Both bosses are feeling the heat but is AVB unfairly maligned?
Andre Villas-Boas took the Chelsea job last year with the apparent remit that he must usher out the old guard at Stamford Bridge in order to succeed. The club's UEFA Champions League triumph just 76 days after his sacking proved the Portuguese coach spectacularly wrong.
But with Eden Hazard and Oscar now transforming the team's style alongside Juan Mata, the possibility remains that perhaps Chelsea had appointed the right man at the wrong time.
The 34-year-old hasn't had to wait long for another top job in England. And the perception is that Villas-Boas is fortunate to be given an opportunity at Tottenham so soon after his Chelsea struggles. In truth, there is a feeling that - if not afforded time - he once again finds himself remarkably unlucky to be at the helm at the present moment.
Villas-Boas has joined a club where expectations are particularly high. The man he has replaced is keen to crank up those expectations.
"The chairman at Tottenham obviously feels he can do the job there," Harry Redknapp told The Sun in the summer. "He's certainly got the players. He's got the players there to be a top four team every year and challenge for the championship. That's my opinion. They have got the ability there and I think that will happen. In the last few years, we've come from nowhere to be a top-four team. The next step is to win the championship."
It is clear that even a repeat of last season's fourth-place finish would be framed as a failure. And yet, with Chelsea having invested heavily since finishing sixth last term, the reality is that Villas-Boas was always likely to face an uphill task merely to stand still this season. But as Redknapp would no doubt attest, the expectations at White Hart Lane are not a media construct - they are very real.
High expectations
"Natives are seriously restless," claimed Daily Mirror reporter John Cross on Twitter at the weekend. "I get the impression AVB is just one defeat away from civil war at White Hart Lane." That defeat came against Wigan in the form of a 1-0 defeat and the boos of the crowd duly followed.
Of course, Redknapp's Spurs suffered the same fate at home to Wigan in 2010. And Villas-Boas has actually picked up more points in his first 10 games in charge than his predecessor managed in his last 10. But without the same goodwill having been built up, there is a danger that the questions being asked will soon follow a familiar pattern for the former Blues boss.
"The biggest concern for Tottenham supporters is that the problems Villas-Boas experienced at Chelsea are starting to resurface in north London," wrote Jonathan Liew in the Telegraph. "Patchy performances, poor results, unhappy players and dissatisfied supporters, baffled by his tactical tinkering, are leading to a sense of deja-vu."
The unhappy player in this instance was Jermain Defoe - raging after being withdrawn, despite scoring just one goal in his last 10 hours of football for Spurs. The forward has been given an extended run in attack as doubts remain over Emmanuel Adebayor's fitness and it is surely that more immediate issue of injuries that has clouded the early months of Villas-Boas' reign more substantially than any supposed managerial incompetence.
Forced to replace the irreplaceable in Luka Modric, Villas-Boas had briefly found a convincing combination in Sandro and Mousa Dembele that could provide Spurs with protection and penetration in the centre. By the 23-minute mark last weekend, Sandro had joined Dembele and Scott Parker on the sidelines and the home side were left with a makeshift midfield to go with their injury-ravaged back-line. All the while Joao Moutinho, the man Villas-Boas had been desperate to sign, continues to do his thing for Porto instead.
Football fans are invariably unswayed by managers bemoaning selection problems. They want performances and they want them twice a week. But the here and now culture seems particularly cruel on Villas-Boas, who has even suffered the misfortune of Gareth Bale being required at his partner's bedside ahead of his much-hyped showdown with Chelsea last month.
He will take it, in the knowledge that this is a long-term project that should not be derailed by a poor result while the club is only out of the Champions League places on goal difference. But that's what they told him over in west London too. "I will never accept it," Villas-Boas said of his Chelsea sacking by Roman Abramovich. "I told him that for me, it was him quitting on me when he had been so much involved at the beginning in bringing me in and he was also [the one] who was not putting up to the things that he promised."
There are no suggestions Spurs chairman Daniel Levy is about to quit on Andre Villas-Boas just yet. But if there's one thing the Portuguese coach has learned in 2012 it's that long-term projects aren't what they used to be.
