Is it just me or does it feel like this end of March international break has gone on forever. Never fear though, there’s only a few sleeps left until Tottenham Hotspur make the trip up to St James’ Park to face Steve Bruce’s battling Newcastle United side.
Unless I’ve missed something during my little Vital Spurs hiatus as I’m not a huge international fan, short of maybe some tiredness I don’t believe any players will return worse for wear and that should give us a decent chance to make it back to back Premier League wins again after yet another recent wobble in our form and performance levels that also saw us booted out of the Europa League.
Manager Jose Mourinho will be unable to call on Ben Davies, but we’ll have to see what the later injury update says when it comes to Son Heung-Min, Matt Doherty and Sergio Reguilon. Erik Lamela will return following suspension.
17th placed Newcastle might not have won in their last five, but they are keeping their heads above the drain and have proven tricky for plenty of sides this year, even if they aren’t exactly potent or that threatening on the attack.
As ever though, this is the sort of side that on paper we know we are capable of blowing away, yet we all season long it’s the kind of game that has been our Achilles heel and we’ve struggled to perform in.
All eyes to Sunday as we can still end what was once a promising 2020/21 campaign on a high and with something to cheer about.
For me, what the players earn in a week not a month, the standard is actually very poor, a very average squad player could be getting up 30 000 a week.
123 …. But if we are realistic about players’ wages (particularly those at the top of the tree), it’s hard to make any sense out of it.
That’s true to, crazy amount of money.
My word, the Baggies currently 4-1 up at the Bridge, maybe top 4 isn’t out of the question! 🙂
However unlikely it seems, if the Baggies hold on (Chelsea have pulled it back to 2-4) and Wolves beat the Spammers we would move up to 4th in the table with a win at the Toons. You just know other results will go in our favour but recent history says we will bottle it up there in Toonland!
One good thing, I think, is that we came out of the international break with no injuries. I hope that’s correct?
I think you are right Geof, Davies was injured before the break.
Baggies winning 5-2 at the Bridge, you have to wonder how the internationals have affected the game as WBA probably had few if any players away playing during the break whereas Chesea probably had most if not all of theirs playing 2 or 3 games. It’s something we should be aware of as a similar scenario applies to us and Newcastle.
I’m happy that our match is tomorrow and was not yesterday. If we played yesterday we would be inclined to want to crucify the opponents, but tomorrow we can focus on the resurrection of Spur’s season. May we renew our love of both ourselves, our friends and families, and our opponents and enemies. May José Mourinho find peace in his heart (somewhere else). Oh well, I’m working on it.
I see what you did there TK. :- )
What a funny season. In first place a few weeks ago, then a slide into misery, and now within a spits distance of the spittoon of fourth place. A bi-polar season. Up. Down. Not knowing whether it’s losing to win when winning might keep the miserable mourino at Spurs. It’s Easter so the Easter solution is to pray for José to be converted to decency with a bolt of the old fashioned religious lightning as he reflects on the possibility of his resurrection as a decent non-egocentric man. Miracles are rare, but if any time is the right time it’s the weekend of chocolate bunnies, hope, and the resurrection of edging into fourth place and a chance at CL. Wow. What an Easter weekend. COYS. Keep the faith, whichever faith that might be. A prayer for respect on the site. Be well, mates.
Well here we go” again” yet anor chance given to us to get back into CL positions.
I wonder if we’ll actually capitalise on it this time, this is at least what, the fourth time we’ve been given an opportunity.
But it does show that, in this most interesting of leagues, any team can get a good result.
I’ll houl my wissht until amarra.
COYS.
amarra? my curiosity is peaked. I want to learn how to howl amarra. If sounds like something that requires a shaman to learn a path to a higher consciousness and being spiritually greedy I want to explore the path. if there is no such path I want even more strongly to look for it. spiritual journeys can be at their best when the goals are not obtainable.
