transfer window

Redknapp Should Keep Quiet But That Won’t Mask the Problems

/ Alan / 34 Comments

In the early days of Tottenham On My Mind I wrote a piece characterising the relationship between Harry Redknapp and his chairman. The title, Levy is Redknapp’s Poodle, summed up their dealings during their first summer transfer window together. At his previous clubs, Redknapp ensured large sums of cash were at his disposal, even when at West Ham and Portsmouth that money wasn’t really there to spend. His appointment signalled a potential sea change in attitude by the cautious and parsimonious Levy and the possibility of any policy clashes further receded after Redknapp’s success in averting disaster placed even greater power in his hands. What Harry wants, Harry gets.

Over the next two years, I came to revise that assessment. Like many before, I had underestimated the quiet man’s resolution. Redknapp was clearly given boundaries for the first time in his managerial career since he left Bournemouth. He operated within a strict salary structure and transfer fee budget. Given Harry’s garrulous nature and his cosy relationship with an adoring media, his frustrations occasionally surfaced but by and large he seemed happy enough. Success on the pitch helped. Now, with a watershed season already under way but a lack of new signings, Redknapp can’t contain himself any longer. Restlessness has become thinly disguised antagonism. The tail is trying to wag the dog.

His comments yesterday are all over the media. It’s classic Harry. He’s relaxed and reflective, understanding the situation facing his best player: “…if someone comes along and offers to treble your wages..” note the use of ‘wages’ not ‘salary’, old school is Harry….” and could win the Champions League, it’s not easy….he’s had his head turned.”

Yet he “wants to see him here at the start of the year…” Harry mate, we’ve started already…”I don’t see him going.” But hang on, there’s more: …”if he goes you get three or four players…They’re your options: get the money and get four players, and in all honesty have a better team, or keep Luka who is a fantastic player.”

Harry the pundit, taking a reasonable overview of the situation. Except he’s not a pundit commenting on the state of play, he’s our manager. He has a job to do, to get the best possible team for Tottenham Hotspur. At least he said ‘we’ and ‘our’ this time.

In fact, he doesn’t want to keep Luka at all. He wants the money to buy more players and ‘have a better team’. Thus he is in direct conflict with his chairman, who some time ago said unequivocally that Modric is not for sale, then kept a dignified silence.

Not only is our club riven with conflict at the very top precisely at the time when crucial decisions are being taken at the beginning of this watershed season, it’s revealed in the media for all to see. It’s bad enough our dirty washing gets an airing in public but Redknapp is blatantly using the publicity to gain leverage over his chairman.

In my limited dealings with the club and with people who have had dealings with the club, they are intensely controlling of things like access to the staff and information about behind the scenes activity.  Yet Redknapp can say what he likes. He’s so powerful, he kept his newspaper column as well as spewing out quotes about anything going on in the game. Journalists pick over the bones of the slightest incident or event in football, yet Redknapp is not criticised and is more  untouchable even than Alex Ferguson.  Call him a ‘wheeler-dealer’ and he’s at your throat, one win in 10 and Harry’s working hard to get it right.

Levy does not want to sell Modric or he’s playing hardball to make Chelsea sweat. Redknapp says ‘sell’. Either way, keep it quiet and sort it out behind closed doors. Redknapp’s instinct to deal via the media serves his own interests more than it does those of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. His employer. As it is, he’s openly blaming Levy for not coming up with the cash for new players, cash which in passing surely does not have to come solely from the sale of one player. We have some cash from Keane plus O’Hara and deals will be done for several fringe players in the frenzied last few days of the window. Then there’s £31m from the Champions League and a well-run club.

While I’m at it, sell Luka for even £30m to bring in ‘three or four’ quality players – the sums don’t add up. It smacks of Redknapp getting his excuses in early – fail and it’s not his fault because he didn’t have the players.

