Good morning my dears,
And we’ll kick off today with a quote from Willie McKay. Willie is Joey Barton’s agent of course. A little known fact about Willie is that he has a goldfish swimming in cerebral fluid in the gap where his frontal lobe used to be.
I think Barton would be a useful addition dependent only upon wage demands and our ability to move along the usual suspects.
Barton is undoubtedly bullish and a player with a focus if not the the most gifted bloke to ever kick a ball. So a good suitable character to throw into the mix with Sandro and Sarge.
Palacios is possibly off, but if he isn’t then the idea of someone to replace him when he picks up those inevitable yellows and has the ref watching him like a hawk is a good one.
Discipline wise he ‘s a checkered past but who amongst us aside from the terminally dull has not? The clucking about his possible negative contribution to the dressing room has begun already. I disagree. The fewer people we have wearing headphones listening to def bleeps and soulful vibes the better. I like my footballers to have pre-match rituals like ‘putting their boots on and glaring. Not discussing where’s good to spend £600 on a baseball cap.
That said, I say he’ll hook up with all his pals at West Ham.
BIOYC!
Aaah….that’s why we are looking at Barton. I can just picture him in hard hat and high vis!
Hah hah, love it Stevo!! At least we’ve not lost our sense of humour!!!
Barton sign
Meant to say- Barton signed to encourage stubborn tenants to vacate.
Anyone going to the game on Saturday evening ?
According to the website, it’s selling out fast.
Could be bollocks of course, rather like us signing a striker.
If you can’t get a ticket don’t worry it’s on ITV4:
Tottenham Hotspur v Athletic Bilbao (Kick-off 5.15pm). Angus Scott presents coverage of the fixture at White Hart Lane, where Spurs welcome the La Liga visitors. This is the final chance for Harry Redknapp’s men to impress ahead of their Premier League opener. All three of their new strikers are expected to be involved.
I edited the last bit.
Thanks for that info mate, had no idea it was on TV. Was going to take the missus so will save £60 and try getting tickets for a league match.
Now if you could just name those 3 new strikers …
I can only suggest if it was selling out fast, why would they need to run ads on talkSPORT? Oh hang on, that may cause it to sell out fast.
Fakinel. Can’t keep up :cwy:
We have noticed.
Went on the offical site and that is showing only seats available are in the corners of the ground.
Do we believe them ?
Went to the Fiorentina game last pre-season and you could pay cash on the day as they did not sell that many tickets in the run up to the match.
I got there just before kick off and got one of the last seats, in the back row of the Paxton.
Remember it well as PSB scored twice.
Getting really bored with this window.
If we keep all our top players, we will be stronger as Hudd will be available, Sandro will improve, as will Rose and we will also have Walker.
FFS, we just need a striker a top top striker. Triffic.
Actually David; you make a good point;
None of the players you mention are outside of their prime and will get better (especially under Arrys tutorship)
Walker needs to learn a bit more defensively and he can do that by playing all the Europa and cup games. I want him to start at RB but feel Kaboul is still a better option (gives us additional height at free kicks also)
Sandro is held in high regard by fans and Arry so his confidence levels will improve.
You all know what I think of Thudd and Rose can also get the experience he needs in European and cup games
Other players I’d like to see in the squad and not loaned out are
Harry Kane
Livermore
Parrat
Townsend
Bostock
These guys can be a part of non PL games also; at least up until Xmas
may be we will use the ga,e as a pretext to buy/kidnap all their strikers
Good idea Sid, think we could do with their top striker.
good idea I hope fergy has shown gonadchops how to use the blanket.
I’m very close to agreement with what MysteriousStranger said a while ago. And, in a sense, with David, too.
Fact is, even with all the front men letting us (and themselves) down last year, and some important others failing to come through when needed (including Lennon and Modric), we were very close to retaining the CL spot. That we did not also involves inconsistent/poor team selection for certain games and limited tactical command, though that’s, unfortunately something of a given with ‘Arry these days.
Fact is, we have enough talent in the Kanes, Livermores, Townshends, Masons, Parrets and (even?) the Obikas, to improve without the addition of a striker. My hunch is that anyone or two of the above would grasp the opportunity. Plus there’s Walker, who is surely on the cusp of worthwhile contributions, if anyone is. Was he not called up by England?
I’m not against acquiring a striker of quality. But, if we cannot get the right one (young enough, proven ability, not too expensive, wanting to wear the shirt) then, hey, what the hell, as MystS and David point out, we have the goods in our back yard.
In my humble opinion…
I think its a bit of a stretch to assign such a proportion of blame to the manager; fact is that if Defoe and Crouch had scored just 5 goals between them in the 8 game period string in february, we would have qualified.
5 goals, 8 games, 2 strikers 6 – 9 points thems the sums!
I would consider it a very reasonable expectation that 5 goals from 2 England strikers against the bottom half teams including those who went down, could be achieved……
…..and the ‘arry ‘aters talk about him speaking of underachievement!
He signed both players….thrice in fact :-p :-p If you look in the dictionary under ‘underachievement’ it states, and I quote: ‘English football manager, Arry Rubberchops 30 year career as a so called football manager’
Yes he did and he did it when we were far from the attractive proposition we have become. Since he signed them they have performed reasonably well and IF they had scored say 6-8 each since February we would not be having this discussion or indeed the whole quandry of the need to find replacements.
However In January, it was not and could not be reasonably supposed that these guys with their track records and ability, would NOT chalk up at least a few goals each in the February/March fixture list. Given that scenario, anyone with even the most jaundiced opinions of the players or Redknapp, could have reasonably supposed that the outcome would be what it was. Redknapp played sides that created 30+ chances a game, picked and played England Internationals who failed to score ……….. how is it his fault?
I think this is Monday morning quaterbacking.
Finn,
You probably won’t see this, but the proportions I was thinking of were 75% at the feet of our strikers, 25% at the head of ‘Arry, that 25% being split between team selection and tactics.
In the end, it’s up to the players. Yup.
Agreed….