Season 2013-14

Dear Ellie

/ Alan / 40 Comments

Dear Ellie,

So – your first game at White Hart Lane. And we won!

We have been planning this for ages but we could not get a ticket. When I was younger, you could go with your family or friends whenever you wanted. Now we were not supposed to sit together but you sat on my lap for first half. You were very patient. In the second the man next to us did not come back so you sat in his seat. Wonder where he went? The game was not very good but it was not that bad.

Before the match we walked round some of the ground. We wanted to show you what it was like. I expect you thought it was just a busy road like the one where you live. It was noisy and dirty, wasn’t it? To us, it is special though. Our place, our ground. People have gone to see the Spurs for over 140 years in exactly the same place. Now you are doing the same. You are part of all that history. Imagine all the millions of people, wearing blue and white, looking forward to the football. You are really part of something, just like us. But you were really interested in walking on the lines between the paving stones.

Bobby Soldado scored the goal. At last! You have been practising his song, haven’t you. He is Spanish – we looked up where he came from on the map, remember? He hasn’t scored a goal for months and months, he waited for you to come to see him. I think you are a lucky charm for Spurs.Spurs blog 110

He cost a lot of money but he hasn’t scored many goals. This one was scored from close to the goal but it was very good. Townsend made a good run and passed to Adebayor. He was clever – he did not pass the ball very far but it is hard when you are close to goal, so many defenders trying to tackle you but he gave Soldado the ball. Did you see how he touched it once and the ball was right in front of him? It was just a shame that he did not do that more often. Him and the others really – they could not keep the ball close when they touched it.

Did you notice how quickly he touched it past the goalkeeper? The keeper went one way, Soldado put the ball the other side. Soldado made him do that. That’s clever, I liked that.

We are lucky where we sit, we can see the players close up. Did you notice, when the ball is not near him, he sometimes mutters to himself. I think he worries about not scoring and not doing his best for Spurs. Some players, they don’t seem to worry. Perhaps it is because they get paid so much money, they don’t really care what happens but he does. I was pleased he scored, he will feel better now and score more, I reckon. We need his goals because no one else looked like scoring. Adebayor is a good player but he was working so hard for the team, he was not in the penalty area as much as he should be. I think he should have stayed there more often.

That was a good run from Townsend and Lennon did some good runs too. When they started, they were our two wingers, one wide on the left, one on the right. That was exciting but, trouble is, they did not pass it to the right Spurs player. Over and over, they did the same thing and the ball was blocked or they were tackled. You would think they would learn after a while and change, but they didn’t.

That meant we had Paulinho and Dembele in the middle but they did not play very well. It was too easy for Cardiff to get the ball because they had more players in the middle. Paulinho comes from Brazil. The way he has been playing lately, I think he wants to get the next plane home. Luckily for us, Cardiff weren’t very good. Did you notice how often they gave the ball straight back to us or passed it into touch? Did you cheer? They were blaming each other and Bellamy was rude to the referee. He was booked but we thought he might be sent off. I reckon that’s because they are unhappy because they are not playing well with their new manager. He has not organised them well. It is bad for them, at the bottom of the league.

You enjoyed it when the players kicked the ball really high. It shines in the floodlights as it slowly spins. One time, we thought the goalkeeper was going to kick it out of the ground! When it hit one of their players on the head, we could hear it, it sounded really loud. We laughed! Those big kicks look good but let me tell you, Spurs should not have been doing that. We should be passing it along the ground, not doing a big boot up the field.

We could hear the Spurs manager shouting sometimes too. It was very quiet sometimes. When I was your age, well a bit older than you because my mum and dad would not let me go on my own and they worked on Saturdays so they could not take me, back then the crowd used to sing a lot more. You could not hear the managers shouting then. We sang some songs though.

We both wished Spurs had more shots. We should have scored more goals because we were the best team. At the end we were worried that although we were on top, Cardiff might equalise because we only scored one goal but in the end we were OK. It would be much better if we did not have to worry but with Spurs, it always seems to be like that. I wish I knew why. I wish they would change but they never do.

