Sandro

Ledley’s Knee Beats Liverpool

/ Alan / 20 Comments

What the new ground needs, wherever we may end up, is a statue. It’s the thing these days, dignifying our improvised chaotic representation of beauty with the use of an art-form that stretches back beyond antiquity. Wolves and Wembley have had one for a while but there’s been a spate in the last few years. Bremner outside Elland Road, grinning wildly whereas to make it lifelike he should be scowling into the eyes of opponents spreading fear and loathing.  Jimmy Armfield stands outside Blackpool’s ground, all fitting tributes to true club greats and then at Fulham there’s Michael Jackson.

Outside the New Lane fans will gather pre-match to worship. Children will clamber over the plinth and pose for photos. Their parents’ stories of past glory days and the legend behind the bronze will pass down the love of the club through the generations as the kids rush off to the club shop. Only one symbol from the modern era can truly represent Tottenham Hotspur’s heart and soul: Ledley King’s knee. Shiny metal, each ligament, bone and cartilage in detailed relief, sadly more solid in perpetuity than in life. If only.

Written off by many, although not by this blog, even I had almost given up hope that we would ever see him play again. Dignity in retirement seemed the future

Ledleys Knee. An Artists Impression

rather than a series of limping comebacks. Barely a flicker’s difference in the expression as he trudges off but the slumped shoulders betray the agony of failure that for this dedicated Spur outweighs the pain in his leg. Yesterday he’s back as if he had never been gone, like he’s had a couple of weeks break in the sun. The familiar scuttling run, feet low to the ground to save precious energy and minimise impact. Running on empty, he conserves what’s left for short bursts over 5 and 10 yards, that’s all you need in the box. Above all, the mind is keen and alert, match sharp like he’s played every game he’s missed in his head. Perfect positioning, a refusal to be shifted out of place by dummy runs, uncanny anticipation born of years of experience.

A quiet man on the field, he has no need for conspicuous fist-pumping or bellowed vocal encouragement. True leaders inspire by other means. He lifted Dawson in particular, the two of them a solid central barrier to an attack fast becoming one of the most feared in the league. Danny Rose once again slotted into an unfamiliar role with aplomb and he and Kaboul stayed tighter in defence, close to the regal reassurance of their leader and master. Sandro patrolled in front of them, diligent and tough.

A couple of Spurs sites are doing their ‘Best Ever’ polls at the moment. Too young to see Norman at his mightiest, I was brought up on England, a giant in the middle with Beal sweeping up around him. Mabbutt and Gough, the latter teasing us with what have been if he stayed for longer. A few votes for Miller, but not mine. Since 67 I’ve seen them all and Ledley King is the first name that goes down. His injury has cruelly robbed us of the finest centre half in the last 40 years, so let us relish what we have.

I’ve been critical of some of Redknapp’s recent tactical decisions and player choices but full credit for what was a brave option, plunging King back into action in the game that could save our season sliding into oblivion. Also, Rose at full-back is a fine piece of player potential judgement. Yesterday the team was balanced throughout. Sandro and Modric once more showed that they are a formidable combination in centre midfield. Sandro’s progress is astonishing, as is Luka’s consistency. Everything flowed through and around him: selfless work, the touches, he holds it when it needs to be held and gives it when it needs to go. He does penalties too, apparently.

Unfortunately my opportunities for more detailed comments, and indeed for my enjoyment of the bloody game, were severely hampered by a stream so dodgy I may as well have drawn stickmen on the corners of a notebook’s pages and flicked through them. Try it – it’s like having Peter Crouch right there in your living room. Liverpool may have had some dangerous moments but my screen was frozen in anticipation for so long, I wondered if I had stumbled on a photo site by mistake. ‘This has been withdrawn through possible copyright violation’ – well, copyright violation is the whole point, isn’t it?

