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29th June 2009 - Quiet please

Rather than go over last season, about which there is little more to be said that hasn’t already been covered by other columnists, I thought I’d get my look ahead in early. It’s not my predictions for the season. If last season taught as anything it is that, aside from a dodgy decision at Old Trafford and Tottenham Hotspur’s ability to generate self-inflicted wounds, it’s impossible to be certain about anything.

 

It’s a state of affairs summed up by an email exchange after the fixtures came out, when someone complained that we were playing three of the top four right at the beginning of the season. A tough prospect without doubt, but as someone pointed out, we don’t need the help of the fixture list to make things difficult, we can do a perfectly good job ourselves. Last year six of our first seven games were against supposed cannon fodder, and we completed the sequence with only two points.

 

Which brings us neatly to Harry “two points when I arrived” Redknapp. I confess I wasn’t much of a fan when he arrived, but I was impressed almost from day one. He finally put an end to the unworkable division of responsibilities at the top of the club that only added to the politicking at this most political of clubs by establishing the proven successful principle that the manager is in charge. Credit must go to Daniel Levy for junking a system that he had heavily aligned himself with, although one wonders just how much room he had for manoeuvre when persuading Harry to take over the mess moulded by Ramos.

 

Harry’s team has also produced some decent football. I’ve heard some grumblings about the pretty functional nature of the succession of 1-0 wins towards the end of the campaign, but I think Harry’s team has been prettily functional in a manner that nods to the finest of Spurs traditions. And all this with essentially the same squad his predecessor had. The constant referencing of the “two points” may have become a bit of a running gag, but Harry has a sharp eye for presentation, and you can see the sense in emphasising the fact that he made more of what he was given than a so-called “world class” manager.

 

Our progress under Harry makes it clear to me that we have a very good squad. A squad that doesn’t need lots of changing, which makes me nervous. One of my worries about Harry was his tendency to do more deals than a Vegas croupier on overtime, and this, coupled with what I characterised as Tottenham’s metamorphosis into a player trading exchange, leaves me hoping rather than  expecting that changes are kept to a minimum. The embarrassing buybacks of players only recently sold surely underlines what a farce the transfer policy was under the previous regime. The returns of Defoe and Keane were vital – did they really “have” to be sold? – and the acquisition of Palacios meant we finally got the type of player everyone knew we needed. Everyone, that is, except the people who were in charge of transfers. And why we got Chimbonda back and then never played him is almost as much of a mystery as why we sold him in the first place.

 

Of course, much of the transfer gossip is just that – unattributable spacefiller for the close season football pages, so it’s pointless commenting on speculation. (I sound like the club’s press office, don’t I?) But I did want to mention two areas of concern. One is borne of cynicism, which is not a very nice quality but I’m afraid 37 years of following Spurs does make it run deep. So when the club announced Aaron Lennon had signed a lucrative new deal, my first reaction was to think he’d be sold this summer. I really hope I’m wrong, but we’ve made a habit of selling our best players in the close season recently, and we do like to turn a profit. Whether or not we hang on to Lennon will be a major test – of whether we finally understand that short term profit doesn’t buy long term success, and of whether we are willing or able to retain the quality we need to move on. But I’m sure if Lennon goes it will be his decision – not ours ;-)

 

The other area of concern is over our strikeforce. The sheer weight of stories that Darren Bent is on his way suggest there may be some truth here. But I think it would be a mistake. Bent has delivered goals and hard work, and has kept his focus despite all the slating. He’s not the most silkily-skilled of players, and his natural game was at odds with the football we like to think we should play. But he’s stuck with it in a very professional way, and he scores goals – which is the point of a striker. Top-scorer last season, second highest scorer currently on our books, an apparently very quiet life off the pitch. Why do we want rid of him again?

 

Those who say there are better out there struggle to identify who, realistically, these people are. And I’d hang on to Bent for another reason too. In today’s squad game, our current four strikers need to be interchangeable. Bent can work with Defoe, Keane and Pavlyuchenko, while picking any two from the other three doesn’t inspire confidence. Why do we want rid of him again?

 

As far as our strikers go, I may even venture to be a little controversial. Defoe is the most natural goalscorer we have, and an exciting player who has much left to give. Bent I’ve already covered. Robbie Keane divides opinion, something else I don’t understand. I think he’s rightfully a club legend, and his link-up play on his return showed how vital this previously missing link was. Big Pav I’m not sure about – is he an out-an-out striker or someone who can play off a target man? One season in a strange league when he’s knackered isn’t the best basis on which to judge. So there’s a difficult choice. One of the four needs to go – if, and the if is vital – we can bring in better. Who that is will affect the balance I’ve sketched out above, but if I were manager – a frightening prospect I agree – I’d be wondering whether to sell Pav or The Legend.

 

I have a feeling Keane may be the first out – he was a panic buy after Defoe got injured, and rumour has it he lowered his stock significantly in the dressing room after all the badge-kissing nonsense when he left for Liverpool. Certainly there has been a hint of a tendency to sulk when tings aren’t to his liking and to switch off when he decides it doesn’t matter – and I can’t see Harry liking that.

 

There are other difficult choices. Wilson Palacios was superb when he signed for us, and would be the second name on my team sheet – Lennon obviously the first. But who could blame him if he walks away from football after the awful family tragedy he endured at the end of last season? Whatever he decides, he’ll always be valued by Spurs everywhere, but his place in the team, should he decide to go, will be very difficult to fill. And the Ledley King situation needs a hard look and very probably an admission that we need another centre back. There should still be a place for Ledley, but he may not want to play second fiddle after so long as the front man. It’s a tricky situation, but hopefully the club will deal with it in a proper manner.

 

But overall, I’m not looking for a host of new names. Too much change has been one of the many things which has contributed to our problems recently, and I’d like to see us go into next season with a settled team, augmented perhaps by the left-sider we’ve been missing and a fourth striker who offers more options and a better balance. We don’t need most of the names that have been bandied about, and certainly not the ageing stars looking for a last payday that have been mentioned in some quarters. In Assou-Ekkoto, Corluka, Dawson, Woodgate, Palacios, Modric, Lennon, Keane and Defoe we have excellent first choice players. When King’s added into the equation it’s an even stronger mix, and I’ve already said my piece about Bent. I’ll admit Gomes still doesn’t fill me with confidence, but until someone better is available and wants to come I’d rather we didn’t continue the goalkeeping merry-go-round. I’d hang on to rumoured sales Huddlestone and Jenas, and I think it’s too soon to let Gunter, Bale or Hutton go – although of course I don’t have the day-to-day contact with them the coaching staff do.

 

Of course, the squad needs strengthening to give us greater options, but looking at who we’ve got on the books doesn’t suggest the need for wholesale changes. I hope Harry’s liking for keeping things simple helps him persuade the club not to get too clever again. I’m hoping for a quiet summer and plenty of noise when the season starts.

 

 

 

Read all of Martin’s work at his blog: http://martincloake.wordpress.com/

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25th June 2009 – Go Go Power Rangers

 

I've let the regular contributions slip, partly because I'm really busy and partly because I've nothing to add to what TopSpur's roster of columnists have had to say about last season. I promise (or should that be threaten?) to contribute more regularly in future, with a look ahead currently in the pipeline. But the new kit launch, and subsequent debate, prompts a short comment.

I should acknowledge first that cynical 40somethings like me are not the target market for the replica shirt industry, and despite what my wife sees as an occasionally-disturbing preference for bargain sportswear from Sports Direct, I don't tend to spend much time in polyester. I gave up buying replica shirts years ago, partly because I no longer play enough to warrant the purchase, and partly because - and this is purely a personal thing - I don't really feel comfortable walking around in a replica shirt at my age. So I'll be sticking with the Fred Perry polos.

All this established, the fact that I really don't like the new kit at all will not bother either Puma or Spurs in the slightest. But I do like to see the club I support in a decent shirt. This one looks less like a football shirt and more like a set of costumes from the new Power Rangers Do Rugby League movie. What the heck is that yellow V all about? There has never been anything like it in the history of Spurs kits, and this is not a Spurs shirt. In mitigation, the yellow horrors on the white shirt are reasonably subtle if viewed from a distance, with your eyes half closed, but the mesh above them and below the collar is plain nasty, ruining what could be a decent classic look just as the vile panels on the new Chelsea home shirt do. (Although a Chelsea shirt has the more fundamental problem of being, well, Chelsea's).

The V on the change strip is even more jarring, and the most Power Rangers-influenced of the lot. The apparently vital third kit would be OK, but the contrast stripe brings back disturbing memories of 80s fashion disasters, and who knows what the thinking behind the one and a half black side stripes is.

