Is Champions League qualification possible?

Ok so Ill admit that I have gone slightly AWOL with this blog of late - a hectic work schedule and a lot of preparation for my new career has led to this taking a back seat unfortunately. For those of you who do like to read this blog then apologies all round.

Anyway back to the question in hand. The last few weeks have been a mixture of elation, disappointment and frustration - just a day in the life of being a Spurs fan really. I last wrote in the build up to the Stoke game - this put an end to our winless streak as we done them 3-2, tight game but the result is what counts!

Next saw our exit from The Champions League at the hands of Real Madrid - a fantastic home performance only let down by Gomes' buttery fingers. As angry as I was at him for this we were always going out and as Harry said 'he has been fantastic for us this season' so I cant slag him off for it too much. This was obviously much different among the rest of you, Ive seen some pretty horrendous things said about him over the last couple of weeks but I wont go into that now.

Looking forward to Stoke

The telly was getting a heavy volly of abuse at this moment

Hands up if you felt pretty dejected on Wednesday morning...Yup same here.

A game that promised so much fell apart pretty quickly and ended up 4-0 to 'Los Blancos', Crocuhies sending off on 14 minutes pretty much sealed it for us. We fought well but holding out for 75 minutes with 10 men away from home at The Bernabaeu was always going to be a bloody hard task.

A night out at The Bernabéu

Another disappointing result at the weekend. More dropped points against the bottom clubs. Despite what many yido's are saying at the moment fourth spot is certainly not out of our grasp yet, we still have a game in hand on City and we have to play them soon.

However it does mean that we need to start pulling the finger out very soon, no more excuses and no more dropped points. The games we have left now are even more crucial than before and so we need to come together as a team and make it happen.

Tonight could be the very catalyst for that, in what has been described as the biggest game of our history (not sure about that but definitely of the last 20/30 years) we travel to The Estadio Santiago Bernabéu or The Bernabéu to you and I.

Real Madrid in the quarter finals of The Champions League is quite an occassion and so the boys must be on top form if we are to come out with a good result! The kind of performance against AC Milan away would be just the trick, however even with that its going to be a difficult one.

Wigan away, a desperately needed three points!

Well apparently no-one listened to my blog post yesterday as it has emerged today that Hutton has done his knee and will be out for around four weeks. Fantastic. Just what we need at the moment - yet another name on the injury list.

Well lets try and put that one behind us for the time being and look at Wigan tomorrow. This really is a 'must win' game! That phrase is said too often at the moment but we desperately need to get three points under our belt, we haven't won in our last three games so it is vital that we can pick up a win. Bloody vital.

Wanted: Some fit players...please...

Wow Ive been ignoring this blog lately like Charlie Sheen ignores his prescribed medicine!

Apologies to anyone waiting for another installment, am very busy at the moment so haven't really had the time of late to indulge myself in some blogging!

Anyway, enough of that! Whats been going on in Spurs-land during my short absence? Well not a lot match wise as we have had yet another break. This time for international duty. I actually missed most of the Wales game as I was getting drunk in Bratislava (which also meant I missed out on a Madrid ticket - very upsetting!) however what I did see was quite boring - as per usual really. The big plus for me is that Dawson seemed to do a lot to cement his starting place for England which is certainly something to be pleased with!

A frustrating weekend but its not over yet!

Frustrating.

There are a number of words that I would call our game against Wet Spam on Saturday but frustrating is the one that prevails the most. Both teams had very good chances to score but then again both teams cocked them up. Spurs however cocked up more than them which meant a rather disappointing draw and two points dropped at home, again.

It was one of those tense derby days, nerves were running high which was made worse for me by the amount of opposition fans in the pub. Never mind though, Spurs will come out on top in the end. However that was not to be.

The Spammers at home and a match up with Madrid!

Wow. I think we can all agree that the prospect of Real Madrid in the quarter finals is somewhat awesome!

