Come on Spurf. You're telling me right now that if you had the success Chelsea had, with the help of a rich benefactor, you wouldn't love it? NO NO & NO. not interested that is the definition of a plastic fan IMO. I am sure some people have such boring lives they use their football team for reflected glory so that they have something to boast about. I'll tell you now if Spurs were ever taken over like City or Chelsea I would find another team to support. I like football and many years ago I realised that if you are going to watch and enjoy you need to care who wins so I picked Spurs mainly because of Danny Blanchflower and his famous quote. WE still respect that tradition the new stadium reflects that. In a football world dominated by money and yes Spurs are rich too, they manage like United like Liverpool and yes like Barcalona to respect their traditions and respect the game itself. The game is not about winning it is about glory. There is no glory in buying cups, none at all.
1. Quite easy to say no actually. 2. How has the benefactor made their fortune On #1, all of the fun I have had as a Spurs supporter in the past decade is seeing the consistent return to the style of football the club has deep in its tradition, and performing IN SPITE of the financial largesse of other clubs. On #2, I would rather not Spurs be owned by family members of oil rich autocracies, or individuals who somehow made their fortune dubiously during the political/economic collapse of a major nation. It is uneasy enough for me that our owner made his effective fortune on events that cost the UK dearly financially, without adding the above to the mix.
I've said this a few times but it bears repeating. I used to drink in a pub full of Chelsea, including a couple of their 'top boys'. These were blokes who had been going since the 70's - basically, me minus the racism. I knew them before Abramovic and after. Within 5 years of him turning up, they'd all stopped going regularly. They told me of the plastic fans, the tourists, the terrible atmosphere at home games and the boredom at winning everything......"It's not Chelsea any more." You can sense it at Citeh. They've got a new shiny stadium and untold riches but they can't sell out the stadium and the atmosphere's died. We run that risk but the South Stand and huge waiting list could just save us. We shall see but certain games at Wembley have seen a fair amount of tourists. I am sure that there are those who want nothing more than for us to become a play thing for some shady potentate but it's not all caviar and Champions League wins. As always, it's all good for the armchair fan but detracts from the experience of those going to games. I love our current team but enjoyed going when we were ****, too. Going to football is about friends and beers and laughing. Silverware may or may not turn up but it's really not the be all and end all. My Palace mates have never seen them win anything and they love football as much as any Citeh fan...probably more than many. Everything has a price and a pact with the devil costs your soul....
I was right in that I said Chelsky would repeat their pressing game from the 1st leg. So I would gone for a different formation - though I am not as smart as Pochettino (a back three was not in my mind) . Other than that : 1. WTF was the forward/MF press ?? 2. I would have kept Llorente on as Rose was playing a top crossing game, and swapped Lamela (who was a real passenger) for Moura .
I get that only one team wins a competition, and there’s up to 4 you can be part of. (1 domestic league, 1 European competition, 1 FA cup, 1 carabao cup). It’s a hell of a challenge to be a winner of one of those. But this isn’t about necessarily being the winners, Spurf. I think it’s about placing yourself in the best position to have the highest chance possible against some other serious competitors. We’ve been so close, and I think every fan knows we’re not going to spend money like City. But at the same time, we’ve had players like Janssen, N’Koudou, Llorente etc who have barely played for us for different reasons. Yet we still pay their wages. Fans felt that in order to put ourselves in the best position possible we should have cut our losses with those who it just hasn’t worked out with, and addressed that situation with new additions and/or youth options last summer. But we didn’t. We just carried on, hoping there’d be a different outcome, whilst everyone else got stronger and we literally did nothing. That was risky in itself, and many saw it coming. Believe me, I love the club, like all of us do. But I’m not going to change my views just because you don’t agree with me and tell me I’m negative or unappreciative.
WE are here to exchange views Roo I am not expecting you to change views I am just using your views to express my own. I have just been prompted by a Gooner to get passionate and express my reasons for following Spurs and it has prompted two other fans (so far) to express similar views. This does not happen unless it is prompted by a different viewpoint. There are many reasons why particular players are kept or sold, most we don't know about, I prefer to concentrate on what I can see (the game) It's fun to speculate and it's all part of it. Your posts are always interesting Roo even if I don't agree with them and often BECAUSE I don't agree with them. We can still share our love for Spurs so you can't be ALL bad
Just have a thought for all the fans of clubs who don't win leagues or cups (most of them) Why do you think they go to the game year after year. Clubs like Gillingham or Scunthorpe, or Motherwell and Queen of the South. They go for the reasons expressed by Brian they are there for the 'crack'.Most of us on this board support Spurs but it could equally be Leyton Orient or Watford or even FFS Millwall. As I said Blanchflower was a major reason for me, a South London Boy, to support Spurs but it was also because my parents happened to meet in Tottenham in W.W.2.
We can, I'm pretty sure. The issues are that there isn't much value in the market, and hasn't been for awhile, and that we are after quite a specific type of player. Something needs to change though as our transfer policy clearly isn't working. Even if we managed to sign a couple of players that fit the bill in the summer, it isn't feasible to go into transfer windows needing new players and knowing that it might take a year to get them.