I’ve been clear on the blog about my attitude towards our manager. I will always be grateful for taking us from the foot of the table to the quarter finals of the Champions League, in the process serving up scintillating football played by superb players. To say there’s more he could have done and still can do is not to diminish that achievement. I’ve never accepted his media personna as a cuddly uncle figure who just has to drape his arm round a man’s shoulders to transform him into a worldbeater. He’s crafty and shrewd, knows the game inside out and is tough as old boots. Fine by me – I don’t want a shrinking violet as manager because it’s a hard old game out there – but don’t try to fool me. Don’t like it, never have.

However, I’m tired of this game-playing in the media. It seems no one is prepared to control him so he needs to exercise some self-control for the sake of our club. Our club, Harry, our club.

To finish with, let’s talk about the team. There are serious issues here. If Levy is reluctant to release cash for transfers, even if it means paying a little over the odds, at this point in our history it could have disastrous consequences. If on the other hand he hangs on to make one of his legendary (or infamous?) late deals, he could be our saviour. Right now, all we know is that relations between manager and chairman have plummeted to a new low. After the window is over, something has to give and history suggests it won’t be Levy. The prospect of Spurs caught up in these internal conflicts is the very last scenario I had in mind as our season kicks off in a few hours time.

The Great Depression. Just Me Then

/ Alan / 9 Comments

I’ve been catching up with Carnivale, the US series about a carnival travelling through the dustbowl during the Great Depression. It’s compelling television but frankly not one to come home to after a bad day, evoking as it does a picture of poverty and suffering that places little value on human life. By heck it’s grim up mid-West.

In a recent episode, the carny folk are caught up in a dust-storm that envelopes them in a dark cloud of dirt and fear.  Now I know a decent metaphor when one comes along and slaps me round the chops like a wet mackerel, but just in case we didn’t get it, one of the characters talked us through the plot even though the person she was speaking to was clearly aware of what was happening. ‘Dark clouds of black topsoil stripped from the surface of a thousand farms…the ruined hopes of families like yours, your mother’s bones uprooted and dumped three hundred miles away…’ Think Mystic Meg crossed over to the dark side. But if you want a metaphor for my feelings about Spurs right now, (and of course you do, don’t you?) watch out for the dust-cloud, dark, foreboding and heading our way.

A month ago I was not only optimistic but above all patient. That’s the way I should be still, because little has changed. And therein lies the problem. Nothing’s happening. As I write, no signings have been confirmed although Adebayor on loan seems highly likely, but more on that when it happens. Harry has been conspicuous in the stands at Loftus Road and in Holland. However, if we are contemplating spending a fortune on players in the next week or so, surely they have been scouted thoroughly and there’s nothing to be learned from the manager watching another 90 minutes, less in Holland yesterday where apparently he left the ground at half-time thus missing Ruiz’s goal.

It seems certain that our top-tier targets either do not want to move or have gone elsewhere. Not even Uncle Harry’s charm can’t outweigh the lack of Champions League football. A nice fat salary could do the trick. Except Levy has a wage structure. Some sources say he’s willing to bend if not entirely break that, and in the past to make up some of  the shortfall we have offered lump sum performance incentives that have not proved exactly tough to achieve, like staying at the club. However, it confirms my view that if the big names won’t come, our scouts had better be at the very top of their game to get the best of the rest.

Being patient involves managing anxiety over time and now that the season has started, time is catching up on us. Tomorrow we play Hearts in a crucial two-legged tie. I can’t claim to know much about the Scots, although my fellow bloggers THFC1882  and What a Fantastic Run  can help you out. All I know is that this is our first game of the season, whereas Hearts are well into their league campaign, and we don’t have any fit midfielders, apparently. We were caught cold this time last year against Young Boys, when the European dreams became a nightmare after 30 disorganised and depressing minutes.

