WIN a Copy of Spurs Cult Heroes!

March 24, 2010 / Alan / 2 Comments

Win a copy of ‘Spurs Cult Heroes’ by Michael Lacquiere, known to the likes of you and I as the author of the fab blog All Action No Plot.

The stories of 20 fans’ icons, the book is often remarkable and always entertaining. I hope there’s not too much about fake boobs, though.

My first ever freebie as a blogger and I am giving you, dear reader, the chance to win it. Not that I haven’t been offered items, oh no, but selflessly I’ve turned them all down, keeping TOMM advert-free and as pure and innocent as a new born babe, with a bottom to match.

In order to send this to you in pristine condition, I’ve not been able to review it, although I might peek inside after buying a pair of those white gloves that David Dimbleby uses to handle medieval manuscripts or ancient maps with the land of the dog-headed men, now known as Chatham. If it is half as good as the blog, then it will be the best read of the year.

To win a copy, answer these questions. Replies to tottenhamonmymind@gmx.co.uk, closing date next Wednesday March 31^st at 8pm. First one out the hat wins. I’ve always wanted to pick a name out of a hat, you know.

The Hat. Just think, your name could be in it this time next week...

Spurs have been blessed with many cult heroes, but can you identify three more that you so nearly adored but in the end they never quite made it. We were seriously after these players but the deals fell through.

A bona fide stone cold hero for country and club, in the mid 60s he could not wait to join Spurs and get away from the London team with which he will forever be associated. But his board said ‘no’ and punished him by keeping his wages down.
This saintly hero was rumoured to be on his way for a couple of years and even the bloke behind me confirmed the deal. His style was perfect for Spurs but then his fiancée said she didn’t want to come to London, so he stayed a one club man on the south coast. All I can is, I hope she was worth it.
This man achieved iconic status in the 70s but for one of our bitter rivals. Medicals completed, he was on the point of joining us when one of the cult heroes featured in the book pinched him at the last moment. See how it all fits together?

Inter, Contracts and Graffiti. It Fits Somehow.

March 18, 2010 / Alan / 8 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paul Gascoigne and the Ultimate Taboo

March 12, 2010June 6, 2010 / Alan / 10 Comments

Gazza on my mind this week. No real reason. A home tie to take us to Wembley, can’t complain about the semi-final draw and Liverpool’s ability to find a banana skin more often than Charlie Chaplin have all contributed to a sense of ease and relaxation. So the mind wanders back to past glories, and in modern times there are few more glorious than Paul Gascoigne. And as is the way with these things, I’ve not been looking but Gazza has found me, with a great story from Daveyboy in the comments section of my last article, Morris Keston gives him a mention on twitter and then there he is in the book I’m reading.

A Man Who Looks Like Danny Baker. From the Site http://menwholooklikedannybaker.com. You Couldn't Make It Up

I’ve been a big fan of Danny Baker for many years. Not quite in the league of Kennedy’s assassination or Princess Di’s death but I vividly recall the first time I heard his radio show. On a bleary eyed Saturday morning, making breakfast for the kids, wife at work and no chance of football, the mindless banality of Capital Radio would provide scant diversion from the drudgery of breakfast and the washing up, but it was the best I could come up with. Turning the dial, Robert Cray’s upbeat blues ‘Smoking Gun’ ripped from the radio and I hung around to see who on earth was playing this stuff. From then I’ve followed the fabulous Baker boy around the airwaves. Many times I’ve had to pull over because I’ve been laughing so much but his sense of the absurd and relaxed freeflowing presentation masks an effortless mastery of the medium of radio. Now he’s back at 606, a show he originated and was then dismissed from because he not entirely seriously suggested that aggrieved fans may wish to beat a path to the door of a certain referee. In reality this was the excuse because it was clear his face didn’t fit – on 606 he wanted to talk about things other than Fergie’s latest press conference or whether that was a penalty after 37 replays. Like things you had confiscated at the turnstiles or unusual places to play football.

