Tottenham Hotspur FC

I got sent this from a pal who supports another team.

“Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp has blasted Premier League players for being too pampered, claiming many players from the top flight would not have survived 20 years ago and need to ‘toughen up’”

Who could Reders possibly mean?

Oh that’s all of them.

Harry Redknapp sees no reason why new captain Robbie Keane and Jermain Defoe cannot form a lethal partnership for Tottenham second time around.

Probably because it didn’t work last time mate.

The little and slightly smaller pair have had plenty of opportunities to hit it off as a pairing but it just didn’t happen.

A lot will depend on the we play. We’ve been going from back to front more directly of late. This clearly won’t suit them as anyone who saw us when Robbo used to lump the length of the pitch over the we ones heads.

But Harry hasn’t said anything about the way we’re going to play being the reason Keane and Defoe will be dangerous together. Instead it comes down to, "I wanted them both, I know them and they are good players - good players can always play together."

We wish it was true but if that was the case England would function perfectly with fat Frank and badge kisser Gerrard in midfield. We all know how that one has gone.

Hopefully Redknapp is the man to make it work.

I for one am keeping them crossed.

He is little though.

So ‘Arry’s given Keano the armband?

Not a bad idea.

Woody was the stand in captain when Deadly doesn’t play. You’d imagine he’d still boss from the back. Giving Robbie the captaincy means we’ll have a leader a bit further up the pitch.

"If Robbie has something to say, he is going to say it," stated Redknapp. "He is a leader and has the personality to be a captain of Tottenham."

Good. But to be fair as long as we beat the a*se at the weekend Harry’s missus can do the coin toss.

It’s an easy thing to imply after the transfer window but I hope Bendy comes good. Until he joined us he was a feared, accomplished Premier League striker. I don’t see him as ‘a Spurs player’ but he tries hard and made this move with the best intentions. I feel we as a club have let him down as often as he’s let us down in front of goal.

Harry’s words wouldn’t fill me with confidence if I were Darren. The boss said, "If Darren plays as he did on Saturday then he's going to be very important to us." Hardly a ringing endorsement.

The injury to Jermaine Defoe should provide Bent with enough opportunities to prove his worth and secure himself a move to a club better suited to his talents.

It just remains to be seen if the Bent we see is.



Or he can get back to this sort of form.



Go on Dazza prove them wrong.

Robbie’s back. Yup, somehow someway we’ve signed Robbie Keane from Liverpool for £ 5million less than we sold him for.

Now that’s mental.

For the Spurs squad this has to be good news. Keano is one of the players ‘Arry has been saying we lack. Someone with character a bit of drive and prepared to stand up and be counted (sorry I ran out of clichés).

One question. What the Fratton is Jermaine Defoe going to think? The reason he left us in the first place was because he was behind Keane in the pecking order. The reason Keane left the scousers was because he hardly completed a game. Now history is bound to repeat itself.

I don’t care as long as we get closer to the heights we reached when they were both firing for us.

Welcome back Robbie, Jermaine and Pascal, hopefully your second coming will be more successful than David Pleat’s.

Here’s a round up of all the goings on over the last four weeks.

INS: Jermaine Defoe (Portmouth, £15.75m), Wilson Palacios (Wigan, £14m subject to work permit), Carlo Cudicini (free from Chelsea), Pascal Chimbonda (undisc. from Sunderland), Robbie Keane (£15m from Liverpool).

OUTS: Charlie Daniels (free to Leyton Orient), Kevin-Prince Boateng (loan to Borussia Dortmund), Paul Stalteri (free to Borussia Monchengladbach), David Button (loan to Bournemouth), Troy Archibald-Henville (loan to Exeter City), Hossam Ghaly (undisc, Al-Nasr), Cesar Sanchez (free to Valencia).

Who says you can’t go back? Jermaine Defoe’s return home has produced goals, now we’ve invited Pascal back into the fold. He was a solid citizen for us when he played, he’s excellent in the air, a goal threat at times and can put in a cross. Our only problem with him was he’s such a mercenary.

Hopefully his experience at Sunderland has shown him that playing regularly in a team challenging for trophies isn’t such a bad thing. Maybe now he can put his gloves on, role his sleeves up and enjoy it for crying out loud.

Repay our faith Pascy.