In recent years, the club has turned out some decent home shirts. This seems a step backwards. In all the marketing blarney we're told the designs draw on the core club colours, but yellow wasn't introduced until 1967, when it became the away shirt – so that's 42 years of our 127-year history. To be fair, it is a tough job to come up with the constant justifications for selling what is essentially the same product to the same people who already own it. A flash here, a mesh panel there, a stripe or a patch, material which makes you run faster and control the ball better, material which enables you to win at Old Trafford – it's all part of the sales pitch. (Although science is maybe not yet at the level with could deliver on that last point). Those who see it as a scared duty to buy the shirt will buy it, those who complain about it will be shown Paul Barber's bulging file of letters and emails praising the new kit, while miserable old gits like me will carry on regardless – while wincing at the intensity of the marketing cods.

On the positive side, at least it's not as bad as the Bolton home shirt, or the hilarious Newcastle away effort. And, interestingly, a quick web search revealed that Puma bowed to pressure from Feyenoord fans who hated the original design for their club's new kit. Surprising what can be achieved with a little effort.

As a footnote, I asked my football-mad 8-year-old what he thought of the shirt - without passing any comment myself. "Eeurgh, it's horrible", he said. "It doesn't look like a Spurs shirt." So it's not just me, then.

 

15th April 2009 – Hillsborough

I can remember exactly where I was on 15 April 1989. I was standing on the away terrace at Wimbledon FC's Plough Lane ground, one of a capacity crowd of 12,000. I remember bright sunshine and a positive mood among the Spurs contingent which dominated the old ground, borne of a run of only one defeat in 11 games and growing faith in the management of Terry Venables, then in his first full season at Spurs. 

And I remember the tannoy announcement at half time. It told us that the FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough had been cancelled due to rioting by Liverpool supporters which had caused fatalities. Shock rippled through the crowd. Within minutes, the entire ground took up a chant which rang clear across the skies on that bright spring day. "We hate Scousers and we hate Scousers." 

In retrospect it was shameful. But at the time it seemed justified. It was rooted in a deep-seated resentment many football fans had of what we saw as the myth which surrounded Liverpool's support, a media construct of "the best fans in the land", witty and loyal and knowledgeable – when in fact many of us had seen a different side, a side which was as violent and nasty as could be found in any set of supporters, but which seemed to be overlooked by the media and its Liverpool-tinted specs. 

That night, I was visiting some friends in East Ham. I arrived at their house at about 6.30pm. Lesley was a Liverpool fan, and as she opened the door I said: "I hear your lot have been at it again." She looked at me and said: "You haven't seen the news, have you?"

We sat in her front room and watched the rolling news reports. The full enormity of what had actually happened began to dawn. I sat with Lesley's boyfriend Steve trying to make sense of what we were seeing and hearing as Lesley made and took numerous  phone calls from her family in Liverpool. They were trying to find out what had happened to her brother, a Liverpool fan who was at the game. 

I've been thinking about that day a lot in the run-up to the 20th anniversary. Football has been a major part of my life since I listened to Spurs lose the UEFA Cup Final in 1974 on the radio under my bedsheets, and the major change in that major part of my life came about because of what happened in Sheffield on 15 April 1989. I am lucky not to have been touched closely by the 96 deaths that rippled out through family and friends and acquaintances and communities. Lesley's brother returned from the game unharmed physically, although he didn't go to a match again for years because of what he had seen. But, like so many of my generation of fans, Hillsborough has had a major influence on shaping what I think about football, and about politics and society and life in general. And it's certainly had a major influence on me as a spectator.

As soon as any football fan who had been to a game in those pre-Premier, pre-Sky, pre-hype and megabucks days saw the pictures from Hillsborough, we knew what had happened. And we knew that it could just as easily have been us. Many Spurs fans remembered being caught in a similar crush in the entrance tunnel to the notorious Leppings Lane terrace eight years before at the semi-final against Wolves. And anyone who had been to a game knew about the crushes, the neglect and the contempt of the police. We didn't even question it, that was just how it was. You went to football and you were scum. 

So we knew why, when fans began to scale the fences to escape the deadly crush, the police and many others assumed it was a pitch invasion, that there was fighting on the terraces. Because that's what happened at football matches. Fans fought, so they had to be caged. When people begged to be let out, they really needed to be kept in. Because it was their choice to be there. If you went to football and stood on the terraces, you knew what you were getting yourself into. What did you expect? 

And we knew why that tannoy announcement had been made. Because what was expected was what was reported. We knew too, despite our empathy and our outrage, why 12,000 people in a decrepit suburban stadium in south west London were prepared to believe what was at first reported. That violent football fans had caused the deaths. Even those of us who weren't involved in football violence, who were – through the then still fledgling fanzines and supporters' organisations – attempting to present a different view of football fans, made the assumption at first that it must be the fans' fault. Football fans were among the many folk devils of the 1980s. 

This does not mean that we can look back and say that the police were not to blame. It was their job to ensure the safety of the people attending the match, to understand the movements of the crowd and to judge the situation and respond accordingly. The process of crowd control is complex but not sophisticated, and is something now taken for granted. Investment and equipment may make it easier, but the bottom line is attitude. So whether or not there is a multimillion pound monitoring system being operated by intensively trained officers, it should be a sufficient expectation of basic humanity to expect a police officer to believe people when they shout, from behind  a steel gate and in the midst of a crowd, that they are being crushed to death.

Or for a father, trying to alert an officer to what looked like a serious problem in the section of terrace where his daughters were stood, not to have been told to "shut your fucking prattle". This happened to Trevor Hicks, whose daughters were among the 96 who lost their lives because of what happened that day. Trevor Hicks, by his own description an establishment man, a successful businessman and father far removed from the stereotype of the football hooligan. But he was a football fan, he had chosen to be there, so he was demonised along with every other fan. 

In recent years, some have raised the question of whether it is right to pursue the issue of police culpability at Hillsborough, of whether this simply amounts to a search for "revenge". Much has changed, and lessons have been learned. Perhaps most importantly, football fans are no longer automatically "scum".

But, as an Evertonian colleague said to me this week: "All societies have means of drawing a line under a life through funerals or memorial services, and there’s a reason for that. Too many of the 96 are undead in the minds of too many for that to happen." Because no one has been found to be responsible for what happened that day, there can be – to use that fashionable term – no closure for so many touched by the events. Trevor Hicks said recently that if 96 police officers had been killed you can be sure some people would have gone to prison. Lord Justice Taylor's report established police mismanagement as the cause of the disaster. And yet no individual has officially been made responsible. In fact, police officers present on the day have been compensated. 

This week, David Conn published an excellent article in The Guardian which posed eight key questions which remain unanswered, as well as detailing how the police and establishment smeared the fans and tried to cover up their own culpability. I recommend taking the time to read an excellent piece of journalism.

Although, as I said, I am lucky enough not to have been as deeply personally affected by Hillsborough as the families and communities of those who died, what happened on that day and since still makes me angry. Some of that anger comes from a sense of identity with other football fans, that feeling of "it could have been us" – a feeling which, I remember, led members of the supporters' organisations at Spurs to present Everton fans with a commemorative wreath when we hosted them in the next league game after Hillsborough. 

It makes me angry too, when I see attempts to introduce false notions of equivalence, to question the veracity of moves to commemorate the 96 and the continuation of the campaign for justice. I've seen the question asked: "Will they have a similar memorial for the Heysel victims?" Heysel was caused by hooliganism and bad crowd management, Hillsborough by bad crowd management. Fourteen Liverpool fans were convicted of manslaughter after Heysel. No one has been made responsible for Hillsborough. And anyway – what's the point here? Do the 96 not deserve justice because other people did something different in a different place? In that 1974 UEFA Cup Final I remember listening to as a boy, Spurs fans were responsible for some of the worst rioting then seen in a European stadium. If it had been Spurs fans killed at Hillsborough in the 1981 crush, would it have been OK not to find who was responsible because of the actions of other Spurs fans seven years before?

I'm angry because of the smug self-congratulation in football over "the lessons learned".  Those who ran the game and the clubs presided for years over crumbling stadiums, treated fans as at best an inconvenience and made lots of money in the process. People had died at football matches, in crowd crushes caused by poor planning and management, in fires in unsafe stadiums and in the battlegrounds that football stadiums were allowed to become. Hillsborough was different because it was on TV and everybody saw it. The authorities acted not because they wanted to but because they had to. And they acted by avoiding blame and by latching on to the one thing that the supporters who now "had to be listened too" expressed the most reservations about. This measure also happened to be the thing that would make those who ran the game and the clubs the most money. All-seater stadiums. 

Of all the measures that Lord Justice Taylor recommended, this was the one football embraced most warmly, ignoring his proviso that prices should not be forced up so far as to price fans out. Prices have since rocketed. Stadiums were fitted out with seats with the aid of money provided by the Government and pools companies. A company called Pel Seating made millions out of putting the seats in, achieving a dominant market position and, by 1999, an annual turnover of £75m. On its board  sat a director of West Bromwich Albion, a former Secretary of the FA, and the former Secretary's son-in-law. A former FA chairman was employed as an advisor.