His knockabout style and apparent lack of a coherent career plan (at BBC London he works on a handshake rather than a contract) hides his status as an insightful and shrewd observer of popular culture, especially football and pop music. His 2 hours on BBC London on the day after Michael Jackson’s death, where without a script he reminiscenced around his time in LA before, during and after his NME interview with Jackson back in the 80s, the last major independent interview with him, was touching, funny and honest, and said more about Jackson than the sum of all the tosh that overwhelmed the media for weeks after.

His latest book Baker and Kelly – Classic Football Debates, written with Paxton Road stalwart Danny Kelly, was certain to find its way into my Christmas stocking. Someone would put two and two together as they wandered round the bookshop ten minutes before closing on December 24th, when Waterstones is jam packed with desperate punters scooping up any offering that possessed a connection with loved ones for whom they could not think of anything that they would really want. It’s a bit like the aunt who every year gives you the latest Westlife album, because one Saturday round at hers, squirming with embarrassment at Celebrity Idol Factor on Ice, your morale squashed as flat as a Kraft cheese slice run over by a steamroller, you thought it would keep everyone happy by saying that parts of the chorus were ‘quite nice’. Quite nice. How inoffensive and non-committal is that. It implies that your nervous system was closed down totally save for a pulse sufficient to lift one eyelash a fraction of a millimetre. But to your aunt, it indicates undying appreciation of their irish might, to be rewarded each and every Christmas with their latest offering.

The only question with the Baker and Kelly book was not if I would receive one but how many. In the event, it was only a single copy (but four THFC 2010 calendars….). It’s a largely disappointing effort, an erratic mix of funny anecdotes, rehashed phone-in material that does not translate well to the page and fillers, all of which stinks of money for old rope. Even the print is spread wide apart so as to reach the end of the 300 pages without undue effort. But there are several gems, one of which is an eye-witness account of Gazza’s infamous spree in London. Stuck in traffic, Gazza cannot sit still so he jumps out the cab and commandeers a London bus, complete with passengers, which he then drives round the Marble Arch roundabout. Leaping out, he spots some workmen and while he cadges a fag, digs a hole in the road with a pneumatic drill. Baker and friend Chris Evans look on as he reaches their destination, a media awards ceremony to which he had not been invited, via a Bentley that he flagged down at the lights – the elderly couple in the back were only too glad to help. This was front page news at the time, with Gazza and his drinking pals both celebrated and simultaneously castigated by the tabloids in the ways that only they know.

Baker maintains that they were not drunk but the redtops were determined to imply otherwise. The bottles in the photo (not from the book) are water but that’s

Baker, Evans and a Mystery Man in Disguise

not the story that the tabs want. But the most touching element of this story is the public’s reaction to Gazza – everybody loved him. People from different backgrounds felt good just to see him. They cheered him wherever he went, went along with his fun (and it was all fun to him) and he made them feel better. Everyone felt they knew him, sharing jokes, shouting hallo, wishing him well. For his part, he could talk to anyone and stopped to give them all the time of day. No PR, no manufactured celebrity status, just Gazza.

Gascoigne was loved by the people, genuinely and unashamedly so, in a manner that may never be repeated. Pre-Sky, this was a time when players were not so tainted by their riches as they are now, separated and aloof from their fans. If Rooney wins us the World Cup, he would not be able to set foot outside the front door without a phalanx of bodyguards and PR people, and the sad thing is, he may not wish to.

Baker’s affectionate tribute to his friend opens our eyes to one side of his personality but obscures another, the demons that have driven him to the bottom of the deepest abyss. He touches upon the reasons driving Gascoigne on, his restlessness, the need to fight off a boredom that would engulf him when, finally, there were no more highs to sustain him: “The brighter his star shone the more its inevitable collapse into a black hole haunted him.”

