AVB's success in taking Spurs to a new level makes his critics look plain foolish



Long, long ago, I knew a scribe who specialised in talent-spotting football managers. After diligent trawls through boardrooms and boot rooms, he would tap his nose and divulge a name: ‘I’m told that this feller Clough/Atkinson/Ferguson could well be one to watch.’

His judgment was acute and his delight in their progress was a joy to behold. Whenever a trophy was won or a title secured, he wore the smug smile of one who had expected nothing less.

Of course, they were different, less complicated days. It is difficult to imagine my friend murmuring: ‘I’ve had some very encouraging reports of a lad called Luis Andre de Pina Cabral e Villas-Boas.’ And yet, since he was an excellent judge, he would surely have recognised the extravagant potential.

For one of the happiest aspects of the entire season has been an increasing awareness that Villas-Boas might have something wonderful to offer the English game. With neither fuss nor clamour or any of those arch, self-dramatising eruptions which have characterised the career of a rather more famous fellow-countryman, he is producing a Tottenham team who are in tune with the club’s best traditions.



Glory days: Andre Villas-Boas (right) celebrates with Gareth Bale following the Welshman's late winner at West Ham

And he is doing it, moreover, with dignity; an increasingly rare quality in his precarious profession. It was the kind of dignity he revealed on that day, 12 months past, when he stood on the touchline at West Bromwich, watching his Chelsea side surrender with a feeble, uncaring apology of a performance.

‘You’re getting sacked in the morning,’ sang the merciless Black Country choir, and they were right. The players had rid themselves of an unwanted manager. For them, it must have seemed like a kind of triumph.

He knew all this, of course, but he did not round on the people who had effectively betrayed him.

Instead, he apologised for the performance and acknowledged the need to do ‘much, much better’; almost certainly knowing he would not be given the chance. You found yourself hoping that other openings would quickly present themselves, since there was a sense that he had important things to offer. In the event, unemployment lasted barely four months.

And he is doing it, moreover, with dignity; an increasingly rare quality in his precarious profession. It was the kind of dignity he revealed on that day, 12 months past, when he stood on the touchline at West Bromwich, watching his Chelsea side surrender with a feeble, uncaring apology of a performance.

Perhaps because of his youth — he is only 35 — possibly on account of his nationality, Villas-Boas has been persistently undervalued by English football. An unbeaten League title season at Porto along with victory in the Europa League — at 33, he was the youngest manager ever to win a European trophy — persuaded Roman Abramovich to take him to Chelsea. But those achievements did not impress the Premier League, which persisted in regarding him as a callow interloper.



His English is almost too good, his intellect too sharp, his distaste for matey back-slapping too obvious. And, anyway, he is The Man Who Replaced Harry Redknapp at Tottenham, a fact which does not endear him to the touchline fraternity. Villas-Boas was still settling into the Spurs job when Redknapp observed: ‘These days you are getting [from managers] 70-page dossiers on this and that. Bulls**t can baffle brains at times.’

A Special One: Villas-Boas is hoisted aloft by his Porto players after beating Braga to win the Europa League two years ago

The gibe was widely believed to have been aimed at his successor at Tottenham. The young manager retorted: ‘It is not about the manager, it is about the players. It is the players that take us to success and different managers have different leadership styles.’ It was an impeccably correct response.

But the skirmish was no more than a trivial diversion. Far more important was his task of providing football which was both attractive and effective, of augmenting the work which Redknapp had carried out at Spurs and lifting it to a new level. His progress has become more apparent by the weeks and months.



Taking shape: Tottenham - who trounced Inter Milan 3-0 on Thursday - last tasted defeat in the Premier League in December, with their unbeaten run stretching to 12 games

Tottenham are now recognisably the team of Villas-Boas. The results have been remarkable, the players are responding full-heartedly and, just as important, the Spurs crowd sing of the manager as if he had always been part of the fixtures and fittings at White Hart Lane.

All this has been accomplished by remaining true to the principles which served him so well back in Porto. Clearly, he has adapted and improved his methods in the course of a brief career but the notion that his experience at Chelsea prompted a radical transformation of his managerial philosophy is palpably absurd.

He does what he does and he does it rather well, far better than those early, glib dismissals of his talent would have us believe.

A formidable man is Villas-Boas. I doubt that my old talent-spotting friend would ever have come to terms with his extended name but I know he would have approved of that promising lad they call AVB.

A tweet too far from witless Vaughan

Stirring it up: Michael Vaughan posted a series of colourful tweets this week

There was once an England cricketer who would never read newspaper previews of Test matches.



‘I don’t like people going on about how well England are going to play,’ he would say. ‘We might be up against, say, the Aussies or West Indies. No point in annoying them, is there?’



I recalled his remarks when I saw the curious Twitterings of the former England captain, Michael Vaughan, last week. Vaughan (right) has apparently decided that his role in this Ashes year is that of tub-thumping Aussie-baiter.



His tweets arrived day by rib-tickling day: ‘What do you call a great Australian cricketer? Retired.’ ‘What do you call an Aussie with a 100 by his name? A Bowler.’



‘What do you call an Aussie with a bottle of champagne? A waiter.’ Naturally, he didn’t wish to be misunderstood: ‘This isn’t arrogant in any way but I think England are better than them in all areas,’ he explained.



Then, in distant Dunedin, England were knocked over for 167 in their first innings against New Zealand. Vaughan was apoplectic.

‘There is no excuse for England’s rank complacency,’ he said. ‘England didn’t respect the game. They took the mickey out of Mr Cricket.’



Fortunately, he knew precisely why this had come to pass. ‘England’s mindset has been over-confident,’ he announced, like a man for whom irony is a perfect stranger.



I suspect there is a lesson to be learned from this little episode. With any luck, Michael Vaughan may find the wit to learn it.

Football goes swimming with sharks

A report by the Office of Fair Trading has given 50 of Britain’s biggest payday loan firms 12 weeks to clean up their activities.



Among these legal loan sharks is Wonga, the one with the 4,214 per cent interest rate.



In a civilised world, the Government would legislate to cap these obscene rates. Certainly the national sport would have no truck with such exploitation of the poor and the desperate. Sadly, we do not live in such a world.

