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As a Tottenham supporter, I
feel there is a lot to look forward to next season.
I am an optimist by nature but
believe me my optimism has been challenged by string of poor boardroom
decisions that have tarnished the great name of Tottenham Hotspur and at
times turned us into a laughing stock.
I believe the rot began back in the summer of 1991, we were
making steady progress under Terry Venables at the time. We finished a
credible sixth in 1989, an excellent third in 1990 and
won the FA Cup in 1991. The club’s financial difficulties were very
real but at least we were winning more games than we were losing. Off
the field, a dream ticket of Venables & Alan Sugar take control of
the club, thus clearing the outstanding debts. We’re back on business
and proudly hold the FA Cup, on the face of it, a great summer’s work.
The first backward step was the re-appointment of Peter Shreeves as
manager, this was of course a decision that allowed Venables to “move
up stairs” and become Director of Football. In his place we get
lumbered with a complete non-talent to manage the players. Venables
never should have left his managerial position, we had been progressing
well and had got into Europe. We
struggled badly in the season that followed (91/92) with Gazza out
injured and Lineker missing tons of games due to his son’s illness.
We
surrendered our FA Cup in the 3rd round, lost at the
semi-final stage of the League Cup and bowed out of Europe in the
quarter final against a poor Feyenoord side.
New signing Gordon Durie couldn’t hit a cows arse with a banjo
and we ended up in a relegation battle with the likes of Notts County
and Luton Town. The future wasn’t too bright either with Gazza and
Lineker already committed to moving on to Italy and Japan respectively.
For me the only positive thing was the way Paul Stewart grew as a player
and became a terrific 'bosser' of the mid-field. In all other areas we
failed to improve
as a side. Still, as always, me managed to stay up to fight another day
and I looked forward to a summer reshuffle that would put right all the
wrongs of the previous campaign. To
my delight Shreeves was shown the door to be replaced by the coaching
partnership of Clemence and Livermore ?? I was scratching my head again,
this coaching system had been tried and failed the season before and
still Venables didn’t seem interested in getting the tracksuit on.
The
new signings were less than inspirational, Cundy from Chelsea and Gray
from Palace. Neil Ruddock was re-signed from Southampton along with a
young right-winger from Portsmouth called Darren Anderton. To offset the
above, Paul Stewart was sold to the Scousers for silly money. He became a
shadow of his former self at Anfield and his career nose-dived following
the move.
Not surprisingly, we started
the 92/93 poorly. We opened with a draw at the Dell then lost at home to
Coventry and were thumped 5-0 away to Leeds. Sheringham was signed from
Forest and we slowly started to pick up points. Spurs were still quite
inconsistent before Christmas that year, (winning at Blackburn before
loosing at QPR), but we enjoyed great wins over Liverpool and the
Gooners up
the road. After Christmas
we really got things going and played some lovely stuff.
We also had a great Cup run and got to the semi-finals, where we
were cheated out of a penalty just before half time. Sheringham and a
new kid Nick Barmby were a great partnership and although we missed out
on the Cup Final, we had a good, hungry, young squad and I was looking
forward to season 03/04 eagerly. Things
were too good to be true, how right I was.
Venables got involved in areas he shouldn’t have and ended up
falling out with the Alan Sugar ... the result was a Tottenham civil in
which there could be no real winners.
Our great club’s name was dragged through the courts and the
pages of the tabloid press on a daily basis. Supporters were picking
sides, mostly with Venables. Looking back Sugar was never going to
lose
that war; he had been a winner in everything he had done up to this
point and he was the boss. The Venables sacking drove a wedge between
Sugar and the supporters, a wedge that was never to be removed. To
appease us supporters, Sugar turned to Ossie Ardiles, who had just got
West Brom promoted from Div 1. The understandable lure of Tottenham was
too much for Ossie to turn down and Alan Sugar yet again got his way.
After the dust had settled, a sulking Ruddock left for Liverpool.