Years later, Graham Kelly, the chief executive of the FA on the day of Hillsborough, said that "six hundred million pounds was spent upgrading football grounds" in the ten years after the disaster. "It provided the opportunity for English football to launch a World Cup bid for 2006."

The BBC's Football Confidential programme examined the story. In the bookScams, Scandals and Screw-ups the programme makers point out that, while Pel never broke any rules, there were legitimate questions to be raised about "the morality of the very people so roundly criticised in the Taylor Report for having overseen the neglect of grounds that led to the disaster then making money out of the stadium rebuilding programme it instigated." When Graham Kelly was asked if he had any view on this, his reply was: "No". The Football Supporters' Association's Sheila Spiers, who was at Hillsborough on the day, was more forthcoming. She described it as "quite sickening".

in 1999, Nick Varley closed the moving and eloquent chapter on Hillsborough which formed part of his book Parklife with the words: "Ten years after Hillsborough, the real truth about football is that everything has changed and nothing has changed." Substitute 20 for ten. The great myth that football learned its lesson because of Hillsborough still continues. The changes were driven by the opportunity to make more profit, not because of some rediscovered humanity or acknowledgement of past mistakes. Football supporters are now "part of the football family" but, like an embarrassing older relative, are ignored when they don't say what the authorities want to hear on issues of real substance. 

Did the football authorities really learn the lessons that needed to be learned? Or did they seize the opportunity that presented itself? And have the police learned that people in a crowd are still individuals? Do they still give people "what they deserve" for being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Football fans might say not any more, people demonstrating in the City of London may beg to differ. The difference, I suppose, is that football fans pay good money to be in the places they are. It's the economy, stupid.

So much from what is "only" a game. The details and the implications and the conclusions drawn from that Spring afternoon 20 years ago ripple ever outwards. The struggle for justice continues for many reasons. For those most closely affected, because closure is needed, and because basic notions of right and wrong mean people must be held to account. For many more of us, because what happened that day and how we reacted to it tells us much about the people we are and the society we live in.

 

Cup Final Preview

It's a Cup Final, and it is, for the first time in any competition, contested between English football's two most historically glamorous teams. Even this season, with Tottenham a sad shadow of its former self under the blundering leadership of Daniel Levy, the league game between the two at White Hart Lane was as absorbing a game as you could wish to see. And yet…

Where's the excitement, the sense of expectation? Is it because of lingering embarrassment over the sheer awfulness of our performance for most of the semi-final ties? Is it because of Redknapp's regular moaning about almost every game being an inconvenience, about the squad not being up to it, about how he is not responsible for anything but success? Is it because of the shameful surrender at Old Trafford in the FA Cup? Or is it because, like the players seem to be, us fans can scarcely be bothered to do more than go through a cursory impression of the motions?

It's a very sad state of affairs. Come the day, my bunch of match day stalwarts will repeat last season's matchday breakfast at our mate's house in Kilburn, head off to Wembley and put the effort in. If the players do, and I've simply taken at face value Harry's canny mind games in the run-up to the big day, I'll be delighted. Because even as good as United are, and they are very good indeed, Spurs have the players capable of beating them in a one-off.

Despite his own fixture pile-up, you can be sure Fergie will be wanting to win another trophy with every inch of his being. I don't believe either Harry or our players want anything less than a win – they're professionals too. Who gets the result will be down to nous, hunger and the application of ability. Spurs are capable of winning the trophy, Spurs fans are capable of matching United's in what will surely be a special atmosphere. A win would sweep away the criticisms of the players, of the mental state of the club, and of Redknapp. And in the process it would show that our 'Arry really can walk as well as talk.

As Danny Blanchflower once said, You've Got To Believe.

 

 

3rd February 2009 - Harry’s game

 

In 1901 we became the first non-league team to win the FA Cup, in 1961 the first to win the modern double, in 1963 the first British team to win a European trophy. In 2009 we became the first team to buy back 25% of the team it had sold in the last 12 months. It seems we can never – and believe me, regular readers, I am trying – avoid confronting the utter, witless stupidity of Levy and co’s transfer policy. What a laughable, disorganised, shambolic, clueless carry-on.

 

The positive side of it all is that at least we are now welcoming back the players we should never have sold in the first place. Who knows where we’d be if we’d held on to them.

 

I’m particularly pleased to see Robbie Keane back, despite his silly ‘boyhood heroes’ comments when he left. Levy should’ve had more gumption in hanging on to him when Liverpool came calling, but as we know for sure, when the pound signs spin Levy’s up for a deal. Now we have a goalscorer who can link the play – which is unequivocally a good thing. But consider the history of the deal to fully appreciate the madness of modern football, and the incompetence of the Spurs board.

 

A club’s key player is publically pursued by a rival club. The club doesn’t want to sell, but end up selling, only for the player to find that his new club’s manager didn’t want to buy him. The player’s former club doesn’t adequately replace him, taking refuge in the story that the player ‘let us down’. To get out of this mess, the player’s former club buys back another striker who they sold when he didn’t want to leave. This striker then gets injured, prompting the club which didn’t want to sell to buy the player they sold back from the club that didn’t want to buy him in the first place!

 

Liverpool complaining Spurs ‘tapped up’ Keane provides the icing on the cake.

 

Of course, the club will try to convince us that this is all part of a plan – but it’s blatantly obvious that the club’s recruitment policy is not too much of a step up from the Navy pressgangs of old. It’s organised chaos without the organisation.

 

Continuing the Navy theme just a bit longer, there is another rum observation to be made. In the summer, the club paired two strikers before it knew if they could play together. This winter, we’ve bought two strikers we KNOW can’t play together. Although to be fair, the pairings of Pavlyuchenko and Keane and, possibly, Defoe and Bent could both be improvements on what we’ve seen so far.

 

Which brings us to what happens next. Ramos has been busy telling everyone why Berbatov’s departure was why he couldn’t get the team going, despite the fact that Berbatov was playing for most of the time Ramos couldn’t get us going. Comolli has  been busy telling everyone why his scouting expertise was squandered by a succession of idiot managers. And Harry Redknapp has been at great pains to point out that it’s very difficult to work with the rubbish he’s been landed with. So the new Spurs motto of ‘Not me, guv’ appears to be in rude health.  At this point it’s worth  carrying out a little comparison, a comparison between what can be seen as Martin Jol’s first-choice team at the end of a season in which we finished fifth, and Harry Redknapp’s first choice team now.

 

Jol’s Spurs                                                      Redknapp’s Spurs

 

Robinson                                                        Cudicini

Chimbonda                                                    Corluka

Dawson                                                          Dawson

King                                                               Woodgate

Lee                                                                 Assou-Ekotto

Malbranque                                                    Lennon

Jenas                                                               Palacios

Tainio                                                             Modric

Lennon                                                           Bentley

Keane                                                             Keane

Berbatov                                                        Pavlyuchenko

 

Player for player, that’s pretty much an improvement in every position, except for Berbatov. Consider also that Jol’s squad contained Cerny, Murphy, Ghaly, Stalteri, YP Lee, Gardner, Routledge and Ziegler; while Redknapp’s contains Gomes, Bale, Hutton, King, Bent, Gunter, O’Hara and Taarabt and it’s hard to understand why 2009 Spurs are doing so much worse than 2007 Spurs.

 

Doubtless Harry would say my failure to understand why a better squad performs worse is indication that, to use one of his many favourite media soundbites, I know nothing about football. And I’ll accept it’s not just a matter of assembling good players, but of building a team – something the ‘not me, guv’ culture of Spurs is singularly unequipped to do. But to paraphrase the great Keith Hill, I’m not a man who likes hearing excuses. Harry’s made his point, and most of us agree that the club’s board are football’s equivalent of Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder in The Producers. (Although I hesitate to give the current board credit for deliberately screwing things up, I’m sure it all comes naturally). Now we have the squad we have, and it’s a damn sight better than most, so the players have to play and the manager has to manage. No dealing, no clever-cleverness – just good old fashioned coaching and playing.

 

We’ll only know the truth at the end of the season. If we win the Carling Cup – that’s providing our ongoing deal to sell United our best players, test out their reserves and take it easy in Cup ties isn’t still in force – and we stay up, then this will be Harry’s squad. If not, it’ll be some other mug’s.

 

 

 

 

23rd January 2009 - The last word

"This is a football club that has been put together by I don't know who and I don't know how. It's a mish-mash of players with people playing where they want to play.”

With that statement after what was surely the most inglorious progress to any cup final ever, Harry Redknapp once again stuck it to the Levy regime. How these people, who could have been invented to illustrate the phrase ‘they don’t know what they don’t know’, must detest the man they had to get in to dig them out of their own hole.