Dawson was our best player. He won all the headers and made some great tackles. We learned that defending is as important as scoring goals.

You really enjoyed the match but it was a shame that all the Spurs players often passed the ball to Cardiff or got tackled. The crowd were getting a bit angry towards the end. Why are they giving them the ball?! Why are they giving away corners and free-kicks when they know Cardiff are good at those? They hit the bar just after we scored. Phew! I was shouting at them too, towards the end. Sorry.

Afterwards we walked back with the Cardiff fans. They were singing some very rude songs about their chairman. Aunty Kirsty explained them to you. He changed the colour of their shirt from blue to red. You thought that was terrible. You noticed all the fans wore a blue shirt, not red. The Spurs fans sung that they should play in blue and the Cardiff fans clapped us.

It’s funny – you are only 9 but you know how stupid and wrong it is to change the shirt colour. You know more than the chairman. These things are very important because supporters understand the history of the club.

We have told you how much supporting Spurs means to us and now you are part of that too. It runs in the family. Jackie who took our photo, her dad and sisters and brothers sit next to us. They were late because they come all the way from Oxford. Arthur has been coming longer than me, since 1964. All his family are Spurs fans too. It was nice of him to have a chat at half-time.

Glad you enjoyed it but shall I tell you a secret? Spurs did not play very well. If we play like that next Saturday, Chelsea will score loads. But we won and you had a great time.

We told you our stories, all the things we have loved over the years from watching the game. How exciting it is, how it makes you feel special wearing the navy blue and white. I have been going for nearly 50 years and there is no feeling as good as when Spurs play well and win. About how good it feels when you celebrate with your family. You felt it too.

And in the end that’s what football is all about. I usually write about tactics and formations, or where we are in the league but that does not seem to matter today. We sat together in the ground and supported our team. We told you our stories and showed you round but actually, the best thing was that you taught us what really matters.

Love

Granddad xxx

White Hart Lane: Theatre of Dreams or Theatre of the Absurd?

/ Alan / 31 Comments

“Theatre of the Absurd: work that expresses the belief that human existence has no meaning or purpose, therefore all communication breaks down”

On Sunday we lost 1-0 to Norwich. Spurs were dreadful but if we’re honest, we’ve seen some incomprehensibly abysmal football from Tottenham Hotspur in recent times. Hardly unusual – if only. However, this one has really got to people in a way that the performance itself does not fully explain. All the readers who commented on my piece on the match, I could feel them either shaking their heads sorrowfully as they wrote or else slamming their fingers into the keyboard to get rid of the frustration. On social media, there’s been the usual ranting – get rid of everyone and everything, everything’s bad, abandon hope all ye who enter here etc. From the more considered respondents, though, long-time supporters, there’s been anger and despondency too. We are fifth, still in Europe, Sherwood’s record on paper stands up, the ground is full but people know in the marrow of their bones that the good ship Tottenham Hotspur is heading for an iceberg. Norwich brought it all to a head.

There’s a surreal quality to watching the club right now as supporters struggle to pick up the fast-fading echoes of our hopes and plans, once so strident, now a barely discernable background murmur. I alternate between periods of despair and moments where all I can see is the absurdity of it all. You have to laugh or else you’d cry. Nah, just crying for me, if you don’t mind.

What’s happened at Spurs is a bizarre and distorted version of reality, a footballing hall of mirrors from which there’s no escape. Consider:

Spurs sack a manager who has taken us the Champions League.

We choose a young manager even though the job must have attracted many potential candidates.

We take a risk but then the chairman does not back his decision and decides to limit the transfer budget available to the new man.

The new man does better than expected.

We invest the cash from the sale of our best player in new talent.

The new manager can’t deal with this.

We pay over £25m for a striker but the manager has no idea what to do with him.

We pay a club record fee for a player not ready for the Premier League.

We play a much criticised formation.

The manager is sacked even though we are reasonably well-placed in the league.