Razor had become a colossus and the back during the previous season
and had formed an excellent partnership with Mabbutt. I knew he would be
difficult to replace and I was gutted to hear that our new centre half
would be none other than Colin Calderwood from Swindon. Calderwood was
brought in along with Jason Dozzell from Ipswich and ex-spur Micky
Hazard. It must to be said three very ordinary signings indeed.
The season actually started
surprisingly well with good wins at Newcastle and Liverpool. Sheringham was scoring well, and we were in the top
five or six in October. Deep down I knew we weren’t as good as our results,
so, when Sheringham
knackered his knee and Mabbutt got his head smashed in, we lost our two best players.
From January 1994 to the end of the season it was a
nightmare following Spurs. We were destroyed at Ipswich in the 4th
round of the FA Cup. We had no leadership on the field, poor management and
quite simply some of the worst players to ever wear a Tottenham shirt in
my opinion ... like Kevin Scott, David Kerslake, Stuart Nethercott, Justin
Edinburgh, Jason Dozzell and bless him Ronnie Rosenthal to name but a
few. We stayed up by the skin of our teeth, winning at Boundary Park on
our second last game of the season. This was simply not good
enough. We
wanted action and, following the World Cup that summer, the manager went
on a big shopping spree to bring in Klinsmann and
Dumitrescu, with Gica Popescu being added in September. These signings
were Ossie’s last stand as he attempted to plug the alarming gaps in
the squad that had appeared the previous season. Like most Spurs fans I
wanted to know where the Roy Keanes and Paul Inces were. They were the
kind of players we so badly needed, not more attacking power. How can
normal football supporters see it, but not the management. Looking at the
squad going into the 94/95 season, I was excited and the prospect of the
famous five going forward, but still very concerned that none of the
previously mentioned dubious players had been kicked out of White Hart Lane
during the summer.
The first game of the season
would confirm my deep concerns. Okay, so we won 4-3 at Hillsborough, but
I knew we couldn’t do that every week. In truth, if Wednesday had have
been any way decent they would have won that game. We threw away a
two goal lead, scored a terrible own goal and still won ?? We also
had the pain of being deducted six points (originally 12) and banned
from the FA Cup. We went on to beat Everton at home and won again
at Ipswich. Ossie appeared to be working his magic, but it proved to be
false dawn. By November we were on another losing streak and just
couldn’t stop conceding goals. We entered into the bottom three.
Ossie was sacked and Gerry Francis got the nod. Francis had a back
to basics approach, although you wouldn’t have thought so after his
first game in charge; a 4-3 home defeat to Villa. But within a
matter of weeks he turned things around. Francis worked on the
players’ fitness, he gave David Howells a holding mid-field role in
which he excelled. He loaned out Dumitrescu and re-organised the
defence, all of a sudden we stopped conceding, we battled for every ball
and were very hard to beat. Francis also got the best out of Anderton,
Sheringham and Barmby. We looked like a new side, but again missed out
on Wembley at the semi-final stage after the FA Cup ban was lifted.
In the end we finished a credible seventh, not bad
considering our bottom three placing in November. It was a very exciting
season, for me the high point was a marvellous FA Cup quarter-final
victory at Anfield. There was a lot to look forward to for season 95/96,
as I had faith in the manager and we had a well-balanced squad of
flamboyant attackers and hard grafters. Then 3 bombshells ... Klinsmann was
off to Bayern Munich, Popescu was off to Barcelona and Barmby was off to
Teesside. In response to the exodus an unproven Chris Armstrong was
signed to replace Klinsmann and Andy Sinton was signed later in the year
to replace Barmby. It was like replacing a Ferrari with a 1976 Ford
Cortina (in relation to the Klinsmann/Armstrong situation anyway).
We started slowly at the
beginning of the 95/96 season, in particular losing 3-1 at home to
Liverpool. Results, however, did start to pick up winning on the road at
QPR and Hillsborough. We had the best away record in the league, a great
home win against the Scum in late autumn gave us the confidence to kick
on and put together a solid string of results. We needed to beat Bolton
at White Hart Lane just before Christmas to go top of the table, when a
two nil
lead ended up in a draw. After
a fabulous 4-1 thrashing of Man Utd on New Year’s Day our form faded
away dramatically. We lost our consistency and we ended up in the top
half of the table after the final day’s fixtures. If results had have
gone our way on that final day we could have finished as high as sixth.