As the teams played the best game of statues ever (I’m not inviting you lot to my kids party at Christmas), attention wanders to the message stream in the sidebar. Correspondents named ‘lovespurskillgooners’, ‘parklane007’ and ‘spursbigboy’ readily share their views not just on the game but on life itself with ‘redtildead’ and ‘nukemancs100’. Presumably the number is to helpfully distinguish him from the 99 other ‘nukemancs’ out there.

I’m up for a bit of football banter as much as the next fan but these boards expose the reality that ‘fan banter’ is in fact rank abuse. ‘Scousers rule’ Spurs provokes the witty rejoinder, ‘no they don’t, Spurs rule scum.’ Terrace wit, this is what the younger generation will never know. U f off, no u f off out of it. And so it goes. It’s the process behind it that gets me. It’s Sunday, there’s football on, I know what I’ll do. I’ll go online and abuse other fans in textspeak. Out of the blue, another voice appears. ‘Grimsby are going nowhere!’ It came from the heart.

The ether cleared suddenly to reveal the penalty in stunning clarity. I say penalty but we all know it wasn’t. If anything Pienaar took the Liverpool’s player’s ground. It sealed the win and from then on we played well but it must have been a difficult moment for all the Spurs Howard Webb conspiracy theorists out there.

Adopting a less gung ho madcap attacking approach, we looked more comfortable and composed, more of a unit. It’s got to be the way to go. Praise for the attitude of the manager and the players. Redknapp has been talking down our prospects, to the point where we might have gone on holiday with two games left. Maybe that’s the way he likes it, comfortable with the underdog role, which in itself does not bode well for a top team but we’ll let that aside go for now. The players lifted themselves, showing determination to finish on a high.

The same attitude next Sunday will see us in Europe, and I’m all in favour of that. I understand but don’t accept the anti-Europa Cup arguments. The tournament itself has been ruined by UEFA’s insistence on the group stages, although to be accurate, it’s the clubs who make up UEFA and want the guaranteed cash that demand it. To be a top club, you fight on all fronts. You can’t turn a proper winning mentality on and off when you feel like it. It’s precisely the art of scraping through games, winning those we have drawn or lost this season when we should have done better, to handle squad rotation without falling apart, that we need to learn. Concentrating on the league isn’t a viable option, it’s a cop out, with no guarantee of any success. It limits us severely in the transfer market, and being out of the CL will be bad enough in that respect anyway.

Above all, I’m old fashioned enough to still believe that winning something is better than coming 4th and having a decent bank balance. Play a weakened team, get through the group and then go for it. Imagine bouncing your grandchildren on your knee. They look up at you with adoring big eyes, moist with emotion. ‘Tell us about the good old days, granddad’.

‘Well kids, I remember the time when our income stream exceeded salaries and other outgoings by 10 or 20%.’

‘20% granddad. Wow, things were so different in the old days…’

With winning comes the memories, and memories last. I know which I would rather have.

New Dawn? Just That Same Old Feeling

/ Alan / 28 Comments

The media have taken a solemn and binding oath never to say a bad word about Harry Redknapp. He’s teflon-coated, surrounded by a legion of sycophantic pundits who at the slightest hint of a problem adopt Roman strategy and surround their man with an impenetrable wall of shields. Spurs fans ringing the phone-ins who dare speak his name in vain are showered with ridicule, for example.

I was going to write about this at the end of the season, when we can properly and soberly reflect on a season of wildly fluctuating emotions, but suitably deflated after West Brom’s equaliser, this seems as good a time as any to bring the subject up. It’s a remarkable achievement in an era where the media covers football as never before, not merely examining their subjects with a fine tooth comb but individually picking out each and every head-louse, then sticking that under a microscope. If they can’t find a louse, they’ll invent one.

Yet Redknapp is immune. I can’t recall the last time I read or heard any sustained critique of his managership at Tottenham from a professional pundit. Any suggestion of negativity is met with snorts of derision, not even examined but immediately and forcefully ruled out of bounds. No other manager has such protection, not even Alex Ferguson. Nothing sticks, rather like Pav trying to trap the ball yesterday.

