Spurs Bring Us Together in Good Times and Bad

October 9, 2009February 9, 2010 / Alan / 6 Comments

A version of this piece first appeared in My Eyes Have Seen The Glory

Chris Parker, loving husband, doting father, loyal friend, died this time last year. A few weeks before his sudden passing, family and close friends gathered in a secluded pub garden to celebrate the christening of his first child. Under a fierce sun, we basked in the warmth of his naïve delight in the virtues of fatherhood and friendship, a good natured young man marvelling at the discovery of family life as if he were an Elizabethan explorer returning from the New World with tales of strange creatures, heroic deeds and untold riches.

We never really got to know each other – he’s related on my wife’s side of the family – but it’s peculiar how much you find out about someone only when they’ve died. Shortly before the funeral, I discovered that Chris was a lifelong Spurs fan. So is his father, and many of his mates. Our snatched conversations had never progressed beyond bland pleasantries and for some inexplicable reason we’d never mentioned football, decidedly odd as I can recall who people support long after I have forgotten their names.

The funeral of a young person bears excruciating poignancy. We mourn with desperate intensity both the tragic loss of life and the passing of hopes and dreams, ours as much as theirs, unfulfilled and laid to rest. Emotions veer crazily between a surreal this-can’t-be happening quality and the cold reality in the centre of this Catholic church, a six foot wooden box.

It’s a struggle to engage as the ceremony floats around me like the incense swirling in the breeze. I want to demonstrate respect and sympathy but I’m an outsider here, a non-believer, so I stick to respectful silence. It works. I know, I’ve practiced hard lately, more practice than I can stand.

The congregation cling to the priest’s consoling words but I find no solace in the notion that somehow this is part of the plan for a better universe, only anger and frustration at a life cut short. Absentmindedly I turn to the final page of the Order of Service. Suddenly the organ strikes up a familiar tune. I join in ‘Glory, Glory Hallelujah’ with all my heart, my singing lusty and utterly tuneless. The shameless substitution of ‘Spurs’ for all references in the chorus to the Lord seals my eternal damnation.

I look around. I’m not the only one. Inhibitions shatter, grown men proud and strong break down. Chris’s spirit is amongst us. We begin to grieve, openly and fully, for the first time. It does us all good.

Afterwards we make introductions with unabashed candour. Men aren’t good at sharing feelings but in football we find a means of expression. This maddening, frustrating and wonderful club brought us closer just at the moment when we needed it most. The game creates and sustains lasting relationships. Together in our allegiance and our grief, we could communicate with people who were no longer strangers.

The drink flowed, Chris would have approved. We chatted, laughed and shed a tear. Chris, I wish we had talked more, but now rest in peace. Football is a healer.

Harry v the Taxman – Battle of the Titans

October 7, 2009 / Alan / 2 Comments

Following Friday’s headspinning crisis (what crisis?), the news that Harry Redknapp is being investigated for tax avoidance rather than fraud came as welcome relief for many Spurs fans. However, there’s more than enough to suggest that a world of murky dealings and undisclosed payments are about to be exposed. If not a criminal act, then it’s more than enough to cast a shadow.

This blog’s views on the non-crisis are here in last Friday’s blog piece http://wp.me/pzmOo-3L I certainly have not got it in for Harry: his rescue act has been a virtuoso performance. However, it’s the club I care most about and there’s no doubt that there will be unwanted attention on Harry and the Lane in the weeks and months to come, although his media friends will protect him and us from the worst tabloid excesses.

Whatever took place, and we will probably never know the full story, happened well away from Tottenham Hotspur. Spurs are not culpable, thank goodness. It would be interesting to know if the topic came up when he was offered the job, though. Wonder what he told Levy, and how Levy checked that out. The appointment all happened very quickly, so did Levy just take him at his word? If so, that’s a risk.

Redknapp vehemently denies any wrongdoing. He states that the sum in question is money due to him as part of his contract at Portsmouth, where he took a cut of the income from outgoing transfers, and he has paid his taxes. This comes after extensive investigations into underhand payments in football, provoked by the Panorama programme that pointed an accusing finger at several high profile figures in the game and then further pursued by the police and Operation Quest, the F.A.’s own inquiry. No prosecutions have as yet resulted. Many feel the whole thing has been a damp squib, with these bodies unable to penetrate the twin walls of silence and conspiracy that protect those in the game. However, it’s emerged that action is on hold until the tax investigations have been completed.