The season had promised much but again had delivered nothing. For this
first time, supporters started questioning Gerry Francis’s management
skills. It is my view that he was the man to sort out Ossie’s
shambles. It was when we needed to kick on and challenge for top honours
that he appeared to be out of his depth. His handling of world-class
players (i.e. previously mentioned exits of Klinsmann & Popescu)
came into question. Francis seemed happier dealing with less established,
younger players like Armstrong and Fox. Class footballers need to be
replaced with class footballers and Francis went for potential. To be
fair, I did like the work ethic of the team and Sheringham and Armstrong did bag close to 50 goals between them.
The emergence of Sol
Campbell was another plus. For me Gerry Francis deserved another crack
of the whip in season 96/97, but it was with reserved confidence that I
entered the following season.
The season of 1996/97 proved to
be the dullest season I can remember in my 22 years supporting
Tottenham, okay so we were never in trouble, but we were also at no point
higher then seventh or eighth. This is when we started to
allow our standards slip. I reckon we must have won a third of
our games, drawn a third of our games and lost a third of our games.
The goals dried up for Armstrong so Gerry Francis brought
in Steffen Iversen from Norway to add a bit of competition to the from
line. A couple of duffers
were also added in the shape of John Scales and Ramon Vega, both of whom
joined
for big money (supposedly from under the
noses of other clubs also keen to sign them) to add steel to the team.
As it worked out none of the new signings made much of a difference on
the field and we fell lethargically over the finishing line, ending up
somewhere in mid table no-mans land. Serious questions began to be
raised about Gerry Francis and what he had achieved or more to the
point not achieved in nearly three years at Tottenham.
In the summer of 1997, Sheringham was sold to Man Utd. The cheque
book was out to bring Ferdinand and Ginola to White Hart Lane. I got
the feeling that these signings were going to be Gerry Francis’s final
throw of the dice. And so it proved to be.
I started speaking about poor
decisions and one particular mess up that springs to mind was the Les
Ferdinand situation. In the summer of 1995, Tottenham were looking for a
striker to replace Klinsmann. Ferdinand seemed to be the perfect
choice ... a London lad, 28 years old, worked well with Gerry Francis at QPR, had a
couple of great high scoring seasons there, supposedly a Spurs fan as a
boy and QPR needed to sell him. You would think a quick phone call would
have sorted everything out, but you’d be wrong. We went for Chris
Armstrong instead with Francis insisting that at £6.5 million, Ferdinand was
overpriced and that he could turn Armstrong into the next Les Ferdinand
for £4 milllion. This of course did not happen (the Ferrari and the 1976
Cortina springs to mind again). So Ferdinand ends up going to Newcastle
where he finishes the 95/96 season as the league’s top scorer and wins
the PFA Player of the Year. We sign him two years later, when he
is two years
older and two years slower for how much ?? That's right
£6.5million !! The same price we refused to pay in 1995 for a younger, hungrier Les
Ferdinand. This situation shows what a shambles the transfer policy of
Tottenham Hotspur had become at this point.
Anyway after a predictable poor
start to the season, the writing was on the wall for Gerry Francis and in
late October he was shown the door. Who will get the job was the
question on every ones lips ? Would it be Cryuff, Klinsmann, Bobby Robson,
Gullit, Venables again maybe ?? I was in Australia when I heard the news
that our new manager would be Christian Gross !! 2Who is this man
?? Where
is he from ??" I wondered. Nevertheless, as I have stated
... I am an
optimist, so I thought he deserved a chance. A good away win at Everton
was a false dawn, it was followed by the truth, a pathetic 6-1 home
defeat by those scumbags from Stamford Bridge. Our season imploded after
that, with a string of terrible results and news of senior players
falling out with the management. We were so lucky to survive that
season and if it is wasn’t for Klinsmann returning and scoring some very
important goals (four against the Dons) I reckon we would really could have
sunk into Division 1 very easily. We
escaped again and Alan Sugar supported Gross, why I don’t know and so
he kept him on and gave him money to spend. Another serious bad decision
to add to the long list. Speaking of lists, it is at this point that
Italian full back Paulo Tramezzani gets added to the all time muppets
hall of fame.