How did the ball get over there?

I am genuinely and sincerely grateful for the progress made by Tottenham Hotspur under Harry Redknapp. Harry bless him has obviously been told to stop intoning his mantra but for once I’ll save him the trouble: I have not forgotten that we did have 2 points from 8 games. To me that seems like if not yesterday, then only last week. The tilt at fourth place, the Champions League, the players, the football, all of this I’ve loved and will never forget. Building  a team takes time and I’m not impatient. I’m not expecting overnight success. However, Harry’s mantra can’t hide the problems and in the midst of the final few games that will define the season as one of success or failure, the old problems that we hoped had gone away have bubbled back to the surface.

Redknapp had a bad game yesterday. Starting with the team selection, he ignored the evidence that the pairing of Crouch and Pavyluchenko had worked pretty well. Now this was Harry’s selection in the first place and he deserves the credit: TOMM regulars will know that whilst I love each and every one of my lovely boys, Crouch is not my favourite son. Yet it’s been good so unless there was an injury, I saw no reason to break it up.

Harry will say, of course, that the job of a striker is to score goals and both did yesterday. However, there is no hiding from the reality that both were downright awful. Our problems stemmed from the fact that JD was never in the game (if he touched the ball at all in the first 20 minutes then I missed it) and Pav’s ball-control was a comic tour de force worthy of top billing at the Edinburgh festival. Leading the line is not his game, there’s been plenty of evidence over the years. He’s fine if he can push the ball a metre ahead of him. Do that, suddenly he’s a world-beater, as he was against Chelsea at home and yesterday he took his chance superbly. Then, as West Brom closed us down and left us no room in the box, he and Defoe looked so ordinary and ineffective. Time and again we played the ball to him, only to see it ping back from his rubber boots. When they call strikers ‘spring-heeled’, this is not what they had in mind.

It was odd not to see Benny up and down that wing. He’s been injured before but his presence is reassuring somehow. I missed him after he went off and so did Gareth Bale. He was at fault to some extent for the early goal, giving the player too much room inside him. However, he managed to get back, as he so often does, and the slip/injury did us in. Well-taken but so much room. Old failings.

Pav's boots are made of revolutionary new material

Sandro came on and had an excellent game, adding attacking drive and bounce to his defensive work. However, to fit him in required our two best players, Modric and Bale, to move out of position. This weakened our team more than if we had brought on Bassong, not a full-back and certainly not ideal but a quick and competent defender. Luka’s body language when he heard the news was a picture. He visibly slumped.

Taking of body language, an expert on Radio 4 said that tugging or touching the neck was the surest sign on a person that something was up. Feel free to use that in your next poker game or contract negotiation. As the game wore on, my neck resembled that of a turkey in early December. We never kicked on after our equaliser. It was one of those ‘nearly’ performances. Lots of good passes or touches that nearly came off but not quite. The pass looked a good one but was just cut out, or the flick opened up the defence – almost. In games like these, what begins as promising and inventive becomes over-optimistic and downright naive, as time after the moves broke down. Credit to West Brom here. Even though we pushed them further and further back towards their own goal, their defensive shield did not crack and they were always able to break quickly.We ended up trying to pass through the eye of a needle. Nothing to aim for up front because nothing was going on.

My neck

We needed a change but were treated to a mystifying substitution. For better or worse, usually better, throughout the season we’ve played with two wide men, Lennon and Bale, and this is the shape where we feel comfortable. Not only that, the combination of width and extra pace was ideal to stretch and break down the resolute WBA defence, so for the life of me I can’t see why Lennon stayed left. I can only presume that Harry wanted to double-team our opponents who had Brunt filling back to protect the full-back from Bale’s runs. Instead, it cluttered everything up and neither player was half as effective as they might have been.

