Author: AANP

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Spurs preview

This time next month, we’ll be pushing for Europe…

Make no mistake, the games coming up over the Christmas period and into January represent a great opportunity to push up the table, away from the drop-zone and into the chasing pack fro Europe.

In the league, Fulham at home, West Brom away, Wigan away, Pompey at home, Stoke away and Bolton at home on 31 Jan – all games which, individually, we could realistically envisage winning. There’s a Manager of the Month award in there for ‘Arry, particularly if he bolsters the squad shrewdly over January.

The table remains tight, with universal inconsistency seeing teams throughout the division picking up just four or five points from nine. As such, three or four consecutive wins will propel us up the table.

I realise that this is the sort of claim which will incur the wrath and/or mockery of non-Spurs fans across the land, exactly the sort of blind optimism which breeds pre-season mockery outside fo N17, as we babble on about this being “our season”. Indeed, I admit to making such gung-ho claims fro the ’08-’09 campaign, not least on 15 August, the day before the season began. Back then, carried away with the prospect of an all-action-no-plot line-up so attacking it forced Modric back into the holding role, I saw us beating every team in the Premiership at home, bar the top four. Instead, we promptly lost to Boro, Sunderland, Villa, Pompey, Hull and Stoke, and were bottom after a couple of months. There is therefore, a possibility that this festive fixture-list could prove disastrous for us.

However, results (and performances) such as the 0-0 at home to Man Utd, minus King and Woodgate, and the win away to West Ham, have left hope springing eternal of a points blitz over the next few weeks. It all begins today at home to Fulham. ‘Arry will continue to insist that we’re in a relegation scrap, but I see neon lights, dollar signs and all-action-no-plot, glory glory football – we’re on our way to an unbeaten run! I’m sure of it!

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Spurs news, rants

Spurs bid rejected for nice-guy Bellamy

‘Arry may have a good reputation in the transfer market, but I’m not sure that Craig Bellamy was what I wanted to pull out of my Christmas stocking.

As I indicated when waving goodbye to Paul Stalteri lsat week, being a nice guy has precious little to do with footballing ability. I nevertheless have my misgivings about Bellamy, the very antithesis of a “nice guy”, a man so charming that when on a team-bonding trip to Spain in his Liverpool days, he attacked a team-mate with a golf-club. The loveable rogue. Further evidence of Bellamy’s troublesome character is that he’s had about 45 different clubs during his 10-or-so-year career. Not sure that’s the sort of influence one would want in a dressing-room, although if he’s happy to lamp David Bentley for lack of effort it might not be a bad thing.

In terms of footballing ability he has his attributes – having played for both Liverpool and Newcastle he is undeniably a good striker at Premiership level, with pace to burn and an eye for goal, and he’s also eligible for Europe, which is handy in the absence of the cup-tied Pav.

A huge signing is unlikely in January, so cut-price strikers from hard-up clubs (Bellamy, or Crouch or Defoe at Pompey) or strikers on winding-down contracts (Owen, Hesky) would probably be top of ‘Arry’s attacking shopping list. Those eligible for Europe would be particularly keenly sought, which might rule out the Pompey pair.

The £6 mil bid for Bellamy is only the opening gambit in what is certain to be a highly entertaining transfer puppet show, particularly with ‘Arry pulling the strings. Who knows what our squad will look like a month down the line?

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Spurs news, rants

All I want for Christmas…

Around about the time of my earliest memories of the all-action-no-plot universe – I’d say approximately 1987 – all I wanted for Christmas was the toy truck thing from Thundercats. For John Bostock and other unfeasibly young Spurs players, Thundercats was the greatest cartoon ever. It followed the extremely action-packed lives of a bunch of heroic human-feline hybrids who were armed with a sword which grew bigger if swung around occasionally, and an absolutely brutal truck, with great big claws that could plough through walls and generally cause mass destruction en route to achieving a greater good. The truck rocked, and a toy version was exactly what any sensible, well-adjusted six year-old all-action-no-plotter would want for Christmas. However, that yuletide my parents rather perplexingly bought me a She-Ra*annual instead.

