Belated Grievances

Oh I really don’t want to have to write this. It’s late because after getting home from the game, and all of yesterday, I was tired. Tired of watching the same performance for a year. Tired of watching us waste our chances; from our failure to capitalise on our status as Champions League contenders, to missing out on the right players, in the right positions at the right time, to our failure to convert presentable chances in the games.

While Levy was pooling all his effort into getting another brass farthing out of the spammers for the loan of Keane in the January transfer window, Man City got their £27 million business of signing Dzeko done early, and Liverpool were spending £20 million on Luis Suarez. A microcosm of how we do business- exert every bit of effort into recouping an extra tenner on the dregs like Hutton and Bentley, whilst completely blinding ourselves to the bigger picture. This is not how successful businesses are run. Being a master negotiator is one thing; I’m sure he gives the traders down at Romford market a torrid time for the best price on his Persil liquitabs, but is that the yardstick for a great businessman? I’m a million miles from being convinced that the guy is all he’s cracked up to be.

Perhaps he’ll pull a rabbit out of the hat again? Even if it is another talented but not necessarily what we need type (Kaka has been doing the rounds- Jesus ‘aitch), is this the kind of thing a great footballing or financial tactician does? It’s the behaviour of a chancer. A gambler. One of those city traders we love to hate who take a punt. With our money.

The playing staff need to have a long, hard look at themselves as well. Lennon hasn’t performed since before the last World Cup, and is in danger of becoming that fast lad we chuck on in the last 10 to see if we can get at ‘em. Gareth Bale needs to grow a brain and make it snappy. I made excuses for him last year- Always with space to run into, but always ball watching; always blankly gazing back at an exasperated  Modric or BAE, with a look so little-boy-lost, you felt he needed warm milk and a story, and not the demands of Premier League football. He wasn’t fit. Once he’s got the confidence in his limbs, he’ll make those runs. He’s fit enough now and he’s still not doing it, which can only mean a lack of intelligence.

Harry’s team selection was beyond bizarre. Livermore has got a bit more convincing to do, but what was going through his head when he thought Modric and Kranjcar would be better options for protecting the back 4 against the talent that they were going to unleash? A blind leap of faith in a we’ll-score-one-more-than-you, instead of showing sufficient respect to the task in hand and being hopelessly out thought.

As for Modric, Sunday was the final insult. Regardless of whether he asked not to be played or not, after everything he’s said over the summer, he still got the biggest cheer when the names were read out over the tannoy. After being ‘alwight-saaaaahn-gis-an-hour-then-yeah’-ed off, to a few boo’s, but overwhelming cheers, there wasn’t even a small, cursory hand-in-the-air thanks for the people who had paid to see him for the last 3 years, and who he’d insulted so publicly by demanding a move to another club. I didn’t think my opinion of him could sink any lower. If only that was the only unpleasant surprise of the afternoon.

I can’t find the effort to talk at length about City. Their fans singing ‘we are staying up’ and ‘we’re just a s**t Man United’ with a tongue-in-cheek sense of farce in regards to their ‘meteoric rise’ (copyright every hackneyed Man City article) brought the only smile of the afternoon across my glum chops. If Sunday is a barometer of their season, those fans are going to see a lot of exceptionally talented footballers playing with skill, vision and terrifying movement. Good luck to them, hope they can get one over on their own Arsenal.

Sorry if this bursts anyone’s bubble, but having sat through that and taken a bitter reality pill, I’ve got another one coming. Tottenham Hotspur are not going to win the Premier League this year. They won’t even come second.

I’ll let that sink in for a minute.

Yep, you heard me, and on top of that, our chances of being one of the 3 best teams in the country come the middle of May 2012 are pretty remote.

In other breaking news, Queen Victoria’s dead.