What a cracking bit of business. Carlo Cudicini was arguably the best keeper in the league a few years ago. Then the small club in Fulham bought the best goalie in the world and Carlo took a seat. The bloke is exactly what we need at the moment, especially with Gomez injured. As it stands we have the best goalkeeping pairing in the league.

Hopefully this acquisition will make us more solid. If we can get firing up front again we could be ok.

COYS.

‘Spurs are on their way to Wembley (boom boom) Tottenham’s going to do it again’. We didn’t deserve it though. Burnley outplayed us in both games, if it wasn’t for that incredible 45 minutes at White Hart Lane where Burnley imploded we would have been humiliated. Well more humiliated anyway.

Harry’s outburst after the game will gain some column inches. I’m undecided as to the rights and wrongs of it. One thing’s for sure, that was not good enough. But for a bit more composure in front of goal, demonstrated by our expensive strikers and lacking from Burnley, we were out.

I show Pav little respect but he did it again, scoring another important goal and he showed a few touches that may make me stop calling him Pile-of-wanko, I don’t understand how he does it but I like it.

Ho hum at least we are one game away from retaining our cup.

‘They can’t stop them the boys from Tottenham the boys from White Hart Lane.’

Check out the robbery below.


Watch Burnley vs Spurs in Sports Online  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

We’ve signed Wilson Palacios from Wigan for £12 million. At a tmie when the whole world has run out of money doesn’t that seem a lot? Don’t get me wrong he looks a good player and could do a job across the whole of the midfield. He has good energy and should sure up our powder puff midfield but 12 mill?

He’s 24 which is a good age and Harry clearly rates him.
"Palacios is a player I have liked since I first saw him, and he has the ability to go on to become a top, top player.”

"I just like the way he plays. He is an all-round modern midfielder - he gets after it, he is box-to-box.”

I just hope he’s right.

Stone the blooming crows news is in that Spurs are going to freeze the price of season tickets for two years. The headline should have been ‘Football Club Doesn’t Go Out Of Their Way To Fleece Fans Shocker’.

We’re still splashing the cash but we aren’t looking to recoup it from the fans. In these times of global recession this move is unheard of.

Deadly Ledley King looks like he’ll live to play a few more games for us. I feared the worse when he hobbled off against Portsmouth but the hamstring injury isn’t as bad as first feared. It looks like Pav will be ok as well. He went down pretty hard at the weekend but it was only a kick and he’ll be available for selection against Burnley.

If our squad is as bad as ‘Arry says we can’t afford to miss player of that calibre. I’m not entirely convinced by Super Roman but he scores goals and not just the third goal in a four nil win but openers and winners in tight games so the more he plays for us the better.

Get well soon boys.

There are few Premiership fixtures that offer as many reunions as this. Half the Pompey team have done a job for us at some point in their career including ourSol. Most of the Pompey backroom staff were brought in by Arry, who we nicked off the south coasters, and of course we just bought little Jermain back from them.

I can’t see there being a problem with the banter from the fans. We’ll never get over the betrayal and the Pompey fans will have something to say to Defoe and Redknapp but it’ll all be fairly good natured.

As for the game itself put your house on Jermain to re-open his Spurs account. Pompey are habitually rubbish at the Lane and a win would move us up 7 places. A loss is out of the question, if we are bottom after this weekend then it really is squeaky bum time.

Prediction I think it’ll be 2-1, we won’t keep a clean sheet but the 1 goal head start called Jermain Defoe should keep us just out of reach.

So we’ve got United away in the fourth round of the cup. Errr…shit. When we get to the quarter finals onwards you kind of expect a big name but this we don’t need.

Hopefully as it’s so early in the competition the Mancs won’t send out their strongest team, but you wouldn’t put it past the gaffer to send out a below strength either.

Oh well maybe our cup pedegriee will see us through, but saying that the reds have a bit of previous in the big knock out competitions. European Champions anyone?
FA Cup fourth round draw:

Liverpool v Everton
Manchester United v Tottenham
Hull v Millwall
Sunderland v Blackburn
Hartlepool v West Ham
Sheffield United v Charlton
Cardiff v Arsenal
Portsmouth v Swansea
Chelsea v Ipswich
Cheltenham or Doncaster v Aston Villa
West Brom v Burnley
Torquay v Coventry
Kettering v Fulham
Watford v Crystal Palace
Derby v Nottingham Forest
Wolves v Middlesbrough

Do you get the feeling ‘Arry is trying to distance himself from the predicament we’ve found ourselves in?