The Spurs management seem to pursue a similarly baffling transfer policy. As the January window approaches I can’t help but hope that the dream present will be bought, a modern-day Thundercats tank, to sit in front of our back four and boss the midfield. However, those with the power to buy will almost inevitably purchase something unnecessary, unwanted and completely inappropriate. Such as Younes Kaboul, the Premiership equivalent of a She-Ra annual. Like Kaboul, and indeed my She-Ra annual, the new signing will be peered at out of politeness, put on display once or twice in the following weeks, then left to gather dust.

For years, as long as I can remember, we’ve needed a defensive midfielder. The Premiership equivalent of a Thundercats tank thing, with great big moving claws, and the capacity to plough through walls and generally cause mass destruction en route to achieving a greater good – it’s exactly what Spurs need. Didier Zokora is not such a beast. He may have his moments, and a penchant for those Benny Hill-esque dashes upfield. He may occasionally offer an extra body in defence, causing confusion in opposition minds if not exactly instilling fear in their hearts. He may even, most surreally, be courted by Real Madrid and their fabulous new manager Wendy Ramos, whilst also catching the eye of that doyen of English management, Tony Adams, at Portsmouth – but Didier Zokora is not the defensive midfielder par excellence that Spurs have been crying out for since the days of the three wise men and the ad hoc duvet in a manger. Zokora really ought only to be keeping the seat warm for someone else.

Our need for a holding midfielder is hardly rocket science, yet it seems to have bypassed one manager after another. Instead, in recent years we’ve seen Bent, Bentley, Modric, Giovanni, Kaboul, Prince-Boateng and Pavluychenko brought in – all players of some quality, but none of whom have addressed the real problem area. To paraphrase Alanis Morissette, it’s like needing a spoon, and spending about one hundred million pounds on a set of fancy foreign knives. More idiotic than ironic.

A Thundercats truck of a defensive midfielder is not the only thing we need this Christmas – with ‘Arry seemingly unconvinced of Gareth Bale’s quality it seems we might pursue a left winger/midfielder, as well as another centre-back, striker, goalkeeper and possibly a couple of full-backs. A full team then. ‘Arry has a good reputation in the transfer market, and has been at the Lane long enough to get an idea of the squad deficiencies – he certainly moans about them enough – so maybe, just maybe, we’ll get those things we truly crave this Christmas.  Or, alternatively, maybe we’ll tear off the warpping paper and have to feign surprise as another unwanted player is brought into the squad, soon to be discarded, with Younes Kaboul and the She-Ra annual.

 

*She-Ra was He-Man’s female cousin

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Spurs news, rants

Auf Wiedersehen Paul Stalteri, another useless Spurs full-back

An early Christmas present from ‘Arry Redknapp and Daniel Levy has seen Paul Stalteri’s contract terminated, by mutual consent. That angelic melody you hear emanating from north London isn’t some choir putting in last-minute preparations for a festive performance of Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus, oh no – ’tis the sound of an exuberant all-action-no-plotter toasting the demise (not literally) of another one of our seemingly infinite line of inept full-backs.
 

Paul Stalteri appeared to be a thoroughly decent chap – not prone to diving, whingeing or fussing generally. He scored three goals, each of which, strangely, I remember well – a blinder in the FA Cup, a tap-in vs Man City and, most memorably, the late winner at West Ham, to cap a hugely satisfying comeback win last year. He hasn’t moped or mouthed off this season about being on the fringes and beyond – as such I wish him well, at his delightfully-named new German club, Borussia Monchengladbach.

