Season 2009-10

Monday Meanderings. And Meditation on a Fine Weekend.

/ Alan / 4 Comments

I won’t lie to you. Because of a family bash, I missed Saturday’s match and I’ve not tried to confabulate an in-depth, incisive match report on the basis of MOTD and Football First. All right then, you forced it out of me, even then I dozed off for a moment or two.

Not my side of the family, mind. Good people and a fine time was had by all, but 3pm on a Saturday, the very idea. My kids know better, let me tell you. I’m so proud…

But Monday is a fine time to lean back, suck a thoughtful tooth, look the world in the eye and say, ‘Hallo world, I’m doing very nicely,  thank you.’ Not a classic but there’s a great deal of satisfaction to be found in the way we refused to give ground as the throws were launched and the tackles flew in. They thought Luka would go under, that his mind was as frail as his body looks, but how wrong could anyone be? They put him down, he picked himself up. Riding a tackle is a skill in itself and Modric is a master. That took some determination; it’s not that long since his leg was broken but he never flinched. Bale too; he’s growing up before our very eyes.

The sound of twanging hamstrings is the soundtrack to our lives. As Pav went off, that completed my Crocks XI, as featured in my last post. Not quite the same feeling as completing the Spurs page in a Pannini sticker album, mind you.

Gudjohnson was given his chance and he took it with two memorable moments that stand out even in this season of fine football. Shoulder to shoulder with the defender, a man previously known for his guile did not waver and then smashed the ball home. Net bulging, no messing, so good. Then the step over, the pressure brought a moment of total poise and in a blur Kranjcar followed up. He too smashed. Or lashed. A fine goal superbly taken. His ability to come off his wing and enter the box could be crucial as we reach the season’s climax.

Although Eidur has been off the pace (and judging by the timber he’s carrying on the carbohydrates), he’s gradually found his fitness and finally some match sharpness. The speed is not what it was but the brain is still fine-tuned to what’s going on around him. He’s a clever player who can both score and bring others into the game, and his leave for the second was a simply stunning example of this talent.

A few scary moments at the back, and without wishing to puncture this blissful contentment, some yawning gaps appeared once or twice and Gomes’ looked like he thought he had been transported back in time to last year’s debacle. I’d prefer not to rely on the opposition missing chances, but then again they should get some better players.

BAE is an excellent full back but loses it at times, for no apparent reason. It flashed through his mind that he would be beaten in the air, and so pushed in a moment of panic. Perhaps not so crazy: all-in wrestling was apparently permissible in the box in the Chelsea-Inter game, as was pushing Gareth Bale.

He should take lessons from Corluka, who is superb at nudging his man without conceding a foul. But wait – the only reason he’s likely to take Charlie to one side is in a dark alley to punch his lights out. Over to Harry this morning:

Redknapp said: ‘Charlie (Corluka) was upset that he didn’t come back and do his job. Benoit is a strange boy. He’s a bit highly strung and hardly speaks English. If you say something to him he’s hard work. He hasn’t improved his English in the couple of years he’s been here.’

Asked why the player had walked off on his own, Redknapp replied: ‘He didn’t know the result! He probably thought we’d drawn.

‘He’ll turn up Wednesday and play great, but he won’t know we’re playing Fulham until someone tells him. That’s how he is. He’s unreal. He walks off and he’s thinking about the music he’s going to play when he puts his headphones on.’

Potentially a manager’s nightmare but Redknapp has handled him well. It’s an interesting point: in this world of badge-kissing and the clamour for commitment, Benny goes his own way and is he any less of a player because of that? He clearly worries about his work (and I use that term advisedly because ‘work’ is what it is to him) because he can be unsettled, as he was on Saturday and, say, against Everton when he fell apart. I cannot conceive that level of concentration and application without some form of motivation. Maybe being in his own world protects him from the stresses and strains of professional football at this level.

