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Gold The History of ITK

SpursManChris

Well-Known Member
May 15, 2007
5,347
2,458
Three

Ask Dan Ashcroft

Poor old Martin Jol. While playing a UEFA Cup match at home against Getafe, he received a text message from a friend informing him that he was to be fired.

"hey m8. want to know what a bald man an de axe half in common? You bouts to find out. #youonthedole #canyoustillgetthenewcastlejob #whydowehaveaskillcoach"

Everybody knew. The press, people in the stands, people watching on the tele, hermits living without outside contact in Mongolia.

It must have come as a complete surprise to the affable Dutchman, considering how secretive Paul Kemsley had been in wooing Wendy Ramos from Seville.

But his loss was our gain, seemingly. Because Wendy's right hand man would be Gus Poyet. And it turned out that one of our own was good friends with Poyet. His name was Dan Ashcroft, and despite the name which was a very clear indication* that he was on the windup, he played many of us (myself being one of the worst sycophants) for the duration of Wendy's tenure at the club. He was such a sensation here that he actually warranted his own thread in 2008 called "Ask Dan Ashcroft"

Long before people were asking JJetset if they should wash their laundry with Hot or Cold water, there was an entire thread dedicated to asking one ITK random questions.

But ultimately, he was popular because he told us what we wanted to hear. None of us wanted to lose Keano and Berbatov in 2008, and he was adamant that we would lose neither, but we did. And any casual look into his ITK will show that his hit rate was nearly zero. Unless I missed our signing of of Veloso and Obertan.

When Poyet left, he tried to keep his ITK status but it just showed that he had been an emperor without clothes and he would move from Internet God to a complete joke very quickly. Eventually he left us with nothing but memories.

* The Chanel 4 Show "Nathan Barley" had a character named Dan Ashcroft who wrote a magazine article called "Rise of the Idiots" where he criticizes the emergence of internet hacks yet ironically becomes the spiritual leader of the very idiots he was criticizing.

Four
Midnight at the Croatia

The entire premise of ITK is that we are never surprised at the time of announcement. We're staked out over the F5 in order to know what will happen before it happens. You can see why ITK nuts are so often mistaken for the Big Lebowski. So rarely are we shocked in the transfer window. Rafael van der Vaart is one signing that came out of nowhere; however, the king of all surprise signings during the Levy era was Luka Modric on April 25th/26th, 2008.

It was a little after midnight GMT when the official site suddenly announced the signing of Modric, a player that had seemed destined for Newcastle. The message then went down only to be put back up within the hour. The site went nuts, in the best possible way. There had been so little talk about the diminutive Croatian prior to the announcement, that there was a sense of disbelief in Spurs Chat that night. If you were lucky enough to be awake and online that night, it was one of the funnest times ever here. Everybody was in a great mood and the budding bromance between DC_Boy and Joey55 looked destined to be the greatest love story since Romeo and Juliet. Sadly it ended much the same way.

Over the next few days, details would emerge that would give the signing its legendary status and pictures of Levy strolling through Zagreb like a boss would come out. But that night with little information other than the knowledge that he was ours, fun-time Friday came back for a surprise engagement. Modric was possibly the most surprising, sudden and funnest signing by Daniel Levy.

Note: fun time Friday stems from a number of Arnessen's signing back in 2004 that all occurred on Friday afternoon.

Five

The Family that ITK's together, stays together


The best ITK is always the random poster who happens upon a tidbit. But for one family, it has happened twice.

LennonsJetBoots and Olderyid are posters at COYS. They are father and son.

On June 21st, 2006, LJB and Olderyid went to the Côte d'Ivoire-Serbia/Montenegro match in Munich (WC 2006). After the Ivorian victory (3-2), LJB who was a long-time fan of Zokora, tracked down the team, who were celebrating their win at a Hilton. Damian Comolli was at the gathering, and JLB was able to get a photo with Zokora holding a Spurs flag. Olderyid talked to Comolli, who confirmed that Zokora had signed. In fact, Comolli sent the picture that became so infamous with supporters to Daniel Levy.

mezokorajpg0zy.1.jpg


But it wasn't smooth sailing, as many supporters didn't believe the picture to be real and/or informative. That's when Olderyid popped in over at the Shelf to provide the following details.




Fast forward to January 3rd, 2013, when olderyid gets struck by lightening a second time. He would break the news that Holtby had signed via Klaas-Jan Huntelaar for the coming summer (later their would be the need to bring him in January due to injuries).



And so this is the legendary family that has a perfect ITK record.

Six

I See a carnival of colors.....all greys and browns and greys

Phantom of the Lane or POTL was a stalwart of a fellow forum, COYS, for a number of years. Rumored to be Levy himself or a Donna Cullen stooge or the tea lady at QPR (by me) or any number of people in-between, he was considered one of the best ITK for a stretch of time. But chinks in his armor appeared in 2011. It started with a quick reference to rumors about Joe Cole and Jamie O'Hara, where he ended his post with the now infamous "blue and yellow".

It was a cryptic and cryptics, which you will see occasionally, tend to cause meltdowns among ITK consuming fans.