Moreover, it left Kaboul unprotected on our left, as VDV was cutting inside at every opportunity. Several times WBA exploited this themselves. They found it easier to get two on one than we did. Kaboul did well enough in the circumstances but WBA had several opportunities, scoring from one, an admittedly excellent shot from deep but still Cox had plenty of room. He may well never score another like that in his career but that’s not the point. We were unbalanced by the formation.

On 5Live, after the obligatory ‘it’s been a great season’ Harry muttered something along the lines of, ‘I suppose we could be more defensive but that’s not how we are’, then he let the sentence trail away. This isn’t a precise quote as at the time the topical storm over east London had turned the North Circ into a tributary of the Ganges, not the best moment to discover that there was something wrong with my windscreen wipers. Well actually Harry, that’s precisely how we should be at times like that. Fair play again, in the bad old days we would not have fought back to go 2-1 up and that is much of the manager’s doing. However, even if we had had Lennon back on the right we would have been not only more solid to protect the hard fought lead, we could have still attacked on the break.

Rafa had a fine second half. Coming off his wing he worked tirelessly, prompting and probing, looking for an opening. Much more effective when he doesn’t drop deep, this is his position, in the area in front of the back four. However his and the runs of others were too often lateral rather than penetrating. The West Brom midfield shield pushed them across. No width and they weren’t stretched out of shape. Kaboul could not attack because he was occupied with defensive considerations. Luka had a decent rather than commanding game. Tiring towards the end, even slightly off colour and out of position he remained inventive, but there was so little room.

So Rafa ran hard but he did not run back. Two up front plus Rafa, that’s three out of the reckoning when they had the ball and that’s too much, especially at a time when we were a goal up. I enjoy the cavalier football but there is a time and a place for caution. Unbalanced and unprotected, West Brom could get at our back four all too easily. One on one, Dawson did very well and Gallas was OK. However, left one on one, unprotected, they are left with an invidious choice. Dive in and there’s no one behind. Stand off and our opponents have space to create, or in this case line up a curling shot that they wouldn’t have the time to do in training. The midfield are there to protect, and survive, but they were absent. Redknapp should have reorganised.

Same old story. Weak up front and not converting our superiority into goals and points. midfield not defending. Without taking anything away from a well-organised and determined West Brom team, these points dropped against teams we should have beaten have virtually done for our hopes of the CL. Never mind that, now we are looking over our shoulders and the key match of the season is now the trip not to Manchester but to Anfield. What a waste.

Spurs Crumble Then Capitulate

/ Alan / 11 Comments

Not like this. Not this way. If we had to go, and we’ve had a miraculous tilt at this European lark, then go down with a passion, a flourish. With the style that swept Inter aside, or the courage and poise that created a victory against Milan in Italy, then the fortitude than saw us through at White Hart Lane. But not like that.

Reaching the Champions league quarter finals is a wonderful achievement, far beyond my wildest dreams when the campaign started. ‘Reaching the group stages and giving a good account of ourselves’ or some such, that’s what I wrote back then and I believed it. To be contenders, to be part of something, that would have been enough for me.

So here we are are, the heady intoxication of the CL quarter finals, and when the camera panned around the floodlit tiers of the Bernabeu, every Spurs fan in the world bit their lip and marvelled. What that, in my eye, just a speck of dust….  At the start of the season nobody expected this but here we were, on merit. We deserved to be there because we had taken on and beaten some top sides. We had done everything we needed to and no one could ask for more.

There’s disappointment but never despair in being beaten by a better team, and Madrid were far superior on the night.. This one wasn’t quite like that. Spurs have so much to be proud of but this meek capitulation means it will take a while for that positive memory to rise to the surface of my steaming and frazzled brain. To lose to a series of self-inflicted calamities hurts. However well Madrid played, however many shots on goal they racked up, all the goals were avoidable to a greater or lesser extent. Two at least made us look mugs, and that hurts badly. They pulled us this way and that, stretching our ten men until we snapped, but two of their goals were unchallenged headers from set pieces that came straight out of the Blue Square. Majestically taken but utterly preventable. An early corner and their main danger man is unmarked. All he had to do was to take a few steps forward and jump. No one was on him. No one.