The new guy takes over. He has no experience whatsoever as a manager. Anywhere.

He plays a different formation. We do well.

New manager now plays exactly the same formation that was vehemently criticised when the old manager was in charge and led to his dismissal.

It’s this last one that has done for me. Sherwood has gone from Harry to AVB in a few short weeks. He started by playing the right players in the right positions, attacking football, letting them play. Now, he’s playing a high defensive line, hence the centrebacks being stranded on the halfway line, inverted wingers with Dembele a left footed played on the right and Lennon a right footed player on the left, and an isolated centre forward. Sherwood’s implied criticism of Villas-Boas was apparent in his tactics. Now he’s doing exactly the same, with identical results.

This is has got nothing to do with the relative merits of any of the names I have mentioned. I’m not using it as evidence to support any agenda. It’s so bad, it’s gone beyond picking over the bones of the rights and wrongs of each individual decision – there’s enough of that on Tottenham On My Mind over the past five years. Neither am I demanding silverware and a place in the CL. I didn’t expect either at the start of the season so this is not about unrealistic expectations. I am just saying that it’s crazy. Totally stupid. Absurd. That it’s no way to run a football club.

This is very much a private hell for Spurs fans. Supporters of other clubs think we are doing fine, just a little wobble. One reason is that it is not top of the news agenda, partly because we are actually fifth (excuse me if I repeat that too often but I have to remind myself sometimes) and partly because Manchester United are so bad.

One dimension of this surreal world is the fact that Sherwood is not a real manager at all. Levy is planning to replace Tim the Temp in the summer. He knows that, we know that, no one knows it better that Sherwood himself. So we twiddle our thumbs, mark time, wait for the World Cup to end and see who is available. Another version is of course that the contracts have already been signed. Whatever, we go through the motions until then. Pointless. More plans out the window. Again.

This has all happened before. Talk about the nightmare coming back to haunt. The 2003-4 season when David Pleat took over after Glenn Hoddle was sacked mid-season was the worst in my 45 plus years of watching Spurs for the same reasons that have caused the angst now – the lack of direction, the absence of plan or purpose, the hopelessness of it all. Whether by design or circumstances (Levy may have limited transfer funds), Hoddle decided that a midfield of Anderton, Poyet and Redknapp, a combined age of over 90, could cope with the demands of a full Premier League season. With no money to play with, Pleat had to keep us going and we should be eternally grateful for unsung hero Michael Brown for doing their running for them.

There’s one huge difference between then and now. In 2003, the squad was falling apart through neglect, almost literally in some cases as Anderton and Redknapp dragged their weary muscles from treatment table to pitch and back again, while Gardner, Bunjy, Docherty and Ricketts played frequently.  Fourth from bottom was the only target and there were dark times when that looked over-ambitious, especially in March and early April after a run of one point in six matches.

In contrast we began this season full of expectation, the task being to mould the ambitious, expectant squad into a coherent unit. Goals were expressed in the medium and long term. I was certainly looking for progress this season but with the promise of greater things to come as the players were bought in the knowledge that they had still to fully mature. Their best years were ahead of them.

This caretaker regime could destroy the squad. It’s not Sherwood’s fault. The last thing the club is doing is taking care of these players. The two players of arguably the highest quality in the side, Lloris and Vertonghen, have given us two years and will become impatient that promises have not been kept. They arrived being told that Tottenham was a club going somewhere, with ambition to match its rich heritage. They are in demand, reaching their prime and won’t hang around. Soldado and Paulinho are strangers in a strange land, hollowed-eyed and uncomfortable. The Brazilian could be a World Cup winner, a enviable reputation to banish the memories of an indifferent season. Dembele is another who will be in demand, Walker perhaps in a Premier League that could value his qualities and cover for his defensive deficiencies.

Of the others, Sandro’s injuries make him a less attractive buy. We have no idea of what Lamela is thinking. Eriksen must be fuming.

