Tim Sherwood on his Spurs reign, that win record and how he set the platform for Mauricio Pochettino's success

Exclusive interview: Sherwood left Tottenham after his six months in charge with the best league win record in the club's history, something he is still proud of to this day

The former Tottenham and Aston Villa manager is waiting on his next opportunity (TAG)

Tim Sherwood takes a sip of his Corona and casts his mind back four years, to when André Villas-Boas had lost his job in the wake of Tottenham Hotspur’s 5-0 home defeat to Liverpool, and Daniel Levy asked him to “assume first-team coaching duties” for the immediate future. He accepted without hesitation. It was his first ever senior management position.

Tottenham, it seemed, were in the midst of an all-too familiar crisis. A few days later, Sherwood’s contract was extended until the end of the 2014/15 season, with the club’s official statement to announce the news beginning with the somewhat apologetic acknowledgement that Levy was “extremely reluctant to make a change mid-season”. The news divided fans and players alike.

Sherwood was a rookie, but no experience was needed to know exactly the kind of situation he had on his hands.

“There was a very negative vibe at the club when I took over and the crowd wasn’t happy,” he tells The Independent, leaning back on his chair at a Soho hotel, now two years out of club management. “The club was on the slide. They were down and needed stabilising. Look, they needed someone at the time and there was nobody else to come in, but I was there and knew the players. It was an opportunity for me and I took it.”

What happened next depends entirely on your point of view on Sherwood, how high a club like Tottenham should set their aspirations and how much slack young British managers should be afforded in the Premier League. For the majority, Sherwood’s short reign is remembered as underwhelming, with Spurs suffering four-goal defeats to Manchester City, Chelsea and Liverpool and finishing sixth in the league table, three points behind Everton and ten behind Arsenal.

Unsurprisingly, Sherwood doesn’t see things like that. Spurs were seventh when he took the job. He handed Harry Kane his full league debut. And, as he was so keen on reminding everybody, at 59.09 per cent he had the best win ratio of any Tottenham manager in the Premier League era. “My record here is second to none,” he bristled after the club’s final home match of the season, shortly before he was sacked.

Sherwood handed Kane his first league start (Getty)

Four years on, and that number – 59.09 per cent – doesn’t take too long to come up again, as Sherwood mounts the defence for his Tottenham tenure. He flatly rejects the suggestion his time at the club has come to be seen as a failure. “No, it was never a negative thing,” he insists. In fact, he believes he provided the platform for Pochettino's success. “I always knew I was only getting until the end of the season and my win percentage was 59 per cent – which is high," he adds. "And when the guy they have now took over from me, it wasn’t broken. It was a steady ship and he has now added to it.”

There weren’t too many bad apples at Spurs but most knew I wasn’t going to be there for the long-term

Tim Sherwood

Perhaps Mauricio Pochettino did inherit a steady ship, but it was undoubtedly sailing through choppy waters. It’s difficult to locate the exact moment, but at some point during the second-half of his first and last season in charge of White Hart Lane, Sherwood switched. With his back against the wall, having fallen out with a number of senior players and an unhealthy chunk of White Hart Lane, he went on the attack: robustly defending his record at every turn and dealing out a series of bitter post-match barbs.

“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,” his former assistant, Les Ferdinand, later told the Guardian. “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.”

In his recently published book, Brave New World: Inside Pochettino’s Spurs, the Argentine reveals he found the club in a state of listlessness. “The Tottenham dressing room was full of figures who at some point in their careers had been considered stars but had lost their way,” he writes. “And the team didn’t come first. Two weeks after coming here I remember saying to Hugo Lloris, ‘What am I doing here?’”

Pochettino had his doubts immediately after joining Spurs (Getty)

Sherwood clashed with the likes of Jan Vertonghen, Erik Lamela and Paulinho. He doesn’t dispute he had problems with some of the club’s highest-paid players. “A lot of them were wrangling to leave because there had been a lot of uncertainty,” he admits. “There weren’t too many bad apples – but many of them knew I wasn’t going to be around for the long-term, probably though their agents or something.

“That’s ultimately why I felt the young players deserved their opportunity and there really wasn’t any reason for them to not have the same opportunities as the players that had been brought to the club for between £20-40m. I gave them a chance and, look, then the likes of Kane, Bentaleb, (Danny) Rose and (Kyle) Walker were all integrated into the team.”

It’s this commitment to bringing through young players that Sherwood sees as his biggest similarity with Pochettino, somebody he thinks he could have worked well alongside of.

Sherwood did not always see eye-to-eye with some of the highest-paid players (Getty)

“I admire what he has done,” he says. “I am just glad that after me somebody came in with the same mindset that I have, which is to give the kids an opportunity to go and play if they are good enough. A lot of people doubted Kane, for example, but like Gareth Southgate at England, I knew those kids and knew they were good enough.

“And then when Pochettino came in, he had obviously all seen them rehearse, hadn’t he? So he takes over, sticks with them and they obviously all do very well. Some he got rid of but they were sold on for a good price and it’s all helped to pay for a nice little training ground.

“So he has done a really fantastic job and, in hindsight, if I'd have known the way he works and the way he likes to develop young players, which is what I like to do, I could have been tempted into staying there to help him out.”

With his eventual successor (Getty)

But in the end, Sherwood’s always rocky relationship with the fans was beyond repair, and Levy felt it was impossible for him to continue. Sherwood knew the writing was on the wall, and in his final game of charge hauled a fan out of the crowd, threw his infamous gilet at him and pointed him in the direction of the manager’s chair.

“That guy’s an expert, seriously,” Sherwood joked, after the 3-0 win over Aston Villa. “Every week he tells me what to do. So I have given him the opportunity to do the job.” He would go on to manage Villa next, taking them to an FA Cup final and saving them from relegation before being sacked the following season. A doomed spell as Swindon’s Director of Football followed, and he has been waiting on his next opportunity ever since.

“I’m interested in any job,” he says. “I’ve had a few chats with clubs at home and abroad and I wouldn’t rule out development coaching again to be honest.”

He pauses. “If somebody wants to show me the same commitment that I would show to the job, then great. But with a lot of the jobs I have discussed since Villa, the clubs have been more keen to speak about the divorce before the marriage. They just want to talk about what happens when it goes wrong and I want the opportunity to build something.”

Sherwood soundbites

The former Spurs and Villa manager on...

Harry Kane: He is so strong mentally. Managers used to come to me and ask why he didn’t score on loan. I would say: ‘Well send Luka Modric to Leyton Orient and see how he does’.

Daniel Levy: He deserves a lot of credit. He has only ever wanted what is best for the club. Our relationship was always a good one and it still is.

The north London rivalry: Spurs are much nearer to winning the league than Arsenal. But Arsenal always seem to produce a result when their backs are against the wall.

André Villas-Boas: He was playing a brand of football geared towards Gareth Bale. And then Bale left and wasn’t replaced and things started to fall apart.

Tim Sherwood was speaking on behalf of TAG Heuer to promote the TAG Heuer Premier League Pressure Test. TAG Heuer is the Official Timekeeping Partner of the Premier League.