Season 2013-14

What A Waste

/ Alan / 35 Comments

Funny how these things turn out. I’m bashing out my post-match piece after the Liverpool game, usual routine except I was hitting the keys so much harder than normally, castigating Villas-Boas, blaming Levy for a decade or more of lousy decisions and predicting our manager’s sacking, at the very moment AVB was indeed being dismissed.

It’s happened before, many, many times before, but still comes as something of a shock. This follow-up should be a proper review, a look back at his time at Spurs. But it’s not about analysis, it’s about emotion. At least it is for Spurs fans. For others, it is much more straightforward – Tottenham are a laughing stock. Eight managers in twelve years, close to £100m spent in the summer and four months later the guy who spent it was gone.

It’s provoked different reactions amongst the fans, as you would expect. Many are delighted, some ghoulishly gleeful that their negative assessment of his ability has been proved right. My blogging pal Greg is angry and tearful in this fine Dispatches while Martin Cloake and Adam Powley separately (they are not joined at the hip after all) glory in the absurdity of it all. You have to laugh or else you’d cry.

I should be worked up about it. Long ago having sold my soul to the devil, I’ll be watching Spurs ’til the day I die regardless of who is in charge and who is playing, so rejection, the rational response to the mess the club is in, is out of the question. Rationality and supporting Spurs – really? What am I thinking?

But I invested in what I thought was happening at the club. I wanted Villas-Boas to succeed because I like the idea of a young, progressive and driven manager taking the club forward with a squad of similarly able and upwardly mobile players under his protection. I felt protective because of the way sections of the media and those within his club rubbished him at Che***a. He was ours now and White Hart Lane would be a safe home for him. We Is Us 18 months before it was said out loud.

He’s gone and I wish him well. I’m left feeling not angry, sad or happy, but numb. Hollow and distracted that once again my club, should be left in such disarray as supporters look on powerless. However difficult any life event is, human beings develop strategies for dealing with any repeat. Life goes on. Time and again our hopes have been raised only to be dashed once more. One step up and two steps back. We’re always regrouping, starting again. A endless loop of transitional seasons. It has to stop. Some clichés deserve repeating because they are perfect encapsulations of reality. We can cope with the despair, it truly is the hope that gets you.

I guess I don’t ever want the hope to be extinguished. Life isn’t measured by the passing of the years, it’s how enthusiastic you feel about the things that matter. Once that enthusiasm withers, so does body and mind. That’s why football supporters are such lovely, wonderful people to know. I mean real supporters, measured not by how many games they go to or their knowledge of the inside-out passing stats of Latvian second division false-nines, but supporters who feel rather than spectate. They hold these two diametrically opposed emotions in happy, blissful equilibrium, the cognitive dissonance of despair and hope that protects us from collapse. We moan, wring our hands and kvetsch in our frustration but we know what’s important. And we will turn up next week because good times are just around the corner. It’s a fundamentally decent, buoyant outlook on life that I love and would never be without.

It’s a good way to be but damn hard to maintain with a club that takes every opportunity to trample those positives into the mud beneath layers of cowpats. Uncomfortably numb, in fact, although the thought of a Pink Floyd song is the surest way of driving me completely over the edge.

I’m a keen student of Spurs’ history. If you asked me right now to sum it up in a sentence, I’d say something like: ‘none of the people who have run this club in my lifetime knew what they were doing.’

Daniel Levy has presided over a period of financial stability, and rightly deserves praise for that achievement. Yet he is totally unable to put into practice those same principles of sustainability and continuity on the field. A CEO in any business is not responsible for the detail. That is a waste of her or his time. Rather, they should establish a framework to implement clear goals that everyone signs up to. They set the parameters and the plan, the way the organisation will go about its business. Above all, their job is to pick the right people at senior level to put the plan into action.

This is how Levy has been successful in business. When it comes to football, that flies out of the window. This is what I can’t understand. I would rather a bad plan than no plan at all. To my mind, the club has had a consistent strategy over the last few years, to buy young(ish) players who will develop at Spurs. They come with more potential than experience. Develop together, we have a future in the long-term. the risk that they will leave is balanced to some extent by their increased value in the transfer market.

