Tottenham Hotspur That Was The Season That Was. The Manager

May 30, 2011May 30, 2011 / Alan / 21 Comments

Harry Redknapp has met me. Years ago my neighbour at the time organised a testimonial for one of the Charlton players against West Ham and my wife’s family are rabid Hammers, so there we were in the director’s box at the Valley. Before kick-off Peter waves to me and beckons me down to the front. I’m happy to thank him but he says, “Where are the rest of you? Come and meet Harry. Harry!” he shouts, “Someone I want you to meet.” Harry strolls over, is as pleasant as can be as we exchange a few words and the photo, once pride of place in my wife’s daughter’s living room, is now shoved behind a cupboard in their loft but I’m there, hanging back and forcing a smile.

Peter Varney and I used to work for Lewisham Council – he was something in building – and we got to know each other better during the 5 week strike over, well, I forget now but it was important. Lovely bloke and a good neighbour. He used to cut the thick hedge that divided our front gardens and it was only when he moved that I realised it was on my side of the line but he never mentioned it. A lifelong and long-suffering Charlton fan, he did a bit for the supporters club and for charity. We’d be chatting over the fence and his wife would call out, “Pete, phone. Again!!!”

“Coming. Who is it”.”

“Kevin Keegan”

“Tell Kev to hang on a minute, I’m busy.”

Although he was too modest to speak about it, he must have been good because one day it was announced that Pete was the new CEO at Charlton. From humble beginnings on the picket line, he was in the boardroom and moved away. I, um, downsized.

I never took to Harry. I wanted to, for him to be the football man with a heart of gold who brought success to clubs in the right way. Fact is, my image of him has been tainted from the start as my wife’s family chronicled his dodgy wheeler-dealing that left him in pocket (allegedly) and successive clubs in a ruinous state financially. I refused to succumb to his assiduously cultivated persona of all-round good ol’ Uncle Harry. It was none of my business, until a couple of years ago anyway, but I don’t like being manipulated. Despite his generosity towards me, perhaps I was the first of those ungrateful Spurs fans he’s told to go elsewhere.

Never mind the man. My club comes first, last and always: there’s only one question, what has he done for Tottenham Hotspur? I’m genuinely and sincerely grateful for the progress we have made since Redknapp became manager. It’s not just about the league position, although I’m convinced those advertising boards that form the post-match interview backdrop flash subliminal messages saying “2 points after 8 games”, lest we forget. For me it’s also about the pleasure of watching wonderful footballers in (almost) white shirts playing scintillating flowing football. No trophies but everlasting memories. All Spurs fans are disappointed that we failed to qualify for next season’s competition but let’s just pause and say it out loud: “In 2011 Tottenham Hotspur reached the quarter finals of the Champions League.” Enjoy the sensation. One of the problems of the modern game is that we never stop to savour the feeling, it’s all about what happens next. Relish it, taste it, roll it round your tongue and chew it over, because these moments don’t come around that often. Then think back to February or March last year and tell me you believed that was possible. Be honest.

Yet our undoubted achievements this season have been tinged with regret. It’s realistic rather than greedy to say we could have done so much more. Our woeful lack of firepower up front has been the main problem – the strikers have been downright dreadful for much of the time. Coupled with regular disappearing acts from our defenders and keeper (where the hell did they go?), we failed to dispatch teams we should have beaten. Had just a few draws become wins then we would have overtaken Arsenal and secured 4th place.

Redknapp has to take some of the blame for this, yet he appears unwilling or unable to do so. Win and he basks in the glory. Lose and it’s down to the players. Harry has infamously been dismissive of the value of tactics in the past. He doesn’t really mean this of course, the very last thing he can be accused of is naivety, but he likes us to think he sends the players out to, well, just play. However, he has to take some greater responsibility for our performances, good and bad

The regular selection of Crouch encouraged the use of the long ball. Earlier in the season it went straight down the pitch, often too early, varied as time went on by the player pulling away to the far post, hence the long looping ball. When Pav played, we did the self-same thing. Whilst this brought some rewards, too often it negated the advantage gained from our skilful, clever midfield. Luka and Rafa don’t want to see the ball flying over their heads. Defenders have a fair idea of where the ball will go, therefore it’s easier to handle. Too frequently our strikers were ahead of the ball, stationary and waiting for the ball at the edge of the box. Problem is, the defenders are waiting too.