Tony Pulis’ whinging does him a disservice. He was right about the second booking but not in revealing what is a blatant attempt to influence who referees Stoke’s matches. I’m talking about his letter requesting that Dean not officiate for his team. He would do well to remember that many refs would not have dared give a penalty for a push in the area, and indeed he turned down our appeals for a similar offence on Bale, and that his teams give officials a hard time with their physical approach. Pulis has won considerable respect for the way in which Stoke have quickly become an established force in the league, on merit. They are brisk and tough but play decent football and do not rely solely on the long ball or those throws. He’ll lose that kudos if he turns into another Wenger or Benitez.

Talking of whinging, hark at me. TOMM is nothing if not constructive, Harry, but all this talk of how we’ve been hit by injuries and loans. Loans are not a force of nature that we are powerless to prevent. They are the result of hard-nosed decisions around money and player potential made by human beings. In fact, by you, Harry, so I’d keep quiet about it if I were you.

At the end of the window I protested at the loans of Hutton and Keane in particular. They may never have turned out again this  season but they would be there if needed, as well as offering alternative tactical options. In the second half of the most important season for donkey’s years, there was simply no need to move them on.

But Spurs move in mysterious ways. Maybe Harry’s comments are not so strange if they were in fact directed at Levy, who may have put on some pressure in order to save a few bob.

For me, at the do, the moment of victory had a peculiar feel to it. We were wandering around the host’s newly refurbished terraced house in Archway, admiring the oh-so-tasteful features whilst curling an inward lip at the sheer fortune that it cost. The last thing I want is a TV over the bath but when no one was looking I had to turn it on. I hate myself, I felt dirty.

Reaching, eventually, the top landing, I took a deep breath and turned on the mobile for the scores. A win! I punched the air, and glanced up over the rooftops, dishes and aerials of north London, only to see the Emirates, bathed in light in readiness for their evening kick off. Look out behind you, we’re coming for you…

Winning at Stoke, 10 man Stoke if it comes to it, may not be so big a deal normally. To me, however, it feels as if a threshold has been crossed. We are fourth on merit and the door is wide open to that CL place, or Wembley come to that. It will be a tough path to travel, I’m under no illusions, but without these three points it would have seemed empty and futile. I am just so excited about the rest of the season.

Finally, Tottenham On My Mind has been asked to guest blog on the site of a new fantasy football game, Football 3s, that can be found here: http://football.picklive.com/

It’s fantasy football in real time, as the game is being played and you can play along as you watch. Touted as the next big thing, they are featuring Spurs Fulham on Wednesday.

And later in the week, a TOMM competition – win a copy of Spurs Cult Heroes, courtesy of All Action No Plot. I’m looking after you, eh, now come on, eh?

Damn You Cursed Hamstring!

/ Alan / Leave a comment

Defence collapsing the moment pressure is applied. Young players out of their depth. Keeper all over the place. Powerless manager with no idea how to respond.  Don’t know who that could possibly describe. Oh hang on, it was us, the last time we played Stoke at the Britannia.

It seems a whole world away now, so much so that I had to double-check the

Bale takes the field against Stoke last season

facts. This was the absolute nadir of our season with a comically, criminally awful performance. We began well enough but then Bale, all wide-eyed and ruddy cheeked innocence in the face of the physical onslaught, desperately stretched to redeem an error. Mistimed rather than malicious, he tried hard, too hard. He was dismissed and Stoke scored from the penalty. We looked promising for a while with ten men and equalised, then came the long throws and the crosses and the lightweight midfield were blown away in the wind. Gomes flapped and danced, then injured Corluka as he came out, the Croatian being stretchered off. Outplayed by Stoke, derided by their gleeful fans, down to ten men, bottom of the league, could it be worse. Well yes – we finished with nine men after Dawson was also sent off. But we had the last laugh over those Stoke fans, oh yes. They sang ‘you’ll be sacked in the morning’ but actually he lasted another 6 days! That showed them….