We opened our 98/99 season with
heavy defeats at Wimbledon and at home to Sheffield Wednesday, so Gross was
a dead man walking. He was sacked before September and how I was
relieved. Sugar said he was tired of appointing poor managers and that
this time he was going to bring in the best around, hollow promises
again. When you know who was announced as the new man I was numb.
Sugar
proved he was so completely out of touch with the supporters by turning
to that man to try and make Tottenham successful again. Did he have any
idea what that man represents to us ? Alan Sugar never understood the
soul of Tottenham Hotspur. He could have the words “chairman” on his
office door, have the power to hire and fire as much as he wanted, but
he could never be the master of the soul of Tottenham Hotspur. That is
owned by you and me and all the other unwavering supporters of the
worlds greatest football club. The club of Nicholson, Tommy Harmer,
Danny Blanchflower, John White, Bobby Smith, Jimmy Greaves. Dave Mackay,
Cliff Jones, Steve Perryman, Arthur Roe, Graham Roberts, Mike England,
Martin Chivers, Pat Jennings, Alan Mullery, Terry Dyson, Maurice Norman,
Glenn Hoddle, Gary Mabbutt, Cyril Knowles and Alan Gilzean, to name but
a few. I won’t be so pig headed to suggest I didn’t enjoy our
Wembley win in March 1999 or our FA Cup run, with a terrific 2-0 win over
Leeds the stand out result. The new boss was given funds and decided to
bring in midfield spoilers like Tim Sherwood and Steffen Freund. Argentine
full back Mauricio Taricco was signed from Ipswich to put Justin
Edinburgh under deserved pressure. But the shine was taken off the glory
by seeing that man in the dugout. I’m sure he’s not a bad person,
but he had been responsible for some of my worst memories, with the 1987
League Cup semi-final replay being the worst of all. To have him earning
a Tottenham wage was disgusting. The one shining beacon of that season
was David Ginola, who, at times, was simply unplayable. He seemed to get
better and stronger in spite of the ludicrous criticism and
substitutions he suffered nearly every week from the manager. All in
all, a season that had started as a joke, ended positively, even if our
beloved club was being steered by the enemy. It seemed the manager spent
the summer of 1999 in Wimbledon. He brought in Chris Perry and went
back the following year for Sullivan and Thatcher. He also added the
“versatile” Liverpool mid-fielder, but more importantly ex-Wimbledon
player,
Leonhardsen. Thank God ex-Scum striker Hartson failed a medical or we would have
been lumbered with five of those useless lumps.
All of the above mentioned turned out to be rubbish, with the
exception of Sullivan in his first season.
At the start of 99/00 we were
looking to kick on from our top half finish. We were top of the table in
September, back in Europe and all seemed rosy in the Tottenham garden.
I
had a feeling it wouldn’t last, because we didn’t have the players to mount
a serious challenge. Sure enough we didn’t see European football after
Christmas and we’re out of the FA Cup in the 3rd round.
The only highlight was beating the Goons up the road in November. The
season, like so many before petered out into nothing more than an
eleventh or twelfth place finish. And still Sugar backed his man to the
tune of £11milion when Sergei Rebrov, the Champion’s League top
scorer was signed in June 2000. It was a good sign of intent, but this
purchase was to be offset by the sale of Ginola to Villa. In hindsight
it was a good move for us, Ginola was never the same dynamic player
again, but at the time I could have strangled the manager. Wimbledon’s
finest (Thatcher & Sullivan) also joined the ranks. Along with
Rebrov these were the only transfers in a very quiet pre-season.