This long-term strategy is the best option for a club like ours, without a big stadium or recent success to generate income or a rich investor prepared to buy success. (we have a rich investor not prepared to buy success). It’s worthless without a coherent, stable senior management because this development takes time. Time is the most precious resource at the chairman’s disposal. No successful enterprise would dream of making so many changes. yet Levy cannot find the right man and does not know where to look.

Never mind all this speculation, we all know that Levy has no idea who to appoint. None at all. I wish Sherwood well. People I respect rate his coaching abilities and knowledge but if he succeeds it will be by accident not design. Levy has a record of appointing men at odds with the English game – Santini, Ramos – then folding to give anyone who happened to be around a chance – Martin Jol. He allows infighting within his management team – Jol actively undermining Santini with the players, Poyet the same with Ramos. Redknapp came as a panic measure to fight some raging fires, the success was unexpected. He invests millions in giving Villas-Boas the job, a huge risk given his recent CV, then refuses to back him in the market, the Moutinho deal going down the pan and playing an entire season with only two strikers.

I’m numb in the face of this because I have heard it all before. Much sighing and head-shaking annoying everyone around me this week. It’s real but the anger has gone. Not totally – it erupts to the surface as it did when I wrote my last piece. Sugar – Graham, Gross, Francis. Scholar – brought the club to the edge of bankruptcy. Burkinshaw’s parting shot: “there used to be a football club there.” Sidney Wale dynasty: Terry Neill, failed at one club and Ars***l to the core. It has to stop.

Monday was my birthday. It was nice to get wish-you-well messages. My good friend Adrianna, who tolerates but doesn’t get it, asked me if I had a good day. ‘Lost 5-0, lost a manager’ I replied. She hasn’t got back to me. My son knows me well: ‘Spurs in disarray, there’s a birthday present’ was all he said.

It is a shameful catalogue of wasted opportunities stretching back for over forty years. However, I am a supporter, a stupid sucker maybe but a committed sucker undoubtedly, so I find grounds for optimism always, and it is this: the players. This is a decent squad of footballers. Some obvious gaps but the potential is real. Healthy organisations need a goal: ours should be, whoever is in charge, to start next season with this same group of players. Without direction or some sniff of Europe, they will leave. It’s imperative that we keep them. Add to them, sure, but build on what we have.

Levy should look for someone with evidence of enabling talented, skillful players to create the right patterns of attack. In other words, to do what AVB couldn’t do. And whatever happens, I’ll be there to see it.

‘Enough Is Enough’ – Protest Or Epitaph?

/ Alan / 38 Comments

Spurs blog 104The banner unfurled on the Park Lane before and after yesterday’s Spurs game read: ‘Enough is Enough’. One side red, the other blue, it symbolised the unity of the two sets of supporters campaigning against extortionate seat prices for away fans. After this diabolical performance, it could just as easily be Andre Villas-Boas’s epitaph.

This was a benchmark match. Liverpool and Spurs have much in common: youngish managers making their way in the game,  teams with an illustrious past but uncertain future as they build new sides, contenders for a possible top four place. Now Spurs know where we stand: we weren’t beaten, we were totally outclassed. One of our main rivals is not just a few places above us in the league, they exist in a different dimension.

If there is any consolation to be had from this wretched, dismal afternoon, as bleak and foreboding as the chilly drizzle that seeped into the marrow, Liverpool’s performance makes the perfect training video. AVB should take a long look before he shows it to his players. Where they were quick and agile, we were dull and ponderous. They continually burst forward at pace and in numbers. We drifted around aimlessly. They pounced on our players on and around the halfway line like young panthers eager for the kill. We played with all the menace of charity-shop soft toys with half the stuffing hanging out. Liverpool were everything Spurs should be.

