It’s been a strange old season and it’s been a strange calendar year for Tottenham Hotspur. The highs of the Champions League Final and then the lows of seeing our form and usual performance levels fall through the floor – but Crystal Palace this Sunday is a final chance for some joy before we tick quickly into the 2020/21 season.
What kind of performance we see from Jose Mourinho’s charges is absolutely anyone’s guess, but the first half showing against Leicester City certainly gave some cheer and fans would welcome more of that, but there is also the Europa League question to answer and it will go down to the final day’s results with us currently sat in seventh place in the table and a point behind Wolverhampton Wanderers.
Whatever Sunday may bring, the curtain on 2019/20 comes down and we all know we need to strengthen further in the summer, we need a decent pre-season and we need to hit next year running, otherwise fears that the wheels have truly fallen off the Spurs bus will grow.
We can’t allow all that progress and a nice and bright shiny new stadium to fall away as our Champions League hopes did this season. The only question is, will we?
Until then, Palace and all three points, please!
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Sorry a bit late for this….Years ago as a young lad… I too practised kicking a football.. a old style leather lace up, with left foot and right against my dads garage and wall. So I could kick with both feet. As i was asked to play LW & RW at school football team at junior team then secondary age 10 onwards. This practice drove my mum to distraction, the ball thump thumping for 2 hrs every night and I had to promise not to do it at weekends… lol.
But I did develop decent ambidextrous feet, and could cross with both. Helped a lot as well when left school and played amateur football (as RB also) around N London. Hackney Marshes as well. Happy Days..
Block 108. Just like me. I played left wing even though I was right footed. Could cross with both feet so equally at home on either wing…..when we used to have wingers of course. Always took the corners but a wet leather ball was a devil so I often took them short. You had to be brave to head a high cross. Apparently Jeff Astle (WBA) suffered brain damage from heading. Anyway, no excuse for a left foot and swinger. Practice,practice, practice. Your brain will eventually get the message and then your weak foot.
What do people think about the new kit? Why AIA has to be in huge red letters on the front is beyond me. Dark blue would have looked much better, imo.
Geof……I believe in Asia red is seen as a lucky colour, it was for this reason the guy (I think it was Vincent Tan?) who owns/owned Cardiff City tried to change their shirt colour from blue (The Bluebirds) to red which didn’t go down well with the fans and was eventually reversed. Someone can correct me if I’ve got it wrong.
TQ …. Thanks for that. The problem for me is that we don’t play football in Asia. Red may be lucky there but that does not equate to being lucky elsewhere …. that’s if anyone believes in luck to start with. The red letters are far too Arsenalish for my liking.
Geof….I hate the gooners as much as the next guy but I don’t lose any sleep over a bit of red on our shirts! 🙂
Geofspur….to be honest I am so so with the kit, though would have much preferred an all White top, as for the bloody red, I hate it, agree Dark Blue would look much better. COYS
Mind if we finish Top 4 with a Trophy I think the dislike or like whatever your choosing will be forgotten lol! COYS
Fek me an awful lot of whingers I mean wingers here. I too played rightv/left wing also being Right footed. And played top of the left at Gaelic football. Aah Thursday evenings and Sundays playing Gaelic
Saturdays playing football. Loved it.
Re next season 3rd place finish. Carabo Cup winners+ EL final (win or lose on pens)
Man U finish 15th as they are only given 6 pens next year.
We actually get a fair deal from Refs and VAR.
I was a CB at school in the late 50s, with the delights of heading a leather ball with a buddy great lace you could see coming. In the wet it nearly knocked you scenceless. Regarding the developement of two footed skills I like others remember kicking a ball up against a wall with alternative feet so that either was as good as the other. We were also taught to tackle, that skill that is no longer used as proper tackles are now yellow cards, as they sanitise contact out of the game.
I see the process of leaving Spurs behind has started with Man City agreeing a fee for Ake, Arsenal have registered an interest in Grealish and Chelsea signing 3 or 4 while we, wait for it,
sign a baby from Wigan. We need to realise that to maintain a challenge we need to compete on spends. It is no use have a posh over the top stadium, with a brewery etc. with a mid table team, unlikely to win anything or indeed fill it. I suppose we should be used to it by now, football will always come second to making money in Daniels mind.
Why is it that whilst others are spending we are told because of Coved we won’t be able to bring in expensive players. Is it only Spurs that have lost money as the rest of the top 4 i.e. Chelsea, Man Utd, Arsenal, Liverpool have all indicated that they will spend on Quality, not bargains or BOGOF, as we are looking at.
Jod – I see my prediction regarding Ake is coming true – CL club aka Man City and for a minimum of £40m (price accepted by Bournemouth apparently £41m) – now Chelski supposedly have 72 hours to match it but why go back to them who let him go in the first place when he can end up at Man City – LOL?!
Naturally as I also stated – we are nowhere to be seen – no chance we’ll spend £40m+ on a player this summer even if he is top quality and probably a bargain at that price also!