If anyone doubts our progress under Redknapp, just read the last couple of paragraphs. This appalling defeat will in hindsight be seen as the turning point. Having spent a fortune on getting his man, Levy and Commolli then left him high and dry with a squad ill-equipped for the rigours of the Premier League. Stoke’s steamrollering of our midfield flattened any hopes of a recovery. Levy took drastic action and it’s been pretty good since then. What’s that aitch, something about two points from eight games? Give it a rest why don’t you.

The problems after Christmas this season was the first blip since then but just as we’ve recovered, along comes an injury crisis that could really do for us. Here’s a team: Cudicini, Walker, King, Woodgate, Lennon, Bentley, Jenas, Huddlestone, Rose, Defoe – add a left back and we’ll take on all comers, except that they are all injured. The news of Defoe’s’ hamstring is a bitter blow. We can reorganise – Pav and Crouch have done well enough when they have been on the pitch together lately and Crouch is staying tighter to the rest of the team, therefore he’s not isolated. However, this is the time when we want to be at our very best. We’ve become used to managing without Led and Woody, although I have been grieving over them this week. Take a moment to reflect on just how good those two are.

But in adversity were sown the seeds of recovery. Gomes was brave, playing with damaged ribs, and he has come through that ordeal to become one of the best keepers in the league. Bale and Dawson went away, chastened, and once the wait was over have made magnificent use of their opportunities.

A win will be hard to achieve but that’s the target. It’s not a must win match at this stage of the season blah blah cliché blah but however tough it will be against Stoke, there’s Chelsea, Arsenal, City and United to come. Stoke are well drilled at the back and in Shawcross have a fine centre back. It’s not just their workrate: they move with direction and purpose to support the man on the ball and get it forward quickly without resorting to kick and rush. We must employ our passing game. At home they must come out more than they did at the Lane, but as we press we must recall that game and the sucker punch that did for us. Do what we do well and we can win.

Inter, Contracts and Graffiti. It Fits Somehow.

/ Alan / 8 Comments

On Tuesday, I made a point of wishing good luck to all the Inter Milan fans clustering around Parliament. Not the big bloke with the twitch and the staring eyes, obviously. Big Ben, Westminster Abbey then Fulham Broadway. ‘All England wants you to win’, I shouted at one point. The group’s puzzled looks turned to smiles as someone translated. That might have been going a bit far, mind.

Watching later with some degree of satisfaction, I gasped at Schneider’s skills as if he were one of our own. No wonder he wasn’t interested in us when his name was mooted as a possible target, if he can play for a team as good as Inter were. I had to chuckle at Andy Gray’s comment that when Chelsea were up against it in the second half (make that – outplayed totally), ‘fans of the Premiership’ would be disappointed. The pundits really have absolutely no idea about the fans, do they. Motson said something similar a few years ago, invoking some crazy notion of London supporters solidarity when Arsenal were in the Cup Final, but he’s been going soft for a while now so it didn’t count.

I empathised with the joy of the Inter fans in their corner as Eto’o preened and posed in front of them like a model on the catwalk. Maybe I met you earlier in the day, that good luck wish worked, huh. Maybe they’ll take back to Milan the story of the mad Englishman who wanted them to win. Maybe even now it’s on a blog in Italian. Or maybe not.

Their support was in stark contrast to the home fans. I checked the TV to see if it ha switched to mute by mistake. New Chelsea don’t get it – part of being a fan is that if your team are down, you get behind them. The old school Chelsea supporters have been through more bad times than good in all honesty but it is a sobering thought that a whole generation of fans know nothing but success. You could have watched that team at home for the best part of a decade and never seen them outplayed as they were yesterday. Money and success has transformed the experience of being a football fan. An intrinsic element has been lost, of solidarity in adversity. They simply did not know what to do.