 

And with the formalities out of the way, can I reiterate how glad I am to see the back of the latest in a long line of, at best, distinctly average full-backs. While showing sufficient co-ordination to be a sportsman, and being full of willing, the guy was of limited ability going forward, and made far too many mistakes to be a defender. Off the top of my head I remember him faffing around in the last minute v Sunderland a few years ago, getting caught in possession in his own box and conceding a goal that saw us lose 1-0. Then, when we were winning 1-0 at l’arse with five mins to go I recall him being shrugged off possession by Henry who galloped away and scored, while Stalteri pleaded for a free-kick. Those are just the first two which spring to mind, but there were several more – indeed I recall that season looking back over my fixture list and racking up the number of points he alone cost us. No plot, for sure, but not much action to compensate either. And why on earth was he wearing the number 7 shirt? The shirt of Best, Dalglish, Beckham and Paul Walsh – which idiot thought it would make sense to give it to a mediocre Canadian right-back?

 

Using the flawless, scientifically proven “who-would-buy-him” gauge of a player’s quality, it was telling that last season he went on loan to a relegation-battling Fulham, and this season is as likely to end up in the Championship as in the Prem. I reiterate, he seems a nice chap, but as we’re trying to win football matches, not host garden fêtes, I don’t think his niceness is too relevant. The sooner ‘Arry can get rid of the other sub-standard players in our squad, the better. Half-decent players may be sufficient for the likes of Middlesborough or Bolton, or any other team aiming to avoid relegation, play depressing football and occasionally scrap a win against one of the top-four. At Spurs however we want to be pushing towards Europe and winning silverware. As such we ought to signal our ambition by bringing in players who will be tempted to head off to Old Trafford in a couple of years.

 

There have been some encouraging signs in the last few days, with Gilberto already on his way out (huzzah!). Personally I’d like to see Ricky Rocha, Hossam Ghaly and Assou-Ekotto follow suit. Jamie “Three-Touch” O’Hara gets a reprieve, as he’s young enough to push on, as, perhaps does Kevin Prince-Boateng, although neither have ever really blown up my skirt over the last two years. Stalteri certainly meets all relevant criteria for ejection. He may be Canada’s national captain – and quite possibly their greatest ever player – but at full-back, being an established international is hardly a guarantee of supreme quality (Erik Edman and even Vedran Corluka spring to mind).

 

Over the last week I’ve written in celebration of the fact that Gilberto will never play for us again, and bemoaning the fact that in physics-defying fashion Assou-Ekotto has managed to cement his place in the team as a regular. What is it with Spurs and rubbish full-backs? As far back as I can remember – that’s around late-80s – we’ve always had useless full-backs. A seminal period of my youth was Brian Moore commentating – badly – on the Big Match on ITV on a Sunday, with its funky electric guitar theme tune, and  Mitchell Thomas, back-pedalling as an opponent advanced, clumsily conceding possession and tripping over his own bootlaces. Fast forward twenty years, and where Mitchell once stumbled now we have Stalteri, Gilberto and BAE. We’ve always had flair midfielders, and we’ve always had sub-standard full-backs. It just seems to be a Tottenham thing. The likes of Carr were the exception rather than the rule. The rule was Austin and Edinburgh, Gilberto and Stalteri.

 

Some may argue that full-back is hardly the most important position, and there is something in that. If a good team is going to carry any mediocre player, full-back is probably the one (I should know, I was that mediocre full-back for a few years at school…). A full-back’s mistakes can be rectified in last-ditch fashion by the centre-backs and ‘keeper. However, a top-notch, defensively-sound, attackingly potent full-back can dictate the entire dynamic of the team. Whereas BAE does the bare minimum – and occasionally less – by paroling his touchline and not getting much further than the halfway line, the likes of Bosingwa and Cole bomb on, nullifying the oppo’s winger, creating width for his team-mates, whipping in inviting crosses and generally shoving the entire passage of play a good 20 yards up the pitch.

 

Such descriptions have rarely if ever been levelled at Stalteri, so I shed no tears as he wanders out of N17 for the final time. Frankly, I hope that we be the first of a number of departees, over the coming weeks.