I was on the train today when the news came through to me and I couldn't help but laugh like a madman, this only continued when I found out that we could face Barca in the semi's. The woman sat opposite me must have thought I had lost the plot.

Maybe I have though because last week I said that if I had to chose then I would probably go for Real, yes Shakhtar would have been the 'easier' game but thats not what I want. I want to see the best teams in the world playing at The Lane and I want to see us beating them! What better way to win The Champions League than to beat literally the best in Europe on the way. Sod the easy route - Spurs don't work that way!

Milan - a sort of great night!

Well I can safely say its been a good week for Spurs!

Dawson at full time - says it all!

I intended to write a review of the AC Milan game the other day, however work and a busy weekend prevented me from doing it. However what a great night! I arrived for the game early and headed straight for The Bricklayers pub to meet a friend and my uncle, we quickly found out however that a large percentage of the attending crowd had this idea as well. Now its a busy pub anyway, lets get that straight but when you actually cant move then you know theres a problem!

Great atmosphere as always in there however which set up a great night! We then headed to The Bell and Hare in order to be closer to our seats in The Park Lane upper, again the party atmosphere was present and before we knew it it was that time to head to our seats.

The Champions League - AC Milan at The Lane!

Bale - will he start? Hopefully!

Ok so it's the big one!

Back in November I was crushed when Tottenham emailed me to say that the ticket I had brought for Inter Milan game was being refunded as my seat was in a 'security and operational area'. brilliant. Thanks for that one! However they did offer me compensation in the form a ticket for whatever home game I wanted - naturally I chose the next round of The Champions League.

4 months later I will be taking advantage of this and will be watching Spurs in one of the Biggest games at The Lane since...well, Inter!
We go into this second leg tie 1-0 up after our heroics in Milan. This gives us the huge advantage of an away goal, at The Lane you have to feel confident that we can produce not just a result but a win. Ive been confident of this since we first drew AC, the away win was just a huge Brucie bonus!

Hmmmm what do we make of that?

3-3.

Mixed feelings about this one really. Firstly I'm really quite frustrated, twice throwing away a lead and therefore losing 2 points is a bitter pill to swallow. On the other hand though we were quite lucky to get the draw, Wolves were well up for this one and as I predicted really did go all out for it.

The biggest plus we can take out of this is that both our starting strikers scored and in particular Defoe. Getting two great goals will do him the world of good, hopefully this will be enough to 'Spur' him on for the rest of the season!

The game didn't start in the best ways, the first 10 or 15 minutes were really quite boring if I'm honest. However the longer it went on the more it became apparent that we were probably going to concede and on 20 minutes the inevitable happened. It had to be Kevin Doyle as well, Ive slagged him off a bit this year so I guess he was always going to score! It has to be said that the defending was pretty poor, lack of concentration I'm afraid.

Wolves away, back after our break!

Forget AC Milan, that's not until Wednesday.

We've got more important things to worry about before then and thats the task of Wolves away.

And I'm telling you now it wont be as easy as some might think, Redknapp this week said that 'they will definitely stay up' and although I'm not inclined to agree with him I do think it would be good for them to stay up. Their style of play has been noted for being very physical, some would even say overly so. However I like this, for the same reasons that I like to watch non-league football. Because its the way football should be - no diving, feigning injury, just get on with it and get stuck in!

Another weekend without Spurs? However shall I cope?!?

Wish I was in Dubai!

It was only last week that I wrote on here about coping with a Tottenham-less weekend, a week later and I'm doing the same.
This week, instead of playing The Filth at home we once again facing a rest - with a slight twist however as the squad are sunning themselves in Dubai! Whether this is actually about giving players some 'warm weather training' or Harry's plan to take over an unstable middle eastern country is anyones guess. Actually if its the latter then my advice is Harry gets some people in who can actually shoot - as Defoe, Pav and Crouch are having problems with this of late. Zing. (How many complaints will that get me).

A brief look forward...

Well Tuesday was a bit of a shocker!

