Month: August 2014

Categories
Spurs match reports

Spurs 4-0 QPR: Belated Musings

I would imagine that unborn children leapt in their mothers’ wombs on Sunday, given that we managed to produce our slickest display since ‘Arry was last at the Lane. One could barely move for an interchange of cunning short passes between our heroes that had the QPR players spinning in circles and crashing into each other – the third goal in particular being notable for being the first in history to be preceded by literally a million uninterrupted passes.

This interplay was largely facilitated by the manner in which our heroes buzzed around off the ball like a swarm of particularly indignant white-clad bees. So often the scourge of Tottenham teams in the last couple of seasons, when possession has swung drearily from right to left and back again, due to all and sundry standing idly – and statically – by with fingers up nostrils and hands on hips, this time off-the-ball movement abounded.

Every bit as pleasing as this was the almost demented fashion in which our lot beavered away when QPR were in possession. Sycophantic fawning toward the new manager it may have been, but Messrs Lamela and Eriksen, hardly renowned as the brawn-laden, ball-winning terriers of the team, seemed absolutely demented in their pursuit of QPR ankles at which to snap – one such Eriksen challenge pilfering possession and setting in motion our opening goal.

As well as off-the-ball movement, another wrong of previous seasons that was promptly righted was popping away a goal bright and early. Last year our lot seemed to think it against the rules of the thing, but on Sunday early domination was duly turned into an opening goal at the ungodly hour of ten minutes past kick-off. On top of which, they then flicked the switch to ‘Clinical’ and turned dominance into so many goals that the thing was over by half-time. Where will it all end?

Elsewhere on the pitch

Lamela quite rightly earned himself the drool of a thousand seasoned observers, finally starting to resemble the hero of all those Youtube clips we pored over last summer. The lad also seems to have mastered the curious art of sporting four different hairstyles simultaneously, but young people will do such things.

Young Master Chadli took his chances with aplomb, or indeed several plombs, and there were further reasons, at both ends of the pitch, to muse that Daws-out-Dier-in will prove one of the niftier pieces of transfer legerdemain that the N17 Brains Trust ever produce.

Most sensationally however, AANP has considered issuing a grovelling apology to one D. Rose Esquire. While it would be stretching things a mite to suggest that he has morphed into one of the elite, his pirouette and delicious pass for Adebayor’s goal had me positively purring. Do that week in, week out from now until next May and I may well revise my opinion of the uncontrollably-limbed scamp.

Disproving the usual disclaimers

Of course, this being Tottenham and I being a follower, I had barely pootled along to the train station before all manner of gloomy caveats and disclaimers had sprung to mind – but then such dreary pessimism is what makes us Spurs fans so adorable, no? Thus did I muse that this was only QPR, and the season is but two games old, and we will probably have gone to rack and ruin by Christmas – but a voice seemed to whisper in my ear “Au contraire, AANP, not so.” And a dashed good point this imaginary friend made, for last season I bally well lost count of the number of times we dominated possession against second-rate opposition, looked a tad bereft of creativity and had our pockets picked by some bundled set-piece nonsense. So if this season our lot turn over two lowly teams, good on them. Six fewer points to worry about come May, and I dare say at least one of the (likely) Top Five will drop points at home to QPR at some point.

On top of all of which, our heroes sit pretty atop the tree. Absolutely spiffing stuff.

Shameless Plug Alert – AANP’s own book, Spurs’ Cult Heroes, continues to retail at Amazon and Waterstones, hint hint.

Categories
Spurs match reports

West Ham 0-1 Spurs: The Draconian World of Chris Foy

Regular frequenters of this corner of the interweb will be well aware that here dwells no particular fan of Kyle Naughton, primarily for the crime of simply not being Top Four/Five/Six standard (although in addition to this he also spent most of last season convincing me that he was still a whippersnapper with plenty of time to improve, rather than being 25 years of age – 25! – the swine).

However, even at my biased and most wildly unfair it is nigh impossible to attach blame to the blighter for yesterday’s sending off. A handball no doubt (it was hardly filled with cynicism and malice, but his hands were well away from his body), but the mind has been boggling for a good 24 hours now in an attempt to make that a red card offence. Yank back a man as he hares down on goal, or swing wildly at his kneecaps and one can expect to be sent on one’s way, but Naughton’s handball seemed a couple of yards – plus one top-notch goalkeeper – away from being prevention of a certain goal. If resident arbiter Chris Foy dishes out reds for that sort of thing one dreads to imagine the mirthless existence of the children at Foy Towers, who presumably are tossed into a cellar whenever they fail to clear their plates, and are dealt half a dozen lashings for every misspelt word in their homework.