After the Wigan game he piped up saying, "At the moment we have some players who cost this football club a lot of money and they need to be better for the team,"

"They are supposed to be quality players - and they have got to show that on the football pitch.” "If you look at our results - two points from eight games - it cannot always be the manager's fault, can it?"

Don’t get me wrong the blokes got a point. We have some prima donnas and pretty boys who have gone missing when most needed. There’s a handful of players who seem up for it when the chips are down which isn’t good enough.

But my beef with Redknapp is he said similar things when he went to Southampton and Portsmouth saying the squads were much worse than he anticipated suggesting there’s little he could do as he can’t work miracles. When he arrived at Spurs and got off to the best start of any manager in beards he was bigging up the players saying he can’t believ we were in this position. Now things aren’t going right for us it’s become, “it cannot always be the manager's fault, can it?"

Hopefully the rant was for the players sake rather than creating a ready made excuse in case things don’t go well for us.

I had to post this again. Only because it’s the best thing ‘Arry’s ever done.

So we’ve loaned out the crown Prince until the end of the season. At the moment it looks like a good bit of business but I hope this isn’t the last we’ll see of him. Remember he’s only 21 and showed glimpses of the player he could be. The likes of Kevin-Prince, Taarabt, Bostock and Giovani should be the future of the club rather than spending over the odds for similar players in a few years. They may not be doing it for us at the moment but, and I hate to say it, those lot up the road wouldn’t have them anywhere near their first team until they were ready.

By the sounds of things this move could go permanent. The stuff Boateng has been saying suggests he’s glad to get out of White Hart Lane.

"I am delighted to be back at a German club and to be able to speak German again. I am filled with all possible emotions that have to do with happiness and am relieved that the transfer pushed through,"

Clearly the lad needs to play football to improve so sitting on the Spurs bench may not be the best place for him but if he does mature over the next few months we should have him back.

So long sweet Kevin-Prince and good luck in Germany. Hopefully we’ll see you soon. You do have silly hair and bad ink though.

According to ‘Arry someone has come in with an offer for Hilario. Three months ago that would have been the best news we could hope for but the keepers performances over the last ten games or so have been consistent. We aren’t conceding as many goals, although we couldn’t hit an aircraft hanger with a ukulele, and Gomes has put in a few man of the match performances, especially against Liverpool and United when they came to the Lane.

Surely it’s no coincidence that Gomes’ rebirth started with the arrival of Tony Parks as our goalkeeping coach. So special mention should go to him. Parks is doing significantly better than Sir Les who was brought in as our forwards coach. Since the big man came in our goals have dried up.

Maybe we could send him on a scouting mission. But then again…

Little Jermaine is back, yippee. We’ve been chanting his name since the day he left and didn’t even mind when he scored against us.

The numbers involved are a bit confusing. We sold Defoe for £9 million, bought him back for about £15 million and the word on the street is Pompey hasn’t even paid us yet.  To be fair I don’t care as long as Jermain scores a shed load of goals and has learnt the off side rule.

Hopefully the wee one will be with us for a while now. Like Martin Jol said in 2006, "There's no problem with Jermain. I wouldn't swap him for Miss World - he would probably swap me for Miss World though"

Welcome back son.

Bad news Spurs fans. Alan Hutton could be out for months with a recurrence of the injury that delayed his start to the season. The ex ‘Ger was good for us from January when he joined to the end of the season. I for one thought him and Bale would prove to be the outstanding fullbacks in the league this year. But since his injury he’s struggled to regain his form and now he’s out for another long spell.

Harry’s not confident of a swift return with an operation in the offing, "It's the same injury that kept him out at the start of the year and they decided not to operate and it seems to have flared up again."

Hutton underwent a scan at the start of the week and our specialists have confirmed Al requires surgery that will keep him sidelined for up to five months.

Get well soon son.

People have been saying that the loss of Berbatov would affect our striking options this year. And it’s come true in a round about way. Even though we’re finding the net more regularly this season with our front men chipping with more than their fair share of goals the sulkin’ Bulkan has still stitched us up somehow.

The reds will be without Berba for a few games and his absence coupled with united drawing blanks in their last two games has alerted manc’s manager and part time hairdryer he may not have as much depth up front as he once thought. Just when he’s showing he could be a useful squad striker for us sir red nosed reindeer is talking about recalling Fraizer Campbell.

Typical.

