False Start

Two games, two heavy defeats.

After a taking a hammering on our own ground in a fixture that should have been a six-pointer, where many of the flaws in our first-team squad were exposed, against a back-drop of a ground emptying as quickly as The Emirates in front of a live global audience, it may a good time to look for a bit of perspective.

The boarded up shops and demolished infrastructure on Tottenham High Road instantly provide a bit of perspective. In the early hours of Sunday 7^th August, when Tottenham as a district was a headline across the world, some of instinctively thought that the club would immediately be a less attractive proposition in a key transfer window, while considering the possibility of national funding for a new stadium. Going back to N17 twice in four days for the first time since the rioting, is a reminder of the bigger picture.

On a more micro level, there is a sense of perspective that we still have the same players that battered the then reigning European Champions in the Champions League last season, and won away at Milan with one of the club’s all-time great European away performances, just 20 competitive games ago. As our manager is never slow in reminding us, things have been much worse. And, hopefully, we should have a stronger squad by close of play Wednesday when the transfer window shuts.

And, on the lowest level of them all, there was an undeniable silver lining yesterday. In the days after Labour lost the 1992 General Election after being well ahead in the polls throughout, the satirical comedy ‘Spitting Image’ had the crying Neil Kinnock puppet consoled by his wife Glenys with the thought of Chris Pattern losing his seat – the sketch showed Kinnock, in the midst of his darkest hour, smiling at the misery of his rival; it is far from the end of the world for Spurs, and seeing the great pretenders, one of the teams both the bookies and the media still expect to finish above us this season, get a proper going over at Old Trafford didn’t just bring a smile, but laughter. (Their third red card in three league games even felt like being spoilt by a Ferrero Rocher at the Ambassador’s Party.)

In contrast, we held our own at Old Trafford for the best part of an hour on Monday night, and were on top early on the second half, but failed to create a clear cut chance, with the usual problem of not having someone in the six-yard box when the ball was out wide; we were also being too reliant on a ‘shoot on sight’ policy for a suspect goalkeeper. Had Defoe either played in Van Der Vaart for a one-on-one rather than shooting or made a run across the goal himself when Lennon once again beat Evra and was in position to find him, we could have been one-nil up, and the start of our league season may have been entirely different.

But just before United took the lead the signs of us getting sloppy were there; Corluka gave the ball away carelessly from a throw, and Assou-Ekotto also gave the ball away cheaply as United went on to score the first, before we fell away badly. It was no surprise we were over-run in the end, not just because we were a League game behind United in match-sharpness as a team, but because we started with Jake Livermore and Niko Kranjcar as a central midfield two.

Livermore is a local lad from Enfield, and has done well in pre-season, but in truth at this moment in time he wouldn’t get anywhere near either Man United or Man City’s squad; regardless of our Europa League games, a loan at a Championship Club chasing for the play-offs may suit his development more.

Most of us, including the Chairman (and hopefully the Manager) would expect come the end of the transfer window we would have a squad from which a fit first-choice XI would compete to win at Old Trafford; but an XI on it’s own is not good enough, and we need to have a squad with at least two quality players per position. We won at the San Siro without our full complement, but our squad is far from complete and it doesn’t always necessarily need an oil-rich backer to improve it.

Liverpool, while clearly paying over the odds with a number of their transfers since January, have also made a couple of very astute signings in the summer, that can be considered good value in the current market: Jose Enrique is one of the best full-backs in the league, and was snapped up for £6m, while Charlie Adam, a player with a streak of competitiveness our midfield is sorely lacking who proved last season he can dictate the pace of any game, both score and make goals, was reportedly signed for £7m. Both of those players would have enhanced our squad, and were comfortably in our pay range, but for whatever reason, we missed out.

Once again yesterday, depressingly, Kranjcar started in central-midfield two. Kranjcar didn’t have his best game at Old Trafford, but played well in both games against Hearts, and has shown in both the Premier League and at International Level he is a quality player, but playing in a two against a Manchester City team that would have two defensive midfielders, plus three players playing between the lines ahead of a central striker was always asking for trouble.      

We started off well though on the ball, and could have twice taken the lead after fluent forward moves, showing signs of the passing and moving demonstrated at Tynecastle ten days earlier. There was no clinical finishing though, and Bale’s spurned opportunity yesterday was particularly disappointing, considering his undoubted ability and confidence. And we were made to pay.

The central midfield highlighted many of the deficiencies in our squad. There was no bite, no tackling, no enforcer, no leadership, and no protection of the defence. And conversely, as Van Der Vaart, the one player of ours who moves between the lines, dropped deep, no midfielder moved into the space he vacated. This lack-lustre midfield performance continued into the second-half when both Huddlestone and Livermore were on, both on their heels when there were opportunities to break into the box.

Both full-backs started off well, Ekotto continuing his improvement as a player, looking comfortable of the ball, and progressing play, and Corluka covering well. But once again as the game wore on Ekotto’s poor defending directly led to the third and fifth goals. By then, of course, the game was already up. Within the space of 100 minutes of football, starting with the first goal at Old Trafford on Monday, the team’s confidence had been shot to pieces.