Sorry for my lack of posts this week, has been a busy one and simply haven't had the time!

Tuesday was a strange one, how on Earth we didn't win that game is a complete mystery to me. Its really quite frustrating as well, not for losing against Blackpool - they have proved themselves to be a tough team this year.
No im annoyed because we blew the chance to go third, that win would have really consolidated fourth place as well and put us in a commanding position at least for the time being!

A weekend without Spurs? Whatever next!?

Spurs aren't playing? Whatever shall I do?

Well after the excitement of The Champions League on Tuesday we are back to the FA Cup this weekend, in our fifth round tie we are at home to Bolt.....oh thats right we went out of the cup. Well in that case this weekend see's Tottenham face a rest.

And quite frankly they deserve it. Its been all systems go on planet Tottenham for some time now so a weekend of R&R will actually be quite welcome, hopefully it will give the team a chance to get over some of the little niggles that every team gets at this time of the season!

So whats been going on then since my last blog entry?

A real Glory Glory night!

Crouchie gets the winner

Wow - What a night!

Before the game I said I would be happy with an away goal, I would even had taken a loss (depending on the score!) if we could get that away goal as I was very confident of beating them at home. Not only getting that away goal but winning AND keeping a clean sheet was quite frankly fantastic!

This season has seen some great Spurs moments, The Champions League has certainly seen to that and at the moment this doesn't look to be ending any time soon. Last night saw one of the best performances I've seen from a Tottenham team, at times it wasn't pretty and the second half saw AC Milan hold a huge amount of the ball but Spurs battled.
Two legged fixtures such as this have to be treated very carefully, going on an 'all out attack' although great to watch does have its drawbacks - the goals we've conceded in the competition thus far can support this. We needed to go to Milan, get an away goal and try to snatch the win and this is exactly what we did.

A return to Champions League!

Well firstly I hope you all like the new blog design - gave it a little face-lift as I think it needed it!

The San Siro could arguably be the venue for our season defining moment. 4-0 down at half time and then a second half resurgence spearheaded by Gareth Bale that culminated in a 4-3 defeat. Although a defeat it gave the team the belief it needed to play the biggest teams, from then on our play in The Champions League has been much more focused. Essentially they believe they can beat anyone which is a fantastic thing to have!

2-1 and the yids go marching on!

Another great win!

However what an awful game!

In the push for a top four finish though we can’t afford to be picky and with City losing to United and Liverpool only drawing at home to Wigan It was a bloody good day for us!

It's Niko time!

Before I start I must apologise, the internet decided to stop working which meant I missed out talking about The Olympic Stadium on Friday and doing a match preview yesterday – great timing!

Anyway back to Sunderland.

Wheres the drummer gone??

Theres something that has been worrying me this season. Something that has never before been an issue to me but is slowly becoming more apparent when watching our beloved Spurs play at The Lane. This is going to be quite controversial and may really frustrate some people but I believe it has to be said.

Our support is not what it was.

Would somebody shut her up?!?

There Is one person at the moment who is rather rapidly shooting up 'My List', to the point that I don't think I would care If she met an 'untimely end'. Ok so maybe thats going a little far (or maybe not?) but you can't help but feel anything other than bitter hatred for Karren Brady.

Just when you think the Olympic Stadium debate is slowing down and might finally get out of the news for 10 minutes BAM along comes Karren Brady and makes a public arse of herself once again. She just craves It - right now I could make a joke about her cravings and working with porn barons but ill leave that one for now.

Kranjcar to the rescue!

THAT is why I keep banging on about Niko! My regular readers will know that I do beat the 'Kranjcar drum' quite often and yesterday he justified that and bagged us 3 points in the process.
After that display he really should be given a starting place, especially when you consider the huge amount of injuries our squad has at the moment - unfortunately Van der Vaart becoming the latest casualty.

Niko scores the winner in the 92nd!