The lad has scored three goals in three games for us and is a real threat off the bench and good enough to be trusted with a start. At a time when we’re missing Dos Santos we can ill afford to lose the boy Campbell as well.

Let’s hope it’s just paper talk or early mind games ahead of their visit to the Lane next month.

The word on the street is that the interlopers from up the road are having a few internal struggles. In an attempt to deflect attention from his piss poor captaincy Billy Gallas spilt the beans claiming that players are being disrespectful when he confronts them. "I am trying to defend myself a bit without giving names. Otherwise I'm taking it all (the blame). It's very frustrating"

We say diddums. Best of all it nearly went off at half time when the scummers played us. "There was a problem at halftime. The only thing that I could say at halftime was 'Guys, we resolve these problems after the match, not at halftime." You can imagine how they felt at full time.

Check out my artists impression of how this info came to light.

Luka Modric is out for a fortnight with a partially torn groin muscle. Obviously this is a massive shame as in the last couple of weeks Modric had been shaping up as our best player.

An MRI scan revealed the extent of the injury which forced the footballing genius in a little girls body off at half-time in our defeat by Fulham at the weekend.

We’re going to miss him for the Blackburn and Everton games plus the Uefa Cup tie away to NEC Nijmegen. Which is an arse as all the games are important, but let’s keep them crossed that this is a blessing in disguise allowing someone to step up and make a name for themselves.
If someone can emerge from the squad and make a real play for Modric’s position in the team then groovy. This could be a chance for Adel Taarabt to force his way back into the reckoning or united striker to get himself pushed up the pecking order.

THe one lad you feel for is Giovani dos Santos who'll be coming back from his own inury around the time Modirc does. Shame really because we haven't seen the best of him yet. Let's hope he doesn't get itchy feet and sticks with us for a while.

Whoever gets the nod I hope they take their opportunity.

The draw for the quarter finals of the League Cup were made last week and it completely slipped under my radar. We’re playing Watford.

The good news is we don’t have to play a Premier League team. The bad news is we’re away from home. But despite generally being smelly hairy bollocks away from home a trip to vicarage Road should be something our squad can negotiate.

I’m not getting ahead of myself but if we can get passed the Hornets we’ll undoubtably meet a*snal youth in the semi finals. The Woolwich boys have turned a few heads in this competition so far and despite Burnley’s heroics against Chelsea you wouldn’t bet on Arsne’s ankle biters making it into the last four. Providing we get through we’ll be ready for them, hopefully we can put six past them this time.
Here is the draw in full.
Carling Cup quarter-finals draw:
Stoke City v Derby County
Manchester United v Blackburn Rovers
Burnley v Arsenal
Watford v Tottenham Hotspur

And anyone looking for an omen check out what’s perhaps my favourite Hoddle goal against Watford many moons ago when men played football in hotpants.

We’ve sacked off our goalkeeping coach. Which seems a bit harsh. Unless he was telling Gomes to throw it into his own next every 85 minutes I can’t see how Hilario’s current slump is his fault. But that’s why Harry is the boss and I just write blogs about him. Hans Leitert, the bloke on his way out, has only been with us since the summer and the goalie coach is perhaps the last area Redknapp hasn’t got his own man in so I suspect that’s the reason for the change. But this announcement got a lot more press since Gomes’ calamity performances of recent weeks.  

Harry is trying to stand by our No.1 saying, “He's our number one so he's got to do the job - we're relying on him heavily.
"I believe in him and we have to believe in him."

But he doesn’t sound that convincing. The fat we’ve called back Ben Alnwick from his loan spell at Carlisle suggests Harry has lost patience with Gomes, or at least wants to have a look at Alnwick to see if he’s upto the job. Don’t be surprised if he gets a run out against NEC in our UEFA Cup game at the end of the month.
Let’s pray that Hilario plays a blinder against Blackburn at the weekend and turns into the best ‘keeper in the league. I’ve got as much chance of holding onto that slither of hope as Gomes does of holding onto an aerial ball.

Surely he can’t be bad as any of these lot? Can he?

There’s been talk for weeks that the current crop of Hotspurs aren’t too bovved about playing for the shirt. Despite the evidence before our eyes you just wish it’s speculation.

We got news earlier in the week that Pav is out for three weeks with a knee injury. Terrible news, obviously. We’re not suggesting that this injury is made up or anything but days later we hear that Roman insists on joining up with the Russian squad during the international break.

