The north London outfit sit only five points off 4th place in the Premier League, but results such as the 3-0 loss to West Ham, the 1-0 defeat at the hands of Newcastle and the 6-0 thumping from Manchester City didn’t aid his cause. These results, coupled with the aforementioned humbling on Sunday, conclusively contributed to his sacking.
While Spurs sit on 27 points, one better off than at the same stage last term, the quality of football on offer has left a lot to be desired, in spite of Spurs spending more than £100m on new players over the summer on the back of Gareth Bale’s sale to Real Madrid. Murmurs of discontent amongst supporters had been growing louder after Villas-Boas criticised the supporters on the back of a 1-0 win over Hull and it was little surprise to have seen his position at Spurs become untenable.
Naturally, the lack of goals this term has proven a problem for the club. Last campaign, when up against teams that were able to limit Spurs’ goalscoring opportunities, Premier League player of the season Bale was able to secure the three points single handedly with one of his 21 league strikes, but without the talismanic Welshman, the team has been feeble in front of goal.
It’s perhaps telling that in the second half of the season, Spurs managed to win just once in the league without Bale scoring. Moreover, the team currently boasts a conversion rate of only 5.0 per cent, with that return the poorest in the Premier League. Last season, that figure stood at 9.1 per cent. Regardless of the feeling that the side had ‘sold Elvis to sign the Beatles’, the sale of Bale hampered Spurs.
Nonetheless, little has changed with regards to the build up play in Spurs’ attacks. The club was averaging 17.9 shots per game last term, while that has only dropped marginally to 17.4 this season. In both campaigns, Spurs created an average of 1.3 clear-cut chances per game.
Unfortunately for Villas-Boas, the fact he failed to alter this approach arguably cost him his job. Without the goals from Bale to drag the team out of the mire and nobody able to replicate his performances, this inability to consistently break down the most steadfast of opposition hindered their pursuit to build on their fifth-placed finish last season.
Interestingly, this was also the first time in Villas-Boas' career that he has been in charge of a team for a second year after only spending a solitary term in charge of Académica and Porto, before his sacking as Chelsea boss less than 12 months after his appointment. This leads to the notion that the 36-year-old simply didn’t know how to change his approach having never previously needed to do so.
In unchartered waters and sinking rather than swimming, the young boss was reported to have lost the will to fight for his position at White Hart Lane and to the hardy Spurs fan looking in, the severing of ties on Monday between man and club came as little shock. The departure of Bale wouldn’t have aided his cause, but his lack of plan B in order to adjust the system in order to benefit the new signings meant performances were more negative than positive this term.
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