Enough of this. Back to the Lane and Huddlestone has signed a contract to take him through to 2015. Levy has done well to offer extended contracts with, presumably, better terms, to young players like Lennon before the vultures start to circle in earnest. It gives a positive message that they are wanted and they respond well, unlike a player such as Wright Phillips who was appalled recently at being offered ‘only’ £70k a week, bless him the poor little solider.

Hud deserves it. Harry tried several permutations in centre midfield, then opted early on this season to start him regularly, and the big boned one has taken his chance whereas Jenas did not. He can drift around in an infuriatingly lackadaisical manner at times but this is gradually disappearing from his game and his passing and general availability is important to us. He was missed straight away when he got injured a few weeks ago and still is. There’s more to come; he does not have an instinctive grasp of positioning and his anticipation requires a bit of polishing. He learns slowly but when he grasps that the first yard is in the head, he will be a real force.

He’s repaid his manager’s faith in him but sadly it does not guarantee that he will be around for the next five years. These days contracts are as much if not more about securing the value of the player should he be sold than keeping him at a club. Still, for the present he’s ahppy and once again Levy has done well for THFC on and off the pitch.

Finally, on my way home I spotted a reminder, once common but now extremely rare, of being a football fan in the old days. Next to the railway outside London Bridge, deep in the Millwall heartlands, someone has painted the letters ‘T H F C’. Not a tag and certainly not spray-painted street art, just that simple inscription, created with an ordinary paint brush.

Graffiti was run of the mill in the seventies and eighties. Fans would furtively visit all parts of the city in the dead of night, struggling to conceal a 5 litre tin of Dulux under their crombies or donkey jackets and daub their colours here and there. Usually it was simple initials, sometimes a more complex message, typically involving some threat of violence. ‘Spurs rule OK’ or some such. In those times, arriving at the Lane you would be met with freshly inscribed messages of welcome from the opposition, displaying a marked absence of fan solidarity and sometimes some nasty stuff about yids.

When we played Millwall in their season in the First Division, approaching the old Den we were funnelled under a railway bridge and greeted with the slogan ‘Turn Back or Die’. Given the frantic expectation surrounding this rivalry, the scrap yards and barbed wire around us plus their fearsome reputation, unfortunately there was an element of truth to it, a bit like a government health warning. Some graffiti was more benevolent: for many years the environment in Tottenham was improved in some way, I feel, by the burst of creativity that resulted in the painted words, ‘Ken Dodd’s dad’s dog’s dead’. No, I have no idea either.

These surreal outpourings have great appeal. Nothing to do with football, so far as I am aware, but Richmond had ‘Cats Like Plain Crisps’, Deptford the plea from a tortured artist in the midst of bleak council blocks, ‘Give Me Canvas’, whilst only recently has the legend ‘Big Dave’s Gusset’ fallen victim to the building work outside London Bridge.

Any more examples of football graffiti? I’ll put them up on a page if we have enough.

Monday Meanderings

/ Alan / 6 Comments

Always on top but never entirely comfortable. Our main goalscorer notches two but has a mare. The pressure’s on for the top four but we’re not morning people. Just mere Monday meanderings on my mind…

That’s not  a completely accurate summary of Spurs against Blackburn but it was a bit of an odd one. We played some decent football without ever displaying a sense of urgency that should have accompanied this crucial home game. Every match is crucial from now until the end of the season but with a difficult run of games fast approaching on the horizon, if we can’t put Blackburn away then we are nothing and nowhere. I thought we would come out with all guns blazing but  we never stamped our authority on the game. Partly this was down to our opponents’ organisation but we could have been more pro-active and better teams would have made us pay by taking one of those first chances, or indeed a better ref could have given a penalty when Dunn went over. The lethargy with which we began crept back into our play as the second half went on, and after Samba scored I feared that we would not be able to lift ourselves out of that torpor, but Bale and Pav came to the rescue after a few unnecessary scares. At least that bit was completely normal – for a Spurs performance that is.

