Tottenham Hotspur FC 2013/14

[EJG1980]

Yeah, I saw EL had gone and agree he always put in the effort and that rabona goal against Arsenal and the previous one he did in the Europa League showed the quality he had. But.......................he never quite delivered as a midfield play maker and never produced the numbers of goals he perhaps should have done.

Injury issues were likely a big part of that so getting in a new younger player with the potential to develop into the sort of player Spurs need in the midfield was not unexpected.

Yup, I'm sad to see him go but the squad needs refreshing and shaking up and that means moving on players who have been here for a while (that you know have almost certainly reached the limit of their potential) and replacing them with fresh blood.

Another departure today as we've just announced that Toby Alderweireld has been sold, moving to a club in Qatar.

https://www.tottenhamhotspur.com/news/2021/july/toby-departs-for-qatar/

An absolutely magnificent defender at his peak, I don't think I've seen a better defensive partnership at Spurs than when Jan and Toby were together the first 2-3 years that he was here. He's still a great defender but injuries and age have affected him the part few years and he's not quite the player he was, so I think that like Lamela, it's a good time for him to move on.

There's a young defender we've been heavily linked with that I REALLY hope we're going to sign, a deal possibly imminent, but I'm not going to mention him in case I jinx it If we get him though, it carries on the summer theme of letting long time players leave and replacing them with young players with big potential.

If Dele Ali doesn't produce something approaching his best form this year under the new manager I can see him being offloaded before the end of he season likewise.

According to the latest Spurs news video from Alasdair Gold on YouTube, Dele Alli and Steven Bergwijn both turned up to pre-season in phenomenal shape, and have really impressed Nuno in pre-season training with their work ethic. Hopefully it shows the penny is dropping with Dele that he needs to get back to his best or he may be on his way out of Spurs, and probably not for a team higher on the totem pole.

[EJG1980]

All this Kane stuff has been fun, hasn't it?

Pretty disappointed with Harry, to be honest, I thought that if there was one player who wouldn't pull weasely stunts to try and get out of a club, that would act like an adult and a professional, it'd be him.

I have zero problem with any player who wants to leave the club, zero, but the way a player conducts themselves in trying to secure that move away...

Christian Eriksen did it the right way. Openly and honestly said in an interview that he wanted a new challenge and would be looking to move. The club tell him that they don't want him to leave but if they get an offer matching their valuation, then he can go, if no offer comes, he's obviously free to leave at the end of his contract.

Eriksen trains and plays like a normal professional, respects his contract, eventually Inter come up with a fee we deem suitable and off he goes. No sulking, no leaking stories to the press, no disrespecting the lucrative contract he signed of his own free will, just two sides acting like adults and parting amicably in the end.

Kane has now put out a statement saying that, among other thing like being upset by all the comments being made about him at the moment, says "While I won't go into the specifics of the situation, I want to clarify that I would never, and have never, refused to train. I will be returning to the club tomorrow, as planned."

Quite frankly, I don't believe it. The press started reporting on Monday that he was meant to be back in training and hadn't turned up. They've been running daily "Kane no-shows again," "Kane Still AWOL," stories all week. If that was me, and it wasn't true, I'm not waiting five days before I put out a statement denying it, it's going out within five minutes of reading those stories! I don't wait five days while my professional reputation is being shredded by "false" stories.

The club themselves would also have instantly shot down a story like this if it's not true. Five minutes to put a post on Twitter / the club web site saying "Harry has permission to be away from the club until such and such date, the current stories in the press are false." Nuno, when asked about it after the Chelsea friendly, would simply have said there was no problem rather than saying no comment, it'll all be dealt with in private.

So to me his statement reads like a cop out, he thought Man City were more interested in him than they were, he's seen that we're not budging on valuation, and it's a tentative rowing back of his position as he's worried that it looks like he might not be getting his move.

I think the most disappointing thing is that even if he stays (which is looking a distinct possibility) a lot of Spurs fans will now never be able to feel quite the same about him, some of the magic will be gone, and that’s a bloody shame. I won’t crucify anyone for ****ing up once, but I think that IF he stays, there needs to be some contrition and apology to the fans, his teammates and manager, for the way he went about things.

But enough of the crap stuff, on to the good stuff…

[EJG1980]

There's a young defender we've been heavily linked with that I REALLY hope we're going to sign, a deal possibly imminent, but I'm not going to mention him in case I jinx it If we get him though, it carries on the summer theme of letting long time players leave and replacing them with young players with big potential.

Yes! This is the man I wanted

https://www.tottenhamhotspur.com/news/2021/august/romero-signs-from-atalanta/

Excellent signing, top top (copyright Harry Redknapp) young defender. Voted defender of the season in Serie A last season, a great tournament for Argentina helping them with the Copa America in the summer, I can’t think of another (realistic) centerback I’d rather have signed.

