Although Roman Pavlyuchenko seems to be the current favourite among the Spurs faithful on the back of his goal scoring exploits, manager Harry Redknapp doesn’t appear to be a massive fan of the Russian.
Regarding Pavlyuchenko, Redknapp has been quoted as saying, “when he wants to play and wants to work he’s great.” He has been a bit more positive about the striker since those comments but I still feel like it’s painful for the Spurs boss to say anything complimentary where Pav is concerned.
I don’t know what’s gone on during training, maybe he is lazy, but generally when Pavlychenko has been given a chance to play, he has scored. While I’m a bit unsure about the rest of his game, you can’t argue with a striker that gets in good positions and puts the ball in the back of the net.
I think you can understand the reasons why Pav would have got disheartened and perhaps a little lazy since Harry’s arrival. When a player signs for that type of money, he would expect to be getting regular football. Not even making it onto the Tottenham bench at times must have hurt. Maybe he didn’t handle himself in the best possible way but a lot of this can be put down to his agent and them trying to get a move away from the Lane during the transfer window.
It must have been even more frustrating seeing Robbie Keane be allowed out on loan as well as Eidur Gudjohnsen’s arrival. Pav probably thought that he would be in the exact same position before the transfer window opened, sitting on the bench if he was lucky. With no World Cup to showcase his talents in, it was looking like being an awful season for the Russian.
Luckily, he took the opportunity of a twenty minute window against Wigan to turn things around. His sudden appearance in the team has made the season more interesting at a time when it was becoming a bit stale and will hopefully give our other strikers something to think about.
I’m not totally convinced by Pav’s overall play but he’s scoring for fun and you can’t help but love him! Why doesn’t Harry?