However, once Foy had meted out his own unique brand of justice, to their credit our heroes clung to parity for a good half hour. All the more impressive  when once considers that in similar circumstances in the corresponding fixture last season, when we went down to ten men at a similar point in the game (Kaboul doing the honours) the whole bally lot of them collectively wilted like a particularly world-weary sunflower.

Pochettino

A cheeky nod of approval too in the direction of our latest glorious leader, for the post-red card tinkering he effected. Where convention dictates that in such circumstances the nearest meandering forward should be hooked off and Dawson, or the nearest approximation, duly plonked at the back, Pochettino intriguingly left the entire front four in situ, giving nary a glance at his subs, and instead shunted the resident prodigal Capoue from the defensive shield in midfield into central defence. 4-2-3-1 neatly became 4-1-3-1, and although we pootled along fairly gently thereafter it warmed the heart to see that the sending off was not automatically the prompt for a downing of all attacking tools and reversion to safety-first defence.

Elsewhere on the Pitch

Goodness knows what they feed defenders out in Portugal, but young Master Dier certainly drifted forward for his goal without batting an eyelid or breaking a sweat, and a doff of the cap is duly directed towards him. Elsewhere ye olde problems that were ever present at left-back reappeared with a sunny wave, as Danny blasted Rose allowed himself to be turned inside out by Steward Downing of all people.

Further up the pitch the famed Pochettino alchemy cannot yet be said to have truly been effected across the green and pleasant land, as Lamela missed as often as he hit, but frankly it was just nice to see him lolloping out the place from the off, as if the whole sorry mess of his debut season had never happened.

The rather unique circumstances of this one make it a touch difficult to draw too many conclusions, but bragging rights over that ‘orrible lot are always welcome, a last-minute winner allows for particularly unbearable smugness in the office on the Monday morning and three points away from home is most satisfactory way to get proceedings underway.

Shameless Plug Alert – AANP’s own book, Spurs’ Cult Heroes, continues to retail at Amazon and Waterstones, hint hint.

Categories
Spurs preview

West Ham – Spurs Preview: Perspective & Moderation, Of All Things

The whiff of misplaced optimism fairly pointedly indicates that a new season is lumbering into view, but things are unmistakeably different this time round. For a start, perspective and moderation, of all things, are dangerously close to breaking out amongst the lilywhite fraternity, in a scenario not too dissimilar to the English attitude at this summer’s World Cup. In common with quite a few Spurs-supporting chums, I cannot help but think that we are careering towards a respectable if unremarkable 6th place finish. Wage bills certainly suggest as much, and while those around us have been parading shiny new players at mind-boggling cost, following last season’s transfer glut the rationale at N17 this time round has veered to the other extreme. Big name signings have been conspicuous by their absence, and expectations have been tempered accordingly.

The drill for the new man at the helm seems to be to make the most of what he inherited, with not a peep of dissent, and not a hint of a big money uber-signing. Handily enough, the job description in its entirety seems to be neatly summarised by The Lamela Situation. Contained within one unsymmetrically-coiffeured and over-expensive Argentine winger lies the conundrum facing our man Pochettino – to extricate good value from someone else’s expensive toys. If anyone can perform such alchemy it ought to be the chap who turned Lallana, Shaw et al into £20m+ players.

Just as well, because in addition to Lamela there are a raft of others who need a switch flicked somewhere – while Soldado poached one rather neatly in last week’s friendly against Schalke, there was also the inevitable wild slap into the North Stand from close range, suggesting that certain bad habits linger. Then there is Chadli, Townsend, Lennon, Dembele, Capoue, Chiriches… the whole dashed lot of them in fact, bar Lloris and Vertonghen.

Such ambitions are for the future. Saturday brings the dreary prospect of a trip to West Ham, and a distinct lack of optimism at AANP Towers. I don’t doubt that we will finish ten or so places above them come next May, but this is their Cup Final, and the painful memory of the corresponding fixture at the tail-end of last season lingers heavily in the memory. On that occasion, the performance of Adebayor and Paulinho within our defensive wall set the tone for a defeat so spineless that passing amoeba congregated pitchside to take notes.  Talent they may lack, but one can certainly see West Ham out-fighting us, and should they get their noses in front I fear we will be in trouble. (That pre-season optimism did not last too long then.)