Now more than ever before, the decisions of the board on and off the pitch are seeping through the redoubtable barricades most football supporters create over time between our escapist enjoyment of the game and the reality of the time, effort and cost of watching Premier League football. Promises made to us have been broken too. We don’t need statements from Levy himself to know that the anticipated success on the field has not transpired, that ticket prices continue to soar, there’s no sign of the new stadium and a bottle of water costs £2. The atmosphere is poor. The police are taking action against fans who use the Y word. Sometimes at the Lane when the crowd starts to sing, it feels like an expression not so much of support but of relief and release, to get the frustration out through our lungs into the air, to remind ourselves that this is what watching football is all about.

Len Shackleton famously included a chapter in his autobiography on the football knowledge of directors. It was blank. Levy’s lack of football acumen leaves him vulnerable because he can’t make up his own mind. This is not just about the rumours of Sherwood influencing the chairman’s decision to dismiss Villas-Boas. In his autobiography Ledley King, the most inoffensive of writers, says that Jol briefed against Santini, Poyet told players to ignore Ramos. This means the club are always vulnerable and everyone who has anything to do with us knows it, including the various Directors of Football. That’s the problem with them. Not their post or them as individuals but we are never clear who takes decisions or what the accountability structure is.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow night’s game against Dnipro. £20 in, 1882 will ensure a good atmosphere, I’ll get behind them and we have to go for it. A proper European tie at last, one down but everything to play for. Sincerely I wish Sherwood all the best with the team but forgive me if it all still feels a bit odd.

Since When Does Naughton Take Corners?

/ Alan / 38 Comments

Since when does Kyle Naughton take corners? From both sides of the pitch? How come that was the plan? Someone at Tottenham Hotspur sat down, thought this through carefully, maybe even deliberated with others, and came to the decision that a Spurs reserve full-back who seldom looks confident moving forward anyway, should be our deadball specialist for the day.

Sometimes you watch a game and things don’t go well for Spurs, OK, they gave it a go, could have played better but that’s how it goes. Occasionally you see something that is so bewildering, so utterly unfathomable that you have to hit yourself over the head with a tin tea-tray to make sure this wasn’t the hallucinogenic ramblings of a delusional unconscious.

Look – I know Naughton’s corner-taking ability isn’t the thought that’s uppermost in Sherwood’s mind as he reviews this hideous performance. Since the final whistle I’ve tried to come to terms with it. My only conclusion is that is represents the nightmare vision of my repressed subconscious, where every fear I have about the team, hitherto long-buried under alluvial denial, played out before me. Those dreams where you run and run yet find yourself going nowhere. Where you lose control over muscular functions so everything you try fails crazily. Where logic and rationality becomes an Alice in Wonderland parody of reality.

Much of the game held a hazy, dreamlike quality. Vertonghen, a fine centreback, intelligent, quick, tough, a footballer, crashing through with mistimed tackles he was never going to make. Dawson, marooned like a beached whale on the halfway line, stranded and gasping for air. A back four so far apart, they needed binoculars to see each other, so lacking in unity they would have been better off communicating with semaphore. Lennon with some sort of a central free role – but he can’t pass it… Chadli doing, well, not sure what really but he looks good and that’s what counts, apparently. Defensive midfield? Who needs it?

With no intended disrespect to Norwich, who were fully deserving winners, the first half was shocking. The Canaries’ hesitancy was understandable given their perilous league position. Ours was harder to grasp. We had a lot of room and took no advantage. Instead there were bizarre passages of play where both sides struggled to come to grips with the basics of football and passed to opponents, into space, anywhere but to a team-mate.

One time, we took a throw, with caution mind, nothing rushed, and precisely tossed it 10 yards to a Norwich man, who with as much consideration passed it straight back to us, whereupon we gave it to the nearest yellow shirt, all without any pressure on players or the ball. Did I imagine this or had my mango squash been shaman-laced with bad seed?