One idea that comes to mind is: they can’t get him on fraud so they’ll have a damn good go at tax. Normally in these circumstances, I understand that the Revenue negotiate a cash settlement with the individual and then, provided that that individual has divulged all his income, the matter is closed. However, I fear that Redknapp may be used as a scapegoat and therefore this option will not be left open for him. Under this line of reasoning, the powers that be will use him as an example because they want to send out a warning to the game at large and they do not want all their investigative efforts to go unrewarded. Let’s hope I’m being overly pessimistic, because any proven wrongdoing and Levy will have no alternative but dismissal. Otherwise, the club will hold off on action until the case is resolved.

Leaving aside what it means for Spurs, it sheds further light on the shady world of football contracts and transfers. If a manager gets cash for selling his own players, one inescapable implication is that at the very least if a bid comes in, his own interests (i.e. the possibility of cash) might conflict with those of the club for whom he works. Would his decision on who to sell be influenced by the size of his cut?

Incentive bonuses are part and parcel of modern business, but this particular arrangement has no place in football. I work in social care for a charity, a world as far away from the business of Premier League football as could be. Colleagues who work for some private companies are on performance related pay. In my world, this means increasing the number of children who are placed with carers. The more children, the more money they get.

They could do this by working hard to get more good carers. Or they could drop standards, have anyone as a carer and still place the child. They get more money, their company gets more money, but it does not necessarily mean that they provide a better service to children.

It’s the same thing in football – the manager gets more, maybe the club gets money but in the long run it does not necessarily mean that the team does better. Harry may or may not have done this in the past; certainly in the highly unlikely event of any West Ham fan reading this, they would at this point chuckle at some of the players he bought and sold who frankly did not have a major impact on the club’s fortunes…

If any manager has a provision such as this in their contract, I as a fan would be concerned about even the possibility that standards would be compromised. The good thing for Spurs is that I’m convinced Levy would not countenance such a clause. I’ve been extremely critical of him in the past over the lack of direction at the club but he’s having a good season. His probity and business acumen leaves us in a strong financial position and also protects us against this sort of dodgy dealing. In the transfer market, he successfully used all our market advantages to lever a couple of good deals. We had cash, Portsmouth needed cash and quickly, so we get first Crouch and then Kranjcar at decent prices. With the Kyles, we had cash plus players Sheffield United might want to loan, and crucially our main rivals in that deal, Everton, had neither. Finally, I’ve written several pieces praising his involvement with the wider community and with disadvantaged groups.

Redknapp himself believes he can sort it out this week, and the sums involved are small, given that by his own admission he’s paid the Revenue £10m over the years, so a settlement is likely, unless there are more skeletons in the cupboard. It’s nothing to do with Spurs, but no off the field troubles should get in the way of our progress on the pitch.

Bolton v Spurs. Who Cares? We Should Do.

October 4, 2009 / Alan / 14 Comments

The last time Tottenham Hotspur away to Bolton meant anything very much was in the mid 70s when two pulsating battles helped decide the promotion places from the old Second Division.

It’s not that I have something against them. Rather, they are just – there. Not a big club, small club, homely club, friendly club, mouthy club, upstart club, arrogant club. Just there. However, yesterday’s match offered a significant benchmark of our progress as a team and I’m sorry to say that we failed the test.

In my preview I suggested that we should no longer be afraid of the physical, muscular teams. Yet we were consistently vulnerable, especially in the box. I laughed out loud at Bolton’s tactical ploy towards the end of the game, when they replaced small players with very big players. And it was effective.

Credit where it is due. Our opponents played some good football and in the end it was Spurs who were offering long balls, scoring from one and another from a set piece. We did little to ameliorate faults evident in our play this season, such as not closing down effectively in midfield and conceding needless free kicks. Above all, our ball retention was appalling and Bolton took full advantage. I also take absolutely no pleasure in the fulfilment of my predictions that Gardner was a danger and that Davies would peel off to BAE on the far post.

These problems must be sorted out as a matter of supreme priority if we are to maintain our status as a top six team, with aspirations to move higher. They are basic to Premier League success, and if we have to adopt a slightly less attacking attitude, then so be it. Keep the ball and play people who can do so. Without resorting to stereotypes, this is more familiar to foreign players, so Kranjcar, BAE and WP can be a good influence in this key aspect of our game.

I would add Corluka to that list but he is not quite on his game. One of my favourite players, I see calm and measured ease where others have clamoured for more pace. He’s strong, intelligent and shrewd. Last season he was seldom outmanoeuvred, never dispossessed and held the ball superbly. This more than made up for his slowness, although even this was exaggerated. There were few occasions where he was flatly outpaced in situations where other defenders around the league would not have struggled. Even against Drogba for Chelsea’s second, he looked lost but actually reached the ball first with his toe. This year, he’s not playing badly but has lost that air of superiority. He seems to be more hurried and whereas I used to rely on him, he now gives the ball away continually.