I’ve said before that I take a rather juvenile pleasure in hearing the self-appointed masters of the Spurs universe exposed as the self-regarding bunglers they really are – clearly, I don’t tolerate excuses – but I think the point has been made now.

We know Levy and co have bungled through seven years, we know they will never admit, or perhaps do not have the self-awareness to realise, how wrong they’ve been. We know they have built not a club but a collection of players. Think of how many of the current “squad” have been here longer than three seasons and then reflect on why there’s no team spirit, for example.

But Harry’s made his point, and I’ve surely made mine. Now, with our manager fully signed up to the “not me, guv” club charter, it’s surely time to move on. So the squad’s a mish-mash, but we’ve got what we’ve got. It’s time for the manager to do what football coaches used to do and make the materials he has better. Coaching, I believe it’s called.

This is required because we aren’t going to be able to buy every player we allegedly “need”. And even if we could, the only way to have any chance of them playing as a team would be to, er, coach those players. So there’s no getting around it. Harry has so far blamed the players, the squad, the transfer policy and the number of games for the problems he’s having. On all except the number of games he has a point, but he’s made that point. He has a difficult job, but it’s the job he has. And is no doubt handsomely rewarded for. So let’s go to work, as they say in the movies.

I’ll bet, by the way, that Alex Ferguson won’t be complaining about the distraction of having a Champions League tie either side of the League Cup Final. Playing more games is a sign of success, surely? So enough complaints already.

Just the ticket

I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the club’s two-year season ticket deal. Of course, much of it is about getting money up front before the recession gets worse, demonstrating demand for the new stadium and possibly even future-proofing us against relegation. But it would’ve been no surprise had they put the prices up again, accompanied by the usual old pony about financing our move to ‘the next level’.

Unfortunately for the club, the years of spin and greed make most of us naturally suspicious, so it’s inevitable that any initiative is scrutinised for the sting in the tail. But this time, and I will accept the judgment is made against a less than glowing track record, the club seem to have got it more right than wrong.

Two years is a lot to commit to, but pegging prices to a real level of less than last year for the next two is an improvement on an increase. I don’t disagree with Jim Duggan that this has to be seen in the context of the vast greed exhibited by hefty year-on-year rises for so long, but a freeze is better than a rise.

Combine this with the fact that the tickets can be paid for on interest-free credit via Barclaycard or Spurs MBNA card – what would Gordon Brown say? – and the deal looks more attractive still. And if two years is too much, one year renewals still benefit from the freeze.

There are a few points to tweak – the unfair discrimination against silver ST holders when it comes to applying for tickets being the most obvious – but the package as a whole isn’t bad. And if I understand the sequence of events correctly, the fact that the club’s promised ‘consultation’ with the Supporters’ Trust consisted of telling them what would be in the announcement a few hours before it was made doesn’t demonstrate an adequate understanding of the definition of consultation.

One issue I do genuinely feel sorry for club officials about is the ticking bomb that is the Loyalty Points system. The time when there’s a massive clash between a new generation of fans resentful of the stranglehold exerted on the best tickets by long-time ST holders and the determination grizzled of old gits (myself included) to cling on to that advantage surely draws closer.

Choosing to test the claims made about the level of demand for tickets is perhaps a brave move, especially when the plans for the new stadium – encouraging as they are – don’t contain any indication of where the money is actually going to come from. I’d like a bigger house, but I don’t now where the money is coming from. Perhaps Levy has a cunning plan – in which case we should all worry.

But despite the negatives – inevitable at Spurs – there are positives to celebrate. We’re in another Cup Final, albeit undeservedly on the strength of the semi-final showing, and the club is not being a greedy as it could be. Relative progress, but progress nonetheless.

 

 

17th January 2009 - A bit of a character

 

I have to admit to enjoying one aspect of the so-called Redknapp Revolution immensely. And that’s his comments on the stewardship of the club during the seven initial years of Levy’s five-year plan. He’s described the transfer policy as “a shambles”, the squad as “unbalanced” and the decision to sign two strikers before we knew if they could play together as “stupid”.

 

It’s all quite ironic when you remember Martin Jol incurred the wrath of the brain surgeons (© Alan Sugar) on the board by suggesting that the club may not be equipped to make the top four. (For younger readers I should point out he was referring to the top four places in the top division, not the top four divisions. Times have changed since Jol steered us to the heights). I’ve found myself imagining the conversation when Harry met wally, as Levy desperately tried to sort out another bungle. “Listen Danny boy, I’ll come for a price I’ll decide and only if you ditch all this director of football, buy young and sell on rubbish. If you want a manager, I’m your man but that means I’m in charge. And I don’t want you and yer fancy mates sticking their oar in either. In charge means in charge, and I’m in charge.”

 

Levy, of course, was left with no alternative but to agree, largely because of the utter disaster the Ramos era ended up being. Which was the fault of, er, Levy. I will never really understand quite how, even with all the transfer bungling and interference from the brain surgeons, Ramos turned out to be quite so inept, so perhaps some sympathy is in order for Clever Danny. But on the other hand, maybe not. A friend of mine who has proven himself a canny operator in business remarked that Danny and the BSs didn’t carry out “due diligence” on Ramos. It’s a familiar accusation in business when everything goes tits up. But the Spurs board pursued Ramos for a full year before making their (exceptionally clumsy) move. Anyone can make a mistake, and Levy has proved the truth of this on numerous occasions, but to make a mistake of such proportions after taking so long to weigh it up indicates stratospheric levels of incompetence. So as far as the Ramos debacle was concerned, we can conclude either that Levy was incompetent, or totally incompetent.

 

So despite my concerns about the amount of transfer dealing that Harry’s tended to do, I’ve been quite pleased to observe that, now that Levy’s been put in his box, we’ve got someone who knows about football in charge of running the football club. We’re reviving such long-lost traditions as playing players in their correct positions, seeking to fill positional gaps, and trying to build a team. And should Levy be tempted to bungle his way into the action, Harry has only to threaten to walk away and leave him to face the music to get him to back off.

 

But a mess that took seven years to create takes longer than a few weeks to clear up. And if you think that’s a harsh judgement, take a look at the facts. After seven years and what must be a world record number of transfers in and out we are left with an unbalanced squad and few players who have been on the books longer than a couple of seasons. There’s little homegrown talent, and the ‘talent’ we bought has ended up either being sent back as faulty goods or sold to Manchester United and Liverpool. If you needed more proof of how totally and utterly misguided Levy’s transfer strategy has been, the proof is in what’s already happened in this transfer window. We have brought back a striker we sold and made a net loss in the process. (Levy will dispute this with some smoke and mirrors about monies owed on other players, but shifting figures between columns doesn’t change the fact that we paid more to buy Defoe back than we got for selling him). And we are trying to loan back a player we sold five months ago, a sale made on the back of consistent ‘leaks’ about his bad attitude. Either Chimbonda is good enough for Spurs, or he isn’t.

 

At least signing Defoe back (another humiliating moment for Levy when Harry asked for that one) went some small way towards addressing the disastrous dismantling of one of the best selections of strikers in the country. I don’t intend to go over the folly of the Berbatov and Keane sales again in detail, but the Keane affair in particular exposes yet further the Tottenham board’s incompetence. But “you can’t keep a player who doesn’t want to stay” say Danny and the BSs. To which I would reply, “No, YOU can’t keep a player who doesn’t want to stay”. Aston Villa were pressed to sell their key player, just as we were, by the very same club who eventually bought our key man. Last time I looked, Gareth Barry was one of the main reasons why Aston Villa were significantly higher up the league than us. And then there’s Stewart Downing (there’s always Stewart Downing, like a transfer window Groundhog Day). He “didn’t want to stay” at Boro, but Steve Gibson, like Randy Lerner, appears able to keep his man, despite him “not wanting to stay” and even though he “wanted to” go to us when we asked.

 

It must be something about Danny and the BSs.

 

Although I’ve enjoyed Harry’s cut-the-crap approach [insert dropped players name joke of your choice here] I didn’t enjoy his comments after the defeat to Wigan. It’s fair enough to question the character of this group of players, but to say “it’s not my fault” after being so quick to claim the credit for his initial success here was a worrying sign that Harry has picked up another of Danny and the BS’s unpleasant habits. Being quick to claim credit for success and equally quick to avoid responsibility for failure is a trait that runs through the club. It may be another sign of the lack of character – or one of the causes.

 

But we shouldn’t be surprised at the absence of a willingness to stand together, win or lose. Danny and the BSs have replaced what was once a football club with a player trading exchange. If a player does well, he knows he’ll be sold on. If he doesn’t, he can look for a payday elsewhere. No fighting for the team, standing with your teammates or trying to build for future battles. Just a stint of paid freelancing before moving on while the people in charge watch the value of their (preferential) shares rise. It smells most unlike team spirit.