We don’t really do perspective and reality round our way, but there it is. What makes us so special that we are immune from the limitations of our station; we all point at Stoke or Bolton finishing in the top 10 and pompously state ‘they’ve done well’, but round our way, we rope in an ageing goalkeeper, and a loan striker not good enough to even make the squad of a team we claim are our rivals, and then act with incredulity that we get turned over by the summers 2 biggest spenders? This game is about glory. It’s also about us getting a f**kin’ grip, and realising that the benchmarks of the past have been moved.

After getting bashed 1-5 at home, there is no mileage in trying to skim over any of this by saying it was a bad day at the office. Serious questions need to be asked by all involved, or we could find ourselves deep in the smelly stuff, quicker than you can say ‘2 points 8 games’. What I will say is that once these last 2 games are put to rest internally; there are 16 teams in the Premier League that we can realistically finish above. This is by no means a guarantee- we need to get the right people in and quickly. If Scott Parker being a Tottenham player means that I’ll never have to see a Modric and Kranjcar central midfield pairing try to stem the flow of attacks from the likes of Toure, Nasri, Silva, Aguero etc, then fine. Whatever your thoughts on the guy, there’s no argument that his leadership and ability to protect our defence would have made a difference.

In the cold light of these 2 results, I can still see us battling it out for fourth place.

A Warning. To: Man City. From: History

Pretty dull stuff last night, but job done and nice to get a look at some of the young prospects. Impressed with Kane’s general awareness, and Carroll’s speed of thought and feet. No criticism for any of the rest, even if they didn’t dazzle, so let’s wait until they give interviews saying they should be starting every week before we get on their backs. To mirror the general mood around the Lane last night, this blogs attention now turns to Sunday and the visit of Manchester City.

Despite our little flurry of transfer activity, including the capture of central midfielder Iago Falque Silva on loan from Juve, and the signing of Adebayor, and EVEN IF we were to get Diarra, we still wouldn’t come close to this lot. You may have heard they’ve got a bit of lolly and aren’t afraid to spend it

Uwe Rosler and Shaun ‘The Goat’ Goater have been replaced with a couple of lads from Argentina, and for Georgi Kinkladze and Nicky Summerbee, read David Silva and Samir Nasri, their slightly upgraded modern day equivalents. For every other area of the pitch, a sea of numbers to shock a shekel splashing soccer sheikh. Except that it doesn’t; it just goes on and on, and you can’t help but wonder how much more of the planets footballing talent might have been hoovered up if they were allowed to name more than 25 men in their squad. But we’re not playing a team of numbers, we’re playing a, albeit expensively assembled, group of 11 footballers who are fallible to the pressures of price tags and expectations. And I think we’ll beat them.

Despite a promising start, and without doubting the quality of the individuals in their squad, I still don’t ‘buy’ Manchester City. They remind me of a horse racing game I used to play on Facebook, where you’d start off with a horse, train it up, enter it in races, get prize money, buy more horses, and, if you were patient enough, eventually have a stable full of thoroughbreds, and all the riches you could virtually wish for. However, with the money came expensive temptations, and for a bit of your prize pot, you could buy steroids to artificially enhance the development of your horse. Being a very ethical game player, I was never tempted by such things, but then one day, having achieved relative game success, I thought I’d give the ‘roids a go to see what happened.

It all started out brilliantly. Les Ferdinand was storming all of the races he was entering, and winning me loads of cyber dosh in the process. I was beginning to question my whole approach to this horse racing business, and wondered why I wasted all that time developing and nurturing all those other nags, when I could have just goosed them all up from the start. What kind of a trainer was I, that I was so rigid in my approach, I’d blinded myself to such a lucrative and success-strewn path? I was the Arsene Wenger of the Facebook horse-racing game world! But then, something terrible happened. ‘Les Ferdinand has suffered ‘Roid Rage’ and had to be destroyed’. Oh dear.