I predicted a 2-0 win yesterday, a lot of people thought it would be more than this and it could be a potential rout. Oh how they were wrong. Although I got the result right it was so nearly the fourth premier league draw of the season that I've seen at The Lane!

At home to Bolton

Tomorrow could be an interesting day. For a number of reasons really. We are now definitely at the beginning of 'the business end' of the season, now that the transfer window is behind us all the speculation and unease can disappear also.
Talking of which the results of my latest poll (Are you happy with our January dealings?) was a resounding 85% to "where's my striker?" not too surprising really!
Unless its about David Beckham - already the speculation has started that we will sign him in November/December when his LA Galaxy contract expires - I'll leave that chat for another day though!

Our last outing saw a well deserved and well needed away win against Blackburn, Harry and the team will want to build on this going forward and a home tie against Bolton should be a guaranteed 3 points. Especially when you consider that our next two league games (potentially 3 depending when the Ars*nal game is rearranged for) are away from home.

Back to winning ways

Tottenham do know how to keep you on the edge of your seat! What's it called again? "Squeaky bum time?" Well It certainly applied here at times!
It was a strange game really, at times the play was fantastic - our distribution was at its best, the passing fluid and direct and the forward thinking top notch. Other times It was the opposite, the ball was given away far too easily throughout the game and lapses in concentration nearly cost us more than once.

However a win Is a win, especially away from home and its a much needed boost after the last weeks events on and off the field. Especially when you take into account the amount of injuries the squad has at the moment.

Back to the football then!

Today brings with it a return to The Premier League, Its been a mixed week for us Spurs fans but one that seems to have left most ultimately disappointed.
Sundays 4-0 thumping In the cup was followed by rumours of big money transfers that culminated In bids for Phil Neville and Charlie Adam. No striker materialised and to make matters worse Chelsea, City and Liverpool all strengthened their front lines. (Yes I know 'pool did sell Torres but they replaced him with two quality strikers).

So following all this tonight's game has an added importance on our season, results last night didn't go our way with wins for Utd, Chelsea and the filth just adding to the importance of three points. Also City are away to Birmingham and Liverpool have Stoke at home tonight - this adds even more to tonight's fixture as you can expect wins from the both of them.

Deadline day round-up

Well that's the transfers finished now until the summer and as usual it was a pretty crazy Monday. In total during the January transfer window a total of £218,525,000 was spent - far more than both the last January window and even the summer window!

As we all know our beloved Tottenham needed a striker, really really needed a striker. Things were looking very positive in this respect with the breaking news on Sunday night that we had had a number of bids for top striker in La Liga rejected. This list included:
Sergio Aguero  (apparently £38.5m rejected!)
Alvaro Negrado
Fernando Llorente
and Giuseppe Rossi

Where Do I Start?

I purposely waited for a while before I wrote today's match review, simply because I was In such a bad mood earlier It would have probably consisted mainly of swear words and I don't expect much of it would have made sense. Nevertheless I expect this will possibly have one of my lowest 'read counts' to date - and I'm not really surprised!

Where do I Start? I guess the one positive we can take out of the shambolic display today Is that as usual the crowd was fantastic! As I said In yesterdays preview the atmosphere at The Lane on new years day was pretty pants, well today was the complete opposite. Apart from a few token efforts the Fulham support was woeful, even at 4-0 the yids were still making all the noise! Good job!

Fulham In The Cup...again.

This weekend once again brings with it the FA Cup, this time it is the forth round and we once again have to play Fulham; this is getting to be quite a regular occurrence now having played them a number of times in the competition in recent years.
In all this will be the sixth meeting In the cup, Tottenham coming out on top In all previous games. We have already played them twice in the league this year as well, having done the double over them with a 2-1 away win and a 1-0 home victory.

So the advantage is most certainly in our corner, however as we all know the cup is one of those competitions where anything can happen and this tie could potentially be one of those. Fulham spanked Peterborough 6-2 In the previous round and will have a degree of confidence from their recent results, they have only picked up 5 league wins all season however 3 of those have come in the last 6 games so it could be potentially interesting.