Also, and as a lover of attacking style it pains me grievously to say this, we were often too open to succeed in the Premier League. Although we developed greater resilience and an ability to hang on to possession, we lost it more easily than we should have on too many occasions and the midfield did not work hard enough to tuck in and protect a lead. It’s not about outright defence, rather, it’s about adapting to the conditions on the pitch. That’s the way it is in this league. This is tactics. This is the responsibility of the manager.

Redknapp’s great strength is that he is good with players. He takes their skills, fits them into position and asks them to do what they are good at. Find a group of players whose skills dovetail and you have a fine team. That’s why players always say they like playing for him, because he plays to their strengths. Nothing wrong with that and his loyalty to some men by giving them a run in the side has meant Bale, Dawson, Assou Ekotto and latterly Sandro have developed their full potential.

He’s more shaky when there’s a gap. He doesn’t adjust or enable the whole side to be as flexible and mobile as the best teams. For example, if Bale was out or he felt compelled to squeeze Van Der Vaart into the side we struggled because we did not have another man to step in to play the same role. Square pegs in round holes. Modric shifted to the left, unaccountably taking our finest player from his best position or Rafa wandering aimlessly from the right. Also, if he has it in for you, it’s less Uncle Harry and more evil stepfather. Bent was never played in the right way, back to goal too often when he likes it in front of him, then ridiculed and off elsewhere. What we could have done with half the goals he’s scored since he left.

Redknapp is immune from criticism and has taken umbrage recently against Spurs fans who have dared to go where the media refuse to and question his tactics, selection and status. I first commented on this a few weeks ago after the West Brom game. In an age where the media unstintingly dissect their subjects like a pathologist dragging out the innards of a corpse then examining the entrails under a microscope, his protection is a truly remarkable achievement. I can’t recall any sustained critique of his era at Tottenham from a professional pundit. Any suggestion of negativity is met with snorts of derision, not even considered but immediately and forcefully ruled out of bounds. No other manager is shielded in this way, not even Alex Ferguson. Nothing sticks.

Harry would do well to remember that we the fans were here when he came and will be here long after he’s dumped us for the England job. He can’t control us the way he looks after the media. He’s done a good job for us but should also look back to his appointment and be grateful because his record as a manager didn’t merit the role. I’m sure he’s as frustrated as we are at some of the problems, so why can’t he acknowledge that and share the pain and joy we’ve felt over the past 9 months.

Redknapp must carry on as manager. Consistency is key and the process of team building should continue. Above all, he must hang on to Modric, Van der Vaart, Sandro and Bale. Sell his grandmother and his precious Sandra if he has to, just the build the team around these gems that he did not unearth but has polished almost to perfection.

This man of the football world is still learning, even in his early sixties. He’s never been in this position before. He’s had little experience in Europe, let alone the Champions League, or at the top end of the table. Neither has he previously worked with players this good nor been in a position to buy the highest quality footballers. No more bargains or cheap but useful veterans for the short-term. Never mind the team, he has to step up in quality too, like managers with 15 or 20 years less experience in the game. I have the niggling feeling that he’s an old dog who can’t learn any new tricks and shed the underdog mid-table mentality. I desperately want him to prove me wrong.

Pouring over his individual comments has little value but over time you get a broad sense of what he’s up to. At the moment he’s gone on the defensive, talking down our ambitions and dropping hints to Levy that we need the money to buy quality this summer. It’s familiar territory, as is the rubbishing of the fans. Most of us do not have over-inflated expectations. Within our frustrations we realise both the potential of the club and the work still to be done. To fulfil that potential, Redknapp has to move out of his comfort zone in terms of the players we buy, the way we play and the manner in which he relates to the fans. He has to work hard this summer. I for one look forward to August.

