On This Day In Spurs History: 3rd September

1988 – On this day in 1988, Paul Gascoigne made his debut for Tottenham against his old club Newcastle at St James’ Park. Gazza was showered with Mars Bars whenever he approached the touchline and to make matters worse, Newcastle took a 2-0 lead.

Gazza’s fellow ex-Magpie Chris Waddle, got Spurs back into it with a volleyed goal, before Terry Fenwick made the score 2-2 with a header.

Spurs Quote Of The Day

“When Gazza came t the Spurs training ground for the first tine, he got the ball, went round eight players as if they were not there and then smashed the ball into the net. Just to see him play like that made the hair stand up on the back of your neck. Everybody stood there and applauded him.” – Terry Venables

Spurs In The News: 3rd September

Michael Dawson tells The Sun that he has the England bug.

In The Mirror, John Toshack helpfully reveals that Spurs received a major bid for Gareth Bale this summer.

The Oh, Ah Daily Star claims that Jermain Defoe will not need surgery.

In The Daily Mail, Rafael van der Vaart wishes for a Champions League game against Real Madrid.

Best Of The Web: 3rd September

The Spoiler has audio of Robbie Savage losing it on 6-0-6 after being accused of buying seven pairs of trainers.

‘Pies proves that women can throw.

If you had asked any Spurs fan what type of player we needed to sign this summer, the majority would have said that we could do with a striker.

Instead we bought a reserve goalkeeper, an ex-Gooner defender, a defensive midfielder and most impressively of all, Rafael van der ‘bloody’ Vaart. The lone striker that we so clearly require remains elusive, but I think that we should just pretend that we got him anyway.

Are any of Jermain Defoe, Peter Crouch, Roman Pavlyuchenko or Robbie Keane particularly suited to playing as a lone striker? Not really, but another way to look at this is to ask whether our midfielders are better suited to a 4-4-2 or a 4-5-1/4-3-3.

With the purchase of Van der Vaart, it’s going to be very difficult to squeeze all our midfield riches into four spots. Assuming that we would play either Palacios or Sandro as a defensive midfielder in away games, that would mean that we would have to pick three players from Van der Vaart, Modric, Kranjcar, Huddlestone, Lennon and Bale, while Bentley, Jenas, Dos Santos and O’Hara would also be kicking their heels.

We’ve got to look at where our strengths are and it’s in the middle of the pitch. We’ve arguably got the best batch of midfielders in the country, so let’s pick five of them and make ourselves very hard to beat.

Van der Vaart has scored 120 goals in 327 senior appearances. The best spell of his career was at Hamburg, where he scored 16, 14 and then 18 goals, over three seasons. That’s as many as any of our strikers are likely to score and we need to play him just behind the front man, rather than out on the flanks.

So who does he play behind? Pavlyuchenko is the player that I think could be the best in the role, but whether he could really be bothered is another matter. It takes hard work to be a lone striker, which is not exactly his forte and he tends to run hot and cold.

Defoe’s hold up play has got much better and he could do a job for us at home. When you consider that he rarely scores away anyway, it wouldn’t make much difference if we didn’t play him too often, when on the road.

Crouch’s problem as a lone striker is the fact that he’s too slow and immobile. However, if you played him up front with fast players like Lennon, Dos Santos or Bale on the flanks, then it would take a very brave defence to push up high, to take advantage of Crouch’s slowness. When we were forced to play with just Crouch up front against Stoke, Bale and Lennon both had effective games.

So that’s three options. None of them are brilliant, but if we choose horses for courses and rotate them according to form and injury, then it would allow our star midfielders to shine. The loser in this rationale is Robbie Keane, who is better suited to playing deep, but you can’t help but feel that his Spurs career is more or less over anyway.

We know exactly what we can and can’t do with 4-4-2. Van der Vaart’s signing means that Harry surely has no choice but to take a look at what a different formation can offer.

It’s a shame that we don’t have a Fabiano, Huntelaar or even a Gyan to really put the cherry on the cake, but what can you do? Let’s make the best of what we’ve got until the summer, when we can start dreaming of the striker that will make all our dreams come true.

On This Day In Spurs History: 2nd Sepetember

1977 – On this day in 1977, Frederic Kanoute was born. Kanoute was signed for Spurs from West Ham in 2003 and played 73 times, scoring 21 goals, before joining Sevilla for 6.5m Euros. Kanoute has subsequently been a huige success in Spain, scoring far more goals than he ever managed in England or France.

