All Action, No Plot

And it had all begun quite encouragingly. Sitting back away from home and soaking up the pressure just isn’t the Tottenham way, so right from the off we took the game to that lot, giving as good as we got in the first half. Jenas, Hudd and Palacios weren’t far off with their long-range efforts, and there was a gorgeous through-ball from Sergeant Wilson to free up Defoe in the early stages. By stages however, everything that could go wrong did go wrong. It was loosely reminiscent of one of those action films in which everything starts off serenely enough, before one by one the characters are all killed off and by the end it’s complete carnage.

Interestingly, ‘Arry opted to replace Modric by pretending the problem wasn’t there and doing away with the concept of a left-winger. To be honest I’m not entirely sure precisely what formation it was – a lop-sided 4-4-2, or maybe a variant on 4-3-3. The players did not make it abundantly clear, and either way there was not much of a presence on the left. Whether or not the deployment of a winger on the left would have at least helped to keep a lid on the Chelski full-backs will go down as one of life’s hypotheticals. Our formation actually worked to an extent in the first half - fluid if a little shapeless, and benefiting from Keane dropping back from attack – but ultimately, irrespective of the formation, we missed Modric’s guile. Jenas and Palacios had their moments, but we lacked a cutting-edge.

Pointing the Finger

Not one of Corluka’s best days. At fault for the first, he laboured so heavily to keep up with Drogba for the third I wanted to grab a rifle and put the poor blighter out of his misery. He generally compensates for his lack of pace at full-back by intelligent positioning and use of his body, but at centre-back, in a mano e mano sprint from halfway, there was no hiding place. Not entirely encouraging, given that he is likely to be emergency centre-back in the coming weeks – with that fellow speed-demon, the Hudd, alongside him.

And on the subject of the centre-backs, I’m really not quite sure what happened in the latter stages, as Stamford Bridge started to resemble the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan. Bodies dropping everywhere, stretcher-bearers working over-time, and the Chelski groundstaff having to sweep bloodied limbs off the pitch at full-time. I doubt that anyone else will want to play centre-back for us now, as the position is clearly cursed.

Penalty Shout

“I never comment on referees and I’m not going to break the habit of a lifetime on that prat”
– Ron Atkinson

The company line here at AANP is generally to avoid poking at the ref, as there tend to be 22 other chaps out there each game who make more mistakes. Had the penalty been awarded, at 1-0, Carvalho might also have been sent off, but Howard Webb proved to his legions of worshippers that he is in fact human, and Chelski went up the other end and scored. Que sera sera. It did give Keane an opportunity to send the pointing-shouting routine into overdrive, and with good reason – if not a penalty it ought to have been a caution for diving, but neither were awarded. We will get the rub of the green at times later on this season, maybe even from Mr Webb, but the 3-0 defeat to that lot will remain forever etched in the annals.

The hullaballoo over the penalty also glosses over the fact that the second goal was a poor one to concede, as once Cudicini had shovelled the ball sideways two Chelksi players reacted faster than any of our lot. That whole sequence of events – the penalty shout, followed by the strength of Drogba and the sight of our boys casually rocking on their heels as the Chelski forwards gobbled up the scraps – summed things up. Bad luck, bad defending, clinical finishing from the other lot.

With transfer tittle-tattle still entrenched in the realms of fantasy and silly-speak, I thought I’d gaze all teary-eyed and nostalgic at the season gone by, and offer a final few reminiscences. The Top-Ten Mistakes and Top-Ten Goals of the season are imminent, but for now gorge yourself – in reverse order, no less - on a veritable gaggle of pantomime villains from 2008-09, at the madcap world that is Tottenham Hotspur FC.

10. Fulham – Technicallly, we’re probably better off not qualifying for Europe, as it will almost certainly increase our chances of a top four finish next season. However, this was an argument I blindly ignored in the final few months, as all other contenders fell by the wayside, but the Cottagers consistently kept their noses in front. Gallingly, if Gomes hadn’t blundered back in November, we might well have avoided a 2-1 defeat to Fulham, and would now be dusting off our passports once again.