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Spurs match reports

Assessing Assou-Ekotto – Newcastle 2-1 Spurs

Darn it – having recently mugged l’arse and Liverpool with last-minute goals, we muggers became muggees this afternoon, against the barcodes of Newcastle. Evidently we can feel aggrieved, but these things tend to even themselves out, approximately, over the course of the season, so let’s not be too despondent. It still baffles and grates me that we’re unbeaten against each of the top four this season, and have lost to just about every rubbish (or at least second-rate) team in the division, but that’s football I guess. By all accounts it was a decent perfromance – and upcoming fixtures suggest that we have a great opportunity to go on the sort of run that would lift us well clear of the relegation zone and ensconce us in the top half.

The fall-guy today was left-back Benoit Assou-Ekotto, apparently glaringly at fault for the first goal. While ‘Arry has steadied the ship and brought out the best in the likes of Modric and Lennon, and even Gomes and Bent,  his faith in BAE has gone largely unnoticed, but nevertheless irks me. My reasons are twofold – numero uno, BAE is mediocre at best; and secondly, we have one Gareth Bale in reserve.

BAE’s mediocrity is spectacular. He is the archetypal “solid”  full-back, where “solid” is a euphemism for “dull and of limited talent” . He rarely ventures beyond the halfway line, let alone up to the oppo area, in the style of the great 21st century attacking full-backs. His entire array of passing seems to comprise solely of whacking the ball down the left flank – and his defending, as evidenced today, hardly elevates him into the pantheon of greats. I like to judge a player according to the teams he would attract if offered for sale – and BAE seems to be in the Fulham/Wigan category.

On top of that, he has an unnervingly blank expression at all times. Admittedly this isn’t the strongest reason to exclude him from the team, but that icy demeanour makes him look like he’s formulating a plan to murder someone – with an axe – and scares the bejeesus out of me. Just made a last-ditch tackle? BAE looks blank. Just dropped a clanger? Looks blank. I suspect that even if he slotted home the Champions League-winning penalty his celebration would consist of a blank look into some distance space, before retrieving the ball and belting it up the left touch-line.

And yet BAE is keeping Gareth Bale out of the team. Indeed, BAE was the only first-teamer rested by ‘Arry during last week’s draw to Spartak, so unfathomably sacrosanct is his place in the team.

If Bale were sold today Aston Villa and Everton would have a look, and possibly even the top four – indeed, we beat Man Utd to his signature 18 months back. Now admittedly Bale has had a slightly shoddy season so far. His defending has never been his forte, reflected in the fact that he plays as often in midfield as at the back, and his distribution has been a tad wayward. However, when on song – as in the first half of last season, before getting injured – he is a potent threat. As a natural, attacking left-footer he offers balance to the midfield, the threat of an early cross, good pace and also chips in with goals. When all else was going wrong in the first four months of last season, he struck me as our best player.

The congested Christmas fixture list is likely to force ‘Arry to chop and change a bit, and I implore young Bale to seize the chance with both hands, and left foot, and cement his place in the team. He may look like he’s yet to evolve fully from our simian cousins, but he has at least previously shown himself to be a quality performer in a Spurs shirt – something I’m not sure could be said of the axe-murdering BAE.

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Spurs match reports

Gilberto – so bad he got sacked… Spurs 2- 2 Spartak Moscow

Imagine playing so badly that immedidately after the game you get sacked by the manager. It’s got to be the game’s biggest indignity, even worse than being a substitute who gets substituted. Gilberto, take a bow. I think it happened to Dave Beasant once, back in the late 80s/early 90s, but last night in his first start under ‘Arry, Gilberto was hauled off at half-time and shown the door at full-time. How badly must he have played?

Not only that, it was the third time in his brief Spurs career that he’s started and been withdrawn at half-time, for performance rather than injury reasons. Now we’re not exactly a club famed for its amazing defenders, so to be taken off at half-time, and then told he’ll never play again – the guy must have been truly rubbish last night.