It’s the not knowing that gets me. I have no idea how we are going to line up tomorrow, let alone how well we are going to play. Pre-season should have sorted all this out but our own particular footballing coitus interruptus could leave us frustrated and begging for more. It’s essential we play our strongest possible team in both legs of the Hearts tie to make up for a lack of match fitness if nothing else. If the midfield injuries are as bad as Harry says, and he’s lied before, we might see Kaboul as defensive midfielder in a cautious hit them on the break set up.

So it’s down to the last week with the window. Again. At least we have Levy’s ability to make a deal plus the assets to back it up, in the form of both cash (including income of £31m from the CL run) and players to exchange, should the need arise, which puts us in a stronger position than our rivals. We’re used to the brinkmanship, whether we like it or not. What concerns me is that our team-building is falling even further behind schedule. New arrivals won’t bed in for a while and we need to get going with Hearts and both Manchester teams on the way.

Carnivale is one of those programme where you’re sure something really profound is happening without being entirely sure what exactly that is. Like I said, I know a good metaphor when I see one. The central character appears to have mystical life-giving powers. Maybe that’s Daniel Levy in our little drama, but I fear it’s beyond him.

 

So farewell then, Robbie Keane, gone to develop his semaphore on acid routine in the States. These days it’s unfashionable amongst Spurs fans to like him but he deserves great credit for his prominent role in years that can best be described as a transitional period for the club.

He was never the striker you could bank on to score. Especially in one on ones, my abiding memory is relief rather than joy when the ball went in. However, he’s 9th on our all-time goalscorers list. Off the top of my head, 2 stand-out goals bookend his career. Early on at home to Leeds, outside of the foot from the edge of the box, taken early, then later a dazzling long-range equaliser in the mesmeric home draw against Chelsea. More of a curio, I also recall him sneaking in to surprise the Birmingham keeper as he played the ball out, then nipping in to score.

For a time Keane looked to be the perfect modern forward, equally comfortable in the box taking chances and also in deeper positions, making them. His partnership with Dimitar Berbatov made both better players. Derided for having any number of clubs in his boyhood dreams, he was nevertheless fully committed to Spurs when he played and his urgency was welcome on the many days when others seemed dozy and distant.

In the end, Keane was a bit too clever for his own good. Praised by pundits for his running off the ball, too often he took up positions that made it very difficult for team-mates to pass to him. Running between two defenders or into tight angles away from goals is all very well but there’s seldom room for the ball to be played into. Also, his technique was fatally flawed. At the end of last season he missed a crucial chance for West Ham, near post about 3 yards out. The pundits were amazed but Spurs fans weren’t. That ungainly shank or air-shot was all too familiar.

Genuinely overjoyed at our League Cup win, he led the celebrations then left to join Liverpool. Seemingly at the peak of his powers, it signalled the beginning of the end. From then on he became unsettled and despite helping us to safety after Redknapp took over, he was never the same player. It’s a classic case of the psychology of footballers. He was the last one to know it, but something at the Lane suited him. He disrupted the pattern and it was downhill all the way.

Given the gags about boyhood dreams, I was staggered to see him quoted as saying the move to the LA Galaxy was ‘a dream come true’. And they say Americans don’t get irony. It’s a sad recognition that his mind’s gone. At 31, captain of his country, the only option is the soft option. He had a good few premier league years in him, not withe Spurs because we are upgrading and had left him behind, but wherever he ends up, he does so with my thanks and good wishes for the future.

 

 

 

 

Tottenham Hotspur Season Preview 2011-12 Part 2 How Do We Fit Everyone In?

/ Alan / 4 Comments

It’s started. Prematurely ecstatic over Diarra’s arrival, a couple of days ago a messageboard poster was positively drooling over his midfield selection. ‘Diarra and Sandro as DMs, Modric and Hud further forward with Lennon and Bale on the wings. Can’t wait to see that!’ It took a while before a few people gently pointed out that add a back four and keeper, that makes eleven – a team without strikers. Actually, come to think of it, bit like most of last season

With or without Diarra, it’s the tactics and formation that will be crucial in the weeks and months to come. Redknapp doesn’t do tactics, of course. Just extends Uncle Harry’s Long Arm of Comfort round the shoulders of our lads, and that’s inspiration enough. Go out and enjoy yourselves, boys.

