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My prediction involves a few ifs and buts depending upon the
team selection of both sides. My
general feeling is that, although Chelsea are rightly favourites and
therefore largely expected to win by most neutrals, we have a better chance
of winning this cup final against Chelsea than had we played them at any
other time in the last five years.
Its not often we have days like Sunday so I'm going to allow myself to
be uncharacteristically optimistic and say 2-1 to Spurs. 30th August 2007 - Top 4 Spurs? No,
its Top 3 Spurs… After two successive fifth place finishes, Spurs
began this summer very optimistic for the coming August. The
question was, after those two fifth place finishes, exactly what would it
take for Spurs to break into the top 4. There has obviously been a lot
of talk over the last few weeks regarding Martin Jol and our board’s
cack-handed attempt to replace him. Consequently the hopeful summer of
2007 now already seems like a distant memory. However, one topic that
has never seemed to be too far away throughout has been our inability to beat
the ‘big four’ teams. In view of this I decided to see how
the league tables would have finished over the last two seasons if the games
between the top five clubs were removed from the equation. Here’s
how things would have been. 2006/07 1 Man Utd 89 – 14
points = 75 2 3 Tottenham 60
– 4 points = 56 3 5 Arsenal 68 – 15
points = 53 2005/6 1 2 Man Utd 83 – 12
points = 71 3 4 Tottenham 65
– 4 points = 61 4 Arsenal 67 – 6
points = 61 As you can see, last season Spurs would have finished joint third
and the season before they would have finished joint fourth. Based on
these statistics, this should have meant only one thing for the people
in charge of the purse strings at Tottenham over the summer; that our
squad was on the whole good enough against the 'best of the rest'
in the Premier League to compete for a top 4 position but our first
eleven was not, where a team is only as strong as its weakest link,
when it came to the playing the top four itself. I have never been Jol’s biggest fan as a coach in terms of him being the long term answer (as a man I like him a lot). I think he's been great for Spurs but have always felt that he has been too negative when it really mattered and that, more worryingly, this was his natural default setting. The comments he made on the eve of the Chelsea cup tie last year that he would have to leave Spurs in the next five years in terms of one day having a crack at the league title because “it's possible abroad but not at Spurs” were unacceptable for me. I questioned what sort of message that sent to our best players and, for that matter, any new players that we would hope to attract in the coming months of top 4 quality. I found the defeat to Arsenal reserves in January a difficult pill to swallow because it was as if the team had been sent out worried that they were playing a team called ‘Arsenal’ rather than getting on with putting a reserve away at White Hart Lane and finishing the tie (as had happened against a Liverpool reserve side two years before). Too many times I have felt that we have lost games we could have won through this ‘inferiority complex’ (which must if true affect the player’s belief systems) even stretched to Middlesbrough away in 2004/05 when we went up there to play a team we were better than simply to avoid defeat. |
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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. |
