I have never understood the unbridled, out-and-out hostility that some pundits in the media have for Spurs.
"I have never understood the unbridled, out-and-out hostility that some pundits in the media have for Spurs." Its roots are in St Nicholson. When you have set a benchmark for excellence and style in how the game is played, and future generations of the club seek to honour those tenets regardless of what the material silverware rewards are / have been, haters gotta hate.
Me neither. We represent this country pretty well in Europe. Always there. We have a great tradition, play football the right way, a rich history and we are always knocking on doors. Not to mention we provide the English national team with some very good players. As you say, what is not to like? To be honest, I prefer it that way. It makes for great motivation.
There is that, Spurlock. I've always like the fact that we've never been a "plastics" club. Only the true fan seems to support Spurs. There are a couple of other clubs like that, in the Prem, like the Toon, Villa, and Everton.
"Only the true fan seems to support Spurs." And that includes non-Spurs supporters. Look at the love during our CL adventure. You even had Rooney (who would actually play in the 2011 CL final) saying how he was liking watching the Spurs CL games on TV. And 2011-12 when the team was in full PL flow. The Spurs ethos is known/understood/respected by the vaguely intelligent.
Haven't you just contradicted yourself there by mentioning "Rooney" in the same context as "vaguely intelligent"?
"Haven't you just contradicted yourself there by mentioning "Rooney" in the same context as "vaguely intelligent"?" Or it means that what I stated is such a self-evident truth that even Rooney understood it.
Yes for far too long the '5' have dominated and the media, the unimaginative, hidebound, very ordinary media have had little work to do in their so called reporting. A league with many teams having a chance to win it is far better than the boring private members club it was becoming. No doubt Chelsea, City and United will do their best to squash the revival of competition but it just might be too late to get back to where they were before SKY upped the stakes again.
I tend to agree with Spurf on this one. Most of the animosity is probably driven top-down rather than being self-generated from pundits who can barely string a coherent sentence together, let alone form an independent thought or opinion. Ultimately, the bosses in the ivory towers are concerned about one thing and it obviously isn't football...money. It all boils down to more views and more sales. And since the Sky 5 have comparatively far larger global followings than us, filling columns with eulogies for Jurgen Klopp's glasses, followed by a 'Whodunit' sleuth series to uncover which player accidentally elbowed them off his face, will sadly shift more units than an article waxing lyrical about how Tottenham's academy is the best in all the land, or how Eddie Howe is a managerial prodigy. And they'll happily fill those columns with hyperbolic panic when the likes of Chelsea or United lose their way. it's all part of the money-making circus. Leicester fit the David v Goliath narrative perfectly and are thus openly granted the role of pantomime hero - again, more to draw attention to the big clubs and their soap operas than to Leicester themselves. Beyond Mahrez and Vardy, I doubt most pundits could even name most of the Leicester team. We're too big to be David and too small to be Goliath. So we are an inconvenience; the team that could but shouldn't. And at a grassroots level, there is definitely a disproportionate distribution of former Liverpool players throughout the media. This makes sense too, as these players 'came of age' at one of the most dominant clubs in Europe, a team widely respected for playing the game the way it should be played. That generation grew older, retired and simply made the transition up into the studio. Why they specifically have it in for Spurs, I have no idea. Jealousy? The fact that Spurs have been Liverpool's closest challenger for a good few years now? I'm really not sure.
Sorry for coming late on this, but everyone saying what a worldie but Siggurdson last night had a very similar shot, just in that instance, Flappyhandski made the save. Vardy himself said that he knew Mignolet would be off his line. All down to bad goalkeeping.
This is true to an extent, but I suspect if you asked most pundits how many times Spurs have finished above Liverpool in the last 6 seasons they'd probably underestimate the number (it's 5 as if I needed to remind you). Yet the betting for next season, which I heard before last night's matches, has us behind the usual suspects (including Liverpool) - of course! Mind you that might be as much to do with the amount of bets they get for Pool regardless of the hopelessness of the situation.
Mignolet had to be off his line, Vardy bearing down on him would have been easy to score if he stayed on his line. Hugo often starts where Mignolet started. By the time Vardy shot he was in the correct position and it was just a brilliant shot imo.
Arsene Wenger was involved in an angry tunnel bust-up with Southampton boss Ronald Koeman. Gunners boss Wenger confronted referee Lee Mason and fourth official Craig Pawson and accused him of missing a string of decisions as Arsenal suffered a serious setback in the title race. Wenger said: "It’s always the same with you." But Koeman then saw the exchange and confronted Wenger before replying: "It’s always the same with you." Koeman added: "You had 10 chances to score and couldn’t take any of them so why have a go at them?"
I was talking with my Cousin about Vardy's peach, we were discussing what could be GOTS so far and naturally that was mentioned but I did say that although Vardy's strike was superb, these sort of goals do get scored about 2-3 times a season. Dele Alli's on the other hand, that's a once every five years to a decade sort of goal in my opinion. The sheer audacity to do two kick ups, one over an opposition players' head and then volleying it into the corner is just the stuff of dreams.
A lot of recent posts I found myself nodding my head while reading... I’ve been saying since the first few games that we’ve outplayed everyone, and since not long after that that we’re playing as well as anyone. We’ve improved from there in a two steps forward and one step back pattern. If we can continue that pattern, our chance of winning things is good. But who knows if we can, really? All sorts of things can knock a team off stride, and no club knows that better than ours. One good sign is that we may be starting to get the calls. Now that that does seem to be happening, I have fewer qualms about saying that the officials tend to fix the table. Remember the year when Chelsea finished a couple of points above us while getting the equivalent of a dozen more penalties awarded (when taking into account how many were awarded to our respective opponents)? Wonder why the most blatant goal not given in the PL era was for us against Man U, and the most blatant non-goal that was given was for Chelsea against us? It’s because as the next team down from the Big Five, we tended to be the team the Big Five straggler was trying to beat out. But now that we’re the home of England’s young stars, and are becoming bigger, the wormy officials may be turning. But I wouldn’t get too carried away. No one has solved Leicester. Arsenal follow up blips with winning streaks. They were very unlucky not to get a win yesterday. Once they realize Flamini and Ramsey need to give way to Coquelin and Cazorla/anyone but Ramsey, they’re going to be very hard to beat. Man City have more talent than anyone, and are the only ones who know they can get the job done. I’m enjoying the fact that we’re playing the best football in the league and hope we can continue to improve.
Announcing Pellegrini's step down was possibly the stupidest thing City could've done. They must now face a large chunk of the season without two of their best 3 players in Kompany and De Bruyne, all with a lame duck at the helm. They really didn't deserve to win last night at all. The last 15-20 minutes was a Sunderland siege that a combination of bad finishing and Joe Hart managed to keep out. City are one more medium-term injury to Aguero away from complete derailment.