It’s a powerful image of impending doom touching even the most exciting crazy moments but it does not look the real problem in the face: Paul Gascoigne suffers from a serious mental health problem. This is not criticism of the man, how can it be, it’s an illness, nor does it belittle any of his achievements on the pitch. If anything it makes them even more miraculous, given that they were performed under such duress. Gascoigne according to his autobiography was a restless, distracted and hyperactive child whose obsessive behaviour was under control but manifested itself later in life as the pressure eroded his coping mechanisms. He saw a therapist of some sort once as a child but never returned. Baker remarks on how Gazza was constantly talking and narrating his day, reminding himself of what was happening to him as a means of calming himself down.

Gascoigne MOTD2, 2009, in Optimistic Mood

Later, when football no longer sustained him, the drinking, depression and self-abuse took hold. The week long drinking binges by messrs Baker, Evans and Gascoigne are a myth, says Danny, and the London escapade ended with Gazza on Baker’s sofa, chatting with the family as they watched TV. However, he was supposed to be in his log cabin in the remote Scottish hills, which was the bolt hole and place of safety that his manager at the time, Walter Smith, had sorted out. Now we see a pallid and broken man, going through the motions and blank behind the eyes, struggling to rehabilitate himself.

Danny Baker has written an eloquent and insightful piece about the Gazza he knows, which says so much about the man and yet skirts round the one unmentionable in modern football. Sex, alcohol, drugs and infidelity are all open to debate, but one subject remains taboo: mental health. We can’t talk about it. The man suffers, yet he’s given offers to manage a football team or to get back into coaching, or to be a TV celebrity. I heard a rumour that he was going into Celebrity Big Brother and I swear I would have chucked in my job and set up a protest camp outside the studios. We fear mental health problems but they are just that, health problems. Let’s have some honesty about the pressures of modern football and talk more openly about their effect on vulnerable people. Show compassion to sufferers and offer sympathy and treatment. Above all, give them realism – don’t ask too much. The people around Gazza need to look after him. Gazza made us happy, now let’s care for him. A true Tottenham great, we owe him.

Paul Gascoigne – A True Tottenham Great

March 9, 2010March 9, 2010 / Alan / 19 Comments

This profile of one of the finest players ever to grace the navy blue and white appeared first on http://www.sporting-heroes.net, an excellent source of pictures and information about Spurs, football and sport. Later this week, more reflections on Gazza the man.

Paul Gascoigne played football. That’s how Spurs fans know and love him. Not the World Cup tears, the media victim, the maddeningly infantile mischief, or the washed up celebrity. Forget that, because Gascoigne was simply the finest, most exhilarating talent of his generation with the capacity to astound and captivate by virtue of his sheer brilliance.

For three precious seasons, nothing else mattered. Gascoigne was a genuine rarity – a midfielder who really could do everything. When fully fit, which sadly was not consistently the case, he roamed midfield for 90 minutes, strong, alert, vigilant. Sublime passing allied with the vision to match provided rich pickings for attackers; first Waddle then Lineker prospered on a ready supply delivered with pinpoint accuracy.

In the area he snaffled chances with predatory instinct, but more frequently goals came from shots with pace and precision from around the edge or just inside the box. Free kicks were a speciality; walls were no obstacle, beaten either by power or by curling the ball in a graceful arc into the top corner.

The truly gifted stand out by their mastery of a distinctive skill, an exclusive, individual gift. Gascoigne’s was running with the ball at his feet. This was more than mere dribbling, although he could hold it close and weave a pathway through the tightest defence, both feet in total mastery of the ball. At other times, he would just collect the ball and run, characteristic 30 yard surges towards the opponent’s goal, elbows out for balance and protection, chest puffed out. Some defenders would be outwitted by ball-skill, others simply fell away as he breezed past. Then, as he approached the box he would disappear into a cluster of opponents, inexorably drawn to him, as were the eyes of every spectator, only to emerge from these seemingly insurmountable odds with the ball at his feet.

This precocious talent was already a regular for the Newcastle first team and England under-21s by the time Tottenham’s interest intensified after he scored both goals against Spurs in a 2-0 victory in January 1988, a performance the Spurs manager Terry Venables described as one of the best he had ever seen by one so young. As the season came to an end, a lacklustre Gascoigne felt unwanted by the club who had nurtured him since boyhood and as other clubs dithered Tottenham were quick to pounce, the £2.2 million fee a new club record.