Learn From This or Fail

January 31, 2011 / Alan / 15 Comments

You can’t turn it off and on again. Form, I mean. You can’t decide to leave it one afternoon, then come back to it the following week. It’s not tucked up snug and warm inside airtight bubblewrap, waiting to come out when the classy influential guests come a-calling.

Form has a life of its own. You can’t see it but you know it’s there. You can feel it, sometimes believe you can taste it, it’s so much a part of you, you almost don’t have to think about what you’re doing. It has a momentum all to itself, gradually gaining pace and shape like a snowball rolling down a hill.

But never, ever forget. You own it because you made it. All down to you. Your efforts, struggles and talent, mind and body slowly combines to be indistinguishable. Skill plus motivation with a healthy dollop of coaching to provide the organisation to play together, as one, united.

First, you concentrate. Every game, first until last. In the Glory Game, your illustrious predecessors Chivers and Peters talked of coming off the field exhausted and with a splitting headache not so much from the physical exertion but from the mental strain of focussing for each second. One mistake, one mistimed tackle for example, and you are a goal down, punished for your lackadaisical attitude.

Michael Dawson, a mighty warrior for the cause. You are our leader. You should have the honour of wearing the armband on a permanent basis but whatever, we look to you for an example, a leader in a team that’s crying out for leadership on the pitch. That’s why we love you, because you give everything, but you of all people cannot panic. Mistakes we accept, no one is perfect, we are realistic, but panic and that spreads through the team, to each and every one of them. You can’t turn that on and off, even if you would like a weekend’s respite.

I know that sometimes you will give everything and be beaten by a better team. I will be down and disappointed, more than I should be at my age and after all this time, but I will accept it. What I will not accept or comprehend is giving up. After ten minutes. I don’t care if it is the Cup in a world overly obsessed with the Premier League and the Champions League. We paid our money, same as when you could be bothered. We have – had – a great chance of winning that cup. A match for any team in the country, on the day, over 90 minutes. This new Tottenham – they are scared of us, of how we can sweep down upon them from all angles, Bale, Modric, Lennon, Van der Vaart, they fear us. Now they know we will give up, if you give us a little nudge, if things don’t pan out. That’s the message.

Habit. Winning is a habit. Make that, competing is a habit. This weekend I listened all day to the radio as the Cup unfolded. Lower league managers said they instil a winning mentality. Every game, every confrontation in the field, all over the pitch. Win it. Those little skirmishes won, the whole battle follows.

Transfers. In a few hours we’ll know if a judicious purchase or two (striker and defensive midfield, please) will lift us. Daniel Levy is singlehandedly trying to jolt the ailing Spanish economy into life. It could make all the difference but it’s utterly pointless if he joins a team without the mentality to be winners not posers.

Make it happen. Don’t sit back and wait for someone else. Play and others will play with you. Lead and others will follow. You’re all in this together.

Choke. Murray choked. Sent the message reverberating through his world that talent is nothing without the right mindset. Squeeze him and he falls apart. On the radio I heard another warrior, a rugby player this time, saying that as a coach he judges the true mark of a man not by a defeat by how he copes the next time. How he reacts. We’ll see on Wednesday. Most of you probably don’t fancy Blackburn on a chilly Wednesday. Don’t care. Sort out your head or all this talent and potential is out the window. Learn from this or fail.

Look Out, You’ve Been Levyed!

September 2, 2010 / Alan / 23 Comments

The ‘Buy It Now’ price was reasonable but pitched too high for a tried and tested model like that one. Demand and supply fixes the value regardless of the opinions of the vendor, and these days everyone wants these new-fangled gadget phones. This one suited me, just calls and texts. He was open to offers, so I waited, that’s what I do. Tick followed tock followed tick followed tock.

