What also happens here in Germany, is that you get a lot of people on the streets collecting empties for the deposit. It's quite normal to have a bottle on the way to the pub / parties / concerts / events, so most of the time they're left next to, not in, the rubbish bins, to make collection easier. At larger venues they'll be outside with trollies to carry everything.
Top, top pro and a great guy too! No, never the superstar, but every club is better with a 'Ben Davies' to rely on! Lovely comments from Sonny doing the rounds.
Solid squad option who’s dependable. Not the most talented but like you say, every club is better with a Ben Davies type.
So....I had a disturbed sleep last night. Occupational (medical / age?) hazard these days. Anyway, in a effort to get back to sleep and instead of counting sheep, I tried to remember the names of the clubs that we sourced our players from! Now....work with me on this....I soon realised that I could easily remember just about every one of the origins of the squad from 1968-73 era, but very few of the squads from the last decade. (And as an aside, I worked out that the great side from '81-'83 era seemed to be disproportionately homegrown, although I haven't checked that yet!) Not sure if this is a) accurate, b) signs of dementia or c) totally normal , but just thought I'd throw it out there!
90% of the players in the league were homegrown in the 80s! In fact with Ardiles and Villa we probably had 50% of the overseas players in the league at the time. The 81 cup final winning squad of 12 I think contained 6 players who came through at Spurs and also contained 7 Englishmen, 2 Argentinians, 2 who played for Ireland and a scot. That team I can recall with complete certainty, but the team from 12 months later I struggle with for some reason and without looking it up I don't know who played in both, but I do know that due to the Falklands war Ossie and Ricky didn't play in 82. Possibly Hazard played instead of Ossie and I think Ray Clemence was in goal instead of Aleksic.
Off the top of my head, and leaving off free agents (i.e. Perisic, Solomon) English clubs Blackburn (Phillips) Brighton (Bissouma) Burnley (Trippier) Everton (Richarlison) Fulham (Sessegnon) Leicester (Maddison) Leeds (Grey, Clarke) Middlesbrough (Spence) MK Dons (Dele) Newcastle (Sissoko) Nottingham Forest (Johnson) Sheffield United (Walker, Lankshere) Southampton (Hojbjerg) Swansea (Davies, Vorm, Rodon, Llorente) Tottenham (Winks, Skipp, KWP) Wolves (Doherty) Spanish clubs Atletico Madrid (Alderweireld) Barcelona (Lenglet, Emerson) Espanyol (Pau Lopez) Real Betis (Lo Celso) Los Ladrones do Madrid (Bale, Reguilon) Sevilla (Gil, Fazio) Villarreal (Danjuma) German clubs Koln (Wimmer) Leverkusen (Sonny) Monster Energy Dusseldorf (Werner) Wolfsberg (Mickey Van) Italian clubs Atalanta (Romero, Gollini) Empoli (Vicario) Genoa (Dragusin) Juventus (Kulusevski, Bentancur) Udinese (Udogie) French clubs Lyon (Ndombele, N'Jie) Marseille (Nkoudou) Montpelier (Stambouli) Metz (Sarr) PSG (Lucas, Aurier) Dutch clubs Ajax (Sanchez) AZ (Janssen) PSV (Bergwijn) Portuguese clubs Benfica (Vinicius, Gedson) Sporting (Porro, Dier) Argentine clubs Estudientes (Foyth) Rosario Central (Veliz) Swedish clubs Djurgarden (Bergvall) Croatian clubs Hajduk Split (Vuskovic) 'Murican clubs Seattle Sounders (Yedlin)
I haven't got a head that large in total to hold that much information - let alone the top of it!! I think to clarify though, my question was more why could I remember the details from over 50 years ago better than I can from the last decade. Having noted all the responses I'm ashamed to say that it is largely to do with the more international sourcing of players rather than early Alzheimer's Never realised that we had poached Lankshear. I supposed he was an Academy product
The last striker we took on who'd initially been released from Arsenal's academy didn't do too badly.
Oh, the joy if another Gooner Academy 'reject' becomes a star for us! Long, long way to go yet, I know, but the lad appears to have a similar eye for goal. Can but hope!
So in short lets not buy from ligue 1 or the eredivisie !! (Though both Vertonghen and Eriksen came from Ajax )
Got the fantasy football league up again Anyone who has joined in previous seasons is automatically added, though if anyone wants to join click the link below https://fantasy.premierleague.com/leagues/auto-join/ezz8ki League Code: ezz8ki
Clough did like a bung, though. Pissed as a newt, too. I really dislike the word spiv in football, as it only ever seems to get applied to those of a certain background.