Gascoigne’s talent amazed even the harshest judges of all, his fellow professionals. During his first training game at Spurs, he picked up the ball, beat 8 players and smashed the ball into the roof of the net. Everyone stood and applauded. His manager said that to see him play like that made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.

In the years that followed, he would come to inspire his team-mates to greater heights, but the effects took time to emerge. His much anticipated debut was delayed for a week as over-running building works at White Hart Lane caused the opening game against Coventry to be postponed, so his opener was away to Newcastle, a 2-2 draw. The home fans were less than enthusiastic about his return. He dodged flying Mars Bars whenever he approached the touchlines, a better day for local sweetshops than Gazza, perhaps.

Gascoigne received a much warmer welcome in his first home game against arch rivals Arsenal, without delay endearing himself to the crowd with a cheeky goal. Controlling a through ball from Waddle, he lost his boot as he entered the penalty area but still managed to round the keeper and score with his stockinged right foot. However, that match was lost 3-2 and Spurs struggled to find momentum. With two points deducted because of the Coventry postponement and only a single league victory, they were bottom in the first week of November. Gazza’s career was faring better, however. His individual performances were garnering rave reviews and he made his England debut in September, coming on as a substitute against Denmark.

His next goal, a curling free kick against QPR at the end of November, inspired a comeback, Spurs drawing 2-2 after being two down at half-time. This humble point signalled a gradual upswing in fortune. One defeat in December plus the two points restored saw Spurs end the month in the safety of 9th position. Gascoigne’s free kicks were fast becoming his trademark; another swirled into the top corner against Millwall. Any significant momentum dissipated early in the New Year on a muddy Bradford pitch as Spurs went out of the cup in the 3rd round. Another trademark, the roll of midriff fat, had by now disappeared and the young man’s eye-catching individual brilliance brightened months of mid-table mediocrity. Against Norwich in February he rounded the keeper to score the first in a 2-1 victory. March saw another free-kick fly over the wall to net another three points, followed by a solo effort away to Luton. Five wins in the last seven games propelled Spurs to a final position of 6th.

Paul Gascoigne began the 1989/90 season in fine form, matched by his goalscoring. His first came in late August away to Manchester City, followed by further goals at home to Chelsea and a rebound off the post away to Norwich. The admiration earned by his growing contribution to Tottenham’s flowing football was not, however, matched by results. The defence was leaking too many goals and Spurs were one off the bottom after 6 matches, with just the opening day 2-1 success against Luton Town to show in the win column. In October Gascoigne scored in a strong 3-1 win at Charlton (his fourth goal in six league games), a characteristically direct, surging run carrying the ball from midfield, into the box, throw in two or three short strides for balance then stroked past the keeper. In similar fashion three weeks later he powered through the Southampton defence, this time finishing by taking the ball around goalkeeper Tim Flowers.

His League Cup goal against Tranmere at the end of the month proved to be his last until late April, but as the goals dried up his influence soared, for in the shape of Gary Lineker, signed in the close season from Barcelona, he now had a foil perfectly suited to exploiting his talents to the full. Not only was this supreme goal-poacher the grateful beneficiary of the full range of Gascoigne’s passing, Lineker’s movement created space for himself and for his team-mates. If he drifted wide, Paul could drive into the space. As defenders clustered around, Lineker then inserted himself into the resulting gaps. Often totally by-passing their colleagues, the understanding that lead to 26 league and cup goals for Lineker appeared remarkably prescient but the reality was more prosaic, based as it was on a system of signals. Lineker’s nod and short run towards the opponents’ goal was in fact a dummy and Gascoigne would knock the ball short, while a spinning finger gesture mimicked the striker’s spin away from his marker in pursuit of a longer ball into space behind the defence. No matter: 8 wins in the last 10 games, crowned by a memorable first half display against Manchester United when Gascoigne scored and made the other for Lineker, achieved a final league position of 3rd.