9. Gareth Bale – An Arsenal conspiracy in human(ish) form, Bale has gone something like 20-plus league games for us, over two seasons, without tasting victory. I’d be mightily disappointed if we flogged him off this summer, as he made a quite blistering start to his Tottenham career, but it has now reached the stage where opposition players high-five one another when they see his name on our teamsheet.

8. Peter Walton - “Who?” cry a thousand voices in unison. “The ref from the Blackburn game in April“, replies the scribe at AANP Towers, before receiving a good kicking for being such a smart-arse. We were cruising at one-nil, as has been our wont (see above) when Walton thought he’d spice things up by sending off Palacios for sneezing in the wrong direction or something similarly innocuous. Grist to Big Fat Sam Allardyce’s mill, it allowed Blackburn to lob long balls into orbit and back down to earth in our area, and two late goals gave that lot an ill-deserved 2-1 win.

7. Robbie Keane – A slightly strange one this. Rather suddenly upped and left for his “boyhood heroes”, which left the more restrained folk of White Hart Lane shaking their heads and tutting, and the rest of us shrieking invective at him until blue in the face. And then he came back, which left us slightly embarrassedly shuffling our feet and changing the subject. Nobody is yet quite sure whether we ought to be cheering for or grumbling at him.

6. The Entire Spurs Team At Burnley – One of the most embarrassing, disgraceful performances any Spurs fan can remember, we contrived to throw away a 4-1 first leg lead, to a team in the division below us, a display every bit as bad as that sounds. Frankly, it left us plain embarrassed to be heading to Wembley, but that’s where we ended up

5. Dimitar Berbatov – Easy to forget that the incredible sulk was a lilywhite at the start of the season. Decided he was way too cool for school last season, hung around to make himself a dressing-room nuisance in pre-season, and didn’t bother with to make any respectful noises on the way out. Some people depart the Lane to a hero’s ovation; Berba we’d have happily kicked all the way down the High Road and far beyond.

4. Failing to Increase One-Nil Leads - Became a particular trend in the second half of the season, when we’d routinely score in the first-half, stack up lots of possession but develop an allergy to a second goal. The result was a slew of unnecessarily tense finales to games that should have been wrapped up, sung lullabies and put to bed, in the process giving kids like Obika and Bostock a chance to shimmy on with the game sewn up. Instead, those collective final ten-minutes of games have been knocking several years of my life. Three points is three points, but this is something to improve upon for next season.

3. Howard Webb – A two-nil lead in the second-half at Old Trafford, and although we were dropping deeper and deeper we just about had the Champions at arms’ length. Cue a pretty dodgy call from the FA’s finest, and Man Utd had a penalty, and a springboard back into the game. We ought not to have fallen apart thereafter, and there’s no telling whether we’d have hung on for victory otherwise, but few dispute it was the turning-point of the game.

2. Rubbish Pre-Season Preparations – Not sure precisely who is responsible for this, but presumably Wendy Ramos ultimately takes the blame. A pre-season that saw us beat everyone we came across, scoring about a trillion goals in the process, counted for absolutely nothing because all those opponents were lower-league Spanish reserve teams or undercooked continentals about three weeks behind us in terms of pre-season. Preparation for the rigours of the Premiership it most certainly wasn’t - something we should have realised when we saw Darren Bent banging them in left, right and centre – and Two-Points-Eight-Games duly followed. Incidentally it’s a mistake now being replicated by the England cricket team ahead of the Ashes.

1. Damian Comolli – Ooh, it makes my blood boil just typing his name. Dodgy signings at inflated prices, and an insistence in interfering in the manager’s role, the blighter darn well almost got us relegated. And how the hell was he qualified, in his mid-thirties and with no decent experience, for the role as Director of Football, or whatever it was, at a Premiership club? Rumours of an Arsene Wenger conspiracy burn brightly here at AANP Towers. Kicked out in October, he’ll be mortified to know that he remains firmly off the AANP Christmas card list.

The AANP 2008-09 end-of-season awards can be found here, and you can join the AANP facebook group here or follow on twitter here-ish.