Rodgers and Villas-Boas have both faced criticism as clipboard bosses who have been given their demanding, prestigious jobs too early in their careers. At the end of last season, the Guardian ridiculed the Liverpool manager in a quiz listing ten absurd management-speak comments and inviting readers to say which was said by Rodgers and which by David Brent, the boss in the Office.

Now, the only guy who looks absurd is AVB. Never mind a parlour game, judge him from the way he put this team out. We were simply swept aside, utterly inadequate. We is Us, collective responsibility. Players and manager  were poor but the manager must take the blame for this one. Time and again we were caught in possession, no one to pass to, players ambling forward so they could be easily marked by the Liverpool defence, separate from each other, Soldado isolated, strangers not a team.

Last season in late November we beat them 2-1 at the Lane. it was my favourite game from 2012-13, two teams who went at it from first to last in a thrilling match. Then, Rodgers was under pressure. He’s moved his team forward, we are lost. They made runs from deep, three or four at a time, early pass to feet or into space, simple but devastatingly effective. Simple but beyond us.

Villas-Boas has been criticised for not changing. As I’ve said in this blog many times, that’s not quite accurate because he has tried different things. Lately I’ve been asking a different question: not why doesn’t he make changes but can he? Is he able to find the right formation? Soldado is the example. I assumed we paid that money for top class striker knowing that we also had a plan, players and tactics that is, to play to his strengths. I’ve asked that question a lot recently – I am a patient, generous man but the answer is ‘no’. AVB does not know what to do. Bobby is flotsam up front, drifting on the tide, far from safety. Suarez starts deeper, leaving space to run into and in touch with his team-mates.

Liverpool got stuck in from the first whistle. We ambled on the ball and never imposed ourselves. After sustained pressure where we failed on several occasions to cleanly clear the ball, they finally scored when Dawson dallied and Suarez pounced.

We were hanging on, mistakes everywhere, unable to hold on to the ball, as if we were puzzled at Liverpool’s temerity at not allowing us to play. Ironically, we then had our best period. Chadli gave a rare glimpse of why we bought him, an imposing figure on the ball who crossed three or four times from the byline. Soldado and Holtby put the ball wide.

Then further calamities in our box. Lloris all arms and legs like an agile version of Kasey Keller, saved twice. In that moment, and this sounds crazy but I will share, in that moment I thought, the luck is with us, a turning point, we’ll muddle through to half-time, undeserved but only one down. Funny how the mind plays tricks. A split second later Henderson rammed home the fifth rebound and we were sunk even before Paulinho, who was awful yesterday, was sent off for a high tackle.

A feature of the first half was Sterling’s performance. Like an old-fashioned winger, an old-school phrase should sum up his day – he took Naughton to the cleaners. His control, style and speed were dazzling and in stark contrast to Lennon’s haphazard, stumbling afternoon. Naughton was hauled off at half-time, hopefully for the sake of his sanity to spend the rest of the afternoon in a darkened room with soothing music in the background.

If so, he won’t have heard the cheers that greeted Fryer’s arrival. That’s hardly going to help him. Naughton was poor, no excuses, but he was no worse than the others and he was hung out to dry. He’s a right-back played out of position because his manager saw fit to have no cover at left-back, to the point where he sends our first-team regular out on loan. Chadli gave him no protection whatsoever – imposing going forward he may be but he can’t be bothered to come back and double up on the winger, which is basic tactics. Basic. Other chickens are coming home to roost. Why sell Caulker knowing Kaboul is not fit, so we have a midfielder at centre-half. The manager’s responsibility. And Sterling would have given any player in the league a mare on that showing, make no mistake.

It ended up as five, should have been eight (they hit the woodwork twice), could have been double figures, but I would have said exactly the same if it had stayed at two.

Spurs blog 105At the finish, Holtby slumped to his knees and repeatedly pounded the turf with his fists. The others slunk away into the dressing room. If we are to recover from this, Holtby’s spirit and willingness to face up to the crowd is the place to begin.

The debate about AVB has been rendered irrelevant by this game. Levy will not tolerate it. Villas-Boas’s sacking is inevitable, only a matter of time. So here we are again. New manager, new ideas, players brought in to support the old ways. Good players will leave without European football. One step up and two steps back. Change when only continuity will bring results.