In other circumstances, you couldn’t blame the team for using a corner to take a few seconds breather. Second half now, under intense pressure but surviving with two banks of four, working hard, thinking hard, still only one nil and thoughts of having something to aim for at the Lane. But against the cream, there’s no respite. Quick corner, Gallas clearly hampered all night by his injury although he did well to make light of it, nothing in his legs to jump, but still criminally isolated as another straightforward header from a quick corner.

I’ve left the worst until now because I don’t even want to think about it, let alone write a couple of vaguely coherent paragraphs. This blog makes a determined effort not to blame individuals but the utterly inexcusable actions of Peter Crouch delivered a body blow that left us doubled up. It was as if you were cornered by a gang of bullies in the park then one of your mates turns round and whacks you. The physical pain will pass but the sense of being let down lingers on.

In my more philosophical moments, of which there are many,  secretly I like it when sportsmen at the top of their profession do something stupid under pressure, because it shows that actually they’re human, they are like you and me. This is not one of those moments. Lumbering in for challenges that he was never going to win, not once but twice, the yellow card warning totally ignored. Lanky leg off the ground, not once but twice. Them’s the rules, Peter, have been all season. To compound the madness, two completely unnecessary challenges, 70, 80 yards from our goal. No despairing last ditch heroic efforts here.

Time and again we’ve stressed the value of experience in Europe and how this team has had to learn so quickly, on the hoof. Yet this is not the case for a 30 year old veteran of World Cups and of European competition. No callow youth this, tanked up on adrenalin and speeding the night away.

This destroyed us. Bizarre though it seems in the cold light of day, Crouch was arguably the single most important player in our formation. His height has troubled other European defences and so Harry teamed him with Rafa, the latter searching for crumbs as the long far post balls not only might have created something up front, they also provided a precious lifeline to relieve pressure on the defence. He might have helped out at corners too…

His absence meant we were under pressure throughout. Rafa lost his role and was taken off as the game passed him by. Ten against eleven would bend us out of shape. No out ball meant we could not shift the ball out of our half. No one to hold it up, back it came almost before we had time to catch a lungful of air. Pressed back, time and again our midfield, harassed and harried, looked up desperately for something ahead of them. However slim a chance of getting it forward at least with Crouch there would be something, but they searched in vain.

Mouriniho needs no second bidding. He pushed his men up to hold a high line. The back four could play it out with impunity. Marcello could get forward, freed from the pressure of having to care about what he had left behind at the back. No Lennon to worry about either. Very odd that, by the way. I’ve not seen the media since the final whistle. I wonder if he complained about something before kickoff and they were forced into making a sudden ‘should he shouldn’t he’ decision. Whatever, his threat was important tactically in keeping the rading Madrid full back occupied. Madird could therefore press high up in midfield, just as Barca do. We were never going to get behind their defence and Bale and then Rafa from the cheekiest of throws, were dealt with by Carvaliho. JD coming on was pointless.

Spurs passing and movement was poor and we gave away the ball so many, many times. Luka was unexpectedly at fault. I looked to him for something different. However, Madrid gave them absolutely no room to move and any team in the world bar Barca would have struggled in those circumstances.

After the early disruption caused first by Lennon’s sudden withdrawal then Crouch’s brainstorm, we regrouped and defended well for long periods by conceding territory and crowding the space in front of our back four. Jenas and Sandro worked hard, the latter dropping back to central defence to limit the room Madrid wanted to play those little angled passes. Dawson was the pick of our defenders, determined and strong. Not sure where he was for the second goal, though, and at times Madrid pulled him out of the comfort of the middle. He seldom missed a tackle. Gomes was admirably decisive and his clean handling would have inspired an increasingly desperate rearguard effort. Then an error at the near post. Those shots are harder to save than they appear on TV. It came from behind a defender and was swerving, but he still should have got a stronger hand to it to save.