Shameless Plug Alert – AANP’s own book, Spurs’ Cult Heroes, continues to retail at Amazon and Waterstones, hint hint.

Categories
Spurs news, rants

Davies, Gylfi, Vorm & A 5-Year Ruddy Contract for Rose

Oh how the fates toy with us, when it comes to matters of a left-back persuasion. Regular drinkers at the AANP well will be familiar with my dubious sentiments about that careering, out-of-control ball of limbs known as Danny Rose.  So when the carrier pigeon poked in its head to chirp tidings from the lilywhite transfer office, conveying news of the signing of one Ben Davies Esquire, I did what any right-thinking, Danny Rose-abhorring chap would do, and promptly danced a surreptitious but merry jig.

Not that the life and times of Ben Davies is a particular pet topic of mine, far from it. In fact, beyond the most basic snippets of info, I would have to confess to being almost entirely ignorant of anything about the blighter. He does however undoubtedly possess one feature that in my eyes represents ten million nuts well spent – namely that he is not Danny Rose. This, by any metric, constitutes a forward step.

So ‘twas a distinctly bonny, blithe and gay AANP pootling cheerily about his business this week when the carrier pigeon reappeared – but this time its message was so dashed soul-destroying that I had a good mind to wring its neck, pluck every feather from its body and string it up from the window as a pointed warning to any other soul bearing similarly woeful news. And news does not get much worse – or more head-scratchingly baffling – than that Danny Rose and his kabbadi boots have signed on for another five years at the Lane. Another five years! Blinking heck. Another five years of ill-timed lunges, misplaced six-yard passes and errant crosses slapping into the nearest defender. Someone think about the children, for goodness sake.

I do of course exercise a smidgeon or two of dramatic licence here, for the chap is not entirely incapable when it comes to the germane issues around two working feet and a sphere. Nevertheless repeated viewings of the boy Rose do give the impression that God set out to create a runaway trolley, attached a few muscular limbs – during some sort of deific experimental phase no doubt – but gave up before completion and dumped the result in N17.

Gylfi Thor Sigurdsson Biffs Off

As part of the Ben Davies deal we also bid a teary adieu to Gylfi Sigurdsson, not the least of whose qualities include the middle name ‘Thor’. I was always rather fond of the chap (Sig, not Thor), and one suspects that in a parallel universe he has made a starting berth his own at the Lane. However, the Tottenham midfield is bursting at the seams, with attacking-minded chaps of his ilk spilling out all over the place, so the decision to shove him out is understandable enough.

Vorm

The boy Vorm is inbound, since having a pretty dashed handy reserve goalkeeper now seems to be as fashionable as beards and skinny jeans. A competent chappie this Vorm, so one nods enthusiastically and hopes he enjoys staying out late on Thursdays.

Falque Out, Dier In

Our other transfer dealings have been very much on the low-key side of things. Once upon a time £4 million was almost enough to give the foundations of world football a meaningful shove, and pocket oneself a flamboyant, mulleted winger with a penchant for shoulder-dips. Now it seems, a similar sum will secure the services of a man with but one appearance to his name. Step forward (and wave goodbye) Iago Falque, a bean I would not recognise if he made an appointment and proceeded to give the reel-by-reel lowdown on his instagram page. Bundled off to Italy apparently, after that single appearance. Still, he was on the THFC squad list, and as such will forever be entitled to a free whisky at AANP Towers whenever in the neighbourhood.

A similar delight awaits one Eric Dier, who for another £4 million is toddling onto the White Hart Lane premises all the way from Portugal. An England U21 central defender according to the shady types who know such things. The law of averages suggests he will end up disappearing down the route trod by Antony Gardener, Alton Thelwell and indeed Iago Falque – but one wishes him well.

Precious Little Else

Beyond those it seems that preserving the status quo by is the latest fad. Inevitably, a couple of rumours have wafted along suggesting that we might join the merry band pecking away at the carcass of Southampon, but on the whole it seems that the Pochettino remit is to make the most of the treasures already at his disposal. No bad thing, given that by and large last season we seemed but one decent left-back and an in-form Lamela short of the Top Four, but until we bring in a fourth striker I remain a tad uneasy about things.

Shameless Plug Alert – AANP’s own book, Spurs’ Cult Heroes, continues to retail at Amazon and Waterstones, hint hint.