Bizarrely, Gilberto is Brazilian, which ought, according to the laws of physics, to make him one of the most talented footballers around. No doubt once we get rid of him he’ll be snapped up by some European team and end up with a Champions League winners medal. However, it’s saying something that at a time when ‘Arry is moaning about the size of our squad he’s willing to jettison a player after just 45 minutes…

Bless him, Gilberto’s debacle last night occurred about a year after his debut for Spurs, when he picked up the ball just outside his own area and decided to try and dribble past the entire opposition. He got tackled by the first guy, who promptly scored. At the time I figured that after such a nightmare start things could not get any worse for him. In a sense this was true – strictly speaking they haven’t got worse – but the assumption was that things would actually improve. They haven’t. They’ve remained at a cringe-worthy inept level and Gilberto is still rubbish. He’s only played a handful of times for us, but remains about eighteenth down the pecking order of full-backs, behind the likes of Assou-Ekotto, Gunter and the good ladies of the under-12s.

To be fair to the guy, playing in defence obviously means that bad form results in goals conceded; whereas a striker in bad form doesn’t actually cause a negative goal difference. So while Postiga scored about two goals in 20 or 30, and the clumsy beanpole Razsiak didn’t score once, neither actually caused us to concede goals. Gilberto, on the other hand, and indeed Gomes, can have solid games for 89 mins and still be remembered for making one howler, with little chance of redemption up the other end.

I can’t remember how much he cost, but we seem to have made a bit of a habit of paying well over the odds for defenders who are mediocre at best. Richards for £8 mil a few years back, a good £3 or £4 mil for Rocha, now £8 mil for Corluka – even in the modern age of inflated prices these are all ridiculous. I’d be quite content if Platini, Blatter and all the other crack-pots who run the game insititued a two-tiered payment system for defenders – £20 mil for the best ones, and £1 mil for all the rest. Rio? £20 mil. Cannavaro? £20 mil. Ledley? £20 mil. Assou–Ekotto? £1 mil, tops. Lescott, Carragher, Tal Ben Haim and Gilberto – £1 mil. This would avoid any confusion brought about, and remove the need to sack some foreign defender with a few international caps for whom we’ve paid a shedload but who is actually rubbish. It will never happen, but then once upon a time we thought the same about the back-pass rule…

I can’t make much informed comment about Gilberto’s performance as I had to be content with the radio last night. Even though there are about 200 hundred tv channels available in the UK at the moment, including half a dozen dedicated sports channels, not one was showing the game. Clearly there’s not enough football on telly at the moment. There’s a niche in the market there…

So I don’t really know how Gilberto played, other than that he messed up royally for Spartak’s opener, and got sacked as a result. It’s a form of management that would strike few into a few million of Britain’s laziest in other spheres of employment. Elsewhere on the pitch – well, I don’t know. I couldn’t watch it. Apparently though, the first half was awful, but in the second half the full-backs pushed up and we were much improved. Good to see (ie hear) that Modric has broken his duck for us. Generally relieved to hear that the patched up reserves made it through, particularly from a two-goal deficit. Bring on Shaktar Donetsk in the next round, minus the wretched Gilberto.

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Spurs preview

Anyone fancy a game? Spurs – Spartak Moscow preview

The build-up to tonight’s game with Spartak reminds me of our office 5-a-side team. We too would reach the day of the game with only four guaranteed players, from an initial pool of several dozen. And so it transpires that Darren Bent can’t play because he has a cold, Ledley and Woodgate are injured, Pav has a prior engagement with his missus, Corluka is helping a mate move into a new flat, Hutton is probably too hungover, Giovanni will no doubt have a deadline looming and can’t get out of the office in time, and as a result ‘Arry is going to have to phone around the players’ mates to try and find a couple of ringers.

As in fact he has already done – step forward Bostock and Parrett. I watched Bostock come off the bench to become our youngest ever player vs Dinamo Zagreb, he seemed to have a decent touch and was left-footed, which is pleasing, but he looks like he should be wearing a hoody and sitting at the back of the bus playing his music out loud. As for this Parrett chap –  I saw a photo of him in the paper and he looks about eight. Maybe the picture is actually 12 years old and he’s really 20, but this still annoys me. I’m not old, but people like him make me feel old. It seems like five minutes ago that I was a teenager, and dreamed of being the young kid thrown off the bench at Spurs. Admittedly I couldn’t even make the school starting XI, but still, I dreamt that dream because I was young enough. It was about the same era that Southgate and Ince were playing rather than managing.

