Apologies mate, I genuinly thought he was quoting Gent the humourless Gooner and so that's who I was talking about, not you.
depends how you look at it. 8 goals conceded in our first 2 games, 1 goal scored, and 0 points. some might say that if we'd had Ade and Parker, it might have been a different story. only needed 1 more point and 1 more goal, and we'd have finished 3rd. but then again, others could blame the "harry to manage england" spell as the reason for this. regardless, the 2 games at the start of the season did us no favours, when it wouldn't have hurt to have got those 2 players in 2-3 weeks sooner.
That may or may not be true, but what I do know for a fact is that you don't know that I know that lennypops knows that he didn't know he was trying to be sarcastic.
I have suggested this a couple of times. VDV and Sig as our two forwards may work. Although if that was the plan, would be nice to have seen it tried in preseason?
Remember, it's currently halfway through the Brazilian season - if Leandro does arrive, we can't play him every week because he'll be knackered by February (just like Pav was in his first season for the exact same reason), so Defoe and Kane will have regular chances in the team as a result.
That's because they had a good run of fixtures and didnt play anyone remotely challenging and when they did (Stoke away and Chelsea home) they were duly found out. I think most Spurs fans at the time would have looked at the fixtures and foreseen that once they come out of August (let's be honest most teams would have struggled to get anything from City at home and United away especially in that form) they'd do okay. Seasons aren't won or lost in August, better to wobble then than in April which was the month that really cost them
it doesn't matter when the wobble is. 6 points lost in august is the same number of points as 6 points lost in april
Sandro was kept in reserve for a long time - he only really started getting games in the second half of the season, so if Leandro is signed he won't be a regular starter for some time. Expect griping from people seeing Kane or Defoe starting matches in that period, unless we sign Adebayor/Remy/whoever.
Especially when only 1 point is needed. don't get me wrong, we're not as good as city or united, but we're capable of giving both a game and coming away with 1 point from 6.
Wobble in April? We were face down floating down the river by the end of March! It's lazy to say we weren't playing difficult teams. The same sides we beat would've taken points off other sides in and around us over the course of the season. Oh and we beat Liverpool and Arsenal in that run but I guess they don't count, just as Chelsea wouldn't have counted had we beaten you. We weren't "found out" against Stoke either, no team plays their best in all 38 games and that was nothing more than a bad day at the office for us, much like United losing to Wigan or City losing to Sunderland.
now I am really offended - mistaken for a bloody gooner, ohhhh the shame no worries YV, these things happen
My point is you would expect a side like Spurs to be able to beat Wigan at home and Norwich away with the players they have, there's nothing special about that IMO, hence my rejection at the time Spurs were realistic title contenders. I've never heard of a team winning or competing for a title without beating a team around them. With the fixtures you had post Christmas a meltdown was an inevitability in my view
Don't talk bollocks, DL. After the initial two games we went on a run of 10 wins and a draw in 11 games, playing Liverpool and Arsenal at WHL and Newcastle away during that run. It only came to an end because of one of the worst refereeing performances that I've ever seen, before continuing on again afterwards. 4 wins and 3 draws in the next 7 games, before being halted by another ****ing awful refereeing performance at the Etihad, where both Kompany and Balotelli, the match winner, should've seen red. Redknapp then went missing because of his legal wranglings and Levy-funded holiday, missing a home win over Wigan and a draw at Anfield, returning for our game against Newcastle on the day of the game. The 5-0 win was the last time for months that we saw anything resembling a decent line-up. Ignoring the 4-4-1-1 and 4-4-2 that saw us dismantle most of our opponents, with the odd lucky win thrown in for good luck (Fulham at CC, for example), he picked two holding midfield players. Moving Modric and van der Vaart out of position ****ed our form entirely. Parker picked up an injury in the loss to QPR at Loftus Road, so we reverted to the 4-4-1-1. It's no coincidence that we dominated all of our remaining games, including the unfortunate draw at Villa Park, where they were clinging on for dear life against 10 men. Was Redknapp distracted by the England speculation or did the players take their eye off the ball due to his courting of the job? No idea. Did he get his tactics for a large chunk of the season disastrously wrong and screw up the end of the campaign badly? Quite clearly, in my opinion.
If you can point to a post where someone said beating Wigan and Norwich was a great achievement, that'd be very helpful so I could understand where you're coming from. However, as you did at the time, you avoided what I said and presented a skewed account of what what happened. At the turn of the year, around the time you were getting banned the only points we'd dropped against the bottom 12 teams was 2 away at Swansea. Take our results against those same teams in the second half of the season we dropped 15 points against those same teams. 7 of those points were dropped at home before you claim it was a kinder draw in the first half of the season. Now on the face of each individual result in the first half of the season(during the good run) none were spectacular, as you say, yet clearly the inabillity to replicate the results in the second half were more significant to our ability to keep up with the Manchester clubs compared to our inability to pick up points against them.
So it was. I knew there was some reason that he didn't get banned. <cough>englandinternational<cough> The obvious point about us being expected to beat Norwich away is that we failed to do so at home, during our ridiculous slump. Bloody awful performance and a deserved loss. King shouldn't have played and Redknapp later admitted it.
I say the Stevenage game was when the rot began, just based on the formation and tactics Harry deployed Cudicini Nelsen Kaboul Dawson Walker Livermore Parker Rose Bale Defoe Saha A formation we had never used before (or since), a lack of creative players in midfield that our system required (i.e. Modric, Huddlestone, Carroll - even Kranjcar played in that role earlier in the season), and the match did nothing but add a replay to our fixture list. It's telling that the Stevenage match came soon after the Harry For England bandwagon started, as if he was trying to show how flexible he can be for his future bosses at The FA. Slight problem, he didn't - just as he didn't for the next dozen games when he was needlessly dicking with our formation and tactics.
I am inclined to agree with you, especially as I think I am right in saying that Harry's "new boss", Mr Bernstein was at that game wasn't he ??