Hopefully we get another new signing to go alongside him in the centre of our defence, but this is a fantastic first step in rebuilding our back line.

[fallenangle]

Yes, saw that deal for Romero had been done. Sounds like a good buy even at the price.

Still a lot of stuff going on around HK - my guess is that he is not going to go to MC because they seem to have their wallets out for other, foreign, players and may not have enough for the price being asked for him.

PSG + Poch may still be a possibility but like you said a long time ago I think we could still have HK at the end of the summer/start of the season. Whether he is going to be happy about it and that have a knock on effect on his performance we'll just have to see.

[EJG1980]

Pretty much any outcome for the Kane situation wouldn't surprise me. Well, okay, Kane coming out and saying "I apologise for everything, I've changed my mind, I'll sign a new contract that lasts until I'm 40! Spurs for life!" would surprise me

But any realistic outcome wouldn't be much of a surprise: us thinking that keeping a disruptive Kane is more trouble than it's worth, so we reluctantly lower our asking price; Man City deciding that they can't afford not to have a new striker so reluctantly match our valuation; Neither Man City or Spurs budging so Kane has to stay at least one more season.

For what it's worth, I think that if he did stay I expect he'd have a season to his usual high standards. He'll want to be in good form going into the next World Cup, he'll want to keep reducing the gap to Alan Shearer's goalscoring record, and he won't want any of his potential suitors to think he's gone off the boil by having a bad season. A la Modric when he was desperate to go to Chelsea in 2012, threw his toys out of the pram during pre-season, but we refused to sell and then he went on to have what was probably his best season for us before leaving the next summer.

I've seen a few articles saying that our plan this summer is to buy one top quality new striker if Kane stays, and two if he leaves. Breaking story this afternoon saying we've had a bid accepted for a very good striker, and I'm going to go down the Cristian Romero route again and not mention the name for fear of jinxing it

But if we do get this guy, and then start getting seriously linked to more strikers, I'd start erring towards Kane being off.

[EJG1980]

Only a friendly so meaningless in the grand scheme of things, but you never turn down a win against Arsenal. Quite an entertaining match for a pre-season game, and a deserved win for us, majority of the match we were the better team.

One long range effort from Lacazette that clipped the outside of the post aside, all the good chances were for us. A one-on-one for Son that their keeper blocked, Dele hitting the post in both halves with chances where you thought it'd be easier to score, and a shot from Reguilion that went inches wide are the ones I can remember off the top of my head. And, of course, we did eventually manage to put the ball in the net, excellent work from Tanganga in the build up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmSVoTrlxGg

The thing I liked most about the match though was when Bukayo Saka came on for Arsenal and he got a huge round of applause from all the Spurs fans. Good to see rivalries put aside to oppose the kind of disgusting and pathetic abuse he and other England players received after the Euro 2021 final. Nice banner in the south stand too:

[fallenangle]

Managed to find the highlights of the Arsenal match online yesterday.

Looked like we played well, Lucas Moura, whose been one of my favourite Spurs' players since he was bought, played particularly well.

Bit worried about DA and those missed chances - hitting the post or just missing by inches seems to have become a feature of his game.

That work from Tanganga in the build up was superb; strength plus determination winning the ball and not just stopping, running into the space to make the lay off for the goal. More of that please.

[EJG1980]

Great stuff, well done Spurs, a brilliant way to start the season. A well deserved win and an excellent performance.

Man City were well on top for the first fifteen minutes, but that was our only sticky period of the match. Once we came through that I’d say it was 50/50 for the rest of the first half, we gave as good as we got.

Second half was excellent, we started really well and were the better team for a good twenty five minutes. Gary Neville even said on commentary that it was the reverse of the usual situation with Spurs dictating and Man City being the team under pressure looking to hit on the break.

Great goal by Son, and sooooo close to making it 2-0 with Bergwijn, would have been lovely for him and his confidence if he had put that away, but luckily it didn’t matter.

Final fifteen minutes Man City started pushing more but it certainly wasn’t back to the wall stuff, pretty much no heart in mouth amazing chances for them. We saw the game out superbly well and were still attacking and causing City problems. Excellent win.

Everyone played very well today, hard to single people. I’ll mention a few though Dier and Sanchez deserve a shout out as I’ve often felt they’re not quite good enough but they were both superb today. Lucas Moura was excellent and caused Man City loads of problems. Great showing from Skipp in such a big match.

Man of the match though goes to Tanganga, brilliant display from him. Up against Grealish and Sterling and he did brilliantly, went fully into every battle and came out on top. He contribution going forwards was excellent too. He spent his youth career as a centre back but Mourinho said he felt his future was at right back, and it looks like he could be spot on with that observation.

