- Jun 5, 2004
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- #1
[Banner by the genius chrissivad]
25 years ago today I emerged from my moist, warm 9-month home in a suit of red. My father, I expect, would have been disgusted. His own son, not born of blue & white blood, impossible! As the sole addition to the family, he got to work on teaching me the ways of Spurs and today I hope he's proud that he did his job as any good Tottenham Supporting Father should. This paragraph, by the way, is nothing but a chance to tell you it's my birthday today, and also to serve as a history lesson. That season I was born, I managed to encourage the team to win the UEFA Cup for the second time. Me, all me. This paragraph is also to give you a nice, warm fuzzy feeling as the memories (and YouTube videos * which I will plug in when not at work *) play out Tony Parks' saves in your heads and in front of your eyes.
This paragraph here, though, tells a different tale. It speaks of woe, disgruntlement and fear. It talks of Tottenham Hotspur, Class of 2008-2009. We're not in great shape lads, are we, to be fair? I foolishly thought that our victory of Newcastle (who are eventually going to find it impossible to come up with a more ridiculous script to start a season with) would kick start our lackadaisical beginning to this season. And I doubt I was alone in thinking that: Pavlyuchenko scoring his first, settling his nerves, O'Hara showing his desire to be Mabbutt II – it was all there.
Then came Portsmouth. 10 goals in 2 games, Portsmouth; conceded. We started well, I thought, the ball was knocked around sideways … and backwards … and sideways … sideways … oooh forwards! … backwards
… backwards … hoof … Portsmouth goal kick. Damn. This was a running theme to our play and Didier Zokora, as much of a mentalist he is, was doing his best to lead the charge forward. O'Hara was bustling about and Pavlyuchenko was running sideways, waiting for the perfect ball. Or even a ball.Bentley wasn't particularly great, the odd moment of inspiration but his delivery again from set-pieces asks more questions than answers. The questions usually consist of: how the hell have you hit the first defender, again! But there are more words in the forums on that particular topic, and as is a penchant of mine, I try to look for the positives.
We weren't as bad as we were at Newcastle, but again decisions relating to the selection of the starting XI are baffling everyone, still. Journalists and fans alike are filling column inches and message board databases with words of confusion. Why is he playing him there?
Jenas then hand-balled inanely and Gomes parried wrong-wayily and we lost. There we have it, a match review in a sentence. What followed was semi-positive from us, we should have had a penalty, true and it would have been 1-1 if successfully converted having been given. But all in all, I hate to say it but we didn't deserve anything out of the game. And another to add to Juande's strange decisions: Pavlyuchenko off, Bent on – surely not when we're chasing a game JR?
"But but but, there has to be a Masterplan", says a troubled Stoof to no-one in particular. This guy, Ramos, is no mug surely? He's got a new squad, he's in his first full season, he needs time. Granted, that's fair enough, I will give him that time. But at this early stage, for players showing (in my eyes) that they aren't too fussed with it all, it only spells bad news. Or does it?
See, if Juande is using our actual season as his barometer for his eventual First Choice XI (we can only hope he wants one) then he's being given several indicators of who he can trust to perform, and who he needs to work with. This is not an ideal situation and is very dangerous, obviously, as we're into the Big League now; we're playing for points. As others have said though, there is still a positive line between level of performance and games played. We're better than we were against Middlesbrough [Chelsea is our anomaly] and slowly but surely, we're going to hit that one (home) result that will let the fans celebrate and let them roar into life after we score a goal. It just needs that one moment of unbridled joy to convince us, the fans, that all is well with our Tottenham, I'm sure of that and I'm still booking up tickets like nobody's business and I hope the rest of you are too. Because as we've seen with Newcastle, a football club is nothing without its fans – and as much as the players owe us a performance, we owe them our support. That's just the way we're born, even if not in a blue & white bloody mess.
