- Oct 19, 2004
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@guate posted this in the ITK Discussion thread. It was a good post and I liked just about all of it except the bit in bold:
I know there's this fallacy that every game under Redknapp was a swash buckling fiesta of of dynamic football and we have mysteriously wiped the 80% of ho hum stuff we played that was gilded by a piece of individual brilliance from Modric, VDV, Bale or Adebayor etc from our collective memories, as well as the the failure to win 9 home games in his last but one season, losing to teams like Wigan, West Ham, West Brom etc. and our abysmal record and performances against top teams.
But does anyone who remembers the early-mid eighties really think we played better football most of the time under Redknapp than we did during that phase under Burkinshaw or even Pleat ? The Perryman, Roberts, Hoddle, Ardiles, Villa, Galvin, Archibald and Crooks years pissed it for me. We were like Arsenal have been under Wenger, the team that played football more stylishly than anyone in the league for a few seasons, we were beautiful to watch and not just on the odd occasion, but most weeks. And we won things (two FA Cups and a Euro trophy, and another final). Even that Pleat team played a better brand of football more consistently and it wasn't just about superstars it was about a tactical brand of football, high tempo, different structure to many etc and the closest I've felt we were to winning a title since Bill Nic.
Everlasting seconds…….I feel Josua Maine's quote "Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful" sums up pretty much what I would call success. Spurs, with all their deficiencies, are closer now to being a consistently successful team than, IMHO, we have been over the last 40 years. I'm old enough to remember the Blanchflower teams when we were very special, the best of the best, but through bad management of our assets we became very mediocre over that time frame, apart from an odd cup win. During ENIC's tenure-ship we've gone from being a mid table team to one which consistently ends up in the top 6. With the academy, new training facilities and hopefully new stadium on its way, I believe we've become more stable than ever and as slow as it may seem for many younger supporters our success is becoming more sustainable than ever as our foundations are now solid. Hopefully with the new stadium and particularly should it also become the home of the first NFL franchise outside of the USA we will be in a position to compete with the big European teams for any player that's the flavour of the day, month or year.
Untd., Chelski and Citeh have gone about buying the league of late and it's worked, however, even though I'm not a particular fan of Enic or our bean counter, as I believe he should have loosened the purse strings during the Redknapp years when we were playing the best and most entertaining football that I've seen since the Billy Nic period, he's gone about it the right way as our relative success is more sustainable now than at any time during the previous 40 years, and can only improve.
I know there's this fallacy that every game under Redknapp was a swash buckling fiesta of of dynamic football and we have mysteriously wiped the 80% of ho hum stuff we played that was gilded by a piece of individual brilliance from Modric, VDV, Bale or Adebayor etc from our collective memories, as well as the the failure to win 9 home games in his last but one season, losing to teams like Wigan, West Ham, West Brom etc. and our abysmal record and performances against top teams.
But does anyone who remembers the early-mid eighties really think we played better football most of the time under Redknapp than we did during that phase under Burkinshaw or even Pleat ? The Perryman, Roberts, Hoddle, Ardiles, Villa, Galvin, Archibald and Crooks years pissed it for me. We were like Arsenal have been under Wenger, the team that played football more stylishly than anyone in the league for a few seasons, we were beautiful to watch and not just on the odd occasion, but most weeks. And we won things (two FA Cups and a Euro trophy, and another final). Even that Pleat team played a better brand of football more consistently and it wasn't just about superstars it was about a tactical brand of football, high tempo, different structure to many etc and the closest I've felt we were to winning a title since Bill Nic.