There’s a lesson in there somewhere. One minute you’re a thoroughbred champion trotter with all the riches in the world, and the next, you’re doing guest appearances at junior school fetes; turning too off your mash to know where you are. Then, you suddenly you flip out, brain a small child, and you’ve got a tranq pellet in your backside while you foam at the mouth and yearn for the life you once had. I’m not saying this will DEFINITELY happen to Man City, but if this game taught me nothing else, it’s that it probably will.

Ade Buyers With A Job To Finish

So he’s finally signed! Or has he? Yes, yes, he’s ours. Hang on? Isn’t that Kanye? No, no it’s definitely Adebayor. And the guy with only the back of his head showing? Diarra! Definitely him. It’s nailed on. They’re standing with BAE, who else could it be?

Thankfully, all of the twit smoke and daily mirrors seem finally to have been put aside, and we’re just waiting on the official site to announce that Adebayor is a Spurs player. There’ll be no details of his bunce ‘bites lower lip- rubs tips of fingers together* of course, but depending on what news outlet you choose to believe, it would seem we’re picking up a weekly bill of between 75-100k (or 2 days work as Samuel Eto’o might call it) with the option to have him for keepsies at around 12 million at the end of the season. Brillo pads! Expect him ready for debut after the international break to take on Wolves. I’ve said all along that he’s just the kind of forward we’ve been crying out for, and the prospect of him linking up with VdV is certainly enough to get the imagination going, especially when they’re both on song. I can imagine both of them on a bad day will be torturous though. Hey ho, rough with the smooth and all that.

News from a supposedly official Real Madrid account has confirmed that the Diarra deal is all sewn up as well. Permanent transfer this time, 12 million and a 3 year contract. Other reports surfacing this morning are that, fresh from confirming their place at Europe's top table, the Woolwich Wanderers have hijacked the deal and Diarra is now bound for the Sticklebricks Stadium. Just when we thought we were getting somewhere...

As the book closes on the Adebayor on/off saga at least, it would appear the Olympic stadium botheration was all set to follow suit. Tuesday nights London news put some chap from some sort of Olympic legacy doo-dad on my goggle box saying that Tottenham Hotspur had been very silly, had an epiphany in the wake of the riots, and decided to withdraw their legal challenge for them lot giving the stadium to the spammers. Great PR opportunity seized by the Plc thought I; duck out of a no-win situation, commit your support to your beleaguered current home, while currying favour with Government planning/funding types in the process. Not so, it would appear, as our reps turned up to court, all brylcream and shiny shoes, yesterday morning to carry on regardless. What had changed in the intervening 12 hours is unclear, but the elephant in the room is still very much sitting there with a lampshade on its head and not doing a very good job of looking either inconspicuous or comfortable. He’ll be around for a while longer, especially as this latest Judge to hear our woes has said the case is ‘arguable’, and according to @danroan from the twittersphere, ‘’Spurs are effectively arguing that the Newham loan to West Ham constituted state-aid and was therefore illegal under EU law’’. And so it rumbles on.

Back to the present, and we’ve got a job to finish tonight at home to the rabble from the Midlothian Arms. They can’t possibly be any worse than last week, but even with many of the youth team expected to take the field from our collective, we’ll comfortably have enough to make sure we’re in the group stages by the time the final whistle blows, and save practically all of Monday nights wilters for Sunday afternoon. It might not be AC Milan, but it’s a home game damn it, and I for one can’t wait to get back to my seat at White Hart Lane.


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How To Disappear Completely

Whoever writes these Man U v Tottenham scripts needs a holiday. I mean come on, where’s the originality? We’re not asking for Murakami, but honestly, this is like watching the last 10 years of Adam Sandler’s career. Or one of those dreadful talent shows where they pedal out all the freaks early on, a horribly and unnecessarily long bit where nothing really happens, followed by a bargain bin bound Mum-pleaser pay-off at the end. Except there’s never any hits for Tottenham, and Mum pleasing was at a minimum. And there was quite a lot to mull over in that middle bit. I’ve overstretched here.

