounding his future.
Pochettino, on the other hand, had proven he works well with young players whilst manager of Southampton and seemed a safer, more experienced bet to integrate the burgeoning amount of youthful talent into the first team at Spurs for the 2014/15 season.
Signings such as Eric Dier and Ben Davies confirmed that Pochettino wanted youthful players who could buy into his pressing philosophy. Nonetheless, there was pressure on Pochettino coming from the top people at the club (Levy