Bizarrely, while 2-0 down, we had Bale, one of our better players at attacking a ball in the air, staying back on the half-way line to mark Nasri, their only man forward, while we took a corner, with Corluka (admittedly not the quickest) and Ekotto (admittedly on a booking) as two spare men. Perhaps understandable if we winning, but a sign of the fear of being caught on the break again, and a shift in emphasis to avoid a heavy defeat, rather than trying to fight-back.

City have improved dramatically since last season, now with the confidence of a first major trophy in 35 years won and Champions League qualification, in addition to signings that have allowed them to suddenly play with an attacking intent. All of their players are comfortable on the ball, and in Joe Hart, Vincent Kompany, Yaya Toure and Gareth Barry, they had plenty of leaders on the pitch yesterday. And they have De Jong still to come back.

Our confidence will be lifted with the right signings, and as highlighted, they don’t all have to be big-money transfers. Adebayor is a striker that can lead the line on his own, and will complement Van Der Vaart well, although Van Der Vaart’s injury may change the shape of the team in the short-term, unless we play Modric in the hole, or sign someone else who can play that position.

Scott Parker is a leader who started off as a both-footed ball player at Charlton, and adjusted his game early on to become to protect the back-four. Last year’s Player of the Season, we could have done with him last summer, when he initially wanted to come; West Ham wouldn’t sell him to us then, but may be forced to now, and it is a shame that transfer window doesn’t end before the English season starts, or we may not have had the bad start we so far have had.

Another striker would also be welcome; Crouch again looked poor yesterday, Defoe needs to be making runs into the box, and at both Edinburgh and White Hart Lane, Pavlyuchenko has shown he is not at the races at the moment.

Players will have to leave as well, and using Sebastian Bassong in a part-exchange to bring in Gary Cahill would be good business, as Bolton are clearly willing to sell. And there may even be a couple of players brought in that haven’t been widely speculated about, as was the case with Van Der Vaart last August.

Amidst all his verbal diarrhoea and his tactical indifference, Redknapp does seem to recognise what the squad lacks. For him to suddenly start talking up the teams prospects again this season in mid-week suggests he may get some of the players he wants. Characters with a winning mentality are important, as is quality. If we can get that in before the window shuts, while the Chairman continues to show we won’t be bullied by agents, players or other clubs, we will be in a much stronger position when we start against Wolves than our place in the table suggests.

MG

My e-book on Tottenham Hotspur's return to the Champions League is now available on Amazon and Smashwords.

 

Shadow Player

On a particularly rocky ferry ride back from our UEFA Cup exit at the hands of Kaiserslautern in November 1999, I said to a couple of my fellow travelling friends that I believed Spurs had made a mistake missing out on the signing of Robbie Keane; Coventry City had recently bought him from Wolves for £6m and Spurs were reportedly interested in him. There was a strong rumour that the then Spurs Manager George Graham felt the price was too high. As I said at the time, I thought he was exactly what we needed, a young, bright goalscorer who could be as potent to us as Michael Owen was to Liverpool at the time.

I kept an eye on Keane and still thought we may be able to get him from Coventry. He scored 12 goals in 31 appearances for Coventry that season, good for him (and my fantasy football team), with the highlight for me being the televised winner he scored against Arsenal on Boxing day which I saw a few hours (and a few beers) after Spurs had won at home earlier that day.

Within a year his price had more than doubled, and Internazionale bought him for £13 million, but a quick change in management meant although he was popular with Inter fans, he was quickly back in England, snapped up by Leeds United, initially on loan. Even in a big first team squad he continued to get his share of goals (and points for my fantasy team), and I thought it was a good bit of business when we finally signed him in August 2002.

And his record in those six seasons of his first spell at Spurs, the longest spell he had at any one club, will stand the test of time. He scored goals with both feet, linked play well and became a leader in a side that has been notoriously lacking leaders in the last two decades. In those six seasons he scored 108 goals in 254 games, a healthy ratio for a player who also offered a lot more to the side.

Some players have a had good goalscoring records in the Premier League in the past, are adored by the media and end up going to Barcelona, but their stats are exaggerated because they were effectively flat-track bullies; the same can’t be said of Keane. Of those goals he scored for Spurs in his first spell, many of them were valuable and in tight games. He put Spurs in the lead at Old Trafford, Anfield and Highbury, scored last minute equalizers at home against both Arsenal and Chelsea – one a great example of bottle, the other a piece of inspirational skill – as well countless decisive goals in both league and cup.

Some of his finest goals for Spurs include the aforementioned equalizer at Chelsea, as well a wonderful first time finish in his early days at White Hart Lane against Leeds, a couple of great individual finishes home and away against Aston Villa, and a clever goal in an important win against Blackburn as Spurs achieved their highest league finish for 16 seasons. In fact he produced many great moments in those six seasons not even reflected in that goalscoring record, including his work from the left side of midfield that produced our first win against Chelsea for 15 years, and a cracking volley in a friendly against Torino.  