Now what’s going on? Is it a case of a Premier League club looking to protect their player by stopping him from playing for their country? It’s not unheard of, think back to Harry Kewell, Leeds and Australia. Or is it Pav feels too injured to play for us (who are rubbish) but well enough to play for his country (who at the last look were better than England).

We truly hope it’s not the latter. Especially if Pav comes back with a knock that could keep him out for more than three weeks.

The Spurs medical team should treat this situation like my mum used to. Whenever I was too ill to go to school no matter how miraculous my recovery I wasn’t allowed out later that day. If I tried to pull a fast one on a Friday I was in all weekend.

I soon learnt.

Five winless games in and routed to the bottom of the league while 19 places above us the interlopers from South London are top of he Premiership.
Does it get any worse?
Well yes. The rumour mill is grinding out talk of Juande being homesick. That’s all we need.

Juande is making all the right noises trying to crush the speculation saying, "It is not true at all that I want to go home. I am delighted to be in London and at Spurs and am having a marvellous experience.” At least someone is.

But he’s right to say, "We need time. Some players came in only just before the close of the transfer window and there have been big changes.” The only thing is you don’t get time.

Changing manager so early in the season after laying out bundles of cash doesn’t achieve long-term success. We’ve tried it before. We’re in serious danger of becoming the southern Newcastle or maybe they’re ahead of the curve as a northern Spurs.

I still can’t see us getting relegated but for the cash spent we need to finish quite high up the league or have a decent UEFA cup run to make the outlay look like a worthy investment. I’m still backing Ramos because I don’t see a better options out there. Who are we going to go for Alan Curbishley?

But it may not matter if results don’t pick up and quickly. We could lose JR and have to start again.

Now that is the Tottenham Way.

Villa visit the lane tonight as we try and lift ourselves off the bottom of the league. The corresponding fixture last season was classic Spurs. Go 4 – 1 down at home, get back to 4 all and celebrate it like we won the league. On our birthday.

Lightening shouldn’t strike twice but I can easily see this happening again. Villa are an exciting outfit and we are still bedding new players. Corluka and Pavlov’s dog are expected to make their debuts and if Deadly Ledley plays he’ll make his 200th appearance for the Mighty Spurs.

We haven’t notched a W for 10 league games, which is frankly poor. We have been woeful of late so it’s time to step it up.

COYS

It was mad though.

Nothing winds me up more than other teams trying to steal our best bits.

In 2005 we achieve our best season in years then a small club from Fulham poach our sporting director/player buying bloke Frank Arnesen.

In 2006 we achieve our best Premier League finish and lose our most influential player Michael Carrick to united.

In 2008 we win our first silverware in best part of a decade and lose our two best players.

Now the toon are looking to prize away Gus Poyet to take a chalice so poisoned Indiana Jones doesn’t want to know.

Thankfully Gus has seen sense saying, "I'm very happy here. I've had almost a year back at the club with Juande and Marcos. This is just speculation and it's all too easy because of my relationship with Dennis Wise.

"It's nothing to worry about and all I intend to do is relax and continue with my job."

We truly hope this is true. But that's the way it is with good teams and great teams. The great teams build a legacy around their best assests, we sell them off to the highest bidder.

Come on Gus help us stop the rot.

You know what it’s like. You’ve got a new job in a place you don’t know so you ask someone who’s spend some time in the area of your proposed move to give you some advice on what to do, where to go and who to look out for. Your pal is expected to let you know which is the best boozer, where the nearest 24-hour garage is and how much you should expect to pay for a taxi.

That’s not quite the advice Roman Pavlyuchenko got from Sergei Rebrov. The bloke who scored more goals for us than Sheva did for Chelsea gave Roman the nugget, via a Russian magazine, not to go out near White Hart Lane because lots of "dark-skinned people" live there. “It's not nice to be a robbery victim. So I suggest that Roman doesn't walk but drives around that area."

Drive around the High Road? Can’t wait until he hits Seven Sisters.

Sergei is going to be in deep goulash over what he said. Spurs have done what they can to distance themselves from the Ukranian saying, "We do not tolerate discrimination of any sort at the club, on or off the pitch.”

"Tottenham has been at the heart of the local community for 126 years, and our passion on the pitch is shared with the passion we have for the borough."

Which is good to hear. But if Rebrov is looking to justify his comments he should say he meant a far from honest “dark skinned” person he used to work with, Sulzeer Jeremiah Campbell.