And now? Now Southgate is a manager, Ince has just been sacked from his third managerial post and some damn eight year-old who hasn’t started shaving is going to play for Spurs tonight. How can someone born in the 90s be a better footballer than I am? How can someone still at school be better than I am? I’ve got over ten years on these kids – surely I must be fitter, and stronger, if not necessarily faster? Go back to Pokemon and recorder concerts Parrett, leave the football to grown men. That kid is going to get a right kicking tonight. I’d kick him if I were playing – even if I were his team-mate – just because no-one ought to be a better footballer than me if they’re not old enough to remember Thundercats. There’s a natural order of things here, sonny. Still, as long as Ryan Giggs continues to play, I’ll always feel young. He represents a whole era – my era. Don’t you ever dare to retire, Giggsy.

We only need a point to progress tonight. Fingers crossed for Bostock, Parrett and the rest of the High School Musical cast.

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Rants on the Beautiful Game

Time waits for no manager – Ince gets muscled off the ball

I feel a little sorry for Paul Ince. Admittedly the multi-millionaire side of things will probably soften the blow for him, but the guy was a legend for England, and the sort of midfielder I yearned for Spurs to buy. When England were at one of their best periods (Euro 96, le Tournoi 97, France 98) he was at the hub of it.

Still, there’s no escaping the fact that Blackburn were in freefall, and weren’t about to improve under him. It’s all very well to hear ex-pros say he should have been given more time – I think the Blackburn faithful would beg to differ. More time would have seen them exit the league. As Wendy Ramos – and indeed the wondrous Martin Jol – found out, time is a commodity a Premiership manager simply does not have. The Premiership doesn’t work like that. There’s so much money flying around that relegation is an absolute disaster – as is failure to qualify for the Champs League, if the team is that way inclined. This is no secret, so Ince really ought not to use that as an excuse. No Prem manager ought to – if he’s so dense that he thinks that his club will wait to be relegated, just to suit his personal career prospects, he ought not to have been hired in the first place. 

Time waits for no manager, but Heurelho Gomes might just have been saved by it. With no transfers until Jan, and no obvious replacement in goal, Gomes has had the chance to redeem himself and restore his reputation, and he’s fairly literally grabbed it with both hands. He’s certainly turned in some top-notch performances – his ability to pull off the spectacular saves has never really been in doubt, and he now looks a lot more assured coming for crosses, even if he does annoyingly tend to punch every time. However, it remains to be seen whether that will be enough to convince ‘Arry to stick with him until the season’s end.  Bless him, I fear that Gomes could have another 29 consecutive faultless games, but if number 30 features another clanger that’ll be the one we all remember. Call it David James syndrome.

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Spurs news, rants

Woodgate does his Anderton impression: Spurs 0 – 0 Man Utd

Good grief, what a productive week. West Ham away and Man Utd at home could quite conceivably have ended in nul points (and would almost certainly have done so under Wendy Ramos). Admittedly the second half vs Man Utd increasingly became a backs-to-the-wall effort, but we did create some chances, and a clean sheet against the European champions, with an attack of Berba, Ronaldo and Tevez, is no mean feat.

 

That feat becomes even less mean when it is remembered that we began without King, and lost Woodgate to the most innocuous looking injury early on. We’ve been rather spoiled by an injury-free year for Woodgate, but the manner in which he picked up his “knock” – with no-one around him – was rather worrying, and memories of the original, definitive “Sicknote” came flooding back. Whereas Sir Les would get injured every week because he’d get concussion from nutting someone’s right boot, Anderton just didn’t seem to be built for football, and his weedy little legs rarely took the strain. His sinewy frame and gaunt face gave the impression of a man built of elastic bands tied around twigs – with the result that if he strained too hard he would snap. It had slipped my mind until Saturday, but Woodgate’s history suggests that he is similarly constructed. Hence, in the finest tradition of Anderton he incurred an injury seemingly just by landing, after jumping a foot in the air, and off he went, clutching his back and grimacing, like a grandfather who’d overdone it a wedding disco.