And if there was one performance that showed his genuine quality in those years, despite all his contributions for the club, it was one at international level, when he ran the game for the Republic of Ireland against a full-strength Dutch team at the Amsterdam Arena in 2004, scoring the only goal, in an individual performance of high class. He is now on 51 goals and counting at International level, an impressive record in itself, that includes goals against Spain and Germany at the World Cup Finals, as well as a goal in a European Championship Play-off against France.

But for all his qualities, Keane won’t be held in completely high regard at Spurs because in 2008 he made a very bad footballing decision; although finally settled at a club where he had just won his first trophy, enjoying his life living in Barnet, and being the main man in the Tottenham dressing-room, his head was turned.

At the time it seemed a bizarre decision for him, joining a Liverpool side already being managed erratically by Rafael Benetiz. Perhaps in the knowledge that Berbatov was determined to go, he also thought it was the time to move; he had said in a past Spurs programme Liverpool were his boyhood club, but by now he should have been a Spurs fan as a man; and either sentiment, or a green eye of greater riches, led him to make a decision from which his club career has never recovered.

Had he used a simple bit of cold-eyed analysis of where he thought he might fit into that Liverpool team, which had Steven Gerrard playing in the hole the previous season, it’s possible he may not have moved. But it obviously wasn’t a question he considered, as watching him at his opening press conference for Liverpool was like passing by the window of the barber’s shop when Samson was having his hair cut. As he was unveiled as the club’s new Number 7, following in the club’s great tradition of Michael Robinson, Harry Kewell and Vladimir Smicer, Benetiz said he could see Keane playing on the right or the left, as well as in the middle, which was obviously news to his new signing.

Keane clearly became unhappy very quickly with how Benetiz used him and relations soon broke down. While Keane made the poor decision to go to Anfield in the first place he was treated badly; after scoring a cracking goal away at Arsenal in a 1-1 draw he was then dropped from the squad in the next game, and his starts became rarer. It was said that Benetiz didn’t really want him, although all his comments on the Liverpool website and in the press about Keane when he was still a Tottenham player, clear attempts to unsettle him, suggested otherwise.

Had Keane stayed, Spurs would in all probability not have had the bad start they did to 2008-09 season, as eight new players at the club were struggling to come to terms with the pressure at White Hart Lane, leading to two points in eight games.

In the following January, Harry Redknapp, now the new Spurs manager, bought Keane back to the club on the last day of the transfer window, after another of the clubs re-signings, Jermain Defoe, got injured. (The reasons for Redknapp’s other re-signing that month, Pascal Chimbonda, will probably remain a mystery never to be solved).

The re-signing of Keane was understandable; though a different player than Defoe, both Harry Redknapp and Jamie Redknapp were critical of Benetiz’s handling of him, and the actual transfer fees meant Spurs had made a tidy little profit, almost an example of short-selling on players.

Keane though, was not the same player that left. He showed glimpses of his ability, notably in an assured performance in a midweek game at home to Stoke shortly after he returned, but failed to fully recapture his form. Redknapp started the following season with Defoe and Keane as his first choice pairing, a partnership that was never given enough time under Martin Jol, when both players were at their best. They combined well at times in that first spell, Defoe crossing well from the right, while Keane’s movement in the box could lead to a first time finish. But in their second spell, though it flourished in an excellent team performance at Hull, Keane’s best days were behind him.

New summer signing Peter Crouch emerged with a wonderfully effective performance from the substitutes bench at home to Birmingham on the fourth game of the season as Spurs were top of the league, and the was general astonishment when Keane retained his place against Burnley at the expense of Crouch in the next home game. As it turned out, Keane got four goals, to add to much better hat-tricks he scored at home to Wolves and Everton in his first spell. But it was a one-off.

His confidence had largely been shot. Even more than before he was holding on to the ball longer than he should when he could release players; he hesitated when he had shooting opportunities, and gradually became largely ineffective. Also, and perhaps crucially, he had lost the goodwill of those of us that pay to go and see Spurs week-in, week-out. Had he been playing well and scoring goals, he would have overcome any negativity regarding his desertion, as well as Redknapp’s dissatisfaction about an unauthorised beano in Dublin. But he failed to consistently perform on the pitch.

But recent memories shouldn’t cloud his overall contribution to our history. He may have become a shadow of himself as a player, and we will never know what would have happened if he had showed a bit of loyalty, and turned Liverpool down. (He is now another of a number of players who have left Tottenham in recent years to find that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side.)

Interspersed with loan spells at West Ham and Celtic, he scored a further fifteen goals for Spurs in his second spell, and he is likely to remain as one of the top ten goalscorers in the club’s history for sometime to come. If, as reported, he joins the MLS, no doubt he will enjoy his time in LA; I’m sure I remember reading Galaxy was his favourite chocolate bar as a boy. Wherever he sees his last days out as a player though, he will always be a Spur as a man.

MG

My e-book on Tottenham Hotspur's return to the European Cup for the first time in 49 seasons is now available on Amazon and Smashwords.