Harry’s done a decent job for us, so why does he have to insult us with rubbish like this? Another example of how important it is for him to cultivate his image as football’s good ol’ boy. And while I’m about it, of all the absurd cliches that infect our game, ‘just go out and enjoy it’ is surely one of the most ridiculous. I don’t want you to go out and enjoy yourselves, gents. I want you to play like you have never played before, run yourself into the ground so your legs are mere stumps at the end of the 90 minutes and lay bare your heart and soul for the badge. If you want enjoyment, join me in the park for a kickabout.

Harry will have hard choices to make, whoever we add to the squad in the next two weeks. Having too many fine players is a good problem to have but Redknapp and his coaches could struggle to keep a large squad content, never mind the fans.

This season poses fresh problems. Although our experience as battle-hardened European veterans will stand us in good stead, any degree of success means a long hard road ahead with the prospect of over 60 matches. Not only that, the grind of Thursday/Saturday will be further disrupted by kick-offs moved to suit TV – Spurs do not have a home game with a 3pm Saturday kick-off until December 3rd – plus long trips into Europe. Winning with a weaker team is an art, one we haven’t yet learned.

I don’t buy Redknapp’s statement about ‘playing the kids in Europe’. We have to go all out to win trophies and can’t take too much of a risk. The Europa League has a tiresome format designed to make money for teams whilst simultaneously sucking all pleasure from playing the game. However, it’s still a big tournament, undoubtedly worthy of winning, and we have a decent chance. I wouldn’t fear any team in that competition over two legs and should go all out to win it without sacrificing anything in our efforts to challenge the top four.

It is asking a lot but such is the pressure success brings and I wouldn’t be without it. This is the key message that should reverberate around and through the whole squad. To be fair to HR, he never said we would play all kids. Naming only Livermore and Townsend, both of whom have League experience and are hardly kids, he knows that his squad has enough depth to operate a midweek team capable of muddling through the group stage. After Christmas, we’ll see where we are. The main danger is complacency. It’s partly the fringe men entering those games with purpose and motivation, partly also about the more experienced amongst them imposing themselves to make the most of their talents. Hud in the centre maybe, Kaboul at the back, Krancjar and Pienaar as attacking midfielders and whoever plays upfront.

However, there are more fundamental issues to be faced. Last season we gave away too many goals because at the back we were too open too often. Some of our covering was naive in the extreme. If I’ve faced facts then so must Redknapp – we cannot play so much attacking football. In the Premier League our priority is to attack only when we have a solid base and if that means sacrificing one of two players to each attack, then so be it. There’s no alternative.

When the team was set up to press in midfield and lie deeper, as against Milan or Chelsea away for example, we performed those roles well. Problems came when we were stretched out of shape when we took the game to other teams, who could then hit us on the break, Blackpool away being the classic instance. If Bale and Lennon both play, they have to not only work back but shift their starting positions to somewhere deeper. Or, only go forward if others are back covering. The fullbacks have to tuck in tighter to their back four when we don’t have the ball. All of which provides a shield for the back four and the centre halves who were so frequently left exposed and vulnerable.

Defending better doesn’t mean being defensive. We have the men to turn defence into attack with the speed that’s required in the modern game. This is what Manchester United do so well. Sitting low on the Shelf, it is phenomenal to watch them and we need to match their pace and purpose – we have the men to emulate them. They don’t run with the ball like Bale and Lennon do so much as run to get onto the ball, moved swiftly into space. 

We have to buy a striker who can give us the option of playing on their own up front. It’s essential. Banging the ball up  to Crouch must stop. The other requisite for Spurs is width. It plays to the strengths of the team both in terms of men like Lennon and Bale but also the passing ability and vision of Huddlestone and Modric.