 

The resulting ad hoc back-four of Zokora, Assou-Ekotto, Corluka and Dawson hardly instilled me with confidence at first glance, but my goodness they did well. A lot of Dawson’s recovery tackles may come about because he erred in the first place, but he still made those recovery tackles in fine style. Zokora I single out for particular place, not only because he was thrust into unknown territory at left-back, but also because he was up against the newly-crowned Ballon D’Or winner, Little Miss Ronaldo. Perhaps, with his pace and penchant for an occasional 80-yard run, right-back could become a more regular spot for Zokora, in the absence of so many other options. Assou-Ekotto had his usual perfunctory, unspectacular game, although rather more eye-catching this time on account of his new hairstyle, which looked a bit like the grid from that board game “Battleships”. Gomes was quality. I’ve been one of his biggest critics, but the lad had a blinder – the spectacular leaping saves obviously catch the eye, but I was most relieved/impressed by the fact that he didn’t fail to connect when coming for corners. Bravo, sir.

 

Elsewhere on the pitch… Modric continues to look like he’s adapting to the English game with every passing match. Thudd performed an impromptu castration upon poor old Pavluychenko, which prevented what might have been a cracking goal (has Thudd ever scored any other sort of goal?) Bentley still looks like a flashy boyband member who has yet to prove he can walk the walk. However, his early long-range volley was a further indication of the renewed confidence that ‘Arry seems to have instilled in the team.

 

So positives aplenty, but all the jolliness is rather tempered by a glance at the league table, which shows that we’re still only a point above the relegation zone. This despite an unbeaten record against the top four this season* which makes all the more infuriating our losses to Stoke, Boro, Sunderland etc. The top half of the table remains tantalisingly close, but we will require a string of wins, rather than the win one, draw one, lose one cycle we seem to have adopted. The Prem takes a back seat for a few days as Spartak Moscow are next up, which at this rate is likely to see me make my debut in defence. Point needed to progress, I feel confident.

 

* = Pedantry alert – I’m aware that Villa are actually fourth at the moment, but for all intents and purposes I’m shoving l’arse into that little group.

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Spurs preview

Berba the pantomime villain: Spurs – Man Utd preview

So it looks like Berba is chickening out of a return to the Lane tomorrow, the big girl’s blouse. There is also some talk of Carrick possibly missing out through injury, although I suspect he’d be due less vitriol than the Bulgarian swine. Loyalty means nothing to players, nothing new there, but everyone loves a pantomime villain, especially at Christmas, and should Berba play he can expect to be roundly booed for the manner in which he upped and left. Of sulky demeanour at the best of times, his departure was conducted in such a surly manner he didn’t even bother to make the usual polite utterances about how grateful he was for the opportunity and support at Spurs etc. There’s probably a sense in which his honesty is refreshing, but I missed it in the midst of my indignation that anyone would dare to leave the amphitheatre of N17, or that, contrary to the song, there is actually another team around which is by far the greatest the world has ever seen.

 

Some players will always be warmly received at the Lane – Waddler, Ginola, Klinsmann et al. Guys, mi casa su casa. The criteria are pretty straightforward – play the sort of champagne football that the Lane regulars love, show that you care for the badge and, possibly above all else, don’t leave acrimoniously. Getting shunted out by an unscrupulous chairman/manager tends to assist the returning player in the popularity stakes.

 

By contrast, declaring that you’d rather leave Spurs and join some other lot, who have handily become the club you supported as a boy, will grant you the sort of treatment that even Emmanuel Eboue would consider a tad harsh. And leaving to join l’arse on a free, after you’ve been club captain for years – well, suffice it say that ten years on and that’s now become a matter for the polizei to investigate.

 

With Rooney and possibly Evra also missing from the Man Utd line-up tomorrow, and our bizarrely impressive record against the top-four so far this season, there may even be grounds for optimism ahead of the game. I think we’ll get stuff myself, but personally I’d rather lose this one and win the Carling Cup final against them.