The first round of World Cup qualifiers are done and the good news is all of our players came through it unscathed. None of our boys got a run out against Andorra whilst Luka Modric notched against the mighty Kazakhstan.

With the Croatia England matchup on Wednesday watch it from behind the sofa and pray the national team can pull out a performance and Bentley and Modric don’t fly into each other for  blockbusting 50/50 challenge.

I’m keeping them crossed.

Check Luka’s strike on Saturday night, hopefully he'll be doing this for us in the coming weeks.

There was a lot of bollocks spouted since the end of last season about the revolving door at WHL. We cleared out some drift wood and lost our best players. We signed some quality and some undoubted turkeys.

Here’s the complete breakdown of the ins and outs of this transfer window.

I can only hope we got it more right than wrong.

In: Luka Modric (£16m from Croatia Zagreb), Giovani Dos Santos (initial £4.7m from Barca), John Bostock (initial £700,000 from Palace), Heurelho Gomes (£7.8m from PSV), David Bentley (£15m from Blackburn), Cesar Sanchez (undisc. from Zaragoza), Roman Pavlyuchenko (undisc from Spartak Moscow), Vedran Corluka (£8.5m from City), Fraizer Campbell (loan from United).

Out: Radek Cerny (Released, QPR), Tommy Forecast (undisclosed to Southampton), Teemu Taino (undisc. to Sunderland), Paul Robinson (£3.5million to Blackburn), Pascal Chimbonda (undisc to Sunderland), Steed Malbranque (undisc to Sunderland), Anthony Gardner (£2.5m to Hull), Younes Kaboul (£5m to Pompey), Lee Young-Pyo (undiscl. to Borussia Dortmund), Tomas Pekhart (loan to Saint’s), Joe Martin (undiscl. to Blackpool), Jake Livermore (loan to Crewe), Leigh Mills and Charlie Daniels (loan to Gills), Robbie Keane (£20m to Liverpool), Dimitar Berbatov (£30.75m to United).

What a crazy few hours. Just when you thought there was nothing left to surprise you in football yesterdays last minute transfer shenanigans had us all scratching our heads. I mean another club came in for Voronin.

Who’d of thunk it?

Man City obviously stole the headlines. Forget Little Rob, their lunchtime bid for Berba was the best thing that could’ve happened to us. The boys from the eastlands are this bloggers new second favourite team. Not only did we reach an agreement on Corluka but they forced United’s hand and drove up the price for Dimi.

The speculation in the media that the reds paid £750,00 over the asking price to prevent a Premier League investigation into the ins and outs of the transfer makes the saga even juicier.

Who doesn’t love a conspiracy theory?

Yahweh bless you City and all who pour money into you. Just look out for all the nouveau fans.

"Glory hunter? Shut up, I've been supporting City since Eriksonn was manager."

I can see it now.

According to news sources around the world the deal has gone through. We got the 26 year-old Russian goal machine for around £14 million.
Let’s hope the lad can adapt to life in the Premier League quickly. He certainly has pedigree scoring 77 times in 147 appearances for Spartak Moscow and nine in 23 for his country.

Roman has said of his move, "The only thing that stopped me from leaving was my family. But now all doubts are behind me and I decided to sign a contract with Tottenham." If he can settle down in London there’s every chance he could be a legend at The Lane. We can only hope.

Check the vid below to see what we've signed. I’m off find something that rhymes with Pavlyuchenko.

Would someone put us all out of our misery? I thought the Ronaldo to Madrid saga was boring but Berba to United takes the biscuit. There have been no shows, crisis talks and Sir red nosed reindeer saying he thinks the deals off. The Bulgarian clearly wants out but it looks like the powers that be are having a pissing contest. We value Bera at £30 million, United have offered 25. This needs resolving in the next couple of days before it defines our season.

One of the most unsettling things about all this nonsense is Spurs are seen as a bridging club for good players. Dos Santos is rumoured to view us as a shop window, if he turns out to be mustard I don’t know what I’d do if he buggers off to a Champions League side in a year’s time.

Woody’s had some good chat all the right things. He’s quoted as saying, “"I'm not using Spurs as a stepping stone - they're going to be a top club.” He’s also stood up to be counted saying, whilst unsettling, the players can’t hide behind the effect of Dimi’s transfer situation. Hear hear. The guys on the pitch have to take responsibility for our terror-start but these other distractions can’t help.