Given his head in Italia ’90, Gazza returned as the nation’s favourite son and he began the season in high spirits with a series of ebullient performances and goals to match. He scored in the opening day victory against Manchester City and against Derby he single-handedly won the game with a hat-trick, two of which were classic free kicks, from a virtually identical spot thirty yards out, differing only in that one went to Shilton’s left, the other to his right. Both were simply unstoppable, as, apparently, was Gascoigne himself, irrepressible and mesmerising in a series of dynamic displays. Hartlepool at home in the League Cup was hardly on a par with Germany, but he destroyed the visitors, scoring four in a 5-0 victory. In later rounds he notched the winner against Bradford and another versus Sheffield Utd as Spurs reached the 5th round of that competition.

After a barren spell he scored twice in December in two away defeats to Chelsea and Manchester City, his last in the League. As his powers waned, so did Tottenham’s fortunes. They fell away after a steady start, winning only two League matches in 1991 and limping home a disappointing 11th.

But his greatest impact, not merely in this season but in his Tottenham career, came in the FA Cup. After a solid away win at Blackpool in the third round, Gascoigne delivered two scintillating performances, scoring twice against Oxford, including a stunning individual effort, and again at Portsmouth in the next round, the winner coming from a long ball, a shimmy then an unstoppable left footer from the edge of the area. In round 5, at home to Notts County, he atoned for an early error with a memorable display that lifted the lifted the team, culminating in a late winner after it seemed that intense Spurs’ pressure would come to nothing.

This was Gascoigne at his finest, inspired to hitherto unknown heights by the magic of the Cup, but it is the unselfconscious energy, bravado and joy of his game that lingers in the memory. One reason perhaps why the fans loved him, because he would respond to their sense of occasion, not with trepidation but as the key to unlock his true, almost limitless potential.

Yet unbeknown to his adoring public, all the while he had been carrying a hernia injury. Injections could no longer postpone the inevitable operation. Tension mounted as Spurs approached the semi-final, no ordinary game even in their illustrious history, for this was the first such match against bitter rivals Arsenal and the first ever semi-final to take place at Wembley. Gascoigne struggled back, his only preparation was half a game in a league defeat away to Norwich; he was substituted. His fitness was confirmed only hours before kick-off but Paul, roused not deterred by such drama, did not hold back. An early free kick, thirty yards out, struck with sweet certainty into the top corner, improbable, miraculous, glorious, the fan behind this author still bitterly castigating Gascoigne for his ridiculous nerve to shoot from that distance even as the ball furled the net.

Gazza leapt in the air with unconfined joy. He set up Lineker for the second and played a full role in a 3-1 victory that many Spurs fans still prize as the most memorable performance of the modern era.

By the day of the Final against Nottingham Forest, the drama had been cranked to fever pitch. As ever at Tottenham, turbulence off the pitch proved the catalyst for the theatre that was to follow on it. Rescue from crippling debt was possible only by selling its prize asset. Gascoigne went into the game knowing that it was to be his last for the club, an £8.5m fee having been agreed with Lazio. He started frantically, but this time the burden of expectation proved too great. An utterly reckless early challenge on Garry Parker went unpunished but signalled danger ahead. Later the referee reflected that had he been booked then, he may have calmed down. As it was, a few minutes later another dangerous high lunge at the edge of the box left Gazza and full-back Gary Charles in a heap. After treatment, Paul rose gingerly to his feet, only to see Stuart Pearce score from the resulting free kick.

Lucky not to be sent off, Gascoigne departed instead on a stretcher, an ignominious end to his Tottenham career, although Spurs went on to a 2-1 triumph after extra time. His victorious team-mates joined him at his hospital bed for the celebrations. The resulting injury meant a year out of the game, with the transfer to Lazio eventually going ahead, for a reduced fee of £5.5m. Although he was relatively successful in Italy, where he remains extremely popular with the Lazio fans, he never quite regained the excellence of his best Tottenham performances. For Spurs fans of a certain generation, Paul is but one thing, a true great who graced their colours with moments of genius. It was an honour and a privilege to watch him play.