The match highlights on the Sky red button included only two incidents in the entire half. One was Van Wolfswinkel trying to kick a ball in the box that was eight foot off the ground, the other was Chadli shaping to do a far-post top-corner curler and failing miserably. After Newcastle I guess we’ll have to put up with that every time he plays from now on.

I know this because I missed the very start of the second half as I was still putting the dinner on. Add some celery and carrots to the pan, stuff the chicken with an onion, keeps it moist you see. A lemon will do, then slice the onion in the baking tray. This all takes a fraction longer, long enough for Spurs to give the ball away with the defence stuck upfield. Snodgrass, by far the game’s best player, darted into the inviting gap left by Danny Rose and scored a fine goal. At least my gravy was full of flavour.

We flattered to deceive for a while and were on top without getting very far. We had been unbalanced by Capoue’s injury early in the game, partly because we lost the protection he gives us but mainly because we missed the hard work and promptings of Bentaleb who had to drop back. Throughout we had no tempo, settling early into a dull, monotonous torpor from which we never escaped and that Sherwood was powerless to influence.

Only Dembele tried to shake things up, driving at the defence whenever he could. He dished up a perfect ball to Chadli in the second half but his fellow Belgian shot at the keeper when well-placed. Adebayor kept going but his movement was wasted because he was so far adrift from his team-mates. This was a creativity-free zone. Goodness knows what ran through Eriksen’s mind, watching from the bench. What’s Danish for, ‘are you seriously saying I’m not good enough to get into this team?’

Soldado’s form has plunged into the abyss, resting finally in a subterranean cavern that last saw daylight 300 million years ago before the grinding of tectonic plates contorted tortured sediment into an underground chamber buried beneath the rock until the sun explodes in five billion years’ time. See the way he looks round suddenly? He hears the sound of deformed otherworldly creatures scuttling by.

My pity for his misery is as deep as the chasm that has trapped him. Beyond criticism, I can’t bear to look when he comes on. Such indignity should be a private affair. The commentator had barely finished sucking clean the bones of his Thursday night miss when a rare decent move set him up on the right of the box. His first touch of the game was an outrageous slice impossibly high into the stands. A minute or two later, a close range header skimmed off his forehead without even going in the general direction of the goal. Two perfect chances, and the game, gone.

I feel so deeply, desperately sad. What have we done to him? “Soldado, ohhh oh. He came from sunny Spain, he’s going back again….” He must be on his way in the summer. Bags packed in the hall as we speak, I should imagine. And we all know the consequences if the team’s form continues to deteriorate – who else will join him? For the last few seasons, we have diced with the consequences of thwarted ambition and promises that we cannot keep. We build a side in the knowledge that success may keep it together but also acts as a season-long advertisement.  Berbatov, Carrick, Modric, Bale, all gone but thus far we have tried to replenish the pool of talent.

Now, Vertonghen, Lloris, they won’t hang around, Dembele will be a target for someone, Paulinho has a reputation plus a possible World Cup Winners medal to look forward to. What a waste.

Sherwood has a real challenge to overcome. He has to get a grip and exert a greater influence over the side. Individuals are coming back from injury, it’s true, but Paulinho and Vertonghen have to drive us on and be a presence on the field, while the problems with the inverted wingers that bedevilled AVB’s second season have reared their ugly head in the last two matches. We can’t rely on Manu’s goals all the time.

Watching the last two games on TV, I was struck by how low and worried a few of the players seem – Dawson, Verts, Townsend, Paulinho. It may be nothing but they look as if they are carrying a heavy burden.

Norwich deserved to win. They defended stoutly in the second half and should have scored more. Lloris saved well from one chance while the crossbar is still vibrating from a thundering free-kick. Other chances we got away with.

So what I mean to say is, yeah – it was s**t.

Spurs Embrace The Mediocre In The Europa League Again

/ Alan / 9 Comments

Europe used to inspire Spurs. Now it just brings out the mediocre. Since we got back into the Europa League, we’ve never got to grips with the away leg. The mantra is familiar – keep it tight, keep the ball, no need to take any risks – but unfortunately so is our response. We seem desperately compelled to do the opposite, every time. Against Dnipro on an admittedly treacherous pitch, we were wide open at the back and wasteful with the ball. Add some missed chances and all in all, this was another one to forget.