I’m in complete agreement, Niall, about the strangeness of this season. Not only the pandemic and the disjointedness and disconnections from society that it has produced, not only the strangeness of matches played from pitches turned into television studios with no supporters but with phony recordings pretending that supporters were present–a kind of ghostly apparitions–not only the strangeness of crowds in pubs turned into social crimes, but the strangeness of having any chance after chance at making the top four only to have it recede into a grave only to be reborn to be killed again to yet again be reborn. It sure is, and continues to be, a season that needs Easter weekend to celebrate this season of football death and resurrection. One need not be Christian to perceive wonder at the timing. Hold you hats, mates, for all the dying and rebirth of this crazy football season.
Will tomorrow’s match be a celebration of rebirth? or a strange test of our openness to celebrating death and burial? This truly has been, and remains, a season of testing of faith. I keep my faith in THFC and I pray that I can continue breathing the air of glory for days yet to come. I want to watch my grandchildren grow so that i can watch some matches with them old enough to grasp something of what we here know. or think we know.
Our ex manager in poch is struggling in a one team league at the moment
When Poch took the Paris job I assumed it would be in many ways a more difficult task than he had when he arrived at N17. As you wrote, 123, the French league is something like a one-team league. And as such it is a collection of super stars who think–each and everyone one of them–that they illuminate the night sky. Consider Neymar. Man/boy who wants to be the brightest light on the team. I’ve watched Neymar for years from my perch in Brazil. When he is injured I feel that the prospects of the seleção do Brasil are better, because Neymar demands that he and he alone is the center of play–and of attention–when he is on the pitch, and Neymar thinks and demands that he is on the pitch and the center of all that is on the pitch. So all must flow through Neymar, and he is happy only when a goal is from his foot. God help the manager of a team of players each of whom demands that he and he alone be the center of the cosmos.
A team should have no center. The closest to the center that a team should have–other than positions that play in the center of the pitch, the central defence, the center midfield–is the whole that is made up of equally necessary parts. If the whole is subservient to its part, woe are the prospects.
Poch’s job began as something terribly difficult–to shape a whole from too many parts that make the same demand–to be the sole center of all. That, of course, is not a possibility, and it means that the task of a new manager is difficult.
We forget how special our No. 10 HK is. He is without doubt our super center of stardom, but he plays like he is a component part of something more than himself. My guess is that Poch would give some special part of himself to have fewer players who demand to be the brightest star of the pitch for one star like Harry Kane who is willing for the spotlight to shine on others.
Talented lad, that Neymar, but a dark blight as often as a shining light. Our religious and philosophical traditions have tended to associate illumination with understanding, but a bright light is as apt to blind as to illuminate.
Chelsea losing, leichester losing… these results are too good for us to win, another slipup i suppose
Tom, it’s the weekend for resurrections, starting with our season.
You’re sounding very upbeat TK! :- )
TK,
I thought you said you had Irish family
Houl my wissht. Means hold my tongue (keep quiet) and Amarra is how some people here say tomorrow. OK m8 I’ll see ya amarra.
It was really for some of the guys on here who watch “Ted” on “Line of duty”.
Tom you’re right the stars are yet again aligning but as usual we’ll probably fek it up somewhere along the line, we’ll be 4 up and give away 2 pens and 2 ogs. Knowing our luck.
I do have an Irish family but I didn’t grow up there. Irish immigrants who moved to America before I was born. They had accents, but the accents were of people who were half assimilated. It gets even more complicated. My father was in England as an officer in the American army in WWII and he married an English woman. The two sides of my family were pretty hostile to one another when I was growing up. It was a Cathlolic-Protestant thing. People are insane, as i guess you know all too well. I was pretty plugged into the Irish immigrant community in Boston when I was growing up there for the latter part of my childhood. Bars where people were raising money for “the struggles.” People telling tales about “no dogs and Irish” signs on the doors to bars. But it’s still in America in an Irish immigrant neighborhood. When I was in London, which was half of my childhood it was with the English and they didn’t ever mention my very Irish family name. I was Captain Taylor’s grandson. lol. I fit in no where and I fit in everywhere.
I did manage to unite the two sides of my family, though. I’ve twice married women who aren’t white. It’s the one thing that united the Irish and the English. No one was happy except me. Anyway, I’ve pretty much outlived everyone except for the two wives and the children and none of us found anything problematic about it. see ya amarra, mate. we’ll be watching the match at the same time.