 

To be fair to Harry, he’s just taking precautions by taking a leaf out of Levy’s book. The new club motto is, after all, “not me, guv”. He needs to preserve his reputation and he did walk into a mess. I don’t have strong feelings either way for our manager. I like the no-nonsense approach and the fact that he knows his football, but I worry about the fact that he’s never won more than 39% of his games at any club he’s managed despite that great reputation. If he keeps us up, and let’s make no mistake that that is the only target this season, I will be pleased for him and us.

 

But what happens next? If we go down you don’t see this lot coming straight back up – that’s always supposing they stick around long enough to try. If we stay up, will we be able to convince anyone we are a serious enough proposition for success? And will Harry be the man to lead us? Most importantly, what happens with our Danny?

 

It would be easy to conclude all this with a stirring Levy Out call. I won’t be sad to see the back of a chairman whose credibility is now totally shot to pieces – that satirical letter in the Guardian really was the final nail in the coffin for the man who saw ‘too clever by half’ as a compliment. http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2008/dec/30/tottenham-hotspur-premier-league-daniel-levy

But who comes next? Remember, Levy was the rich businessman with money who was going to save us after the last rich businessman with money who owned the club walked away with heavy pockets while leaving us with heavy hearts. We were warned at the time that ENIC was not necessarily all good news, and so it has proved. As fans, we are to willing to fool ourselves that the bloke with the wonga will make us stronger for longer. Chelsea fans are just beginning to wake up to the fact that their success may be built on sand – status as the Blackburn of the south beckons. And you can have some fun taking bets on how long it will be before the circus at Man City closes down.

 

It would be nice to wave farewell to Levy and wish him luck in ordering trousers with the correct number of legs should he return to the textiles business. But nicer still to say hello to someone who recognises the unchallengeable fact that the football clubs that succeed are the ones who get the football right. Is there anybody out there who fits the bill?

 

••••

 

However depressing events on the pitch are, I can always rely on my old mate and fellow season ticket holder Bruce to come up with something to cheer me up. Watching David Bentley labouring unsuccessfully up and down the wing recently, Bruce drily observed “You do get the impression that last time he beat a man was in a specialist nightclub”.

 

 

22nd December 2008 – Aubrey Morris

 

A little piece of the club’s history went on 18 December when Aubrey Morris died aged 89 after a short illness. Aubrey was a truly remarkable man who lived life to the full, and his story is also a story of the 20th Century and an inspirational generation.

Aubrey was the man who first flew English football fans to matches, an adventure which began on March 4th 1961 and continued through the glory years of Bill Nicholson’s Spurs as Morris’s firm, Riviera Holidays, took ever-increasing numbers of ordinary fans to far-flung parts of Europe to watch the Spurs. The culmination of it all came in 1963, when Morris masterminded the Rotterdam Airlift of 2,500 fans to the Dutch port to see Spurs beat Atletico Madrid 5-1 to become the first British club to lift a European trophy.

His involvement in the travel industry, and in particular his pioneering of affordable package holidays, was an integral part of Morris’s socialism, and his ideals never dimmed, largely due to his experiences growing up in the 1920s and 30s.

Morris was born on Cable Street in London’s Bethnal Green and, as a 17-year-old, was one of the many tens of thousands who fought the police and Mosley’s blackshirts to prevent the fascists from marching through the heart of the Jewish community. He was later evacuated from Dunkirk, an experience he gives a vivid account of in his autobiography Unfinished Journey.

After the war, he learnt the knowledge and soon became a ‘mush’ – the owner of his own cab. At the same time, his political commitment led him to stand as a candidate for the Communist Party, and his contemporaries from the time remained lifelong friends. One, the famous Communist councillor, tenants’ rights activist, artist and polemicist Solly Kaye, he credits with putting the words to the Spurs anthem “Glory, Glory Halelluiah”. The cab business led to his involvement in the travel business after Morris got permission from the Carriage Office to drive his black cab to Italy for a family holiday – the sight of a black London cab on the Italian Riviera must have been a one to behold!

These trips gave Morris the travel bug and, typically, he set about opening up the delights of travel to ordinary people. He formed Riviera Holidays and began selling trips to France through contacts I the cab trade. He also tapped into the trade provided by the hundreds of amateur football teams which travelled to France and Belgium for matches.

As Riviera grew Morris, a lifelong Spurs fan who also retained an affection for the Clapton Orient team he played for as a junior, began to take football fans to games. The first flight ferried 47 passengers to Sunderland for the FA Cup 6th round tie in 1961, and demand grew as Spurs pioneered the European tour. One of Morris’s many proud moments was being told by Bill Nicholson how much the team appreciated the support of the fans at those away games.

Morris went on to fly England fans to games, and worked with Bobby Moore. Ironically, it was his experience at the World Cup final at Wembley in 1966 that made him step back a little from the game he loved after finding the intense support and fervent nationalism rather too much of a reminder of what he had witnessed in the 1930s. It’s a feeling difficult to understand from today’s perspective, but it does give an indication of just how dark the days of Morris’s youth could be.

In 1965, Riviera was bought by the Thomson Organisation, and Morris became its first Managing Director. In answer to those who questioned how he could reconcile his politics with his new position, Morris would always answer that his experiences meeting the captains of industry served only to reinforce, rather than undermine, his politics.

After he left Thomsons he maintained a connection with the travel business, always pushing for the right of ordinary people to experience the world, and taking the opportunity to further his love of travel, art and of course, politics as the world changed rapidly.

I met Morris late in his life in 2000, when I was researching my first book ‘We Are Tottenham’. The full story of the Rotterdam Airlift is contained in that book, and I spent a wonderful evening with Aubrey talking about those times, and then more hours when we discovered a mutual political connection. We stayed in touch, and I was honoured to be asked to address the Anjou Luncheon Club, the group of irascible old comrades who Morris had helped draw together for monthly debates at the Gay Hussar restaurant in London’s Soho. For Aubrey, the observation that the world is not only there to be interpreted, but to be changed, was a life’s maxim. He helped found Red Pepper magazine, and those Anjou lunches soon attained legendary status.

My favourite Aubrey story was one of his own favourites, and it illustrates perfectly a charming, engaging but fiercely committed man’s take on life. Having a drink and a conversation in the pub after a Spurs game, Morris was interrupted by a slightly pissed younger man who said: “The trouble with your generation is that you’re behind the times. You didn’t have jet travel, the internet, mobile phones and all that stuff, and you don’t understand how the world works.” Aubrey replied: “You know what, you’re right. We didn’t have all hat stuff – so we went out and invented it. What’s your contribution going to be, you arrogant little shit!”

Aubrey is one of a special generation who did so much to shape the world we live in. His connection with Spurs in noteworthy, but impossible to appreciate without appreciating the man as a whole.

It’s very hard to find words to do justice to the man, but what’s certain is that his eyes – in more ways than one, really did see the glory.

Aubrey – you were and remain an inspiration.

 

 

4th November 2008 - The Levy effect

 

The great football philosopher Paul Gascoigne once said “I don’t make predictions and I never will”, and the events of this season so far have proved the folly of attempting to look ahead, especially where Spurs are concerned.

 

Absolutely nothing that has happened this season, apart from the club racking up the prices for the first off-season-ticket cup game, can have been foreseen by anyone who didn’t want to be checked into an asylum. But here we are, having gone from Champions League hopeful to Championship-fearful and, possibly, out the other side via the trashing of the management structure masterplan and the unlikeliest appointment since Gordon Brown rang Peter Mandelson and asked if he was busy.

 

So, what to make of it all. I’ll confess I vacillated as I watched the utter hopelessness of our early season efforts. Increasingly unconvinced by Ramos, a feeling rooted in the waste of the second half of last season, I was nonetheless conscious of how we’ve chopped and changed too much, and of how the shambles was not solely of Ramos’s making. Most of all, I could not see anyone out there who would be barmy enough to take on the manager’s role.

 

But in the week leading up to the sacking it became clear that Ramos had lost the dressing room, and so some credit must go to chairman Daniel Levy for deciding to act, and for persuading Harry Redknapp to step in. Redknapp is one of the few, possibly the only, managers who would’ve come at that stage and the Redknapp effect has already been seen in the three games since he’s been in charge. Games in which we have seen our pride in Spurs restored. And all without a milkshake in sight.

 

Redknapp isn’t everyone’s cup of rosie, for reasons which we’d best not discuss here, but he has proved to be direct and inspirational. Personally, I also took great pleasure in imagining the look on Alan Sugar’s face when ‘Arry and his gang, including possibly Teddy Sheringham it seems, waltz into the lounge post-match. Ironically, there’s something very Sugar-like about the way Redknapp has brushed aside all the management structure BS introduced by Levy and insisted on a proper role – ie one where the manager is in charge of the team and of transfer policy.