As the clock ran down, I pounced. Once I made my move, he had little choice. The Nokia 3109, brand new, unwanted work upgrade, T-mobile only – he had nowhere else to go. Half his asking price, a quarter of the shop value. I had my prize and the vendor had been levyed.

Levy – verb to extract the lowest possible price, ruthlessly, from a transaction, usually by exploiting the weakness and vulnerability of others

Origin – the chairman of Tottenham Hotspur, an English football club, renowned for waiting until the last moment when purchasing players for the team.

The purchase of my phone is pretty much the same as that of Van der Vaart, bar the 6 zeros at the end of the price. In the past I’ve been bitterly critical of Levy, from the ghastly era of Pleat as the caretaker boss where we so nearly were relegated, through to Santini and Jol’s sacking. However, over the past few years my grudging acknowledgement of his undoubted business acumen has become genuine respect. The club’s long-term future appears to be far more secure than most Premier League clubs and he’s brought some fine players here in the process. Early last season I wrote a piece characterising Levy as Redknapp’s poodle. When he took the job Harry made much of the fact that he had sole control over transfers – no director of football – and Levy, a businessman out of his depth when it comes to football matters, was more than happy to roll over and have his tummy tickled. I was wrong – Levy’s biggest success has been to curb Redknapp’s spendthrift instincts whilst simultaneously enabling the team to develop.

As someone who is to bartering what Kevin Pietersen is to tweeting, I admire his chutzpah. I am the definition of the opposite of pokerface, as anyone who has ever played cards with me will gleefully confirm, yet Levy is prepared to sit it out. More than that, he coldheartedly susses the vulnerability of a prospective vendor and exploits it to the hilt. Word is that other chairmen and agents don’t like doing business with him. I wonder why.

It’s not always worked, of course, as the hapless Ramos will testify. Frazier Campbell for Berbatov, anyone? We’ve clearly been outbid in terms of both fees and salaries for top players in this window. As the tumult dies away, I am more disappointed than I anticipated by our failure to improve the striking options. A top class striker with different skills to those currently available to Redknapp would have done us the world of good. However, I remain convinced that Levy is correct in refusing to pay vastly inflated fees and especially salaries. It’s tempting as we have cash in the bank but there is no reason to upset the pecking order in the club, where good players have been rewarded with generous contracts, team spirit is cohesive and the quality is there already.

Also, and I’m sorry if regular readers have heard all this before, we have to face facts: players may not wish to come here. Fabiano for instance: I’m sure we made a good offer but settled in one of the most beautiful cities of Europe, excellent wages, good team, sun on his back, fewer language problems, swap that for a team with no recent pedigree in Europe, an area of north London containing some of the most deprived communities in the country or, worse, Chigwell, a long hard slog through the winter and a ground that holds fewer than 39,000 people. To me, WHL is a holy paradise on earth but not to everyone.

When it comes to gambling, I understand all there is to know. What happens is, you put your money down, on the card table or at the bookie’s window, wait, then never see it again. But one thing I do know is, for a successfully gambler it helps if you’re lucky. Levy has mastered the art, or likes to think he has. Van der Vaart is a superb piece of business. He’ll provide vital guile and drive in midfield, plus hopefully the intelligence that was markedly absent on Saturday. But Levy and Redknapp got lucky with this one. I suspect we had made a few enquiries, as we have for hundreds of players, but this was a late call rather than the product of a systematic pursuit. Levy had a tip-off at 4pm and the deal was wrapped up by 6, or in fact just after but who cares about that, we had (snigger) ‘a problem with our server’, apparently.

Granted you make your own luck and Levy’s contacts served him well in this case. More importantly, we had the cash to put on the table. If we had had to go through the rigmarole of loans and staggered payments this thing would not have gone ahead, and that’s good finances. But in the end it was his luck that held, not on this occasion his nerve.