I looked ahead to another dire
nine months supporting an underachieving Tottenham Hotspur side of humpers
and headless chickens. Things stayed in the same vein until I was put
out of my misery in March 2001 when Sugar stood down. Within days the
new owners gave the enemy the boot. Into the hot-seat sat Mr. Glenn
Hoddle, Spurs legend and darling of White Hart Lane. At the press
conference he enthused about how the club was in his heart and described
a five year plan to put us back among Europe’s elite. At long, long last
we had the man I wanted in charge. Another FA Cup semi-final defeat and
another meaningless mid-table finish followed, but it didn’t seem as
bad as before as I genuinely felt I had it all to look forward to for
many more seasons to come. I had my Tottenham back and I felt very happy
about that indeed. We were a united club once again and after so many
kicks in the scrotum, there seemed to be a genuine light at the end of
the tunnel. Hoddle bought well in the pre-season opting for experience
over youth. He brought in established performers in Gus Poyet and
Christian Ziege. Prodigal son Teddy Sheringham rejoined following
four successful seasons at Old Trafford. Finally Hoddle added Red Star
Belgrade captain Goran Bunjevcevic, who was heralded as the Franz
Beckenbauer of the Balkans. The above additions to the squad were well
received and belief was that they could help establish a winning
attitude in the dressing room. So far I haven’t mentioned the biggest
story of the 2001 pre-season. The person involved does not warrant a
mention in any shape or form. All
I can say is, if there is a good God in Heaven, we will have our justice
and he will pay for what he did to us.
We opened at home against Villa
in a dire 0-0 draw, for me the highlight was the burning of dummy in a
number 23 shirt from a lamp post outside the Northumberland Arms,
without doubt got the biggest cheer of the day. It wasn’t until early
September until we notched our first win at home to the Saints. A
particularly painful home defeat to those glory-hunters from Stamford
Bridge springs to mind. A game where we completely out played and out
fought them, they won a disgraceful penalty decision and ended up
winning 2-3. That injustice was fresh in all our players’ minds
later on in January when we were to meet again.
Following the famous "3-0 up 5-3 down" collapse to Man Utd in
late September we went on an unbeaten run which lasted well into
December. By now we were playing some lovely football and really tearing
teams apart. As we entered the Christmas programme, there was a feeling
that we could be on the verge something really big, but uncertainty
returned with a run of bad results over Christmas which in particular
included two awful defeats to a soon to be relegated Ipswich Town.
By
January all we had to play for were the cups. We walloped those Stamford
Bridge no-hopers in the semi-finals of the League Cup (in what was for me
the most satisfying performance and result I can remember since April
1991), only to lose out to Blackburn in a final in which we never turned
up for. The defeat in Cardiff burst our bubble, we stumbled out of the
FA in the quarter-finals and finished the season in usual mid-table
obscurity. It was a total anti-climax. By now questions were being
raised about the age of the side and our ability to keep the older
players going for a full season. There was no doubt that Sheringham /
Ferdinand / Poyet / Anderton / Sherwood / Freund & Co could no
longer perform for a full season. The summer brought with it the
opportunity to strengthen the squad and do away with some of the above
mentioned deadwood. All we had to rub our hands together about was Jamie
Redknapp (who we were assured was injury free) and a bloke from Slovenia
called Acimovic who was described to us as the Balkan version of a young
Trevor Broking ... notice the trend here, the previous year we had the
honour to welcome the previously mentioned Franz Beckenbaur of the Balkans,
who by the way ended up as a very ordinary Johnny Foreigner type player.
I feared the same fate for Acimovic, but because it was Hoddle doing the
buying and I wanted him to succeed so badly, I was prepared to have the
wool pulled over my eyes. On deadline day, and pretty much on the
deadline itself we acquired the talents of Robbie Keane from cash
strapped Leeds. Keane was to be our only big name signing. The eventual
signing of Keane followed a string of embarrassing pursuits, which we
were told almost lead to the signings Rivaldo and Morientes. We had
become the nearly men of the transfer market and everyone in the media
seemed to know our business. I hated the board for allowing this to
happen. Finally our record £11million signing Sergei Rebrov was loaned out
to Turkey and was never to don the lilywhite shirt again. In the season
and a half in which Rebrov was in favour, I never thought he was out of
his depth, as there were flashes of brilliance, in particular a FA Cup tie
at West Ham in 2001 and a superb lob at home to Newcastle in the same
season. Why he was shown the door while other less talented players like
Doherty, Bunjevcevic, Poyet and Acimovic continued to bleed us dry I
will never understand.