 

On the playing side, we’ve benefited from such revolutionary measures as playing players in the correct positions and using all the squad members. Bentley looks to be the player he once was, Lennon is being used to run with the ball and try his luck centrally too, King seems suddenly to be fitter and Pavlyuchenko doesn’t look like a misfit. There is confidence throughout the team, a team which – although still unbalanced – should be able to achieve more than the world’s most highly-paid club manager managed to coax out of them.

 

Ramos will forever remain a mystery, and he has stayed fairly dignified after his exit. We’ll never really know how much he was undermined by the disastrous management structure he worked under, or by the toxic internal politics of White Hart Lane. Equally, we’ll never know how Hoddle could have done without the interference of David Pleat, or how Jol would have fared had Levy and co not undermined him. What we can reasonably observe is that Ramos’s shortcomings may well have gone unscrutinised for too long because it was so important that he succeeded – due to the way he was recruited. For the board, it was a matter of personal pride that he succeeded, for us fans it was all about pride in our club. So we wanted to believe that the nagging doubts about not motivating, not getting results, not communicating and just not seeming able to work out the English game would go away. In the end, I suspected Ramos’s biggest mistake was to take too long to see what Jacques Santini spotted early – that the management structure was not a milestone in the game’s development but a millstone. Having worked it out, maybe Ramos was just inviting the sack in the end. We’ll never know.

 

 Which takes us back to Daniel Levy. I’ve given credit for him acting when he did, and for acknowledging that the structure he spent years attempting to convince everyone was the way forward was in fact taking us backwards. But there is much criticism to be laid at the door of Levy and his boardroom colleagues. Not just to prove a point or to select a scapegoat – something they have themselves demonstrated an appetite for– but to try and ensure that we don’t repeat the same mistakes again.

 

Levy’s tortuous contortions as he attempts to explain that, even though he was wrong, he was in fact right and everything is really someone else’s fault may be quite amusing. The way his increasingly ridiculous statements are reported in the press show how seriously he is taken. His attempts to blame everyone else – “If it wasn’t for those pesky kids…” – may be hilarious, or just a little disturbing.

 

Genuine criticism can be advanced on a number of fronts. Levy is very keen to claim the credit for success, but either goes missing or deflects the blame when things go wrong. Witness the willingness to take the credit for a great business deal in securing megabucks for Berbatov, before rapidly saying the decision was in fact Ramos’s when it became clear this deal was not so good, and finally blaming Berbatov himself. If you’re going to delegate blame, you should at least be consistent.

 

But does all this matter, beyond some arguable moral point about those who lead taking responsibility, about the buck stopping at the top, about taking the rough with the smooth? I believe it does, for reasons which more directly affect the future of Tottenham Hotspur.

 

The mistakes of history cannot be learned if they are not acknowledged, and Levy and the Spurs board have some serious self-analysis to do. Of the seven managers they have employed, the most successful has been the only one they didn’t chose – Martin Jol stepping in after Santini left them high and dry. Making the wrong decision – and there’s a whole list of wrong decisions – could be put down to misfortune. After all, we all make mistakes. But it takes a special kind of management expertise to accidentally fall on your feet, and then knock yourself over again.

 

Jol had led Spurs to two 5th place finishes. He’d done so despite having the key player in his side, Michael Carrick, sold against his wishes, and despite the board not securing the transfer targets he wanted. But instead of recognizing that they’d stumbled onto a good thing, the Spurs board set about a sustained campaign of undermining him. Jol wasn’t perfect, who is?, but he deserved boardroom support. Instead, rumours were propagated, and the word that Jol was, heaven forbid, “too close to the players” was put about. And in public, another of the ‘top businessmen’ on the board let it be known that modern Spurs would tolerate “no excuses”. I wonder what he thinks of Levy’s excusefest now.

 

There’s more than a hint that Jol’s sacking was related to the board’s collective ego – it just couldn’t deal with someone being successful that it couldn’t claim the credit for. So the man who was “too close to the players” was replaced by a man who couldn’t get close to the players; the man who took us to our best Premiership finishes ever replaced by a man who led us to our worst start ever in League history. If this were an episode of The Apprentice, what would Alan Sugar say to the plonkers who pulled that off?

 

Levy also seems sensitive to criticism that he has put the balance sheet before the team sheet. All, that’s ALL, the decisions he’s taken have been for football reasons he says. Well, if selling Defoe, Keane, Berbatov, Malbranque, Chimbonda and Tainio were football decisions rather than financial ones, Levy is a bigger idiot than anyone gave him credit for.

 

Maybe everything was just a big mistake, maybe Levy is not a serial bungler – although the evidence of successive transfer windows, backing down over Lasagnagate after being called a liar by Scudamore, and backing down over the Keane and Berbatov transfers after initially threatening action may be seen as just a few pieces of evidence to the contrary.

 

If Levy cannot acknowledge what was wrong with these decisions, how can we be sure he won’t repeat them again in future? Rob Easom, speaking on The Spurs Show podcast, gave an eloquent criticism of Levy that also gave the man some credit. Rob accepted that Levy may have been badly advised as he claims, but asked why it should be acceptable that a man who runs a business should not know that business. It’s a good question.

 

Levy has been known to complain that we “don’t understand” what it’s like doing his job. He’s right. We don’t. But we don’t get paid to be the chairman of a football club. Levy, on the other hand, gets paid very handsomely. We don’t know how much he got paid last year – his salary has yet to appear in the accounts published under the transparent regime of plc status – but we do know that Spurs paid a dividend of £3.7m last year. At least that’s some money for the dear old shareholders you might think – until you recognize that the vast, vast majority of shares are held by – Daniel Levy and the board.

 

So despite a series of mistakes culminating in a relegation battle and the frittering of any transfer market surplus on paying off expensively-employed staff they recruited, Levy and co still get a fat reward. Even the City has stopped paying failure on such a scale, but Levy smugly boasts that the dividend payment is “the sign of a mature company”. This at a time of unprecedented global recession and hefty rises in season ticket prices. A truly Marie Antoinette moment.

 

But even if you are happy with helping to subsidise the cost of failure, indeed the cost of rewarding failure, what of the football? If Harry is successful, can we be sure that the board won’t decide that, once again, they have been bounced into a decision and that the common oik Redknapp is getting too big for his boots? Or, God forbid, too close to the players? Will he be undermined and forced out as yet another wizard wheeze is developed? If not, will he stay for long enough to really move Spurs on? He’s 61, and he’s said he doesn’t want to do this forever – a time period which may be slightly shy of the one Spurs need to become genuine title contenders? Or will it become apparent that, while Harry looks great – so far – at getting us out of the poo, he is not able to take us into the top four? I’m not knocking Harry, but the book’s still open on his ability to compete at the very top.  So have we recruited a manager for the long-term, or merely put off facing the real problems at the club for a little longer?

 

It may be that Harry becomes our greatest manager. As I said at the start, it’s best to steer clear of making predictions, so let’s just hope.

 

But amid all the justified optimism about the Redknapp effect,  there is still cause in the longer term to remain worried about the Levy effect.

 

 

9th September 2008 – Martin puts Stephen Fry straight on “sick as a parrot”

 

Click the link:

 www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00d8p82

[...and unless you have more time on your hands than most of us or enjoy listening to posh people discussing whether something is slang or a cliché, move the cursor up to 6.m 40 seconds to hear the great man in action – Ed ]

 

 

3rd September 2008 - Doing the business

 

Several weeks ago a character called Garry Cook, the CEO of Manchester City, caused some ripples when he outlined his vision of football’s future. In a feature memorably described in the Daily Mail as “containing more bad ideas in one article than Sepp Blatter usually has in a year,” Cook called for an end to promotion and relegation among a host of other issues, and had a moan about the City Masters veterans team trading on the club’s “intellectual property” without permission.

 

I can’t have been the only person to think that it was more a case of the current City team trading on the intellectual property created by the masters. The interview was further depressing evidence of a trend that is communicated in the first football cliché grounded entirely in the modern era - “you’ve got to understand that football is now a business.”

 

Most fans understand all too clearly that football today is a business. How could we not when clubs are deducted points for bad business practices (but only if they are small enough to be bullied) and when all but the most deluded fanatic must see that our passion is encouraged only in as much as it allows us to offer ourselves up for increased exploitation. The problem is not that we don’t understand that football is a business, the problem is that too many in positions of power don’t understand that football is also a sport.

 

Which brings us to THFC, the Tottenham Hotspur Footballers Collection. Make no mistake, this transfer window has put an end to any idea that Spurs are building a team as we understand it. THFC is a player trading exchange, holding on temporarily to a collection of footballers who the incumbent manager is charged with shaping into a workable unit.