Lovely for Nuno to get off to a winning start too, set up the team just right and they looked fit and really well motivated. Did it without any new signings starting or Kane either. Incredibly early days, just one match, but you can’t ask for a better start.

[fallenangle]

Yep, great win.......I was dipping in and out of it on R5L expecting MC to equalise at the very least and then it never happened.......yay!.

Lucas Moura again sounded to be and looked on MotD top notch.

Excellent start and I hope it gives Spurs the confidence to play like that more. But...................if a few of those MC players had been a little more clinical or just up to speed in front of goal, particularly during that first 15 minutes it could have been a very different result.

[EJG1980]

A bit of a disappointment last night but that's the risk you take with a heavily rotated squad. None of the eleven players who started the match against Man City even made the trip.

I don't blame the youngsters who played at all, for many of them it was easily the highest level match they've ever played. I also give a bit of leeway to the new signings who are settling in to a new club and country.

I was most disappointed with the experienced players who started, Winks, Lo Celso, Davies, Doherty, etc.. They should be the ones putting in steady, professional performances, helping guide the inexperienced youngsters through the match, and trying to impress Nuno to move them up the pecking order in the squad. Very lacklustre and sloppy performances from all of them though.

Still, I'd be very surprised if we don't have enough to turn around the 1-0 deficit in the home leg next week. With no travel involved, and a home match in the Premier League the weekend after, I think we'll put out a stronger team next week.

[fallenangle]

Excellent; who says Spurs can't hold onto a one goal lead?

Continued good start to the season and the manager must be particularly pleased with both that and the result today.

[EJG1980]

Yes! Two wins from two. Didn’t manage to catch the match today as none of the, ahem, perfectly legal streams were working to an acceptable level, so just ended up sitting in the garden with the cats and keeping updated via Twitter. Very civilised

From the tweets it sounded like we had quite a few good chances in the second half, when in the first we had virtually nothing aside from the penalty. Even got a twenty minute appearance from Harry Kane! Slightly worrying that he came on for “a not moving freely” Son, but hopefully it was a minor knock / precautionary sub rather than any kind of serious injury.

[EJG1980]

Well that puts that to bed for a year at least. Was getting very bored with it all so I'm glad we won't have the monotonous "Will he or won't he leave???" talk for the remaining six and a half days of this transfer window. Hopefully we can have a good enough season that he stays longer than for just one more year too.

Almost as bad as the constant speculation was the fact that so much of the media seemed to portray this as "Poor Man City, why can't Spurs just do what they want? Stop being stubborn, do the right thing and let Kane go."

I've got two words for that and they rhyme with cluck and cough

He's our best player, he has three years left on his contract, we don't want to sell him. There is nothing for Spurs to negotiate. It's up to Man City to put in an offer that's impossible to refuse and change Spurs' mind; if you want the player that badly, pay up. It boggles my mind that anyone could argue any differently.

I should mention that I have seen the occasional journalist pointing this out over the past couple of weeks, so well done to those that did, for demonstrating they have a bit of common sense.

Edit: League Cup draw tonight, we got Wolves away in the third round. Not the most exciting of draws!

[fallenangle]

Good result last night. Just watched the highlights and it seemed we had plenty of chances to make it more than 3-0.

Two for HK to add to the encouraging performances from some of our less used players and new-boy Bryan Gil in particular.

[EJG1980]

My first match back at the stadium since 4th March last year against Norwich. Funnily enough that was a cup match against a team in yellow and green too, but thankfully we had a better outcome this time

I thought that Bryan Gill might be getting a few mentions after last night. A eye catching performance full of promise. I can definitely see him forcing his way into the starting eleven in the Premier League if he keeps up this level of performance in the cups. It’s not the most prestigious of competitions but the Europa Conference League could turn out to be quite useful in that regard.

The draw for the group stage is this afternoon. As always, my main hope is to avoid energy sapping and time consuming travel; I’d prefer stronger opponents closer to home than weaker opponents that are in the far flung reaches of Europe.

Europa Conference draw:

Tottenham Hotspur
Stade Rennais (France)
Vitesse (Netherlands)
NS Mura (Slovenia)

Well I got pretty much exactly what I wanted with that draw! Stade Rennais and Vitesse are two of the better teams in the competition; still teams we should be beating, but definitely decent sides who need to be respected and taken seriously. I expect Stade Rennais will be the toughest challenge, they have a couple of very good young players (Jeremy Doku and Eduardo Camavinga) and who are bound to end up at big name clubs within the next few years.

Nice quick journeys to France and the Netherlands though, and even Slovenia isn't bad, a couple of hours flight time, same as a trip to Italy. No having to worry about a 2,000 mile trip to some far flung destination a couple of days before an important Premier League match.