The other vital element is possession. We can’t be like Barca but we can follow their example in one sense: keep the ball, because if we’ve got it, the other lot can’t score. It’s not only about skill on the ball, it’s also about movement, ensuring one or two men can always be available to receive a pass. We have the players who are perfect for this. So why didn’t we do that more last year? We could do, for spells only, now let’s be geared to keeping hold of the ball.

So here are a couple of options, assuming that Modric isn’t sold. One is the classic 4-4-2, with Hud or Sandro alongside Modric in the middle, Lennon and Bale wide and VDV off the main striker. Whilst this appeals to me, it’s basically the same line-up that failed to defend well last year, so everyone has to play slightly differently and be more circumspect.

The other option is to get the width from the full-backs. Much as I love Lennon, Walker could offer both the attacking options (coming from deep again) and allow an extra central midfielder who tucks in to allow the full back to come past. Put Bale at full back on the other side and you have more height at the back plus another midfield option, say 2 DMs and still there’s width, and I say this in the full knowledge that if I love Lennon then I adore Benny.

These two aren’t mutually exclusive and we have plenty of options to vary tactics according to our opponents. In some games it may be better to play a defensive-minded fullback, Corluka, behind Lennon, for example.

Three final thoughts. One, in whatever formation Van der Vaart will be crucial. Shrewd and dangerous at the edge of the box, He also offers even more options (stay with me on this one). Whilst he shouldn’t come too deep as he sometimes did last season, that actually is a problem only if there’s no one forward. However, if he chooses to drop back and Bale, Walker or Lennon are hammering forward, that’s fine. We can attack and have men covering.

Which leads on to a second point. Football isn’t played in straight lines. It’s about movement and flow. If our men are clever enough to work on a principle based on knowing where team-mates are, they can vary the options. Men must get forward, men must stay back, but they don’t have to be the same men doing the same thing every time. Flexible intelligence to get the job done, the job (covering, attacking, width etc) being identified with different players doing it at different times, whoever is best placed on the the field at that point.

Finally, and crashing down to earth, set pieces .All this flow and movement doesn’t mean diddly if we can’t do anything from free-kicks and comers. I don’t recall a single goal direct for a free kick last year and we had some pathetic routines that went out with steel toecaps and Brylcreem – tapping the ball cunningly two feet sideways, who would have picked that one up…

 

Spurs. The Seinfeld Of Football

/ Alan / 9 Comments

If Seinfeld was famously the show about nothing, then Spurs are the Seinfeld of football, at least for now.

In the past I’ve been relieved and grateful when things have gone quiet. I cherish rare moments of peace and quiet to punctuate the bedlam of the season. No scandals or internecine arguments, the media looking elsewhere, not to mention winning football matches. It’s the welcome tedium of progress. Heads down and just getting on with business.

But now, nothing. Zilch. Zero. Nada. I’m bored now. There’s been some football. We appear to have won a trophy. I can tell you as much as anyone about what it means for our prospects in the season to come, and I haven’t watched a single second. The Unfit Getting Fitter Challenge.

Transfers? All gone quiet. The media have exhausted themselves with the Modric story: even their creativity can’t do any more with ‘Chelsea might buy Luka’. Uncle Harry’s Long Arm of Comfort has reached out and come to rest gently but firmly around Luka’s shoulders. Meet our new captain (Southern hemisphere only).

Things Could Be Worse. You Could Be Me

Nobody out as yet. That queue around the ground is for City tickets, rather than the expected rush of bidders for our available squad players. Until the prognosis on Sandro’s injury is clearer or another midfielder has put pen to paper, it’s unlikely that Jenas or Palacios will go. Dos Santos is in demand, so probably only a matter of time, while the only decision Levy has to make on Hutton and Keane is how big a loss he’s prepared to accept. No one in either, certainly not the long awaited and much needed striker or three.