Friday musings

Wow, slow news week! I don't remember it being this quiet over the course of a week for Spurs related news since the beginning of the season! Yes there have been a few happenings, for example the ongoing stadium issues and of course more transfer speculation.

However nothing really new. In fact I was hoping to be writing about the OPLC decision on The Olympic Stadium which was due to be announced today - as I expect you know by now this has been delayed because they are lacking somewhat in confidence on actually making a decision - what does that tell you?!

The future shouldn't be this concerning

Everyone's afraid of the unknown.
Be It the future state of the economy, the '2012 end of the world conspiracy' or what Wenger really gets up to behind closed doors. In this case I'm seriously worried about the future of our beloved Spurs.

The debate has raged for a long time now over the Northumberland Development Project and The Olympic Stadium, yesterday saw it confirmed that the decision will be postponed as the OPLC need 'more time to seek further clarification with both bidders', fair enough but this only really tells me one thing - that they are seriously considering our bid and we could therefore soon be confirmed as the preferred bidder.

Lennon saves my weekend!

Probably a fair result in the end if I'm honest. St James' Park is always a bit of a pain to go to and our record up there is pretty grim. I said before the game that I would be content with a draw but actually now the games finished I'm really not.

Tottenham for large parts of this match played really quite good football, the first half was as exciting as a conversation with Avram Grant but for the most part we played well. The big downer being that Bale was forced off on 12th minutes with a reoccarance of his back injury - hopefully it wont be anything serious!
The same can be said with the second half, a little more end to end but we played well. Unfortunately Coloccini nearly wrecked my weekend by scoring in the 59th minute (good goal to be honest) but thankfully Lennon came back with a great goal in the 90th and rescued a point for the Spurs.

Harry, Levy and the forgotten Newcastle Preview

It's not often that I buy 'The Sun' - in fact I actively try to avoid it, there's only so many 'Jordan related' front pages that I can bare to look at, for the record I don't give a toss...

However today was different, the back page was mostly about The Olympic Stadium and actually had a point of view from Harry on the subject - something we haven't had as of yet. I was a little disappointed when I read the article as it didn't really give an opinion at all, apart from the fact that Harry doesn't like running tracks in football grounds. I suppose it was a 'pro Tottenham' article in the race for the stadium but only in the fact that it slagged off West Ham's offer for it - he didnt really give much of an opinion as to what he thought of us moving, in fact the closet he gets is this comment:

Twitter says we've signed Pienaar?

Yesterday brought with it our second signing of the transfer window, some would say it was our first considering very few people have heard of Bongani Khumalo. (In case you are one of those he scored against France while playing for South Africa in the World Cup).

Regardless Steven Pienaar is now a Spurs player after penning an apparent 4 and a half year deal, details are sketchy but it looks like we paid around £3 million for him. It goes to show where we have come to these days, as this was all confirmed by Pienaar via his Twitter feed before being confirmed by Spurs:

Two points lost

0-0.

Quite frustrating In the end If I'm honest. United didn't really turn up (just like their support) but did enough in defence to stop us getting what would have been a deserved win. Well actually United's defence was only half the story, the other half being Crouchie's seeming inability to not only score but control the ball and win headers.

I don't want to turn this into a Crouch rant as he has done some great stuff for us in the past but he simply isn't cutting it at the moment. The cries of 'Jermian Defoe - he's a yido' went either unnoticed or ignored by Harry until the 78th minute. When quite frankly it was too late for him to make an impact. Shame.
I really don't remember him winning a header until the 60(ish) minute, quite frankly this is just plain poor for a striker that's 6ft 7 - he should at least be winning headers!

United? More like Hotspur!

Its that time again ladies and gents - no not to book a holiday to Tunisia - Its time for our home tie against Manchester Utd. This is one of those games that we always look forward to, over the years though I'm not really too sure why.