Overall it was a disjointed, edgy performance but we can take some pleasure in the fact that we came back from a goal down on two occasions and created several more chances. Lest I forget, we came back with a point. In other years, we would have been beaten. However, I remain disappointed and look to Harry and the many, many coaches to work hard in training to rectify the faults that are restricting our development.

Anatomy of a Crisis

October 2, 2009October 2, 2009 / Alan / 14 Comments

First he loves us, then he’s leaving, now he’s back for good. That’s the story of Harry Redknapp’s love affair with Tottenham Hotspur. And the whole crisis came and went in 36 hours. Here’s how.

Yesterday a well-respected poster on a long established Spurs messageboard, who is not given to predictions let alone outrageous ITK, made a brief comment, stating that there was activity in the investigation of the transfer of Amdy Faye when Redknapp was manager of Portsmouth. Papers had gone to chambers (i.e. presumably to a barrister) and there were serious questions to answer. That was all, no further details were offered.

Accusations of illegal payments have been around for as long as football has been played. In 2006 Panorama’s undercover report alleged that several high profile figures in our professional game had been involved in accepting money during the course of transfer negotiations. Included were Redknapp and Kevin Bond. No prosecution has ever been brought on the basis of the evidence revealed either by the programme, the subsequent police investigations or the Operation Quest inquiry set up by the FA to look at the wider problem within the game. Neither has anyone successfully sued the BBC; Bond dropped his pending case in the summer.

However, David Conn reported in the Guardian on June 24th that the FA are keeping their powder dry until the results of an investigation into unpaid tax are available. In Conn’s words:

“That began as a City of London Police investigation the police consistently described as into football “corruption”, with dramatic dawn raids on the houses of Redknapp and the agent Willie McKay. Redknapp successfully sued the police for conducting the arrest unlawfully and the judge, Lord Justice Latham, described the case as follows.
“It was suspected that [Harry Redknapp] as manager of [Portsmouth], together with the managing director Peter Storrie, and the club’s then owner and chairman Milan Mandaric, may have conspired together to make disguised payments to a player, Amdy Faye, using the agent William McKay to receive payments offshore.”

Guardian June 24^th.

So if the case is re-surfacing, it’s interesting but hardly the stuff of front-pages. Certainly the club would have known about these issues when both Bond and Redknapp were appointed as it is old news.

Later yesterday the blogs and messageboards picked up the snippet and it flashed around the net. Also nothing out of the ordinary here.

From then on, the story shifts away from the courts and onto the net. The early morning passed as normal, with the usual rumours and previews of the match tomorrow, including this blog’s. At 11.12 there was a statement from William Hill. The odds on Redknapp being the next Premier League manager to lose his job had plummeted from 40/1 to just 5/1. “Rumours were sweeping the football world”, or so Hills claimed. Their spokesman admitted that it was probably “unsubstantiated gossip”.

This cyber crisis now had a life of its own. Whatever the bandwagon, everyone was jumping aboard, creating an unstoppable momentum. By 12.30, the odds had fallen to 2/1. A little later Paddypower had stopped taking bets. Several other sites picked up the story, still without any factual basis other than the bookies’ odds. The Mail was the first of the dailies at 12.20. By 14.24 the Metro’s headline is, “Has Redknapp left Spurs?” at half past his odds are down to evens.

Around the same time, good messageboard sources reported that there was no truth to these rumours and as I write (5pm), official denials have followed.

So what happened? The answer is almost certainly nothing. The implications of an unsubstantiated messageboard post (I’m sure it was a true account of the information to hand but at no time was this independently corroborated in any of the accounts that I have mentioned today) have spiralled out of control. It’s a crisis that has been entirely created by the internet rumour-mill. Reading the rumours on the net is great fun usually, if sometimes, when my mood is downcast, a little irritating. But we all know that it has to be treated with caution. Don’t we?

There is another less plausible but sinister explanation, that we have been the victims of a betting scam. All I understand about betting is that you give the bookie your money and never see it again. This scam, however, has been tried before this season, with bets on Benitez to leave Liverpool and Ribery to arrive. Basically the price is driven down in the short term so the perpetrators can achieve long term gains by ‘buying back’ when Harry stays.

The real issue is the case itself, and that has always been hanging around, like a sword of Damocles dangling above the future prosperity of our club. We had conveniently put this to one side as Harry has done such a fine job for us on the field, but the fact is, we employed two people, Redknapp and Bond, knowing that their past was at best murky. If the problems, the real problems that is, emerge from the shadows into the full glare of the spotlight, the whole club could be tainted.