Ultimately it was too much. Ten men plus wave upon wave of eager  attackers, probing away. Bale not fit enough to both attack and drop back to defend, three men on him instantly he received the ball. There was room on our right. Corluka was often left unprotected too, then injured. We’ve run out of right backs for the league now. Gallas couldn’t jump. The pressure told as we tired, giving the ball away more and more, unable to close down every forward.

Not the end of our European adventure but an ignominious night none the less. 4-0 is a sound beating. Given the  nature of the defeat, it will be so hard to be inspired by adversity to league success. Self-inflicted wounds take an age to heal. Stoke will be looking to steamroller us on Saturday, knackered, injuries and depressed. Never mind the top four, the struggle to hold on to the top four will test Harry’s powers of motivation to the limit.

 

No Wigan report this week. New piece of software, pressed the wrong button when in the final paragraph, no time to re-write it. You were mortified, weren’t you. Regards, Al

Spurs: Is This As Good As It Gets?

/ Alan / 20 Comments

It’s thrilling at this time of the season when, usually, the games pile on top of each other so there is barely time to breathe between matches, but occasionally I appreciate a break. Maybe I’m getting on a bit now, need to take things slowly at my age. Nah – I’m fine, my enthusiasm for the game is undiminished by the passing years and the way money is in danger of poisoning the relationship between clubs and their fans. Rather, maturity teaches you to rest awhile and enjoy the view on along way, rather than hurtle from A to B.

Despite Tuesday’s defeat, as I suck a thoughtful tooth there’s plenty to relish. The 2nd leg against Milan will do but we are also 4th in the league after a good run of results and are playing some cracking football. In Modric, Bale and Van der Vaart we have three of the most exciting players in Europe. However, it’s given me time to catch up on a few thoughts left over from the Milan victory, one being a radio discussion about our future prospects. Was this momentous victory, one of the great Spurs performances of the last 30 years in my view, the breakthrough moment, the Yellow Brick Road to untold future glory, or was this a time to savour because this is as good as it gets?

The case for the first proposition is obvious – I’ve mentioned enough evidence already – so let’s look at the case for proposition 2, which goes something like this: Spurs cannot play consistently well to take on and beat not only the cream of Europe but also remain a fixture in the top four. To do this requires better players and better resources than we possess or are likely to possess. As sweet as victory as this was, in the cold light of day it’s out of synch with our true status.

In taking this on, I wish I could begin on the pitch but these days we need the Financial Times not the back pages to find many of the answers. Where there’s money, there’s power, and the single thing the powerful are best at is holding on to power itself. Despite the forthcoming changes to the relationship between the salary bill and income, Chelsea and Manchester City, bankrolled by billionaires for whom the purchase of a Torres or Toure has no more impact on their wallet than using a £50 note to light their cigar, will hold sufficient advantage to distort the market in their favour. United or would-be challengers like Liverpool have the might of corporate finance behind them. L’arse depend more than any of the others on the skill of their manager. Whilst his current reluctance to spend is unfathomable, the Emirates is a goldmine, their debt must soon be paid off and there’s a takeover in the air.

Fighting our corner is a shrewd businessman who falls into neither of these camps. More accurately he actually has both – our de facto owner Joe Lewis is a billionaire and corporate financier – but has access to neither. Consistently up in the top 15 clubs in the world in terms of income, we are unlikely to have the massive resources to match those of our main rivals. In ten or 15 years time maybe, not just when the new stadium is built but when the debts are manageable, but not yet.