Positives first. Dawson and Kaboul look like a reasonably solid centre back pairing, and BAE seems to have picked up where he left off as being really quite an excellent full back. As much as I love Gomes and his eccentric genius, Big Bad Brad showed us what we’ve been missing for some time by catching footballs, making saves that he’s expected to, and all manner of other boring, professional flim flam. Bale also looked decent in flashes.

Walker had the same two-bobs that struck Lennon down in the Bernebau, so he’s off the hook. Not terrible from Livermore, but noticeably struggled with the step up in class, while the Niko lovers were given a stark reality check- off the pace and lacking at the top level. I’d still keep him. Much like ourselves, he won’t be asked to play away at United every week. Defoe was Defoe, except this time he wasn’t even threatening enough to be caught offside.

Believe me Rafa, I was just as frustrated at Aaron for not pulling that ball back to you as you were. I sympathised and even got into your head a bit. ‘Who are these clowns I’m playing with?!’. Yes, I said that too. On your behalf. I then sat myself back down, hoped we’d make another couple of those openings, but feared ‘that was probably our big chance’. You didn’t have that luxury of course, but chose to disappear for the final half hour anyway. Unfortunately, you weren’t alone, and once that first goal went in, everyone disappeared. We all saw what happened next. 3 goals was harsh on the balance of the whole game, but it was just punishment for switching off on dangerous ground.

The substitutions were too little and about 15 minutes too late. Regular readers will know I’m no Harry basher, but his inability to change our game plan or personnel in a pro-active rather than reactive way wasn’t pleasant viewing.

Having said all that, I'll say again; we won’t be playing them every week. Travelling without your first choice midfield pairing and any sort of decent forward to OT is about as tough as it gets, and our season doesn’t start and end with this one result. I mean it DID start there, but it’s not ended there, you know? Let’s give it at least 3 games before the knives come out. Anyone who thought we'd be going up to Manchester having conducted minimal business over the summer, to take on a side who've strengthened markedly after finishing last term as Champions, probably needs a bit of a reality check. That's not defeatest, it's how the football world works.

There are 2, maybe 3 teams which are almost certainly, definitely going to finish above us, and we’ve just lost away to the best of them. There are 2, maybe 3 others who, over a whole season, we’ll be competing with for a top 4 spot. I saw 2 of them play on Saturday lunchtime and there was absolutely nothing there for us to be overly worried about. This result doesn’t change any of my expectations for this season.

Same Old Trafford And Nowhere To Run For The Cro-Rat

Patience isn’t a strong point of us Tottenhamers. Having spent the summer endlessly checking the official site for a sniff of a signing, and following all the ITK’s we could possibly dig up- no matter how ludicrous their claims- we then had to wait a further 9 days (aka, an eternity) for our domestic season to start. It’s enough to make you go stir crazy, but as luck would have it, we’ve now got ourselves a light-bite of an opening fixture in Manchester.

Hearts played Chief Wiggum to our ravenous pack of Tottenham attack dogs on Thursday night- starved of competitive action, we leapt upon and mercilessly mauled the first side to tauntingly cross our paths. Impressive as we were, we’ll all be hoping that it was more of a Hearts d’ouvre than a hearty meal that we were feasting on, and that there is plenty of room left for our Devilled Reds main. We all remember the excitement of thrashing the ‘AS Roma Summer Holiday Shopping XI’, only for us to relieve Juande Ramos of gainful employment 6 weeks later, after a couple of points from a relatively large number of games when the real stuff started.

News from OT is that their captain and EPL Player of the Season candidate (or did he win it?) Nemanja Vidic is out for 5 weeks, with other defensive rock Ferdinand also unavailable for at least a week. When I say rock, I mean one of them ones that break quite a bit and need super gluing back together from time to time. With that in mind, it’s looking like promising young defensive duo Smalling and Jones will be the boys called upon to stem the flow of attacks from such luminaries and Crouch, Defoe and Pav. A month ago, their ‘keeper was one of the most promising youngsters in world football. After a charity match and a game in the Premier League, it would appear he has all the promise of a Stereophonics album, and with that, it’s only a matter of us putting some shots on target that will see us win this one.