Spurs Quote Of The Day

“I suppose that will be my epitaph at Spurs: he was always talking about injuries.” – Gerry Francis

Spurs In The News: 2nd September

The Sun highlights the fact that Rafael van der Vaart was talking up a move to United a couple of weeks ago.

The Daily Mail reveals that Robbie Keane turned down an £8m move to Besiktas. There goes our last chance of getting any decent money on him.

The Guardian reports on Jonathan Woodgate missing the cut in our 25-man squad.

The Independent pointedly uses inverted commas around the words ‘computer error’.

Best Of The Web: 2nd September

I take a look at some brutal amateur football fouls for Betfair Football.

‘Pies has a list of the 10 best selling football shirts in the world.

Dirty Tackle features footage of a Greek player getting sent off and then giving the player he fouled some extra punishment.

As the minute hand of the transfer deadline clock clicks away, it looks as though we might again have left things too late and will be left disappointed when the window closes.

This has been a familiar feeling over the years, as our chairman Daniel Levy attempts to buy players for the least amount of money possible. You can argue over the merits of this tactic, but it certainly annoys some Spurs fans. In fact, one has become so disillusioned that he has gone to the effort to amend the Wikipedia page for ‘Brinkmanship’, to include a reference to Daniel Levy (it wasn’t me). It’s now been taken down by the moderators, but I managed to grab this before they cleaned things up:

On This Day In Spurs History: 31st August

1960 – On this day in 1960, the eventual Double winners defeated Blackpool at White Hart Lane. Bobby Smith scored a hat-trick as Tottenham ran out as 3-1 winners.

Spurs Quote Of The Day

“I read in the papers that Terry Neill says he’s going to put the joy back in Spurs’ football. What’s he going to do – give them bloody banjos?” – Eddie Bailey

Spurs In The News: 31st August

The Sun thinks that we will make a final bid for Scott Parker today.

The Mirror claims that we will make a move for ex-Gooner Emmanuel Adebayor.

The Daily Mail breaks the annual transfer deadline news, that we have missed out on the signing of Huntelaar.

The Guardian has a number of funny Photoshopped pictures of Gareth Bale.

The Independent links us with the signing of Sulley Muntari.

Best Of The Web: 31st August

Dirty Tackle has footage of Neymar’s pants.

Former Spur Rohan Ricketts, reveals what it’s like to be a footballer on transfer deadline day, for The Sabotage Times.

For anyone that’s ever seen Tim Lovejoy on television, heard him on the radio, or read his work, it’s patently obvious that he knows absolutely nothing about football.

This isn’t a crime in itself, unless you’ve been coining a living off the back of the beautiful game for many years. Tim Lovejoy is the sort of nouveau football supporter who stands out as clueless even amongst Chelsea’s band of ‘devotees’.

If you want evidence, check out this entry from Lovejoy’s Twitter feed, that appeared during the recent Champions League draw. It’s not the most uneducated thing that anyone’s ever said about football, but it’s quite probably the most stupid thing written by someone who has presented 6-0-6.

They scored their one goal, but we just forgot to hit our nine.

Harry Redknapp has stated that this defeat wasn’t due to a Champions League hangover. I don’t think that our players were tired from the midweek shenanigans, but it certainly seemed to have left the crowd subdued.

The atmosphere in the stands was as muted as the performance on the pitch. I don’t think though that this mindset is anything to do with a sense of entitlement and belief that teams like Wigan should be swept aside. Before the game my mates and I were expressing doubts over whether we’d win. They hadn’t got a point yet, after all. Who better to play in that situation than Spurs?

Can you imagine Scum fans saying that? Of course not. We might be in the Champions League, but it’ll be a while before we can approach any game without caution. The old Spurs mindset is alive and well.

On the pitch what we lacked was invention, or to put it another way, Luka Modric. They were sitting back and making sure that their defence wasn’t as full of holes as last season and we had no answer to the sheer weight of numbers. It was the same old story of last term, when we failed to break down Stoke, Wolves and Hull.

I can’t help but think that we’d actually do better in these situations with one less striker and one extra midfielder. Transfer deadline day is almost upon us and we have still not rectified the fact that we are outnumbered in midfield, in practically every game we play.

We had one decent chance in the first half, when Defoe’s shot was pushed away. Most of our attacks came down the left hand side, with Gareth Bale looking impressive once more.

