Covering the mishaps of a reluctant young conscript, the first of Spike Milligan’s autobiographical war stories rejoices in the title Adolf Hitler: My Part in his Downfall. The tongue-in-cheek hubris is magnificent.
For QPR fans, perhaps there is some fun of this sort to be had when considering the irritable and seemingly very naïve Portuguese man who managed Chelsea for part of last season. It does feel, after all, as though our ragtag outfit played their part in his downfall. André Villas-Boas even admitted as much himself.
For QPR fans, perhaps there is some fun of this sort to be had when considering the irritable and seemingly very naïve Portuguese man who managed Chelsea for part of last season. It does feel, after all, as though our ragtag outfit played their part in his downfall. André Villas-Boas even admitted as much himself.
People love a handy initialism. The young Portgueezer provided one, his name quickly being reduced to 'AVB' by the English football public. An initialism favoured by many QPR supporters? ABC. Anyone But Chelsea. So it was
music to many pairs of west London ears when, in February, sports journo Yann
Tear reported on Chelsea’s badly stuttering attempt to recapture the Premier League trophy. The Pensioners' then-manager felt that his side’s acrimonious
defeat at Loftus Road was the beginning of the end of Chelsea’s title bid.
Lovely stuff.
During that bad-tempered match, it
certainly became clear that the southwest London side could be rattled.
Apparently surprised by the hostile crowd and the doggedness of the home team,
Chelsea’s discipline evaporated. Seven players booked. Another two sent off.
The captain getting drawn into a situation that led to him being charged with a
racially aggravated public order offence.
It also became very clear that
Villas-Boas could be rattled. His tetchy post-match comments to the press and
his attempt to remonstrate with the referee got him in hot water. This lack of
composure also surely provided encouragement to any other managers considering
the use of mind games.
But let’s not kid ourselves. The
Rangers may have done their bit in sowing the seeds of doubt in the inscrutable
mind of AVB’s temperamental Russian sugar daddy. But the young Portuguese boss
was undone mainly by his own mistakes and shortcomings.
Among these was an inability to
win over the big egos in the Stamford Bridge dressing room. It’s a tough gig
down there. In the popular imagination, a cabal of senior players can get
managers fired by refusing to go along with any boss with whom they do not
click. Whether or not this is a fair characterisation of what goes on behind
the scenes at Chelsea, the newspapers were soon reporting that Villas-Boas was somewhat
aloof, apparently not communicating the rationale for his team selections to
those players disappointed at being dropped. Some managers are able to rule
their clubs with an authoritarian style at the same time as commanding the
respect of their players. AVB did not manage to pull off this balancing act at
Chelsea. Why was that? One can only speculate, but his background may well have
been an issue. Not much older than most of his senior team members, he came
into management with no career as a professional player behind him. You
have to ask whether the likes of Lampard, Terry and Drogba ever took him
seriously when he was crouching in his technical area, gesticulating
enthusiastically and trying to give detailed tactical input. Is it really
fanciful to imagine that when ‘Lamps’ and ‘JT’ looked over at him their
thoughts were along the lines of “cheeky little cunt, never played the game and
he’s telling me where to fucking run”?
It’s hard to see why this approach
to match-day communication and to man management will go down any better at
Spurs than it did at Chelsea. The Tottenham squad have reputedly become used to
a regime which was all about letting talented players express themselves,
playing the game without the shackles of overly prescriptive instructions or
overly rigid tactics. Their former boss is also someone known as a highly personable
man manager. The transition from Redknapp to Villas-Boas, then, may not be a
smooth one for some Spurs players. How long, one wonders, will it be before the
spiky Portuguese coach is clashing with members of his new team?
We should also observe how Villas-Boas handles the media in his new job.
It seems to be the case than here in
England it is possible for foreign managers to create an initially very
favourable impression. They speak slowly and carefully. We think this means
that they are more articulate and more intelligent than our home-grown gaffers,
failing to realise that slow, careful speech is simply a consequence of operating
in a foreign language. When we compare these guys to a Sam Allardyce or a Mick
McCarthy, we think of them as more suave and sophisticated. But that’s just
because we are better able to make judgements about the education and
background of our own countrymen than we are about people from other countries.
Fooled by the appearance of a
calm, almost scholarly demeanour, we perhaps imagine that managers from
mainland Europe will be clever and unflappable when interviewed. We assume they
are all going to be charming. But they all crack in the end. The pressure here
is great. Our newspapermen are bastards. Our pundits can be cruel. The only real surprise
with Villas-Boas was that he cracked so quickly, almost immediately proving
unable to charm the media. He answered pretty harmless questions rather warily,
looking paranoid in the process. He thereby showed signs of weakness. This is
fatal. Our newspapers are sharks. They go in for the kill when they scent blood
in the water.
At Spurs, AVB faces a particular
challenge. His predecessor was a media darling, a great favourite of the
football press, who united almost as one to proclaim him as the only viable
candidate for the England job. Unless Villas-Boas has somehow radically
reinvented his approach to media relations, there exists the danger of him
being given a very rough ride indeed, especially if Tottenham do not make a
strong start to the season.
For our part at QPR, we don’t get
to give a Villas-Boas-led team the full Loftus Road treatment until January.
But other managers, teams and fans would be well advised to test his
temperament before then. Unless the man has changed a lot over the summer, he
looks vulnerable to psychological warfare and is unlikely to enjoy the lessened
pressure of a long honeymoon period in the media.
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