Harry, now surely there’s something on Harry. But no, the tax case has been postponed and the wheeler-dealing that he doesn’t do oh no not him never not me has ground to a halt. Excuse me: twiddling thumbs whilst brushing away the tumbleweed blowing across the blog is tricky stuff, you know.

It’s hard to tell if no news is good news. Certainly it is as far as the Modric saga is concerned, with Levy remaining true to his word and rumours that Chelsea are signing an alternative target. I fear however that SSN will on deadline day have a helicopter poised over the Lodge until it’s over, which is variously 5pm, midnight or three weeks the following Tuesday if the League’s fax machine runs out of paper.

I’m also pleased that there has not been a mass exodus. I’m in the minority as many Spurs fans would personally transport Jenas and Bentley to the destination of their choice, or failing that a destination not of their choice. Anywhere but N17, in fact, but taking the first offer is reckless. I have a suspicion JJ will still be with us come September but if there’s late activity for the others, it’s good business by Levy to hang on. The traditional end of window panic could push the price up and I don’t believe we have to sell before we can buy. Granted we have to keep the squad size within the requisite 25 and sales will generate some cash but the big money is already in place. Also, highly significantly, there’s been little or no discussion about Sandro, Bale or VDV leaving. If keeping this squad together for another season is the overriding priority, then silence is a beautiful sound.

The biggest worry is no striker. This isn’t unexpected. As I have said many times now, the men we want are in demand and our offer, in terms of both fee and salary, will not be the only one on the table. Frustrating for us, look at it from their perspective: they will hang on for the best offer, given that we can’t give them CL football. Aguero to City is the classic example. By all accounts we made a generous albeit late bid in January and were still interested this summer, but as soon as he has a sniff of City’s wealth plus the Champions League, it’s natural he’ll go there. In cases like this, it’s not a question of our lack of ambition, simply that a few teams can offer a better package to in-demand players.

I’m still reassured that we are working hard on this. Frankly, I have no hard evidence but Levy has learned from previous windows and the potential vistas opened up by the CL run, while Redknapp cannot be blind to the deficiencies of our frontmen or overestimate the value of big man/little man up front as he did this time last year. Complacency is no longer an option.

Late deals could come in the form of loans. Adebayor for instance: we can’t (and shouldn’t) match his salary but City will be forced to reassess the options if they don’t get a better offer. Us paying half is better than they having to pay the lot. Also, the transfer market as a whole hasn’t opened up yet, with comparatively little activity, Sunderland and Liverpool apart. The time to worry is when players we want who are not courted by the top four go elsewhere. The suggestion that we didn’t go hard for Suarez because the scouts thought he wasn’t right for us is an error that must not be repeated.

One positive is the continued investment in players for the future. Another often repeated refrain in these pages is the need to ensure a steady flow of young players able to challenge for the first team in the years to come and that this development should not be ignored in favour of the big signings. Souleymane Coulibaly looks like a cracking young striker, whilst Caulker’s season long loan at Swansea could be the shrewdest piece of business we do all season. He looks a fine prospect and a year in the Prem could be the making of him. Witness Walker’s development, from loanee to international. Similarly, Mason, Naughton, Khumalo (not so young) and others have a better chance of making it if loaned out than if they were stuck at the Lodge.

Or how about this as the most curious signing of the season. I’m happy to be corrected as I haven’t checked this, but I understand Perry Alnwick has been given another contract. Forgive me, but what exactly does he do? Even on loan in the lower leagues, he’s been there as cover and hasn’t played. Surely we can do better for the coveted 4th choice keeper spot.

Overall it’s not such a bad picture. However, time is moving on. Every day is one less day new arrivals will have to settle into a team that must get off to a solid start and one more day of growing anxiety that the strikers don’t in fact exist. The next piece might have a bit more edge to it. However, this is still the silly season. As I write, there’s a rumour on twitter from a Chelsea fan that Modric is at the Spurs training ground, dressed rather than in training gear, and shaking hands. And they say Tottenham On My Mind doesn’t carry the latest gossip.