In what appears to be a burgeoning mind game battle between the West Ham and Tottenham managers ahead of tonight's Boleyn Ground clash, Spurs boss Andre Villas-Boas has fanned the flames of rivalry and has slammed his opposite number Sam Allardyce's statistical analysis approach to club management, describing the methods as "useless" and telling the Metro that although "it differs from coach to coach and we all have different approaches, I have never used ProZone. The mind and how the player feels is much more important from us when it comes to preparing players for training or matches."
This string of comments from the White Hart Lane chief is a decided knock at Big Sam, who is renowned in the game for his love of sports science and analytical approach to the game- and Villas-Boas' comments may well be a backlash for what was admittedly a pretty blatant attempt in the Independent this morning by the West Ham manager to unsettle Spurs' star man Gareth Bale, stating that he believes the Welsh star is worth £50 million and saying that "there could be (another club) from another country that decides could be the man."
These mind games are all par for the course before London derbies, and personally I think it's rather flattering that Villas-Boas has seen fit to take a knock at our manager's methods; it certainly does a fair bit of harm to Tottenham fans' longstanding claim that this game is our "cup final" and that they don't care about us. You might not, lads, but your manager certainly does!
By Alex Shilling, News Editor
@alexshilling
No comments:
Post a Comment