Palacios had another excellent game, curbing his instincts to fly in and to get forward on behalf of the team. By staying back he allows Modric the freedom he requires. Also, his ability to make good choices has been improved by the pressure of the nine bookings. Remaining on his feet is more of an imperative now and he looks all the better for it. Our tally of free kicks near our box has dropped too. You could see the anxiety, though – at one point he fouled and Webb thought about it but Daws dashed up to wag a single finger in the ref’s face, reminding him that this was his first foul (which it wasn’t but Daws’ problems with maths suited us at that moment). A few wayward passes when he lost concentration during the middle of the second half, but WP pulled his game together again and he is back to his best.

Kranjcar should have come in from the wing more frequently, as Modric does when he plays on the left. He did more of this in the second half, presumably under instructions, but although he did reasonably well, in a tight midfield he could have looked for the ball more assertively, as well as getting into shooting positions in and around the box.

No matter – who needs tactics when we have Gareth Bale. Just give to him, lads, so runs the pre-match team talk. He’s fast becoming a magnificent sight, flying down the wing. He’s a big bloke – the coaches have put some muscle on him – and a fearsome prospect for any defender as he gets into his stride. Salgado is experienced but, um, past his best shall we say. On the Spanish football as a pundit, I swear he was still twitching. As Daws found him with a series of sizzling balls that Bale brought down with the nonchalance of a Sunday morning park kick about, Bale repeatedly rampaged down the wing, causing mayhem. Given Sam’s reputation for organisation, I don’t understand why he didn’t put two men on Bale, especially as the right midfielder, Emerton, often plays at full back. Perhaps he didn’t want to stretch the rest of the team.Who cares – we have a world class prospect on our hands. Keep hanging around at the end of the game, Gareth my son, you’re a big ham to milk the applause but you deserve it, down to the last clap.

I’m tempted to ask if any Spurs player has ever scored so many goals and played so poorly, but that is a little unfair. I also know the real answer, having seen Clive Allen play a first half (against Norwich I think…) when he had about as much co-ordination as Bambi on drugs, then he scored a hat-rick. Pav’s technique deserted him on Saturday. He completely shanked two left footers as they came to him, one in each half which could have been crucial misses, and the ball largely refused to stay close to his body when it was pushed to him. However, even off form his running creates space up front and he often made room for himself, whereas Crouch is either too static or easy to pick up as he lumbers around, bless him. No technique required with his first, as rather than take it on he blasted it straight at Blackburns’ ‘fat Tim Howard’, or rather straight under him.  I would like to see Pav, JD and at least one midfielder hammer into the area towards the 6 yard box when the ball comes over. One or two hanging back is fine but too many take the easy option. Bale’s crossing would become even more dangerous with bodies at front and back post, as well as in the centre.

Dawson had another good game. Tightening up the back after those early chances, he’s mighty in the box, tackles and blocks in an old-style ‘they shall not pass’ kind of centre half, the days when men were men and centre halves were centre halves because they were big, slow and couldn’t pass. Those were the days. Etc.

Howard Webb, he’s not keen on us, is he? The Bale pen was one where you think that FIFA must have changed the rules overnight and you didn’t hear about it. He’s not biased against us, he’s just a poor ref now. It gives me no pleasure to say this. Last year he seemed to get many of the big games and it was a relief to see that we had a ref who was up to the job. English football is worse off because of his failings. He seems to be suffering from an inflated sense of his own self-importance. He’s the big man on the spot to take the big decisions – in his own mind. Instead he should calmly rely on the evidence of his own eyes and just let it flow from there. It’s not about who he is or the occasion. It’s about a ball.

Reading this back, don’t want it to come over as too much of a whinge. We deserved to win and were the better team. Things should have been easier towards the end but that’s not our way. Harry should have brought Kaboul on as DM, dropping back into the box to combat those long balls that Blackburn regularly launched in search of an equaliser, but that would have been too easy. Despite not being at our best, we were too good for our opponents.