Tim Sherwood has lifted the lid on his brief spell as Tottenham Hotspur manager, discussing how he brought Emmanuel Adebayor back to the first team and why he does not resent chairman Daniel Levy for sacking him.
Former Spurs midfielder Sherwood took over at White Hart Lane after Andre Villas-Boas was sacked in December 2013 and he immediately brought Adebayor back to the first team.
Villas-Boas had demoted the Togo striker to training with the youth teams - whom Sherwood had been coaching - but Adebayor made a big impact on his return to first team action, scoring eight goals in 10 Premier League matches.
And Sherwood believes that Spurs players such as Adebayor had been restricted by Villas-Boas' coaching and flourished under a more expressive style of play.
"I knew I was holding fort before Pochettino came in," Sherwood told the Daily Mail. "I also knew there was no point in taking over from Andre Villas-Boas and not changing anything.
"He got sacked for a reason. They weren't winning enough football matches, scoring enough goals, or playing with enough freedom.
"So I looked at the players. Emmanuel Adebayor, for instance, was being isolated, training with me and the kids.
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"I always made sure he had the right attitude otherwise I wouldn't have had him there with the boys anyway. I brought him back, and we won more than we lost."
Remarkably, Sherwood's 59.1% win percentage is the best of any Spurs manager in the Premier League but he was sacked by Levy at the end of the 2013/14 season.
Despite this, the former Blackburn Rovers man maintains that he has a "very good" relationship with Levy.
"No, because I knew. I knew the job. I knew the script," Sherwood responded when asked if he felt hard done by after being sacked.
"I knew he was ready to come in and they needed someone in the meantime. It would've been different if I didn't know. Perhaps I would've liked that opportunity, like Ole Gunnar Solskjaer at United. But I knew it wasn't my job."