Those two colours would come to dominate the summer transfer window of 2011 and even blight the summer of 2012 and would become synonymous with POTL on a handful of internet forums. The speculation on who the cryptic refereed to spiraled out of control.

Do you combine them to make green so that it had to be Muammar Khadaffi's son Al-Saadi? Was it a Swedish player, when Sweden only produces shitty furniture and shittier pop-bands? Was he racist and referring to an Asian with one of them, even though it was so not-PC to refer to the fact that Asians go into violent rampages when the see the color blue? Were we signing a smurf, possibly Vanity Smurf.....meaning Christiano Ronaldo? Was yellow a reference to Coldplay and maybe Apple was going to be our next sponsor?

Despite this, he would reference the colours nearly a dozen more times that summer and countless times more in the 27 months that followed that initial post.

It would lead in August of 2011, to his now infamous showdown with Peanut, a fellow ITK at COYS. Peanut claimed that POTL was using blue for any player that suited his needs and POTL politely disagreed. Nothing happened that required the COYS staff to get involved.

For the next two years, due to blue and yellow, he would suffer from credibility issues, despite a pretty good record during that time. But his posting took a more defensive tone.

Then last summer, it all ended when Willian was forced by Anzi, at gunpoint some say, to go to Chelsea as part of Abromovich's need to overpay for washed up legends that had once played in Italy. This time it was Samuel Eto'o, who wouldn't come without Willian, the only person that listened when Eto'o would go on one of his rants about supply-side economics.

POTL last logged on August 22nd of last year. At that time, he was seeking to assure people around the Chelsea derailment story surrounding Willian

As well all know, Chelsea did end up hijacking our bid for the Brazilian. And the response by fans was to hang POTL in effigy, as if he had lied. In fact, as the story was revealed later, it was quite obvious he was telling the truth. Everyone at Tottenham felt very strong about the signing, specifically because he was having his medical with us when everything went tits up. But POTL never returned.

Seven

Rolling Rolling Rolling, Keep those Wheelbarrows Moving......RAWHIDE!

In January of 2011, we were in desperate need of better strikers. Actually we are still in desperate need of a better strikers. But in January 2011, we were chasing another Champions League spot after finally making it to the promised land the year before. We were swapping spots weekly with Chelsea for 4th and it the team needed a January influx to help us retain our status in the top four.

It all started, as everything bad that has ever happened, with Luis ****** Suarez

420673_612895918723414_588964098_n.jpg


He was the most promising link that winter in our search for an upgrade at forward. We were battling with Liverpool over Ajax's captain crunch and eventually would concede the player to Liverpool because Harry Redknapp thought he was too similar to Rafael van der Vaart. But we left that assessment to the last hour and were then left in the final week of that winter transfer window chasing shadows, innuendo and half-truths. Notice I didn't say players, as it became evident that all of the talk about strikers we might sign was nothing more than publicity by Levy and co. to appease fans and keep our stars at that point happy. It is debatable if we ever made an offer to any team for the list of players that has become legend. But notable in all the ITK/Paper Rumors/SSN Ticker links was this ITK from Adiepf back on January 21st of that year



Even a broken clock is right twice a day, and for once Adiepf was right.

These are the Attackers we were linked with in the January 2011 window (sources: a and b)

The believable ones
1) Kenwyn Jones
2) Andy Carrol
3) Lucas Barrios
4) Giuseppi Rossi
5) Carlton Cole
6) Connor Wickham
7) Ashley Young
8) Sergio Aguerro
9) Fernando Llorente
10) Karim Benzema
11) Edin Dzeko
12) Romeo Lukaku
13) Emmanuel Adebayor
14) Edison Cavani
15) Luis Fabiano
16) Marko Marin
17) Hulk
18) Diego Forlan
19) Alvaro Negredo
20) Ricky van Wolfswinkle
21) Mirko Vucinic
22) Pato (on loan)

And that doesn't include David Bechkam, Phil Nevill, Lasagna [sic] Diarra, Scott Parker and Stephen Pienaar (who was the only player we brought in of the nearly 30 linked here).

Take note of the number of player from La Liga at that time: Diarra, Negredo, Forlan, Fabiano, Benzema, Llorente, Aguerro and Rossi. When Sky Sports announced in that last week of the window that Daniel Levy was roaming Europe with a wheelbarrow full of cash looking for a striker, it quickly became a joke among supporters, who morphed it into a wheelbarrow in Spain due to the large number of links to La Liga, as mentioned.

And that is why the only Spanish word many people on SC know to this day is: la carretilla. ;)
How could you know so much about the SC specific stuff that happened before 2012 if you only joined in 2012?
 

senseispab

Active Member
Feb 16, 2006
904
137
Amazing thread!

I still fondly remember the time that Arshavin was supposedly spotted at WHL prior to "signing".
 

srups34

Well-Known Member
Jun 11, 2008
2,595
5,477
What ITK told the big fat lie about Modric supposedly saying to Bale he couldn't leave after the reaction he got from our fans :D
 

Larryjanta

Well-Known Member
Apr 22, 2014
1,953
5,040
What ITK told the big fat lie about Modric supposedly saying to Bale he couldn't leave after the reaction he got from our fans :D


It was Krancjar to Modric the day of the riots and, to be fair, Modric did stay that season!
 
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