Surely that's why we invest so heavily in the academy and training facilities and it's why finding Pochettino is like finding a seam of gold. He buys into producing players not just buying them. Just like United did under Busby and Fergie not a bad coiuple of models to follow.
Unfortunately (or fortunately depending how you get on), with success comes plastic and tourist fans. You might even notice it a bit more at wembley. Winning stuff, having superstar names and playing attractive footie will bring the plastics along. You may already see that effect in the new stadium now that the ticket prices have increased and some of the locals might be priced out of it. Even united and arsenal who havent sold up to a rich benefactor out to give them all the finances in the world have many day trippers at their grounds
I think it needs to be balanced though. I’d say it’s naive to think an academy player can automatically always save a club £30m whenever we need someone to step in or replace. You won’t produce a Harry Kane every window. Academy players can definitely, in time, make an impact, as we’ve seen with a number of lads in recent years but sometimes you need an immediate impact and not someone who’s going to need 2/3/4 years to develop into the ideal solution. Take Skipp for example, in about 2-3 years (maybe even less) he can potentially become a very, very good midfielder, but we need someone right now and therefore the best solution is to buy in order to strengthen - at least in my opinion anyway.
"Spurs have a small club mentality" say Chelsea fans about Dier making sure every tackle counts Strangely they didn't seem to have an opinion about Rudiger throwing his shirt into the crowd at the final whistle...
Totally agree but I'm pretty sure those players were available, it's just that no one wanted to buy them unless they were sold cheap. Even now there's talk of Nkoudou going out on loan because no one wants to buy him. We do need to be more decisive though and take the hits on players. We sold Sigurdsson back to Swansea on the cheap and he ended up doing brilliantly and going for big money, ultimately it didn't affect us though because we moved on a player that didn't fit and used his wages to bring in new players that we did need. Janssen should have been sold when he only had a bad season with us on his record, now he has a bad one with us, an average one on loan and no place in our squad on his record. Same goes for the others.
Ajax, Barca, United all have been hugely successful by developing their own talent the transfer business was an add on not a be all an end all. Spurs have easily been the most successful top 6 side in the transfer market in recent years we are where we are today largely because of it. So people complaining about our lack of success in the transfer market just makes me smile.
It's true DH you need both and that in fact is what Spurs do but as has been said many times the futher we get the harder it gets to find players who will improve us because we are punching above our weight. We are by finding the likes Dele and Eriksen and before that Bale and Modric BEFORE they were fully developed or spotted. Buying ready made superstars is for United and City and Chelsea we can't do that atm.
Yes but we can't replace all our signings with academy graduates. We can't just throw 4/5 academy players into the first team each season, we can't fast forward a player's development by 4 years just because we have an injury crisis, we can't control what positions our best graduates are suited to. New signings don't have these limitations and we'd have to pay for that. The examples you listed ultimately still signed players and so do clubs like Barca, who have an incredible academy. We are in an unfortunate position with injuries and Son disappearing to play tournament football again but we should be thanking our lucky stars that it's happened in a transfer window, when we can react. I'm not saying we sign players who are injured because signing players we only need for a month is daft but what the injuries have done is expose holes that were already in our squad and those are the areas that need fixing.
Keep up, mate. Keep up... As with most things, it's about degrees and managing it. That comes from having a long-term fan as Chairman and owner. Rather than just build what the owners wanted or what the manager desired, Spurs asked the fans what they wanted. Consequently, Spurs have built a stadium with fans close to the pitch with a proper home end, designated areas for safe standing, fitted the safe standing rails for home and away fans and expect that the extra 'newbies' will be fitted in around the core support. I'm sure that it's possible to grow and take 'old sweats' like me along for the ride. Have we got it right?..........I hope so.........at least we have tried
I haven’t said we only need superstars, even though that’d be nice. For sure, if we could get Milinkovic-Savic this window I’d probably run around Tottenham naked, but I’m aware that the chances of that sort of signing happening is slim to none. But that doesn’t mean Spurs can’t be strengthened though, if we can’t improve the XI, then improve the squad. Give the players some help and competition instead of running them into the ground which is what we’re currently doing. For me, having options is better than no option at all.
Going back to the subject of injuries, it's certainly worth asking if we rushed some players back a few weeks too soon. For example, the lunatic fringe are currently demanding we sell Lamela to the first buyer no matter what the bid (because that will address the squad depth issue!) yet he missed most of November with a thigh injury and his performances have been noticeably subdued since he returned. Similarly, Trippier was out with a groin strain in late November/early December...although that doesn't explain his costly brainfarts against Saltypool and The Sheikh Mansour Team before said groin strain, nor does it get him off the hook for him thinking it was more important to berate Winks for failing to control his needlessly risky pass than it was to get back and defend a Wolves counter attack
Sorry brian. I only read snippets as i was in a rush. I have just repeated what you wrote . I took the first part (meaning you didnt want spurs to turn plastic) and thought you meant spurs wouldnt be going that way. .