Perceived weaknesses aside, this United side will be the same as ever. Great at winning football matches, especially against Tottenham. I haven’t heard any ‘it’s always a great match when we play’s’- largely because he wins them all- as yet from the Bells spokesman, so lets hope we’ve got him a bit worried at least.

As for how we’ll shape up, I see it as the same as Hearts, but with different personnel. Despite his second half disappearing act, I expect Defoe to carry along up front with VdV in behind, while Livermore will give way to Huddlestone. I can see Harry putting Corluka back in for Walker and sticking with Gomes. For now.

News of the Cro-rat’s head not being in the right place (Manchester, for one), is just the sort of farcical blow we have all come to expect on the eve of a league campaign in these parts. It raises an interesting debate over whether to let him rot in the stands (we don’t have a reserve team, remember) or take the money, Berbatov-style, and cut our losses. Personally, while letting him go would certainly be the pragmatic path, I think we’ve passed a point of no return in our ability to take the transfer fee and re-invest. After the strong words of our chairman and our *reasonably* consistent stance from the management, the fans, players and, increasingly, the football world at large are looking to us to stand firm against this player, and more tellingly, agent power. If he won’t play, get on the phone to the Russian mob who’ve got a shed load of cash and send him there on loan. Make it as uncomfortable as possible. If he behaves himself, take him back in January with the promise of selling him in the summer if a bid of X amount comes in.

As for tonight, I’ll be watching on in hope rather than expectation, but a crumb of comfort on offer might be United being historically prone to an early season slip up. Wasn’t there a defeat away at Pompey a few years back? I may have made that one up, but they definitely lost to Burnley a couple of seasons ago. Whether this constitutes a ‘pattern’ is, obviously, completely unfounded, but nevertheless, these big machines tend to take a little bit of warming up before they’re at full steam, so with a bit of our midweek swagger mixed with United being guaranteed an early slip-up (it’s fact now, I’ve decided), let’s hope the footballing Gods conspire in our favour.

5-Star Tottenham Break Tynecastle Hearts

To be fair, there are probably about a billion potential Hearts related headlines that one could concoct this morning. That one was the first one that popped in the ol’ coconut, so I’m running with it.

To the great ire of some of the Scottish contingent who found their way over here, the previous article suggested that Hearts weren’t very good. In light of what they offered up as an opposing force, it now sounds like a little pre-match flattery rather than an attempt summarise their footballing prowess. They were truly dreadful and we took full advantage.

Without ever needing to get out of second gear, the arrogant London nasties had the temerity to turn up, not be in the least bit fazed by the supposedly white-hot reception awaiting them at the famous old ground, and then proceed to deal out something of a lesson to their bewildered sweaty cousins. The Portuguese lad given a go at managing the Jam Tarts this week could regularly be seen with his hands shielding his eyes from what must have been extremely uncomfortable viewing for a man of his experience. Well Toto, you'
re not in Lisbon any more. You’ve got quite a job on your hands.

It’s hard to contextualise our showing given the opposition; Monday nights little jaunt a bit less further North will provide a greater barometer of what condition our pre-season has left us in, but there was no doubting that the movement, sharpness, hunger and professionalism were a joy to behold. Some of the VdV/Krankie/Lennon/Bale link up in the first half was top class. Even Defoe looked good. For a bit. The Frankenstein combination of Charlie’s brain and Alan Hutton’s physicality seems to be bearing early fruit in the form of young Kyle Walker as well, which was perhaps most encouraging of all.

A few of the youth team and a run out for the fringe players would be nice to see for next Thursdays return leg.