The season started well and we
were top of the pile after four games. In our fifth match, away to
Fulham, we were 2-0 up at half time, but completely choked and lost 3-2.
For some bizarre reason known only to Hoddle, Robbie Keane was denied a
debut in favour of Sheringham/Ferdinand strike force. From then until
Christmas we were pretty mediocre, the age of the squad started to
become alarmingly suspect, our mid-field was non-existent and we were
leaking a lot of goals at the back. Our 3rd round FA
Cup exit at
Southampton highlighted the extent of our problems. It was well accepted
that we were only saved from relegation because of the points we had
managed to pick up in the early months of the season. The final insult
was a 4-0 home defeat on the last day of a season that simply could not
end quickly enough for all concerned with Tottenham Hotspur Football
Club. For Hoddle the honeymoon was well and truly over.
During the summer of 2003,
Glenn Hoddle decided to scrap the first half of his five year plan which
was to bring experience players who “had done it all” in the game.
This vision had resulted is a squad that looked more like extras from
Dad’s Army than professional footballers. So we were advised that it
was time to develop a younger, hungrier, more mobile squad of players.
Hoddle went about this by bringing in a 21 year old Portuguese striker
called Helder Postiga. We were told that Postiga was one of the top
young talents in Europe and had bagged himself over 20 goals for Porto
the previous season. Next on the list was Fredi Kanoute from our
relegated “friends” at Upton Park. A good talent, but injury prone
and you got the sense he was one of these foreign career players. Scum
reserve mid-fielder Rohan Ricketts crossed the great divide and arrived
with something to prove. Finally Bobby Zamora, a prolific nationwide
goal-scorer, who we seemed to be scouting for years put pen to paper.
So
now we had three new strikers and an attacking mid-fielder. Where were the
ball winners and battlers we so badly craved (answers on a postcard).
Predictably, It was an uphill
struggle all season long. In late September, following back-to-back home
defeats to Fulham and Southampton, Glenn Hoddle was sacked. This was a
very sad ending for a match that I believed was made in heaven. I felt
he was destined to succeed where others had failed ... how wrong I was.
There are no sure things in football, that's one lesson I’ve learnt the
hard way (Hoddle, Coventry ‘87, Blackburn ‘02). But life goes and
Glenn Hoddle today still is Tottenham, he will always be Tottenham, much
more than me. Looking back now I just wish he stayed away from the
poisonous chalice that is the Spurs job. That way he could only be
remembered for his vision, touch and prowess on the field and not his
shortcomings in the dug out. It was very painful to see Glenn sacked
from the club he was born to represent. However I feel it was a decision
that had to be made for the overall good of Tottenham Hotspur. I just
hope that one year on he doesn’t harbour any bitterness towards his
experience. The uninspiring David Pleat took charge of the first team
while the board looked for a replacement for Hoddle. The search ended up
lasting nine months, during which time we worryingly flirted with
relegation. Following our home defeat to Charlton on December 28th we
were in the bottom three, I hoped and prayed that we could just finish
seventeenth come May. In
the meantime, the managerial selection process was thrown into farce
with every Tom, Dick and Harry being linked with the top job. In the
middle of this crisis, Kanoute decided to turn out for Mali in the
African Cup of Nations for four weeks. If we had of been relegated,
I reckon fans would
have set fire to Kanoute’s house for running away when we need him
most. But it wasn’t all bad news, because Michael Brown was signed from
Sheffield United to add a bit of bite to our very lightweight mid-field.
