It is unclear precisely when Tim Sherwood went rogue during his managerial stint at Tottenham Hotspur in the second half of last season. But Les Ferdinand, who was one of his assistants at the time, is perfectly clear on the crucial aspect of the chicken-and-egg debate.
“Without a shadow of a doubt, Tim’s outspokenness came after the realisation that we weren’t going to be there [beyond the end of the season],” Ferdinand says. “Tim felt that he had to protect his own corner. Sometimes, if people are not banging the drum for you, you have to bang it yourself. And you have to bang the tambourine. And play the harmonica as well.”
Ferdinand, the Queens Park Rangers director of football, laughs at the image he has conjured. Sherwood was not quite the one-man band, as he had the full support of Ferdinand and Chris Ramsey, the other assistant,who is now the manager at QPR. But he and his friends came to feel isolated and their dismissal by the chairman, Daniel Levy, was inevitable long before the club confirmed it on Tuesday 13 May.
The previous evening, Sherwood had been in the White Hart Lane dugout for the last time, as the manager of the Guest XI in Ledley King’s testimonial. The announcement of his name before the kick-off had been booed by a section of the crowd.
Two days previously, Sherwood had been in charge of Tottenham for the last time – coincidentally against Aston Villa, the club he brings to White Hart Lane on Saturday. That was the game in which Sherwood beckoned a Tottenham fan from the seats behind him, handed him his famous gilet and told him to get on with managing the team.
“That guy’s an expert, seriously,” Sherwood said, after the 3-0 home win. “Every week he tells me what to do. So I have given him the opportunity to do the job.”
Sherwood kept the one-liners coming until the very end. Where might that fan be in the betting for the next Tottenham manager, he was asked. “No chance, he’s English,” Sherwood shot back.
His comments invariably went down well with the press. Let us not pretend here that Sherwood was anything other than a dream to write about during his off-message period at Tottenham, nor that he did not win the admiration of journalists with his chutzpah. His honesty in trying circumstances was refreshing.
But they went down rather less well at boardroom level and among plenty of supporters, who came to view Sherwood as a pantomime villain and often the source of embarrassment. In their eyes, he beat the teams the club ought to be beating and lost to the ones that they most wanted to beat. He also flunked in the cups.
Sherwood’s most noticeable achievement was his 59% win-ratio in the Premier League, which stacked up favourably against his predecessors and continues to do so with his successor, Mauricio Pochettino, who stands on 51.6%. But as Sherwood promoted his numbers, so it seemed to jar in certain quarters and both he and they were disparaged. There will be no applause in the 59th minute of Saturday’s game.
Sherwood’s reception on his first return to White Hart Lane as the Villa manager is likely to be mixed and his Tottenham legacy is complicated.
He took over a struggling team in mid-season, one who had been criticised for their uninspiring football under André Villas-Boas, and he oversaw an upturn, even if Levy would complain that “in games where we gained maximum points, our football was not always what we have come to expect and associate with our club”.
There were good wins over Everton, Manchester United and Southampton, together with a heartening faith in the club’s academy players, with whom Sherwood had worked in his roles as youth technical co-ordinator and head of football development. Harry Kane and Nabil Bentaleb were the most obvious beneficiaries.
“Tim Sherwood was the first one to trust me and put me in,” Bentaleb said. “Most of the credit I have is for him. I will be forever grateful to him.” Sherwood also got Emmanuel Adebayor to fire again.
Yet memories at the club remain fresh of Sherwood’s ability to put noses out of joint – he made it pretty clear how he felt about Jan Vertonghen, Paulinho and Érik Lamela, for example – and of what has come to be considered as his penchant for rewriting history. He was not solely responsible for the development of the club’s home-grown players.
Sherwood is a lad and there were those who frowned on his ways. He eschewed the manager’s office at the training ground in favour of a table in the canteen, at which he sat with Ferdinand and Ramsey, and dished out stick to anyone within range. The joke was that it was like a pub.
More seriously, Sherwood turned up late for the Europa League tie at home to Benfica on 13 March of last year and was unable to give the pre-match team-talk. He had been stuck in traffic, which, as anybody who has battled to reach White Hart Lane will tell you, can happen. But it is also fair to say that the squad’s more experienced players were not impressed. Tottenham were beaten 3-1.
In the previous game, the team had lost 4-0 at Chelsea. They arrived in good form – Sherwood’s league record at that point read: W8 D2 L2 – but, by then, his long-term Tottenham future, or the lack of it, was at the top of the news agenda. After the Chelsea defeat he not only slated his players for their lack of “guts” but rounded on the board for the “deafening silence” with regard to his prospects.
Sherwood firmly believed when he signed his 18-month contract in December 2013 that he would get the full term to implement his ideas. Levy, though, would reveal the deal contained a break clause in the summer, which he chose to exercise.
“We felt that if we did a good job it was going to get extended for the extra 12 months and, maybe, we would sit down at the end of the season and negotiate longer,” Ferdinand said. “But, from day one, every single press conference that Tim went into he was answering questions about his future. Everybody, outside of us, realised that maybe this was just until the end of the season.
“If there is no problem, you’re not asked the question but there obviously was a problem. Tim always answered it honestly. Whether that antagonised Daniel, I don’t know but, certainly, no one came out and said that Tim was here for the foreseeable future. No one said anything so in the end, you have to protect your corner.
“One of the difficulties is that when players know you’re not going to be around next season, some of them are not too bothered. You want people to be professional but it’s very difficult to get the best out of them.”
Ferdinand talked of how Sherwood’s belief in the club’s academy players was so emphatic he told Levy he would not need to make any signings during the January transfer window. “I don’t know whether it was music to Daniel’s ears or a panic-up,” Ferdinand said. “In the past, you get used to a manager saying he needs more and more signings.
“Tim put his reputation on the line over the young players. He was true to himself and I don’t think he will have any regrets. Pochettino has done a very good job, he got them to the League Cup final but, other than that … When you look at the stats, Tim did an excellent job.”