 

How else do you explain the enormous player turnover of the last few seasons? The selling of pivotal players at the end of seasons which have provided evidence of progress? The failure to recruit players for positions we need filling or covering? The failure to persuade players to stay to help move us on?

 

Let’s take just one player as an example. Younes Kaboul. Bought last year apparently against the wishes of the manager, he was a young player plunged in too soon and then rapidly bombed out. The same could be said of Kevin Prince-Boateng. If our Director of Football is so good, why don’t we trust his recommendations for longer than a few games? Could we just be interested in keeping the money turning over?

 

Making money at the expense of team building can be the only explanation for last January’s sale of Jermaine Defoe. Which brings us rather neatly to the subject of our strike force. There is absolutely no way at all, by any stretch even of the imagination needed to truly believe Spurs can ever make the step to the next level under this regime, that it is possible to argue that we now have a better strike force than we did nine months ago. Where once we had Berbatov, Keane, Defoe and Bent, we now have Bent, Pavlyuchenko and Campbell. (And Campbell only on loan, in a move which confirms our status as United’s feeder club). And when we were down to just Bent and our manager was complaining that we only had one striker to choose from, what did we do? Send striker Thomas Pekhart out on loan – presumably because there was a few bob more in that than in hanging on to him.

 

The Russian fella may well be the business, Campbell may well be a gem – but they will take time to adjust and gel. We have gone backwards in the going forwards department.

 

Apologists for Daniel Levy and the board will say that there’s nothing we can do when players want to go. It’s true that Berbatov looks to have behaved pretty disgracefully and, to be frank, quite pathetically with his tearful press conferences about ‘his dream’. But isn’t it an amazing coincidence how every player we’ve cashed the chips on has been revealed to have a bad attitude or generally a wrong ‘un by the rivers of innuendo and wink-wink that surround Spurs and the way we do business.

 

I said publically that I supported Levy’s public statement over the attempts to sign Berbatov and Keane. I should have known better, and I’ve certainly learnt my lesson. I’ve been among those who have criticized Levy for being The Invisible Man, for never speaking up when he should. But now I know I’d rather he said nothing. All he does is make himself and the club look stupid. His ‘principled stand’ proved very quickly to be yet another money-making ruse – one thing Spurs could win a World Championship at – and he has demonstrated beyond any doubt that Spurs with him at the helm will always – always – look to make the money whatever the consequences.

 

We have signalled that we will sell anyone if the price is right, even if they act as disgracefully as Manchester United did. Berbatov’s behaviour cannot be excused, but a club negotiating with and giving a medical to a player without any agreement from that players’ employer could not go unpunished in any game that was run according to proper principles and practices. And as the FA are the guardians of the game, I’m sure we can look forward to the kind of severe punishment being inflicted on United as Luton and Bournemouth have had imposed for lesser offences. Even in the Anyone But United days I had some respect for them. No more.

 

If I were Manchester City I would send some representatives down to talk to any Spurs player who starts having a good season. Don’t worry about being seen tapping up, hell, why not do it on the pitch at half time. What are we going to do? MAKE A COMPLAINT?

 

Isn’t it just possible the failure to convince players to stay is because the players know this is not a team but a player exchange? Isn’t it just possible that finally people will recognize some responsibility rests with people at the top? Because let’s make no mistake – this transfer window was a cock-up if it’s looked at in football terms. Yes, we’ve signed some decent players, but have we improved the squad? Is it more balanced? Most of all, why have we failed to realize yet again that the season begins when the football starts, not when the transfer window closes. This is the second season on the trot that has seen us make a mess of the first few games, and there’s every chance we’ll spend the rest of this season playing catch up just as we did last.

 

We didn’t sign the players we were led to believe were Ramos’s top targets, Milito and Arshavin. We had all summer to plan for what already looked like our main striker’s departure, and we recruited deep lying forwards and midfielders. Then it seems we went to the wire on Arshavin and blew it because one of clever Mr Levy’s wizard wheezes (“How about a quid now and the other £20m when we win the Champions League?”) wrecked the deal. After working through a whole list of forwards we were reduced to considering – it is alleged – Emile Heskey and Carlton Cole. Yes, the Carlton Cole who supposedly demonstrated why Jol was a muppet when he was alleged to be interested.

 

The spin machine which has worked so tirelessly to present a picture of everything going smoothly for so long had been strangely quiet, as if there was a realization that this time they’d really gone and done it. But this evening it creaked back into life. First, Radio Five’s Brian Alexander said that, 40 minutes before midnight on deadline day, Daniel Levy actually wanted to block the Berbatov move but, and you’ll like this, they gave Ramos the final decision. And when he said he wanted to move on, poor old Danny reluctantly conceded that he’d just have to bank loads of wonga and give his star asset up.

 

Then we had the laughable, ridiculous, patronizing even by Tottenham’s standards excuse for a statement on the club website. It’s a bit of a masterpiece to be sure, and already the subject of a well-constructed spoof on one of the message boards. To try and be balanced, it should be observed that the mere fact of posting such a statement gives some indication that the club realize there’s some explaining to do. But you have to admire the total lack of self-awareness as they airily dismiss the fact that two significant signings are cup-tied for Europe by saying we’re concentrating on the league and “building for the future”. Presumably they’ll be dropping the prices for UEFA games then, and giving us a refund on those Season Ticket prices that were justified because we needed to invest in the squad this season.

 

Most interestingly of all, the statement continues to push the line propagated by Brian Alexander by placing the responsibility for deciding Keane and Berbatov should go with Ramos.

 

Just as Jol was made a scapegoat for the board’s failure to build a team, so Ramos is being set up as the next fall guy - the man who is responsible for failure while the board are responsible only for success. Ramos is clever enough to have already started to cover his back, saying in last weekend’s press “'The person who has the capacity and the wherewithal to control the club is the chairman. That's what he's there for and that's what he does.” Presumably Keith ‘no excuses’ Mills has had him in for a stiff talking to. Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Ramos walk before long. I hate what has happened to the club I support, but looking at it from the professional’s point of view, I don’t see much reason to show any loyalty or commitment.

 

Don’t get me wrong, things could be much, much worse. We could be run by a dodgy oligarch, or by some dubious Royal family or dynasty. We could be suffering a 30 point deduction, on the verge of bankruptcy, or followers of the team that finished bottom of the pyramid. Hell, we could even be Newcastle United fans. But we now know that Spurs is not a football club, it is a business, and nothing more. So we can hope that in the course of the business we get to see some good players and some good results. Although any really good players will be sold, almost certainly to Man City, in January. We can hope that the voracious player trading quenches the thirst of the greedy people who run our club so that we can still, just, afford to be able to attend games. But actually succeeding, moving on from the constant building and transition and proving that we can win at the highest level – that seems a distant dream. At least while we are run by people who don’t understand that football is not just a business, but a sport.

 

Postscript

To prove it really is business as usual, what did the PR geniuses at Spurs post up on the website on the day the disappointment of the transfer window was revealed in such stark terms? Details of the VIP trip to the Arsenal game, no loyalty points required, just wave yer wonga and we’ll get you in. Priceless. And classless.

 

 

 

11th August 2008 – Season Preview

 

Last season I said "I don't go along with the current wisdom which says we can't win this and that because the top places are a closed shop, it's all about money etc etc. We have a very good squad, some exciting talents, and we can be good to watch as well as effective. We play the same teams as everyone else, on the same pitches, and use the same number of players. And if you really want to talk about money, we've spent quite a lot this summer.

So, it's in our hands. Win a Cup? Win the League? Why not? I never go to a game or approach a competition thinking we should lose, so why should anyone else at the club?" 

I could say pretty much the same this season, despite the enormous changes that have been implemented since then. The fact that we could line up for our first game with just two or three of the players who started last year could work either way. It could give us the surprise factor of fielding a team opponents are unsure of how to play against. Or it could mean we suffer from lack of familiarity and team spirit. We can at least say it's unlikely we'll get shot of the manager this season - although you can never say never as far as the old shotgun/foot interface is concerned at Spurs. 

One area of concern as I write is our forward line. Darren Bent has been in great form pre-season, and the rumoured 4-2-3-1 formation will play more to his strengths than we did last year. Berbatov may well remain, but it's pretty clear neither he nor the club sees a long-term relationship. And we've sold Keane at a vast profit, after trying to hang onto him via the clever tactic of asking him to put in a transfer request. Despite banking a £13m profit on a player who also had a former club paying a significant proportion of his wages for a significant part of his time with us, and despite those hefty season ticket price rises being justified because of the need to make new signings, we apparently can't afford the player Ramos has identified as Keane's replacement, Andrei Arshavin. 

