After another dull, and pretty boring break in the fixture list for those who aren’t that interested in international football, the proper action is back for Tottenham Hotspur fans as we make the trip up to newly minted Newcastle United.
Following their recent majority takeover by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, but the Premier League being ‘assured’ the Saudi Arabian Government will not be involved in the running of the club – even though Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is the Chairman of PIF and it’s basically the states savings account whose raison d’etre is to secure non-oil based revenue for Saudi Arabia as a whole – what this actually means for our trip up to St James’ Park is open for debate.
Newcastle United fans will definitely be boosted after all their battles with Mike Ashley, but given the wealth of the new ‘non-Government linked’ owners, it’s easy to imagine there will be a good degree of uncertainty, both amongst management and players when it comes to their futures.
Having ended our three game losing streak with the 2-1 victory over Aston Villa, we will be looking to make that back to back wins again and given their start to the season, you’d have to make us firm favourites to do just that, as long as we turn up.
But of course, so far that has been the story of 2021/22 – will Spurs turn up?
Of course we’ll come through it unless pandemic or war intervene. the question is will we get closer to 9 wins or to zero wins when we’ve come through the 9 matches..
Yes, it feels like a tough run.
In those next games, we’ll test ourselves against 3 direct rivals for top4/top 6, and the run will also decide our future in both the EFL Cup and the ECL.
In many ways, it’s far too early to make our season, but it can certainly break our season.
Best guess about the upcoming run of 9 matches: We’ll win some, lose some, a draw others, in some sort of combination.
Truth be told, we’ve been so inconsistent this season that it’s mad to think I can predict much of anything. We beat Citeh, fair and square, and looked like the team from the County Girl’s School for Orphans in others.
Nuno seems to be settling into a first team, so maybe the team will hit some consistency. But we’re not close to that yet, it seems.
The one player i hope gets a shot at moving towards the first team is Bryan Gil, who shows flashes of being another David Ginola. illusion? who knows? But he seems more the future than does Moura, who seemingly never will learn what to do in the final part of the pitch on attack.
But for me it’s already a successful season. We’re rid of the odious manager we had 12 months ago, so already we’re way ahead.