United up next. Vidic out for 5 weeks and Ferdinand not ready until their game at le arse? Us playing champagne football? It can only go one way…

Jam Tarts and Goal Nets. Let The Games Begin.

Awake from your slumber fellow Totters, for the new season is upon us.

It wasn’t my intention to be so quiet over the summer, but when the only pulse quickeners are the signing of a goalkeeper with more miles on the clock than my old Mum’s Fiesta, an injury to Sandro, and an ad inifinitum ‘saga’ involving last years Player of the Season, it’s not hard to see where the initial optimism of a clear out and overhaul of the front line went… and then there was the postponement of battle for a further 9 days; our domestic campaign now beginning at our least favourite Premierland hunting ground. Good grief.

Like a CarpetRight in Tottenham High Road, the dust that has enshrouded the squad and it’s potential fire-sale has begun to settle. Who’ll be standing, and who will have fallen when Tottenham’s transfer watch (GMT +20 (ish) minutes) ticks over into the no-buy zone? Stories linking us to the likes of Eto’o, Rossi, Hulk, Falcao and other sticker book shine-ey’s have begun to fall away, replaced with far more likely lads. The fixer-uppers. Players who’ve lost their way a bit and are in need of a loving home. Diarra would be an excellent piece of business, as Adebayor would be just the ticket. Samba? I’m tempted to say that 10m of investment in an area that looks pretty strong might be a misallocation of reportedly scarce resources. Then I remember we’ve got the not-so reliable fitness of Ledley and Billy G as back up to Daws and Kaboul. Then I have flash backs of Bassong up at Blackpool last term. Then I realise that this is an area in need of attention. Big Chris would do for me.

Having seen the line-ups from some of our pre-season games, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who felt the face-numbing disappointment that the sight of ‘Jenas 8’ and ‘Keane 10’ seem to inspire, but it would appear that some of our orange cutters and pot boys might finally be freeing up some of those valuable squad places. Keane going anywhere except the Lodge for his daily ‘three s’s’ and rub down is a blessing. All the better that it’s to the Galaxy, far, far away, where we can all hope to see and hear from him as little as possible. Unfortunately, Jenas will probably have to be carried out of there.

Giovanni Dos Santos has removed his novelty ‘My Drinking Team Have A Football Problem’ t-shirt for long enough to get TWO real life football teams bidding for his services. Udinese are offering more money, but Sevilla are his preferred choice. I’m quite sure a compromise will be reached for the sanity of all involved.

Despite being left outside the local charity shop, Alan Hutton still managed to find his way back to the club, and would even appear to have got himself a white shirt with a number on it. Alex McLeish is Scottish and the manager of an average football club. Alan Hutton is Scottish and when his brain flickers into life, he can do a good impression of an average defender. Let’s hope this isn’t just lazy journalism and that there is lots of truth in this one.

In a development involving actual football, we’ve got ourselves what appears to be a competitive fixture on Thursday night in the shape of Scottish ‘best of the rest’ Heart of Midlothian. Initially describing the Ropey Cup as a ‘killer’, there couldn’t have been a much kinder draw for Harry to be contemplating, what with them being about as local as you could hope for from an open European draw, and also being. You know. Not very good. My feeling is that we’ll view this fixture as a glorified pre-season friendly. My fear is that they won’t. Our precious lambs could be on the end of some pretty industrial treatment.

More intriguing from the point of view of the Modric situation will be whether he gets any game time. Am I right in thinking that if he represents us on Thursday night, that he’ll be unable to represent any other side in European competition for the rest of the season? Keep your eyes peeled for any ‘thigh strains’ in the next couple of days.

As far as a season prediction goes, a lot will depend on the business we’re able to conduct in the next couple of weeks, but if we can keep the big guns, get the players we’re (realistically) linked to, then I see no reason that we can’t reach those heady heights of the top 4 and start pissing with the big boys once more.

Hold on tight and try to enjoy the ride. Welcome back Tottenham.