I think though that we’re in danger of becoming over-reliant on Bale. Aaron Lennon kept popping up on the left and the reason was that very little of our play was coming down his right flank. Bale is currently in much better form that Lennon, but that’s not going to change unless we make sure to vary the way we attack.

In the second half Redknapp brought off Crouch for Pavlyuchenko, with Bale dropping to left back and Kranjcar on the left of midfield. Though the intention was to give us more attacking thrust, it actually had the opposite effect. Bale wasn’t half as involved as he’d been, while Kranjcar looked rusty.

As we pushed forward to make a breakthrough, holes started to appear at the back. First they missed a sitter, before volleying over the bar. When Wigan’s third chance presented itself, they were not so wasteful. Hugo Rodallega was given far too much space down the right and his drilled shot found it’s way past Cudicini.

It was a poor effort from the goalkeeper, who appeared to have crisp packets attached to his wrists, rather than hands. Cudicini hardly covered himself in glory with his performances for Spurs prior to his motorcycle accident, so it’s little surprise that he made this blunder. He’s not going to come back from that sort of incident as a better player and it’s obvious that he needs to be replaced as Gomes’ backup.

After that goal went in, we should have been given a penalty for a handball in the box, but that’s clutching at straws. Kranjcar tested the keeper and Kaboul missed a sitter with his head, but we really should be creating more chances.

The result is a setback rather than a disaster. We just can’t beat teams that don’t want to attack, but as we haven’t really improved our squad over the summer, why wouldn’t we be experiencing the exact same problems of last season.

All eyes will be on Sky Sports News for the next couple of days. If we don’t get the right player(s) in, then we can’t really expect to progress.

Tottenham Hotspur v Wigan Athletic

Don | MySpace Video

On This Day In Spurs History: 30th August

1969 – On this day in 1969, Spurs were in action at home against Ipswich Town. Tottenham took a 3-0 lead with goals from Alan Mullery, Alan Gilzean and Jimmy Greaves, before the visitors pulled it back to 3-2 with strikes from Ron Wigg and Colin Viljoen. Though Ipswich searched for an equaliser, Spurs held on to edge a win.

Spurs Quote Of The Day

“We have no desire just to be a football club. That is not the basis for success.” – Paul Bobroff, former chairman of Tottenham PLC a few years prior to the club owing the Midland Bank about £20m.

Spurs In The News: 30th August

The Sun reckons that AC Milan have told us that they will not let Huntelaar join Spurs on loan and we must pay for a permanent deal.

They also think that Stoke are ready to pay £7m for Jermaine Jenas.

The Mirror claims that we will make a last gasp bid for Luis Fabiano.

The Daily Mail reports that Villa have yet to receive a bid for Ashley Young.

But the Daily Express expects Spurs to make a £15m bid for the winger before tomorrow.

Best Of The Web: 30th August

Dirty Tackle reports on Jermain Defoe’s silly hair.

101 Great Goals features Harry going nuts after being described as a ‘wheeler dealer’.

Welcome to a new feature at TottenhamBlog. Every Premier League weekend I will go head to head against Betfair’s Andy Gray, the BBC’s Mark Lawrenson and The Sun’s Jeff Stelling, to correctly predict Tottenham’s results.

The scoring system will work like this. One point for getting the result right and three points for getting the correct score. Here’s our predictions for the Wigan game.

TottenhamBlog: 2-0

Andy Gray: 2-0

Mark Lawrenson: 3-0

Jeff Stelling: 3-1

When Roman Pavlyuchenko came on against Young Boys the other night, the crowd immediately started the Super Pav song.

The chant made me feel sorry for Peter Crouch. At the time he had scored twice and by the end of the game he had claimed his hat-trick, but there was no singing of his name.

Along with a few others, Crouch is one of the players who we don’t have a song for. You never even hear something as uninspired as ‘There’s only one Peter Crouch’.

I know that he’s a player that divides a lot of people, but surely we should be singing in appreciation of anyone who scores a hat-trick? Or are we all big Abbie Clancy fans and still upset with Crouchie for his philandering ways?

This is the man who got us into the Champions League with his goal against Manchester City, before putting in a great performance on Wednesday. It wasn’t just the goals. Crouch was all over the place and tracked back to make several good tackles.

But that still wasn’t enough to get the fans singing and instead we were busy praising another striker. What has Pavlyuchenko really done at Spurs to warrant one song, let alone the two that we have for him? ‘Super Pav’? It should be ‘Occasionally super, but generally can’t be bothered, Pav’.