All may be resolved by the time the season starts, or at least by the date we seem to think is the real start of the season - the end of August, three games and nine points into the campaign. But as ever, it's the suspicion of the board's spin, clever-dickery and focus on shareholder dividend (ie their own) at the expense of team-building that remains the major worry. 

Football-wise, I'm looking forward to watching Modric And Gio regularly, the return of Bale, and the quality of Hutton, Woodgate, King (when fit), Bentley and Lennon. All of those players are capable of competing at the top, and if you add in Jenas, Dawson, Bent and dare I say even Zokora then it's not too bad a squad. Gomes is an unknown entity in the Premiership, but we of course wish him well. It's all down to how they play together, and the depth we have to cover. If the signing of Corluka comes off, to cover for central defence and right back, it'll make me rest easier. As will a proper defensive midfielder.

How they all work together is down to Juande Ramos and his tactics. If the tactically astute, proactive, offensive and motivational Ramos who took us away from the drop zone and to a Wembley victory is in evidence, than last season's assessment that we've got as good a chance as anyone still applies. But if the bystanding Ramos who was unable to get the players to switch back on after the League Cup Final and who failed to experiment with players and formations even when we had little to lose as last season petered out is still around, we could face problems.

What's encouraging is that the board seem to be letting the manager decide on players and the playing side - at least in relative terms. I'm broadly confident in him, even though there are those question marks. I will confess to a slight suspicion that he's also lined up plenty of excuses if things don't go well - new team, transitional season, dominance of big four cash blah blah blah – but to be honest if I was working for Levy and co I'd cover my back too

My expectations are that Spurs play entertaining football and everyone connected with the club gives their all. A cup, or two? still looks more likely than the league title, but I still refuse to concede the idea of the big four closed shop.

 

 

29th July 2008 - Not Keane

 

So Robbie Keane has gone to Liverpool and Spurs are £20 million richer. First, some facts. Keane was the all-time 12th highest scoring player in Spurs history, netting 107 goals. In each of his five seasons with the club, he has scored 15 goals or more. That’s a class record in anyone’s book. He was an asset to Tottenham Hotspur.

 

Before any comment from me, let’s look at the words of some of the principal players in this very modern football tale.

 

2 March 08: “I think with the squad we have now and the new staff coming in it's set up nicely for the next few years. The new manager has come in and given us a lot of belief. Regardless of whether we're playing a top team he wants us to go out and win and hopefully you can see that in the performances. He is focused on winning all the time. Every manager has that but I think he has it down to a tee. His man-management is unbelievable.”

Robbie Keane

 

3 May 08: “He is a magnificent player and we rely on him a lot.”

Juande Ramos on Robbie Keane

 

29 May 08: "I'm very content with my life and my time at Spurs. I want to play there as long as I'm happy and as long as I'm wanted. Over the last three of four years there has always been speculation that I'm going here, there and everywhere. I'm having a summer off without people ringing saying 'Are you going here, are you going there?' So I'm looking forward to a nice break and then going back to Spurs next season."

Robbie Keane

 

28 July: “I would like to place on record my thanks to the board, players and fans of Tottenham for the past six years, which were the best and most enjoyable of my career to date. I will never forget them. I would specifically like to thank chairman Daniel Levy for understanding, that, as a fan, joining Liverpool is a lifelong dream of mine and one I couldn't let pass me by. I hope one day the Spurs fans, who have been brilliant to me, can understand this too. I have only good things to say about my time at Tottenham and expect them to go from strength to strength under Juande Ramos and Daniel Levy.”

 

What does all this tell us? That it’s best for footballers to say nothing. Look at the words. They are direct quotes. Try to trace a logical line through them. It is not possible. This is a prime example of why it is very difficult to have respect for footballers. They tell us what they think we want to hear when it suits them. And they change their opinions when it suits them. Robbie Keane has every right to play for whom he wants. Just cut the old cobblers about dedication and commitment and boyhood clubs and all that badge-kissing, outdated, insulting rubbish. We are stupid to believe a single word of any of it, but the mock-loyalty of today’s footballers still hooks us, serving only to twist the knife further by reminding us of a time when players stuck with the job and tried to create success, rather than wait to be bought into it.

 

Better then, Robbie, if you hadn’t said you’d be avoiding those calls this summer. That you were very content here. That you thought we were going places. Instead we would have been left just with the memory of some great goals and linking play – the football, the stuff that those of us too old-fashioned to realise that we should really be asking for a look at the books rather than the pitch still fork out to watch.  And at our boyhood club, too.

 

We may also have wondered if those strange substitutions at the end of last season had anything to do with your evident conclusion that you weren’t, in fact, very content here. Many of us wondered at the wisdom of Juande as you were repeatedly hauled off for no apparent reason. But we’ll see how Rafa the Gaffer’s rotation policy suits you. I guess if you don’t like it you can always rediscover your boyhood love of Celtic.

 

I won’t be booing Robbie Keane when he comes back to WHL – rotation policy permitting of course. But I won’t be cheering either.

 

I may reserve some applause for Teemu Tainio though, when he returns. Apparently a Spurs fan, though note the caveat above, the hero of the 5-1 rout of the Arse was unceremoniously shoved out after having been given few chances to impress. Although to be fair, his injury record wasn’t great. Whatever [imagine my palm circling up towards you as I say that] – it’s a reminder the loyalty thing cuts both ways for players too.

 

But there are wider questions to answer, for which we must return to the words actually spoken by the protagonists.

 

19 July 08: “The behaviour of both clubs has been disgraceful. We told both clubs very early on that we had no interest in selling Robbie or Dimitar, respectively, and that they should refrain from pursuing the player. Both clubs arrogantly chose to ignore this request and we now have evidence that both clubs have systematically been working to prise the players away from us, outside of PL rules of conduct.”

Daniel Levy

 

28 July 08: “I was incredibly disappointed when I first heard, not only that Liverpool had been working behind the scenes to bring Robbie to Anfield, but that Robbie himself wanted to go and he submitted a transfer request to this effect. I have already made my opinion clear on the nature of this transaction. I don't regard it as a transfer deal - that is something which happens between two clubs when they both agree to trade - this is very much an enforced sale, for which we have agreed a sum of £19m as compensation plus a potential further £1.3m in additional compensation.

“Liverpool FC has also acknowledged that the way its website reported comments of its manager, which were widely covered by the media, was inappropriate and in light of that acknowledgement has apologised and agreed to make a donation to our Club's main charity, the Tottenham Hotspur Foundation. Tottenham Hotspur has therefore agreed not to pursue its official complaint to the Premier League.”

 

I’ve already complimented Daniel Levy on his forceful statement in defence of the club’s interest (see last column). But once again we are left wondering how sincere words are. If it’s a point of principle that “disgraceful behaviour” that is “outside of PL rules of conduct” should be reported so that the rules are enforced, then it’s a point of principle. But THFC plc has clearly signalled that its principles have a price. In this case, £19m, plus £1.3m, plus an undisclosed donation to the club’s charidee. So next time anyone wants to tap up, lure way or otherwise entice one of our players, or even contravene any other rules to our detriment, just bring a big bag of money and you can stick your size 12s all over our upturned faces.

 

Let’s be clear here. I’m not criticising the club for not doing what I THOUGHT they should do. I’m criticising them for not doing WHAT THEY SAID THEY’D DO. Once again, if you don’t mean it, don’t say it.

 

There is a further question mark over the whole business. For months, Liverpool have been, in their inimitable manner, publicly pursuing Gareth Barry. As I write, Barry is not only still a Villa player, but is being spoken of as staying at Villa for the coming season. Things may, of course change – and such is the luck of the columnist they probably will between writing this and getting it published. Yet just weeks after Liverpool announce they would like to get their grasping and arrogant hands on our Robbie, the deal is done. We’re often told we can’t expect to hold on to key players without  Champions League football, but Villa haven’t got that either. No do Villa, as far as I know, have a significantly higher wage structure than we do. So what is it, we must ask, do Randy Lerner, Martin O’Neill and Aston Villa have that Daniel Levy, Juande Ramos and Tottenham Hotspur don’t?

 

We will move on from all this, and eventually even the small-scale warfare between tiny groups of Spurs fans which serves as such an effective distraction from the bigger questions to be asked of more prominent figures will die down. We have some exciting prospects to watch next season, and rumours – for there are always rumours – of even better to come. We can but cling to two hopes. One, that people only say what they mean. And two, that Spurs will one day manage to build a team rather than run a profitable player exchange agency.

 

They say it’s the hope that gets you. 

 

Disclaimer: Please note the words on this page are the opinion of the topspurs columnist and are just that, opinions, not facts and are nothing to do with Tottenham Hotspur Football club PLC. Just a supporter having his say nothing more nothing less. Any commentary on betting is meant for discussion purposes only and does not constitute any form of advice or recommendation.