But there is continuity – Levy is still here. A financial wizard, he has no idea how to choose a decent manager. He’s still here and we’re down the toilet, stuck in the u-bend. A decade or more of opportunities flushed down the pan.

The effort to stay behind for the post-match protest against ticket prices was superhuman, let me tell you. I doubt if anyone noticed. We were the last on the Shelf before shambling home in the rain. Off to find a darkened room of my own.

Postscript: this was written before I heard the news of Villas-Boas’s dismissal. Good luck to him elsewhere but sadly elswhere is where he should be. Epitaph it was then.

NLD Ticket Disgrace

/ Alan / 17 Comments

45 minutes ago Tottenham Hotspur announced the allocation of tickets for our much-awaited cup-tie versus Ars***l – 5186. On the face of it, that’s a big number, more than we get for league matches. The reality is, nearly half of what we are due has been stolen from us, yet another example of how fans these days are reduced to background extras for TV and cash cows as far as clubs are concerned.

As I understand it, away clubs are entitled to 15% of the tickets in FA Cup games. At Spurs we have seen season ticket holders evicted from their seats in order to accommodate this allocation in the Park Lane, surely the only club in the country that turfs out fans from its own end, thus diminishing the potential vocal support for the sake of compliance.

That’s bad enough but at least we get the same favours when we travel to other grounds, right? Wrong, at least as far as Ars***l are concerned. We should have got 9000. Instead we have 8.64%. The most amazing thing is, I wonder why we ever believed we would get our fair share in the first place.

Earlier this week, after much speculation in social media, I heard that Spurs were going to apply for the full allocation. We also heard that it was to be a 5.15 kick-off at the behest of ITV. Everyone rolled their eyes – hard-fought derby kicking off after an afternoon’s drinking time. Madness.

In today’s statement, the club confirm they did indeed apply for the full whack. They continue:

“Following lengthy conversations, Ars***l Footbal Club has advised us that on safety and security grounds, experienced at previous cup fixtures this season, they are only able to provide an allocation of 5186”

It goes on to make some mealy-mouthed points coming straight from the Emirates press office about segregation, ‘not possible’, but I can’t be bothered to read them again let alone type them out.

This won’t take long. TV moved the game to a time which in my view jeopardized the safety of fans planning to attend and made safety considerations even more of an issue than they were before.

The clubs accepted this because it means a hefty fee. It may well be a contractual arrangement, I don’t know and would be happy for someone to tell me, one way or the other.

So television makes the rules and the clubs go along with it like itsy-bitsy cuddly-wuddly ducklings trailing along meekly behind mother mallard. ITV can take a decision that boosts their advertising revenue and we the fans suffer for it.

Health and safety is the prime consideration at football matches. I was at Hillsborough for the Spurs v Wolves semi-final, pushed right down the front. I’ve been going to football since 1967 through the bad old days. Don’t lecture me about safety.

But if safety were such an over-riding concern, don’t kick off at 5.15. It isn’t you see the prime consideration. Safety comes into play only after the money has been sorted out.

It also provides a convenient smokescreen for clubs. Look at the wording of the Gunners’ statement: ‘only able to provide’, ‘not possible’. Like a series of mysterious health and safety gods have prevailed, compelling them to make a decision that was out of their worldly powers. No – they sat down and took this decision. People. Flesh and blood human beings. Don’t know who, lucky for me really because a libel suit would surely be coming my way if I speculated, as really, I could not have stopped myself.

Further proof, if any were needed, that supporters come bottom of the dungheap when it comes to the modern game. Like I say, my excitement at this plum cup draw distorted my perceptions and made me consider the possibility, the merest possibility, that we might get our fair whack.

I understand that there were significant crowd problems when Chel**a visited recently. So how come Spurs fans are punished for that?

I may be able to get a ticket, certainly could if there were an allocation of 9000. There’s a degree of self-interest in this column therefore. But you know what, if I hadn’t, I would have been equally proud of the noise from my fellow Spurs fans who had made it, because they would have brought the wretched soulless red and white bowl tumbling to the earth.

