Imagining the Tottenham Team Had Tim Sherwood Remained in Charge

Tim Sherwood was on top of the world the last time he walked down the White Hart Lane tunnel in a managerial capacity. His recently inherited, resurgent Aston Villa side had just won 1-0—a result that would help secure their Premier League safety—and against the club that had dispensed with his services 11 months earlier.

Tottenham Hotspur and Aston Villa meet again at the Lane on Monday without Sherwood in charge of either. His similarly brief tenure with the latter coming to an end on Oct. 25 following their eighth defeat in 10 Premier League games in 2015-16. The salvage job and run to the FA Cup final holding no sway amid worries of another relegation battle ensuing.

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Villa are still essentially the 46-year-old's team. In places, Spurs do not look a whole lot different in terms of personnel to what they may have had the academy boss-turned-head coach remained in charge in north London.

Current Spurs boss Mauricio Pochettino has undoubtedly benefited from the young players his predecessor helped progress to the first team, a couple of whom Sherwood looked to be in the process of establishing as key parts of his own side had he remained in charge.

Harry Kane's Spurs debut came under Harry Redknapp in 2011. A couple of years on, having benefited from varying experiences out on loan, the striker was beginning to hint at his firepower in fleeting first-team opportunities granted him by Andre Villas-Boas.

It was not until Sherwood was installed as the Portuguese's replacement that Kane began to be considered as a more serious first-team option. Gradually handed more minutes, he finished the season with three goals and starting recognition ahead of expensive signing Roberto Soldado.

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Where Pochettino mostly restricted Kane to cup duty early on in his tenure, the young man will almost certainly have started for Sherwood's team heading into 2014-15. If he had scored even half of the 30 he would net for the Argentinian, you suspect he would still be leading the line for Spurs in this imagined present day.

Nabil Bentaleb had not featured competitively for Tottenham prior to Sherwood introducing him off the bench in the coach's first Premier League game in charge. Coincidentally, that was a 3-2 win over Pochettino's Southampton.

With no previous senior experience, there was naturally a slight tentativeness about Bentaleb compared to fellow youngsters such as Kane. But that also spoke of the considerable faith Sherwood had in the teenager. Allowing him time to familiarise himself with the Premier League, he persevered with his protege ahead of more experienced midfielders.

By the time his coach left, Bentaleb was preparing to participate in Algeria's World Cup campaign. That validation of his belief in the player will have given Sherwood the confidence to make the player a cornerstone of his midfield moving forward.

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Sherwood's Spurs were very much a loosely defined attacking outfit. Freedom of thought and intuition was encouraged sometimes at the expense of shape. On their worse days, it meant a side unsure of itself, but at least it initially led to more positive play than seen in the somewhat stilted last days of Villas-Boas' tenure.

Ryan Mason (out on loan at the time) and Andros Townsend (already a squad member but mostly injured during the period) would likely have been given opportunities by Sherwood moving forward too. The more intriguing academy-related possibility in regard to the shape of the former Spurs captain's side would have been the role of Tom Carroll.

"We miss someone who moves that ball and passes it between the lines very quickly, and he assists the assister," Sherwood said of the midfielder to the Tottenham and Wood Green Journal's Ben Pearce, then on loan with Queens Park Rangers. "I think Tom Carroll was that player—he can do that, absolutely."

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Had he backed up his words with Carroll, you could picture him being key in Sherwood engineering more structure in his Spurs side. The pivot point for a midfield trio of him, Bentaleb and Mason perhaps, or maybe just a straight-up partner in the central duo of a midfield four. Some encouraging efforts this season from Carroll suggest he may have been up for the challenge.

The more difficult part in imagining Sherwood's Spurs in late 2015 is the fate of the more experienced players he managed. Who would have been kept on around his academy boys? Who would have even wanted to stay?

After a positive start as Spurs manager, less flattering results heading into the spring led to Sherwood publicly criticising his players, most notably questioning them after a 4-0 defeat away at Chelsea (see his seething Sky Sports post-match interview below).

Having helped revitalise Emmanuel Adebayor that season, his pursuit of the striker this past summer, per Sky Sports, suggests he is one player who would have been kept on. Given the emergence of Kane and the personal issues that ultimately affected his 2014-15 form, though, it is less certain he would still be leading the Spurs attack at this point.

Others who performed well for him, such as Christian Eriksen and Kyle Walker, will also have been prominent in his plans. But even more experienced senior players might not have been so keen at having their efforts so publicly scrutinised. That would have probably been fine with him too.

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"I want players who want to play for the club and they've got between now and the end of the season to show that," Sherwood also said after that Chelsea game, per the Guardian's James Riach. "I don't think at any football club any player should be doing the club a favour by playing for them."

Working as a pundit later in 2014, his harsh criticism of Jan Vertonghen after another loss to Chelsea, relayed by the Mirror's Darren Lewis, gave the impression he would have been one such departure. Others would surely have made way too as Sherwood sought to put his imprint on the team.

Whom he would have looked to bring in is definitely an unknown. There is a good chance we would not be watching players such as Eric Dier and Son Heung-Min at Spurs right now.

As it is, Sherwood's Spurs remains very much a hypothetical. A different route the north London club chose not to go down.

Aston Villa have opted not to, either, giving us even less an idea of what his version of Tottenham may have looked like had he been kept on. With his struggles in Birmingham, that is probably something the White Hart Lane faithful are grateful for.