lifeof...
Well-Known Member
- Mar 18, 2005
- 2,073
- 248
After Spurs' stunning achievements this season, surely the club's board must consider rewarding the League Cup-winning squad with the chance to get away early to the world's finest beaches before the summer rush.
What else is there to play for after all? There is silverware in the trophy cabinet and relegation should be comfortably avoided. Six league games are left - so maybe it would be a good time to give some peripheral and young players the chance to cut their teeth while giving the senior men a well-earned rest for their weary limbs?
And perhaps Gus Poyet would let them go with his blessing? It would save him having to face yet more post-match embarrassment as he tries to explain away his side's fecklessness and cover the management's inability to correct it.
The Spurs players should be ashamed of themselves. The League Cup win aside, their season has been a shambles. They have simply not performed to expectations - whether under new man Ramos or Martin Jol. They also fell in the last eight of an eminently-winnable UEFA Cup and in the early stages of the FA Cup (okay, it was at Man United - but then Pompey won at Old Trafford, so...).
Even the League Cup win has to be taken in some context. Beating Arsenal's reserves was only really notable because in the previous season at the same stage, Spurs could not. Beating Chelsea is their only really stand-out result - the more so when you consider results in their totality.
Spurs fans should be hoping that many of these players get their just deserts. You would think that players who believe that they can be something in the game would be professional enough to play on to the end of a season (even to the final whistle) and attempt to impress what is still a relatively new management team?
You might also hope that the players would consider the fans who pay their hard-earned cash on season tickets and expensive away days. You might think they would try and reward that support? But this is a forlorn hope I suppose, given what we know of the average 'professional' footballer these days.
If Ramos is the manager he was billed to be, then he will have earmarked for the door marked 'exit' those players who think that a League Cup win provides them with some kind of legendary status and the right to stroll about in a Spurs shirt cheating those who pay to watch them. Player reaction to that triumph has surely pinpointed for him those players who will not be up to the job of making Spurs a consistent top-six finisher, never mind somehow qualifying for the Champions League in future seasons.
It is a concern though that Ramos does not seem to fully command player respect. If he did, then surely results like Sunday's against Newcastle would be more of a surprise.
But judgement on Ramos should be reserved for the time being - out of fairness. He will get his first real chance to impose his will in the summer - when some of the Wembley heroes should find themselves plying their trade and shining their League Cup medals somewhere other than White Hart Lane.
Paul Little
What else is there to play for after all? There is silverware in the trophy cabinet and relegation should be comfortably avoided. Six league games are left - so maybe it would be a good time to give some peripheral and young players the chance to cut their teeth while giving the senior men a well-earned rest for their weary limbs?
And perhaps Gus Poyet would let them go with his blessing? It would save him having to face yet more post-match embarrassment as he tries to explain away his side's fecklessness and cover the management's inability to correct it.
The Spurs players should be ashamed of themselves. The League Cup win aside, their season has been a shambles. They have simply not performed to expectations - whether under new man Ramos or Martin Jol. They also fell in the last eight of an eminently-winnable UEFA Cup and in the early stages of the FA Cup (okay, it was at Man United - but then Pompey won at Old Trafford, so...).
Even the League Cup win has to be taken in some context. Beating Arsenal's reserves was only really notable because in the previous season at the same stage, Spurs could not. Beating Chelsea is their only really stand-out result - the more so when you consider results in their totality.
Spurs fans should be hoping that many of these players get their just deserts. You would think that players who believe that they can be something in the game would be professional enough to play on to the end of a season (even to the final whistle) and attempt to impress what is still a relatively new management team?
You might also hope that the players would consider the fans who pay their hard-earned cash on season tickets and expensive away days. You might think they would try and reward that support? But this is a forlorn hope I suppose, given what we know of the average 'professional' footballer these days.
If Ramos is the manager he was billed to be, then he will have earmarked for the door marked 'exit' those players who think that a League Cup win provides them with some kind of legendary status and the right to stroll about in a Spurs shirt cheating those who pay to watch them. Player reaction to that triumph has surely pinpointed for him those players who will not be up to the job of making Spurs a consistent top-six finisher, never mind somehow qualifying for the Champions League in future seasons.
It is a concern though that Ramos does not seem to fully command player respect. If he did, then surely results like Sunday's against Newcastle would be more of a surprise.
But judgement on Ramos should be reserved for the time being - out of fairness. He will get his first real chance to impose his will in the summer - when some of the Wembley heroes should find themselves plying their trade and shining their League Cup medals somewhere other than White Hart Lane.
Paul Little