They didn’t want us there, we know that, but that club are not the only ones to blame for this filthy slimeball of a decision. When they come to the Lane, they can be allocated one of the West Stand boxes, seems proportionate. Let’s have a sweepstake as to a) how soon the ITV commentators go on about the atmosphere at this great old derby and b) how many times they mention the atmosphere during 90 minutes. That’s all we are to them, background noise and sound effects.

This is a great old fixture, genuine, real, tangible. It has generated huge excitement and will create interest in a cup competition the real fans love but it is less interesting as each season passes. Want to know why? Because of decisions like this. These derbies will die if things go on like this. Money, TV and executives killing the game. Our game.

The Trust and Spirit of Shankly from Liverpool are protesting on Sunday against high ticket prices, details on the Trust’s site in the links list to your right. Stay behind for 20 minutes after the match. It’s not much but it is doing something. Let them hear what we think.

Spurs Maintain The Momentum

/ Alan / 23 Comments

Ironic that as the minute’s applause in celebration of the life of Nelson Mandela had barely died away, the Barclays adverts flickered around the pitch perimeter. Not so long ago, or so it seems to me, we boycotted Barclays because of its persistent links with the apartheid regime in South Africa. Cashpoints were picketed, and we didn’t buy their apples. The ANC probably did more to bring down the government but it felt as though we were part of the struggle. Many still feel a deep connection with a man whose principled, single-minded compassion created fundamental political and social change, an example to all yet sadly highly unlikely to ever be repeated in contemporary politics.

Plenty of time to watch the ads in the early stages as Spurs versus Sunderland took a while to get going. Perhaps I am in sync with the team, understandable after all these years I suppose. This is the pattern lately, a slow start then build up a head of steam as time passes. I know my knowledge of male grooming products began and ended with Old Spice and Brylcreem but a skin product named Nip-Man – that’s a joke, right? And sorry to disappoint relatives and friends but you can forget the Stubhub gift certificate for this and any other Christmas. This blog does not wish its readers a Merry Tixmas. Tixmas for goodness sake.

Christmas is a time for tradition and Spurs have created one of their own in time for the festive season, the defensive cock-up. After a sedate first half-hour where our new centre back partnership of Capoue and Dawson looked unsettled without Sandro’s protection in front of them, Lloris’s horrible error put us one down but shook us out of our stupor. His feeble punch went straight to Johnson who scored easily.

From then on, we dominated the match. As at Fulham in the week, we should aim to impose ourselves on teams from the start. We haven’t got the defence to absorb relentless attacks and in this opening period we looked lousy on the break, wilfully moving the ball slowly even when we had time and space.

Having the ability to pull ourselves back from a deficit is laudable. Personally I would prefer if we didn’t make a hash of it in the first place, much more sensible. Recent victories should not obscure this fact. Never mind all the talk about tactics, formations and the merits of AVB’s managerial style, we make too many basic and costly mistakes at the back. Our early season parsimony was not due to mighty defence but our relative lack of errors.

It helps to get back quickly. After Defoe missed one opportunity and Chadli headed straight at the keeper from a corner, the value of the latter’s height and power in the box was shown to full effect. A long cross seemed to be predictably drifting wide but Chadli nodded it back and Paulinho was more alert to the loose ball. I had given it up but he didn’t, and touched home from close in. The Brazilian’s starting position was deeper yesterday, alongside Dembele as DMs, and for me he looked all the better for it.

We came out after the break with a welcome eagerness, dominating the next twenty minutes where the game was won. AVB confounded his detractors by making two significant tactical changes. The high line was notable by its welcome absence again. AVB and I still shudder at the sight of Daws stranded on the halfway line against City. Also, a right-footed winger on the right. Lennon was outstanding, and when Townsend came on as sub to play wide left, he too looked so much more comfortable.