I see they’re also getting a supposed bargain in Torres – £40m roughly down to around £20m – moving quickly on all fronts as any club even more so a top/elite one should do!
I guess we’ll have to wait as usual – especially with our current financial predicaments compelling on top of what is already normal for us anyway!
As for next season – top 4 hopefully, in with a chance of wininng the EL aswell and even the domestic cup’s also with a bit of luck (so try to pick something up for sure) – go all out in all 4 anyway but for that to happen though we’ll need some signings to bulk out the squad properly with some decent quality (Hoj and Castagne maybe, etc)!
El Jefe – Why would Chelsea match the price ? City have effectively been given the right to use as much oil money as they want. So whatever any other club offers for a player they can simply offer more. Even at £40m I wouldn’t describe it as a bargain, fair price maybe.
As always on this site no explanation of how you compete with an entire country’s oil revenue.
Jod – it was Chelski who agreed to insert a £40m clause in his Bournemouth contract for a buy-back so they must have seen it as a pretty fair price especially if he was a success which he has been – after all Chelski were in a position of strength as the selling club and not needing money desperately!
We paid £42m for Davy already 3 years ago with no Prem experience, etc – Ake at £41m today is a bargain end of and worst of all it’s City who are getting him – not that it really matters that much even if they do get ripped off – like you say at the moment they’re allowed to invest infinite funds without hindrance from the looks of things lol!
Ake will first have to go to City, play regularly in the 1st team and then become a top PL player before we can judge whether or not he was a bargain at £40m. Right now it seems to me to be a lot of money for a player coming from a relegated Bournemouth.
But even though we are talking City here with their oil-rich billions, they have also just sold Leroy Sane to Bayern for a supposed £40m or so. But with add-ons that are reported to possibly bring to City as much as 60m in total…
Spurs once had a red-topped kit (with navy shorts and socks), back in our history. This was for around 6 years back in the late 1800’s. Who on here remembers it? Our very first kit shirt had the Spurs emblem in bright red. And at various times in our earlier history we have had many, red-topped, away kits.
But mostly our club colours have been the recognisable navy blue and white. The clubs very first 2 kits had navy blue shirts with white shorts and navy blue socks. After that for a few years, we had kits that had blue and white half-panelled shirts. But the blue was a light blue like the Argentina national team colours.
But the main colours for most of Spurs history have been white shirts, navy blue shorts, navy blue and white socks. The colours that we all associate to, as “traditional” Spurs colours..
As far as logos go. Like I said our very first shirt had the club emblem in red. It also had within the red badge a capital H for Hotspur, in navy blue. And for nearly 20 years now, 3 out of our past 4 shirt sponsors have had their main logos in red emblazoned across our players chests. That’s Thompson, Mansion and AIA.
On the other side of the North London divide, Arsenal once used to have navy blue and white striped socks for a good while. And throughout their history have had navy in a lot of their kits. At times, a good few of their away kits could have been mistaken for Spurs outfits! ……. Scandalous!
Up the navy blue and white… Lilywhites!
HT…you teacher you, thanks for that, most of us olduns who have read books of our history probably knew your info but conveniently forgot about it, lol! must admit it is interesting, thanks again. COYS in White, Navy, White.
PY, I looked this up a few years ago… (I don’t think a lot of us would have known this, apart from a few Spurs’ obsessives out there). And, earlier on this thread, I joked about Spurs being the Lilywhite, Yid Army and not the bleedin’ Red Army.
I was remembering a regular poster on here called Pele10, who almost on a daily basis moaned about our shirts having red logos on them. I’m not exaggerating either. Every day the same old Levy, Lewis and red logo rants… I actually mis him and his moaning old posts. I used to joke about it being like “Groundhog Day” with him. And he took it with humour…
I then spent a whole 5 minutes looking up our kits, throughout our history… It is interesting though to me. It’s a major part of our clubs identity after all. And the fact that so many Football supporters worldwide, do spend a hell of lot of money on club and international team shirts, proves the significance of club colours, logos, emblems etc.,to a clubs or countries identity.
HT – in that case regarding Ake at £41m possibly being a lot of money – what do you make of Davy costing us £42m in total already 3 years ago with no Prem experience, etc and with hindsight what do you think of that price with regards to how he has performed overall in that time also?!
VVD £75m (from Southampton – hardly a top Prem club), Maguire £80m (from Leicester – again last season were hardly a top Prem club), Ake for roughly half of that and considering it’s City who are getting him (Pep tends to know a good player – good solid Prem experience, Dutch international, only 25, etc) I think it is a bargain – time will surely tell for sure as you say – matter of opinion of course lol!
HT/Jod, etc – my only gripe with him as mentioned on here many a time – is his height at only 5ft11 – quite short for a top Prem CB but apart from that think he is an excellent option as an all round defender and it seems Pep agrees also – indeed with all the money they have at their disposal as we all agree, etc and to go after as you say a relegated CB speaks volumes of his opinion on Ake’s overall talent! Think it will prove to be a bargain but again as I said it’s still just a matter of opinion.