When the Berbatov move was first muted I was prepared to say farewell with our blessing. But with everything that has gone on in the last few weeks I suspect sad sack will be roundly booed on his return to White Hart Lane whoever he plays for.

We'll miss him though.

There is so much speculation about the potential comings and goings at The Lane it’s hard to keep up. Pavlyuchenko has been spotted in London but until I see footage of Roman and Juande with a Spurs shirt between them and White Hart Lane in the background the deal isn’t done.

The arse-shaving deal looks like it’s gone cold. Again. All the noise coming out of St Petersburg is we missed the boat. Apparently £16 million won’t be enough to prize the Russian away, even though it sounds like he’s up for coming to join us.

The Miguel Veloso interest is exciting. The 22-year-old Portuguese has been tracked by a host of clubs but it looks like we’re at the front of the cue. I hope we throw loads of cash at the situation to get the lad. He’s a quality defensive midfielder, exactly what we need. And he’s got lovely hair. If we can get Miguel in a Spurs shirt we could achieve the much-needed balance in our talented midfield.

Check out what he can do.

Our defence of the Carling Cup starts against Newcastle away. Outside of playing last years top four we couldn’t have had a harder fixture. They’re not quite our bogey team yet but we’ve lost our last five to the Toon who look rejuvenated this season under king Kev. The booze cup will be a realistic target for the Geordies so we can expect them to put out a strong team.

But if you’re going to win things you have to beat whoever is put in front of you. We saw off four Premiership teams en route to winning the cup last season including a*senal and Chelsea, why can’t we do it again? It just feels a bit early to be playing the magpies especially with our poor early season form. But we’ve got three weeks to build up a head of steam and crucially by then all the unsettling transfer speculation surrounding the club will be well and truly put to bed.

I’ll save the predictions until closer to the time. In the meantime have another look at this.


Cc Final - A funny movie is a click away

It was The Sun who uncovered it. That’s right the current bun have found irrevocable proof that Dimi is going to join the reds of Manchester.

What’s tipped them off?

The obligatory manager one side, shirt in the middle, player on the other side shot with the stadium as the back drop? Nope.

Comments from the player’s agent claiming a deal has been done? Nah.

Word that a press conference has been hastily arranged for tomorrow? Uh uh.

No, it was a pic of the mardy Bulgarian signing a Man U shirt. Yep. Dimitar Berbatov signed something a fan stuck in front of him. It’s been the worst kept secret of a couple of summers that sad sack with the silky skills wants to play for Sir Alec but come on The Sun you really are clutching at straws. It’s the middle of the Olympics and the day after an England game. It can’t be that slow a news day.

United’s next centre forward did score a brace last night against Bosnia-Herzegovina. Check the goals out to a Euro house beat below.


Bosnia-Bulgaria 1:2 - Watch the top videos of the week here

The latest suggests the Arse-shaving deal is dead and we could be looking at Diego Forlorn. Is there anyone we haven’t been linked with? What I’m worried about is having our pants pulled down when negotiating because of our buckets of cash.

The smart money is on Usain Bolt becoming a lilywhite by the end of the window. Looking at him he’d do a job anywhere on the park. He’s big, he’s strong and the fastest man on the planet with more records than Hoddle and Waddle. Best of all the Jamaican Amateur Athletics Association would bite our hand of for £3.5 million.

He’d be cheaper and younger than Freddie ‘King’ Kanoute. Now if only he could do this…

Is anyone missing league football already? It’s only 4 days since we played and I’m getting withdrawal symptoms. Obviously the International is important in the great scheme of things but I want to see Bentley and Jenas bonding in the Spurs midfield rather than wince any time they go into a tackle in case they do themselves a mischief.

Well done to the Under 21s. Good to see (well read) that Hudd and Lennon got a run out but more importantly stayed injury free. We’re expecting big things from those two this season, The Hudd especially. If we can find a terrier to tackle people then give Tommy the ball we could be on the verge of something special.

Then again…

North London natives since 1882, 1919 still not forgiven, Bill Nicholson – best ever, push and run, Greavsie, Gilzean, year ends in one. First British team to lift European trophy, first double winners. Hoddle, Waddle, Chas and Dave, cups, Ossie’s dream, “Is Gasgoine gonna have a crack? He is you know.” Klinsman’s dive, entertainers, decline, love a moan, false dawns, now’s our time, maybe next year, sell best players or walk for free. The Tottenham way.