Out of the blue we found some form and posted wins against Crystal
Palace, Birmingham, Leeds and Liverpool. The icing on the cake was the
signing of Jermain Defoe from the unhappy Hammers. He is plain and
simply a class act. I can’t remember a better prospect joining Spurs
in recent times. Predictably he scored on his debut and went on to notch
some very important goals in the run in. I think he could go on to break
all the goal-scoring records if he gets the service he needs. Anyway, we
finished fourteenth and avoided relegation with two games to go. None
of the relegated clubs were able to put a run of results together and
sank into Div 1 without a fight. Just as well as we only won three
matches
between mid February and May, but Premiership football was assured for
another year and that was all that mattered.
The longest managerial search
in football history was finally concluded when French national coach
Jacques Santini was announced as the new man in charge. He was one link
in the chain of a new managerial structure. PSV director of football
Frank Arnesen was appointed Spurs Sporting Director and Martin Jol was
brought in to as Santini’s assistant. Chairman Daniel Levy announced
that this European structure was the way forward and that is was only a
matter of time until the good times rolled again. Since the above
appointments, Santini’s France were a huge disappointment at Euro 2004
and our pre-season results were nothing short of abysmal. I couldn’t
help but wonder if Santini was the right man. I really hoped we would
get Martin O’Neill.
All of that aside we are in a
better situation now then we were at any stage over the past two years.
I have been very impressed with Frank Arnesen, he appears to be very
professional and focused. He has a vision for the future and a plan to
put everything in place to achieve our common goal. I certainly have
faith in him to turn things around. Patience needs to be observed as it
is impossible to undo 13 years of mismanagement and poor
decision-making. Since the end of last season we have lightened the wage
bill and the average age of the squad by releasing Anderton, Ziege and
Poyet. I was sorry to see Postiga pack his bags, but I suppose it was
best for all concerned. In their place we have bought well, in
particular the introduction of Sean Davis will give us some serious
quality in mid-field. I think this guy could be a revelation next
season. I was also delighted with the signing of Paul Robinson, it’s
time for Kasey Keller to step down as has he has no presence and is far
too inconsistent for the first team. Joining the above we have
unknown quantities in Portuguese mid-fielder Mendes and left sided
internationals Edman and Atouba. Poor Robbie Keane is going to miss the
first month of the season with injury, this was the very same situation
with Robbie last year. It looks like it’s Defoe and Kanoute up front
for the season opener. We sure have come a long way, let’s not forget
that only 16 months ago our front line consisted of Doherty &
Sheringham !! So, Stephen Carr is on his way to Newcastle for £2
million. Good
luck to Carr. |His career had gone stale and to be fair to him, with 12
years service and one medal I can understand his decision. I also don't
see him reproducing the form of 99/00 & 00/01 again, not for us
anyway.
And
£2 million is a very good price for a man who is out of contract in May.
He could have been a real git and done a Sol next summer, which would
have made him an even wealthier man than he is already. I also
think we needed a fresher look on our right side. We have young Stephen
Kelly ready to take the challenge and make the right-back spot his own
and although it may be too soon for Phil Ifil, but he certainly looks like one for the
future and a good candidate as cover for Kelly next season. A note on
the Danny Murphy situation, I've
always been an admirer of Murphy, but he left Spurs with no option but to
withdraw their offer. Demanding a guaranteed first team place is a joke.
I
think Murphy has made a big mistake. Spurs would have been the perfect
place for him to display his talents and stake a claim for an England
place. Danny, you missed the boat son.
By now I’m sure you can
gather that for the most part, my negative and bitter rantings apply to
times gone-by and although nothing is assured, I really do feel we could
be on the verge of something big, relatively speaking. Top six finish and
a good run in one of the Cups would do nicely and give us something
solid to build on for phase two of the rejuvenation of Tottenham Hotspur
Football Club.
I will leave it there before I start looking too far
ahead.
After all you’re only as good as your last game.
Finally, below
is my ideal first team assuming everyone is fit.
C’MON U
SPURS!!!!!!!
GK
- Robinson
RB
- Kelly
CB
- King
CB
- Gardner
LB
- Edman
RM
- Davies
CM
- Redknapp
CM
- Davis
LM
- Ricketts
ST
- Defoe
ST
- Keane
Shane O'Sullivan |
