What ho, and how wonderful to reconvene in such happy circumstances, for glory be, the new season will up and runneth soon enough. Huzzah! Surging left-wing runs, infuriatingly aimless headers, goalkeeping howlers, near-suicidal-but-ultimately-ok left-backery, oodles of Sky Sports stats, European adventures on Channel 5 and, of course, madcap, all-action seven-goal thrillers and the like. Again I screech from the rooftops, glory be. Emerge ye, pale and emaciated from the interminable summer months minus football, and bask in the warm glow of lilywhite once more.In common with on-pitch exploits, things in this neck of the interweb rather tailed off at the end of last season – apologies – and by way of admonishment AANP now currently swims resignedly every day against a heaving tide of spam. Still, onwards and upwards. For season 11/12 our heroes look even more polished and shinier than before, like some sort of re-booted Hollywood film series.
Massive, Gob-Smacking Marquee Transfers
Thus it transpires that despite needing a great big hulking brick outhouse of a striker capable of sticking out his rear-end, holding up the ball, elbowing aside various defensive types and thumping the little orb netwards, our transfer chiefs have instead tootled along in silence as Messrs Pav, Crouch, Defoe and even Keane return to Spurs Lodge to practise spraying the ball anywhere but the goal.
We have made one attacking signing, a whippersnapper by the name of Souleymane Coulibaly, who is reportedly fresh from scoring about 15 goals in five minutes at the U-17 World Cup. Underwhelming news for all those who have followed the careers of Tomas Peckhart, Adel Taraabt, Giovani et al. While I have dropped down on bended knee to plead to the gods of football fate that this chap does in fact turn out to be the second coming of Drogba, I am tempted to stick a fiver on him going on loan to the Championship and popping up at Lyon in four years time, before randomly appearing for AC Milan in the Champions League. Either way, this is unlikely to be his season.
Elsewhere, ‘Arry’s commitment to signing sackloads of decent players we don’t really need has extended to the goalkeeping position. Hard not to like Brad Friedel, but I’m not sure he is the solution to anything in particular. Still, if the best way to stop Gomes flapping around is to employ a genial bald yank to wheeze down his neck then so be it.
Modric (Grrr)
Back to the point. Difficult though it is to fathom, we would cope without him – we did a decent enough job following his early season injury vs Birmingham back in 09/10. As such, I would accept £40 mil plus Drogba, perhaps giving you all an insight into why my 9-to-5 job is a million miles removed from running a football club. However, rather than take the cash I would much prefer that Levy keeps his heels firmly dug in for the 27 days of the window, and the clean-shaven Jesus remains a lilywhite come September 1st. Just give us one more season Luka, and get us back into the Champions League…
New Kit
Indeed, some would very persuasively argue that the launch of a football kit barely deserves comment anyway, but such has been the emptiness of these summer months. We seem to be in neither better nor worse condition than last season (aside from an injury to Sandro, which has me shaking an enraged fist at the screen on my computer box). Still time for changes in personnel, but for now the focus is presumably to get through 90 minutes against Deportivo without fresh injuries. Fingers crossed.
10 replies on “Gentle Musings on Spurs’ Summer”
I can’t get my head around the amount of transfers teams are making. Paying 4-5 million on unproven players from abroad. Yet we can’t seem to sell Keane, Jenas, Hutton or Bassong.
If I could make one transfer it would be a swap involving Jenas, Bentley and Keane to Wigan for Rodallega and McCarthy.
I Think Samba and Diarra would be good additions, BUT they’re not strikers…
IF Anyone saw us playing last season, we were a CL team IF we had a striker that scores goals when given chance or 2…
IF we can’t Get proven world class striker Cause we can’t pay there saliry.. Rossi, Drogba, Benzema, Forlan. I vote for taking a chance on Leandro, Zarate, Llorente, Huntelar or whoever…
Are we playing Deportivo as well or did you mean Bilbao??
entertaining article … good stuff.
Nice piece AANP. As your sub-title suggests, it is a feeling of bewilderment that is the overrding one I have after the summer’s happenings at N17.
Surely us fans deserve more transparency on the part of the club. The rationale behind most things we do is hard to fathom.
Levy oscillates from the sublime to the ridiculous. he’s such a paradox. Yes, his stance on not selling Modric is commendable but it was his failure to be pro-active that caused the problem in the first place. Once we failed to qualify for the CL, you know that Modric, Bale et al will be courted. So take little Luca to one side, butter him up, double his salary, plus add-ons and send him on holiday.
And when you meet him after he’s asked to go to Oligarchland, treat him with kid gloves, make him feel wanted, assure him of our ambition, make him see that our squad’s better than theirs. DON’T act like an arrogant ass and threaten him.For a supposedly shrewd businessman, Levy makes a lot of basic errors in my view.
Not to mention the pointless Olympic Stadium legal action….the bad karma that creates must be damaging.
Anyway, as you say, let’s hope and pray llorente or Negredo etc. will be brought in asap.
COYS….would love to bring home a pot this year, although not the bleeding League cup again.
Lovely to have you back and blogging. Just in time for our title push.
What?
I can’t believe you’re finally back!
Great piece as always.
Great to have you back,best blog on the net,if only Harry would read it !.Harvey the hudd,dead right mate,couldn’t aggree more.
Welcome back. Look at the bright side – we didn’t (yet!) do anything silly with Parker, Adebayor, Barton, Joe Cole et al as some would have had us believe.
Nice to see you. Too see you. Nice.
Defoe and even Keane return to Spurs Lodge to practise spraying the ball anywhere but the goal.