Spurs v Young Boys. A Morning Like Any Other But A Night To Remember

August 25, 2010August 25, 2010 / Alan / 9 Comments

A morning like any other, in fact a pleasant one. Warming sunshine, brewed the coffee just right, little traffic on the M25. A gentle welcome to a momentous day, for come nightfall, in a splash of searing incandescence in north London, thunder from the throats of thousands will roll out into the dark and tumble around this famous old ground, inspiring the righteous and striking fear into the hearts of the weak.

This is the most important match Tottenham Hotspur have played for many a long season. And haven’t some of those seasons seemed so long, individual moments of brightness snuffed out by the pervading hopelessness of mid-table mediocrity. But this one is different. This is the real thing, the game that can launch us into another world, of glory and untold riches.

Cluches abound but tonight is the genuine article. Fortunate enough to remember the real glory-glory nights of European football at the Lane, I treasure the experience. The passion and tension concentrated by the lights, the world and universe is for 90 minutes that florescent green. Nothing exists in the murk beyond the glare, there’s only Spurs and us. Anderlecht, Barcelona, Milan, Feyenoord, and I’m too young to have seen the Double and their great feats in the early and mid 60s.

With all due respect, Young Boys are hardly the opponents I would have had in mind for the return of the glory days, but this is the modern era of the Champions League, and the Champions League equals money, and money equals success. Not the way I like it, but there’s no avoiding this stark truth. The CL is a passport to other objects of desire. It safeguards the finances, enables us to pay higher salaries and transfer fees and attract better players. Better players keep us up there, and so it goes. Whatever the ITK on individual players, decisions will be made on Thursday morning that could shape the club’s future for years to come. Get it right and the success is self-perpetuating, get it wrong and the trap door to mediocrity clatters open.

Assuming Ledley is fit, the team picks itself for all but two positions. Lennon and Bale will offer the width and pace, and in Bale’s case the power, that will be crucial factors as YB settle back into their efficient, well-organised formation. Defoe should start but there’s a question over who partners him up front (and we will begin with

4-4-2). Crouch will get the nod despite Pav’s superb goal in the first leg.

The other question is centre midfield. As I envisage the game unfolding, looming out of the darkness is the vast bulk of Tom Huddlestone. I see him directing our play and controlling the tempo. Who would have thought it, not so long ago, but this team now plays with and around him. They feel comfortable with his presence, he enables them to play. Alongside him in Luka’s absence, Wilson would normally be the one to step in without a second thought. However, he’s not started the season well and I wonder if JJ’s good second half against Stoke, plus his extra mobility and willingness to get into the box, given that we can’t sit back, could see him given the chance to rescue his Spurs career.

Europe in knock-out games brings tension like no other match. However, two legs do offer a second chance. We so nearly blew it in 30 minutes in Switzerland but there’s another 105 to make up for it. We must dominate from the beginning and dictate the tempo, without taking risks at the back. Led will give us more pace there and we have enough attacking options to afford the luxury of not stretching ourselves too far. I’m nervous, but confident that we will win.

The significance of this match cannot be over-exaggerated. I’ve described it myself as a passport into riches. However, this sort of approach is an aggravating element of modern football. Notice how the importance of most matches is described in terms of something else, of what it might bring rather than what it is. Finishing in the top four is a triumph in itself, yet all the talk is of qualification into the CL. The CL qualifiers provide admission to the prestige and income associated with the group stages, but then the significance of the group stages is relegated to it merely becoming a path into the knock-outs. The play-offs are another example. It’s the way to get the Premier League cash, not an achievement in itself.

Modern football is as thrilling and exciting a spectacle as can be. Enjoy it for what it is. Win this game because we can, and take glory from that. Sure, the money is important, I can’t ignore that, but in all this talk of what might be, of what’s around the corner, there’s a danger that we might lose sight of what we have right in front of our eyes. We have a fine team playing a vital match. The triumphs and the glory are here and now, in winning that. Stop and savour the moment. Enjoy it – these moments don’t come around that often.