Early doors to start calling anything, but unless Levy does his Cat In The Hat trick ala the Van der Vaart transfer again then I see us staring into an abyss with Scott ‘Scotty’ Parker at the bottom of it.
£10M quid is the figure most guesstermaters appear to be going with. £10M quid for a relegation squad star. I’m dischuffed. I don’t rate him and I don’t buy into him.
He’s the sort of player that Arry understands and coos over. You can just picture him and Frank Lampard Snr cuddled up in the crisp East End air, car coat to car coat. Cooing.
Here’s a poll. Feel free to use it.
[poll id=”62]
Well, let’s not forget that last year we beat each of the “top four” except the manure, plus a pretty strong citeh (yes the Hudd was fit then). And we did it with a determined second half run. Why the heck can’t we repeat?
At the back, I used to favour Hutton, but Corluka deserves another, longer look. Ditto Kranjkar. Always liked both. Speed can only take one so far, and only for a short time in most games. Skill is always a plus. Look at Beckham in his glory days. Or Scholes. Or our Dave Mackay/Danny Blanchflower. Etc, etc.
At CB the best and certainly the most honest answer is to say goodbye to Woodie and Ledders. Give them coaching/ambassadorial/community roles. Bring in that good young’un Caulker from loan.
If Pav could score goals without fuss for the Russkies last year, and Nikko also, plus this year as well, for the Croats, and Defoe was more than O.K. last year too (when fit), and if we could get into the top four then, what’s to stop us doing so again? With the same strikers. We need, in addition perhaps, to bring one of those loanees back. That, or really show confidence/put it on the line to the lot we’ve got. Tell Pav and Defoe they have 6-8 games on a trot to show what they can do. Play in a 4-3-1-2 formation. Train a penalty kicker/set ball specialist, who could be VdV, have Lennon dribble the heck out of them into the box and draw fouls, etc. etc.
We can still spring a surprise. Being out of the FA cup will help us focus. The one concern is Gomes. We forget how important he was last year. Made as much of a contribution as Bale and Lennon, and Modders. More than Lennon, perhaps. But he’s not near that standard this year.
“It’s not over until it’s over” as a Yankee immortal once said. Which reminds me, wasn’t there a time when their shadow was stretching in the WHL direction? Now there’s an outfit that could mix it with the best, dollar for pound, for Euro, for rial….
I am totally disappointed by the lack of activity by the club this window. Chelski and the Bin Dippers have gone all out to go for a challenge at CL – we have blown our chance to cement a place at the top table. I can’t believe that Harry/Levy didn’t think we needed reinforcements to the squad. So we are down to 3 recognised ‘strikers’ for the rest of the season, and have a CB crisis – I don’t get how the squad is good enough to merit no new faces.
And as for Financial Fair play – Abramovich is going wild and buying up everything as after 2011/2012 season starts an owner can only input 15m Euro in per season. Clubs also have to break even in 2014/2015 or be excluded from European football. He (as well as Mansour) will write off this spending spree before the 2011/12 deadline and we are left playing catch up. I’m even expecting a ridiculous ‘sponsorship’ deal at City from Mansour’s family business (Etihad) to ensure turnover stays high and bankroll the spending. Am seriously worried about our chances of being at the top in the coming seasons – I’ve seen CL football come to the Lane for the first time in half a century, I don’t want to go back to Europa/no continental competition. We deserve better – We are Tottenham!
It all comes down to the money. We simply will not pay the wages the very top players demand. Harry hinted very strongly on Friday that DL will not put the club in jeapordy by paying the £100k plus minimum per week that even someone like Forlan wants at 31. Harry also pointed to the stadium problem and he is right that unless we can get more people in then we cannot compete with those that can or are bankrolled by the super wealthy.
I am very disappointed that we could not get at least one forward in and am very worried that if we do not get CL football next season we could see Bale, Modders and VdV moving on. Whatever money is thrown at them they will only leave WHL if they feel that we cannot deliver them CL football and medals. Sadly I think that like Carrick, Berbatov even Campbell they might conclude that we cannot deliver. Players will move if they want to move. It could be that we are sadly effectively a feeder club for ManUre etc until we get the increased capacity / investors. Very sad but it is the reality. Having said all that I still think our best players will stay at least for next season.
The only good thing has been that we have cut away almost all our dead wood. PSB, Bentley, O`Hara and Gio were never going to feature so at least they are off the wage bill.
So overall January has been a very poor month for us. What with all the fuss surrounding Beckham, the stadium, a virtually blank transfer window and some dodgy performances we must get back to winning ways starting tomorrow. I think we have been a bit too quick lately to start beliveing our own hype. What with all the Beckham distraction and Harry declaring that we can win the title. No coincidence that in Jan we have been pretty poor.
Need to start putting up or start shutting up or we could start giving the doubters the usual …
`Spurs will let you down eventually` ammunition.
Blackburn away will not be an easy fixture for us. It never is that productive for us BUT it is another MUST WIN !!!! We have the quality but on the evidence of Foolem are we up for it??????