I think they are all ridiculously expensive, EJ. The football world is a crazy, expensive over-inflated and over-hyped mad, mad world. But it’s still unfair to rate and compare players by how much a club has spent on them anyway…
Harry Kane cost Spurs nothing apart from his wages. Dele, £5m! Which means that when we bought him he was actually only worth 5m to MK Dons. That had nothing to do with the very good PL player that he almost immediately became. A Spurs 1st teamer and 1st choice International. A player that Pool thought of as being too expensive for them… But none of this actually proves anything at all about how they then perform once sold and bought.
Ake may well turn out to be a fantastic purchase for City. All I said was it’s too early to judge. Which it is. He has to do it for them first and there are many players that don’t…. How much did Pool pay for Carroll for instance? N’dombele. was considered a bargain when Spurs bought him for a record fee. A year later and he has barely played for us… But we could sell him and even make a profit (maybe) and he then goes on to be a star elsewhere. But we don’t actually know this right now, do we….
I think you keep misunderstanding me EJ, when I mention players from relegated clubs or lower placed ones, being overly expensive these days.
This is not mean’t as a judgement on the players talent or potential to be a great. It’s about them being at clubs that have spent little or nothing on them because they are not the wealthiest of clubs or with a recent history of success.
In other words, it is more about how much a big club is willing to spend on these players, knowing that the selling club can’t usually afford to say no to 40-50m. They’d almost be foolish not to when being relegated.
Man City can afford the punt on Ake coming good. But they can also afford to have such a potential talent sitting on the bench, that has cost as much… For Spurs it would just seem wrong to be forking out that much for a player like Ake to possibly not live up to his hype and even be sitting on our bench…
Right now, Sanchez that you have mentioned, up until this season had been playing for a top 4 PL club and a CL finalist… Spurs! Ake has not. And Sanchez is a year younger. Sanchez was also just a penalty shoot-out away from being a WC quarter-finalist 2 years ago. And he stood out vs England that day as a bloody good defender. Which he is. Ake is not really considered to be a top International at this time…
This is not me putting down Ake but more about me bigging-up how good I think Sanchez is (and now Dier) as our current CB’s, are.
This is regardless of how much City are prepared to pay for him …. And who knows maybe there is a £5m CB with just as much potential but 6 years younger than Ake, playing at a club like MK Dons right now… 🙂
HT – in that case I agree lol – especially as I am a share-holder LOL!
Davy and Tanguy quite frankly we were ripped off on –
Davy only 21 and 1 year at Ajax – £42m!
Tanguy only 22 and 2 year’s at Lyon – £65m!
Hardly top league’s and even more so vastly experienced players – indeed on Tanguy even Arse got Lacazette from Lyon for £53.5m and Aubameyang from Dortmund for £56m (and many said they were ripped off lol) but these were STRIKERS with brilliant proven goal records thus vastly experienced and the best players in their league’s, etc – hence for all his posturing, etc Levy keeps getting done over quite frankly when it comes to bringing players in – especially when it involves large amounts especially by our standards lol (or even cry at loud as the case maybe)!
Ake at 25 is a proven Prem and international player and at a perfect age where blends that experience with still having his best year’s ahead of him – perfect timing for the big move to a top club, the TOP club in fact lol! £41m given what we paid for Davy and the VVD and Maguire deals, etc will surely prove to be a bargain IMHO but yes let’s see what he gets upto at City to justify this first of all of course!
HT – we might have been all you said we were but that didn’t stop City from taking Walker off us for around £45-50m in total – so in that case if Davy was that good – why have City not come in for him again around the £50m mark for example – surely better to pay an extra £10m or so if the quality is indeed worth it?!
Would we seriously turn down £50m for Davy – I very much doubt it and there has to be a reason for that surely! Indeed I read an article this week stating if we were offered only £40m for Davy that we’d likely take it so that says it all really!
As for Tanguy – we’d be lucky to get again £40-50m for him currently and he cost in total £65m – very bad decision making by the club, Levy, etc!
That’s not how it works EJ… It’s why I keep mentioning that Pool thought of Dele as too expensive… Besides which, is Davinson for sale right now? I reckon he would have to cost more than Ake if he was…..
When Sanchez was at Ajax, he was highly rated just as Ake now is. He was a sought after player which is why he cost so much. Same as Ake…. But Ajax ain’t no Cherries are they? 🙂
We are going around in circles here…. I don’t actually care how much Sanchez cost Spurs as long as we have him as a player, playing to a certain standard. I actually prefer him to Maguire as a CB. But as you pointed out Maguire cost MU around twice as much. Does this make Maguire twice the player that Davison is?…. So anyway, given my preference, I could choose to say that Sanchez was a bargain for Spurs, compared to Maguire for MU… Ake, not being a Spurs player, it makes no odds to me how much he is sold for….. It’s all still madness!