However, I’m not giving up that easily. Let’s get back to what matters, what happens on the pitch. Spurs have to take the blueprint that got us here and throw everything behind that. Players. Players are our future. Young players who will mature – we will find them and once here, cherish them as if they had returned to suckle at their mother’s breast.

Time – give them time to develop, grow and achieve their full potential. With patience, time is a resource conspicuously lacking in the minds of Abramovich or City’s sheikhs, yet it is within our gift.

Process – this is a process, a flow of players joining us. As one reaches the first team, another is out on loan learning their trade, a third is sweating blood in the youth side. Whilst our own youngsters need to progress, our success has been to identify young players who have some first team experience elsewhere.

Football men. Football men in charge of the team who can make these players believe and excel, to be better than they think they can be. Most significantly, football men off the pitch and in the stands of grounds around Britain and and Europe, men who understand not just what a player can do but what they could become. A man like Comolli. Allowed too much influence by Levy, the club’s management and accountability structure hampered progress and Levy must never allow that mistake to be repeated. I’m aware he may not have personally picked all of these players, but in his time Gomes, Bale, Lennon, Corluka, Modric and Assou-Ekotto joined this club.  Director of Football, chief scout, I don’t care what he is called, we need someone who can ensure a flow of  players on their way up.

We’ve shown we can compete. Keep this team together and add quality all over the pitch, especially up front, and I am convinced we can challenge the best. Walker and Sandro are next in line: hugely promising. Hard enough though it is to find these precious and scarce resources, the true test is whether we can keep our young (ish) stars at the end of this and next season. The signs are good at the moment but let’s face it – in the summer bids for Luka and Our Gareth will start at £30m. I trust Levy is practicing his cold stare as we speak.

In one of the first ever posts on this blog, I answered the question of where we would finish in the league that season by saying that my true hopes were about the manner in which we went about things. I would have been happy if we were genuine contenders with a realistic chance of challenging for honours and the top four. Whilst I’m still not sure exactly how to  define it, I know when I see it and that’s still how I feel. It’s what we are doing now. If we give it a right good go and finish 5th, I’d be disappointed but not too downhearted.

Right now, I’m pessimistic about the top four – 5th, lost by a short head is how it feels. The burden of expectation is starting to weigh heavy on our shoulders and our strikers are seriously misfiring, but to be serious challengers, now and in the future, is good enough because one day, one of Chelsea, City, United and L’arse are going to fall from their pedestals, as did Liverpool, and we need to be waiting. That day could be sooner than you think. As I write, L’arse will have to pick themselves up from their League Cup defeat, a hammer blow that they did not anticipate. City have drawn with Fulham – they are not yet a team, they have problems gelling as a team. Chelsea have misplaced their mojo and in the longer term need to rebuild. Finally, at some point in the next couple of years, United have the twin problems of replacing Ferguson at a time when they are burdened with debt.

Let’s reflect on how we got here, make a plan and stick to it. Levy has found money for a striker, even though we couldn’t find one, but in the transfer market it’s a scout that we need the most. Maybe we have one already. If so, if there is a man who brought Walker and Sandro to the club, then I salute you and I’m glad you do not seek the limelight. In considering the future let’s not forget to enjoy the present. This season is chock full of glorious memories and there are more to come. Now and in the future.

Finally, I’d like to join Spurs fans in mourning the loss of Dean Richards, who died yesterday at the tragically young age of 36. Signed from Southampton by Hoddle for £8m, a fee that was without looking it up the highest at the time for a centre half even though he was uncapped, I hoped he was the solution to our problems in the centre of defence that had dogged us since Richard Gough departed. Strong, experienced, not the quickest but still mobile, he was the big man at the the back, the leader we craved.

Well though he played, the fact that he never quite hit those heights meant that he was underrated by many. We now know something that even he did not at the time, that his balance was affected by a serious brain condition that eventually claimed his life. In the circumstances, his achievements were remarkable. My sincere condolences to his family. At Spurs we will have good memories.