This has been a pretty depressing fixture to watch in recent times, even more so when you factor in the away games! In fact we haven't beaten them at home since the 19th May 2001 when thanks to a Korsten brace and a Ferdinand single we managed to turn them over 3-1.

It was 23rd October 1999 the last time we beat them at Old Trafford but we all know how unlucky we have been there over the years - Mendes anyone??

A week in Lillywhite

What a week this has been!

I really cant remember the last time that Tottenham have featured in the media this much over the course of 7 days! It seems that every time i put Sky Sports News, BBC news or Sky News on there is some sort of Spurs coverage - and it doesn't stop there, the newspapers and their on-line versions have jumped on the 'We Love Spurs' bandwagon as well.

Ok so about 60 - 70% of this press attention has focused on Beckham training with us, i think SSN have had a correspondent on permanent standby outside Spurs Lodge every day since his arrival. Just in case something happens, like Beckham getting a blister or something...

Olympics? Sorry I'm a football man!

January 28th.

A date that could well be a turning point in the history of our beloved club. If you didn't know that is the date that The Olympic Park Legacy Company (OPLC) will recommend who is the most suitable for the Olympic Stadium - this obviously being between ourselves and The Spammers down the road.

The Olympic Stadium itself is fantastic, have been past it on a number of occasions (ironically on my way to Spurs) and it is pretty impressive! The transport links would be fantastic and it would cost a significant amount less compared with The Northumberland Development Project.
The potential is also there for a much greater capacity stadium than we would get at White Hart Lane, this would be a fantastic thing for the fans as it means many more of us could see our team every week. It would probably see the end of our enormous season ticket waiting list as well! (at least for the time being anyway!)

Despite all this though, am am hugely against this idea.

Who's number 31??

So yesterday I was a little late getting to my seat which meant that I missed the line up announcement on the jumbo-tron, this always makes the first 10 minutes or so a bit of a pain as you try and work out who is actually on the pitch!
It makes it even more frustrating when you see someone running around with 31 on their back. Who the hell was this? A quick check on the back of the program didn't help and so I had to wait until mid way through the first half when I realised that it was Andros Townsend.

Iv'e never seen him play before but had heard good things so this was going to be interesting.

Ugly scousers and Charlton at home...

The big story so far today?

Roy Hodgson has left Liverpool, not Spurs related I know but felt it was worth mentioning.
In fact I was watching Sky Sports News when it broke this morning and far from the fact of being surprised I was more concerned with the ugly scouselet in the background. (See picture)

Now its a known fact that if you put a camera in a public place people will flock to it, but why is it that they are always like this kid? He minced about in the background for bloody ages with a shopping bag looking so gormless it defied reality. Leave it to the 'pool fans to show some class!

Anyway that's my morning moan out of the way.

Lift off!

With a new year comes yet another Tottenham orientated blog!

And what a time for it to come along, the January transfer window is upon us and its time to see whether or not any of the myriad of players we have been linked with since September do materialise!

The list is bloody huge as well, some of them realistic others just plain ridiculous, the list however includes among other the following:

Luis Suarez

Emmanuel Adebayor

Steven Pienaar

Christopher Samba

Karim Benzema

Ashley Young

Luis Fabiano

Scott Parker...*yawn*

I also think i saw a rumour that we were going to bring Gary Lineker back again - bloody tabloids!

Obviously the biggest topic is the potential loan of some 'Beckham' guy, whoever he is! Seriously though out of all these rumours I would have put him as the most unlikely back in September, now it looks like its merely hours/days away!

I think the one big trend here however is that they are for the most part front men. Lets face it, at the moment our strike force is probably our problem area (in the sense they aren't scoring) - what a difference half a season makes! Keano is on his way out, Crouch cant seem to score in the Premiership and Pav is laziness personified. I'm hoping that Defoe will get back to last seasons form soon but he hasn't really had a chance yet - what with the injury and getting sent off  against Villa!

And you cant just rely on Bale and VdV to score them all!