I was in the shelf then too! Also re Anderton "sick note" I remember reading something on old-606 that was a proper analysis of his sick record and it somewhat debunked the whole assumption. He did play a very large number of games for us. Still, he's not the first footballer to be tagged with a reputation that continues even against some of the evidence. Regardless of how sick or not he was, I don't think he deserves to be in the list of not very good players we like, because generally IMHO he was very good.
According to wikipedia he played this many times each season while at Spurs: 34 37 37 9 19 15 46 22 26 44 22 24 I would say that squad rotation wasn't around much back then so i would say that 7 out of the 12 seasons were fairly sicky.
cracking shout! I've just dug out this spurs shirt. http://thumbs1.ebaystatic.com/d/l225/m/mj3MKcEp9e_i6uqTsXD43Hw.jpg I have "Leonhardsen 17" printed on the back. - what was I thinking? I just remember my old man being furious that i'd chosen a player with the longest name ever, as he was paying for the printing i'll always remember him saying "why couldn't you have chosen "Fox"? hahaha
You might argue that, although it's still 335 games and 10 seasons. That represents a great servant of the club to me. Not saying you do not have a point you understand. NB, not sure which source is most accurate, but [http://archive.mehstg.com/fact_anderton.htm] says he played 389 times from the start + 38 sub appearances, which is quite a lot more. Also mentions he turned down a move to ManU in 1995. I also think he tended to do very well for England. I (seem to) remember in that match where Beckham was sent off and we thought we'd scored, everyone switched off, they took a quick free kick and counter attacked. Anderton ran back the entire length of the field and made a brilliant saving challenge in or very near our area. Would have been much more lauded if we'd won of course.
I was actually surprised that he got into the 20s in so many seasons. Hoddle said Anderton was as good as Beckham, but better at defending. Scored a blinder vs Sweden (think it was Le Tournoi). Watch with sound for the noise off both posts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XBo3fBUsrI
In a bizarre twist of fate, Sutton United's reserve keeper was the Jason's Dozzell's brother. Also, no, Anderton was not poor by any means.
Rosenthal for his FA Cup 5th round replay hat-trick against Southampton. Cost us £100k from Liverpool and probably ended up costing them more than that, as we went on to knock them out in the next round and deny them a semi-final against Everton and possibly a final against Man Utd. Any excuse for those highlights: [video=youtube;29GpwMo0yII]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29GpwMo0yII[/video]
And on the official site, plays for our Legends team. Apart from family connection, no reason why he should, Lord knows we've had enough keepers down the years.
That match is also one of my most memorable. I was skiing in Austria at the time and I declined the opportunity to go out that night on the apres ski in order to watch it. At half time I was wondering what I'd done and nearly went after them. However glad I didn't as it gave me one of the most fantastic 45 minutes (+ extra time) of watching Spurs ever. NB From the highlights noted Dean Austin was in the team. I always quite liked him but I've no idea why, it wasn't ability... but he always tried his best and that is endearing.
Crouch--though I'll always argue he was a good player (in which case I shouldn't be bringing him up here...I'm probably overthinking this...) I came at watching football through pulling for England in world cups, and being myself nearly two meters tall and thin, Crouch was my boy. He always works hard and looks to be doing his best, which counts for something as well. "giraffe wearing stilts on ice" brings back some treasured personal memories, by the way. My Aussie tennis coach looked at some videotape of me and said, "Gee Tom, you move like a giraffe on roller skates."
To this day I have no idea what Graham and Hoddle were doing with him. We had a player who thrived on technical football and could work wonders with the ball on the deck, we had a team with numerous ball-playing footballers (under Hoddle, at least...), yet the tactics were HOOF! He's one of the few players of the Graham/Hoddle era that would actually fit into our current team.
