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Tim Sherwood’s Legacy at Spurs Two Years On

By Ryan Wrenn

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Two years ago today, Tim Sherwood was promoted up the ranks at Spurs to take on head coaching duties following the sack of André Villas-Boas.

Only a day before, Sherwood – then merely serving as interim manager – had secured a wild 3-2 victory over Mauricio Pochettino’s Southampton. It was impossible to see then, but it was a game that would embody just about every principle of management Sherwood would bring to the table over the next five months.

Emmanuel Adebayor would score two of Tottenham’s three goals – the third being an own goal from Southampton’s Jos Hooiveld – and thus started a trend that would carry Tottenham through the season. The Togolese striker had been more or less frozen out of the side by Villas-Boas in the months prior to Sherwood’s appointment, even spending time training with the under-21 squad instead of the first team.

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Supposedly at Daniel Levy’s insistence, Sherwood brought Adebayor back into the starting XI and, for a brief time, Spurs reaped the benefits. Adebayor would go on to score nine more goals in 19 more starts as well as set up five assists. In a season in which Spurs were struggling to get any kind of meaning production from their strikers, that was a huge boost.

It was a stroke of luck – or good man management – that would come to define Sherwood’s career. Were it not for Adebayor’s resurgence, Tottenham’s fate that season would likely have been far grimmer than if Villas-Boas had been allowed to continue.

Adebayor’s brief return to form also owed itself a lot to the style Sherwood had Spurs play. It was reminiscent of classic Harry Redknapp, the type of game that had been banished from the club since Villas-Boas’ arrival the season before. Energetic, direct and daring, it seemed an intentional counter-argument to the Portuguese coach’s at times sterile techniques.

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It was also reckless.

Both of Southampton’s goals in that first win came almost directly as a consequence of the suicidally wide gap Sherwood left between his defense and his midfield.

None of the that was particularly surprising to anyone who even glanced at the teamsheet ahead of the game. Sherwood elected to keep defensive midfielder Étienne Capoue on the bench and instead deployed Mousa Dembélé and Christian Eriksen as the centeral midfield pair, with Gylfi Sigurdsson and Érik Lamela in wide positions on either side of Adebayor and Roberto Soldado in attack. This was as bold an attacking scheme as any Tottenham manager had used in recent history and, against all odds, it worked.

Sherwood wouldn’t persist with that particular layout through the season. By the time Sherwood managed his most famous victory – a 2-1 win over Manchester United at Old Trafford – Capoue had been restored to the midfield. Eventually Nabil Bentaleb would become a permanent part of Sherwood’s squad despite his age and the fact that he hadn’t played anywhere but Spurs’ youth sides.

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All of which is to say that Sherwood himself wasn’t reckless for recklessness’ sake. Rather, he was a perpetual pusher of envelopes. Out of favor striker? He’s now the most important player on the team. Midfield needs some punch up? Call on your reserve team. Style of play a little too predictable? Throw six attackers at the opponent.

Given the circumstances, these methods worked surprisingly well for Spurs. Not great, but good enough. He earned 1.65 points a game over his tenure as head coach for the club, enough for Spurs to earn sixth place in the Premier League. Not the ending to the season anyone hoped for, but probably better than it could have been.

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Still, Sherwood’s time with Spurs was objectively odd. In his reprisal – intentional or otherwise – of Redknapp’s haphazard methods, Sherwood was attempting to reclaim an essentially English brand of football at Spurs, one that was less a result of tactics and more a product of punts, both literally and figuratively. Who’s to say what Levy expected when he named Sherwood, but what is clear is that he didn’t like what he saw.

Bringing in Pochettino in the summer was itself a kind of damning critique of Sherwood. The Argentine manager might have been on the other side of Sherwood’s first win for Spurs, but his methodology and attention to detail were more a continuation of Villas-Boas’ plan for the club, if not in substance than at least in spirit.

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Sherwood would go on to implement a similar set of wildly guileless but surprisingly effective gameplans at Aston Villa to help save them from relegation last term. He struggled to sustain that form into this season, however, and was sacked in October, just prior to facing off against Spurs in the Premier League.

It was just as well that Spurs were not to play the final nail in Sherwood’s coffin. Under Pochettino the club has found a level of consistency and balance that few could have every imagined Sherwood achieving.