Holtby has a painter’s eye for the angled pass and on 65 minutes with a single devastating brushstroke intended to complete this canvas. The ball sliced through the entire defence, ending at Defoe’s feet deep inside the box as he skipped across the line and free of his markers but his judgement was less certain. His diagonal beat the keeper but slid wide of the far post. It was a frustrating miss, not only because it created 15-odd minutes of palpitating anxiety whenever Sunderland hacked the ball upfield but also because a goal would have demonstrated that finally, we really could make and take a chance inside the area.

There were other opportunities for proof, mostly from players, Lennon and Walker notably, getting to the byline and crossing. I’ll just repeat that for newish supporters or those with merely normal memories: getting to the byline and crossing.

Defoe hit the post twice, coming across the defender to the near post, the classic striker’s move. One header on the right, one deft flick on the left, both were reactions, both were unlucky. These and others – Holtby’s blocked shot, Paulinho’s header – from providers cutting close to the byline. If only they had done that for me, sighed Bobby Soldier, sinking deeper inside his padded coat on the bench.

All these chances yet the winner was pure good fortune. Dembele charging forward on the left and his cross/shot hit O’Shea and into the net. An own goal but one made because we attacked from dangerous angles. It shows again the value of the Moose upfield – let it go, Al, just let it go – but overall he had a strong match before he went off holding his hip.

One of my suggestions to heal our Andre’s self-inflicted wounds was to return to a few things that worked last season. Yesterday Walker and Lennon were reunited down the right. Both made a full, flowing contribution to this win. At times they looked like they were enjoying themselves almost as much as I was. Little Azza was just terrific, buzzing up and down, irritating the Sunderland defence like a wasp after an icecream on a summer’s day. He’s learned to vary his game, not only when to take the full-back on or tuck inside but also to sense the pace of the match, picking things up with a dash forward or a calming touch or two to allow team-mates to readjust position. That is the difference that to me gives him the nod over Townsend right now. Andros is still inexperienced: let’s hope he learns, just as Lenny did.

The pair helped each other out at either end of the field. Defending is not part of Lennon’s natural game, whereas Walker quickly gets bored defending, yet time and again he was back, notably towards the end of the game to prevent Sunderland from crossing the ball. Both were tireless. Walker took stick from the crowd when he stayed down after a challenge – he was knackered after several lung-busting runs then using his body strength to stave off an opponent. He’s improved his play and this was his best game this season. If only he could learn to tuck in at the back every single time to bolster his centre-backs.

Capoue did well enough after a shaky start. He could have done with closer attendance from Walker to help out but when Sunderland went longer later in the game and pinned us back into the box, he and Dawson won most everything. Daws was especially strong at the end. Back in the box not stuck upfield, it’s what he does best and his presence was reassuring. Sunderland’s one decent chance went straight to Lloris, who showed his mettle by claiming one important ball to partly banish the memory of his mistake. Capoue won a header then instinctively went to go forward to where the ball landed, pointing to his team-mates to pounce on the loose ball as he would have done, but he can’t be in two places at the same time. That’s what you get with a midfielder at the back.

Holtby did well but tired. This is one problem with all the chopping and changing. Players get gametime but seldom play for 90 minutes. Holtby has been with us for almost a year yet I would be surprised if he has played more than a handful of full games.

AVB brought on Sandro, not in the starting line-up because he does not feel fit enough yet to play three games in a week, to shore up the defence. It was just at the right time and he did well. However, it could have been our downfall. With the stiff uncertainty of a man who has just come on the filed, Sandro handballed a corner but the ref, who was poor throughout, turned a blind eye.

And on moments like that, the game turns. We fully deserved this win, in the second half playing some of our best football of the season so far, yet we win by an own goal and the penalty that never was. That momentum again, we have kept it going and players and managers know it, judging by their expressions at the end of the game.

No complaints, it augers well for the rest of this important month. Just one caveat – we have done well against three teams who allowed us to play a bit. It remains to be seen what happens when sides park the bus at home, as did Hull and West Ham. That’s for the future = the team and manager, that’s a big ‘we’, have earned our praise for their response after the City debacle, so let’s enjoy it with them.