Half-time, one goal down with the home leg to come, could have been worse – all of that. I’m looking forward to next week – with the goal to catch up, there will be expectation and tension under the lights and we will have to go at them. Perfect European conditions, in fact.

There’s nothing of any significance to take from this match except for the fact that it took place at all. Played against a backdrop of violence between protesters and police in the capital Kiev, the expectant faces of the fans were in stark contrast to the images of a government opening fire on its own people that played simultaneously on the evening news as we kicked off. UEFA should have postponed it until next week at a neutral venue. It was incongruous to see supporters in their scarves, cold blue jackets and silly hats, but football has always been an escape from reality. As the camera dwelt on the crowd close-ups, you sensed their minds were elsewhere.

We fielded a strong team and left at home the players who could most do with a break, bar Bentaleb. This young man relishes a challenge but needs a rest, mentally as much as physically and this was a trip too far.

He and Capoue failed in their mission to protect the defence by simply being bypassed by the Dnipro attack. Capoue was nowhere for much of the time. Naughton and Rose strayed as far as they possibly could from the two centre halves, creating inviting space for the strikers. Unfortunately for the Ukrainian team, they suffered a collective loss of muscle control and capability once they got into the box. I can’t recall a series of such feeble finishing efforts over 90 minutes. A couple barely had the velocity to reach the keeper from 12 yards out.

Friedel was excellent throughout. Part of being a keeper is working the percentages. Get the angles right, make it hard for the striker, don’t commit too early, don’t go to ground. hH doesn’t need the spring in his legs to achieve all if that and he presented a formidable barrier throughout the match. I suspect as the game went on, the mere sight of his approach from his line was enough to put off the Dnipro forwards. Without him the result could have been a lot worse.

At the other end we more than had enough chances to settle the tie then and there. In fact, some of the game was enterprisingly open. But we wasted opportunities, usually with a poor final ball or shooting when we should have passed it. Andros, you know you’ve got to sort that out but he was not the only culprit. Townsend looked really shaken when he was taken off. Usually, players on the bench obey the unwritten laws of substituted players – cursory pat on the back/high five, then leave them be. Yesterday, the unused subs looked anxiously along the line as Andros was hunched and lost, praying almost, comtemplating something.

Soldado missed the big one. An uncharacteristically fluent move involving Paulinho and Naughton put him in front of on open goal, a few yards out.  He missed. By a long way. Any sort of goal will change his whole approach and at least he’s working still to take up the right positions, and still for that matter looking heavenwards every time he doesn’t get the pass he expects. Right now, as he shaped to kick the post in frustration, you expected him to miss it.

As the game was petering out, we contrived to set up the winner for Dnipro in a piece of football in keeping with our overall performance. Capoue had three or four players clustered ahead of him at the edge of their box. Clustering is not good but we’ll leave that one. He managed to miss all of them with a ten yard ball, whereupon Dnipro countered. Daws sold himself inside their half when there was no need, Verts was exposed, had no help and brought down the attacker. The penalty was converted.

Can’t shake that lingering sense of betrayal around Ramos. As soon as he arrived, I printed up the t-shirt: We can be heroes, just for Juande.” That’s genius that is. Then he’s gone: wasted, all wasted. Good luck to him and I’m sure he’ll get a ripple next Thursday at the Lane, although Ledley King won’t join in. In a biography as mild as camomile, he’s critical of Ramos’s lack of understanding of the players and the English game, or more precisely of his lack of effort in trying to understand the game, including insufficient preparation for games other than against the big teams. Led sees the good in everyone, so by the standards of the book that’s cataclysmic.

In injury time as we hurriedly pressed for an equalizer, the ball came to Sherwood at the edge of his technical area. Unerringly he sliced it straight into the dugout. You never lose it, son. One to forget for all concerned.