What had started out as quite a promising campaign has definitely turned into a topsy turvy year for Tottenham Hotspur, and this week has been no different as we backed up a poor performance against Arsenal in the North London Derby defeat with a quite incredible performance that saw Dinamo Zagreb fight back from a two goal deficit to unceremoniously dump us out of this season’s Europa League competition.
Opinions amongst Spurs fans have always been torn when it comes to manager Jose Mourinho and this last week has done nothing to temper those thoughts, and it probably feels even more frustrating as ahead of Arsenal it looked like we were again playing ourselves into some good, attacking form and leaving the more defensive and pragmatic approach behind us.
We will be missing Erik Lamela after his sending off, and Son Heung-Min continues to be out. In other potentially good news, there’s mixed talk about Jack Grealish returning so he might miss out for them, but in any event, we know we have the firepower to take all three points, it just again comes down to how we play and, well, how we play.
The question that no one can bet on ahead of a match this season.
Hi Block.
Sorry and forgive my ignorance. But I don’t know what you mean by P/Ex and cash deal.
Ah, I think I’ve got it! Do you mean player exchange? 😉
Good call B108
Never thought of that, I take it you mean player(S) + cash for Kane.
Whilst like (probably) most here I don’t want to see him go and in the current finincial climate, I thought he was going nowhere, however a players and cash deal may sway Mr Levy.
As long as we get decent players in and not the (mostly) rubbish we got with the Bale money.
I just feel that for Kane and his agent this summer is one for a big decision.
If he were to go, I would be saddened by his departure, however he did stay and give it a go.
If he were to stay it would be for his family, his ties, his love for the club.
And the grass isn’t always greener, he only needs to look at the likes of Torres, and even his current playing partner Bale who is almost dispised at Real Madrid.
Sometimes a move isn’t everything.
Even so Niall… At the end of the day, Bale has a ton of winners medals at RM and the pride of scoring a winner in the CL final v Pool. And one of the best goals ever to be seen in any final. (Something Harry didn’t/couldn’t do).Not to mention that he is currently still Reals top earner. Who, they can’t really afford anymore anyway. But he still gets paid!
And, it is far from simply saying, “Hey Real you want Harry? You can have him but as long as we get 1 or 2 of your best in exchange”.
Questions such as do we (or our manager) actually want anyone at Real (or wherever) and who? Can we afford their pay demands? Do they even want to leave Real/? for Spurs? Do Real/? want Harry anyway? Does Harry want to go there? And on and on and on…
We haven’t begun to understand the massive changes that the pandemic has brought, and will force on us in all sorts of ways, and football isn’t exempted. Some of the mighty will crash. Some of those usually overlooked will become positioned well. The economic and social upheavals will not correspond to the familiar expectations. Add Brexit to this and the future truly is not known. You think that English football will be immune to the ripple of Brexit? Think again. You think that English football will be immune to the ripple of pandemic? Think again.
In 1914 no one predicted that the British Empire would soon be gone, nor that Europe would be home to concentration camps and genocide. The world is re-aligned and the sun sets where there was an Empire. We haven’t yet perceived how the 366 days of 2020 began a re-alignment of all we thought we knew. The PL and THFC must be nimble, or will slip badly.
The changes that will take place in the coming two to three years cannot be foreseen. The economics of world football will not allow the likes of what we have now. Whether Tottenham Hotspur Stadium will be a world entertainment center or an albatross slung over our shoulders is up for grabs, and no one can know when or how or what to grab. Or whether we be grabber or grabbed.
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold, as I quoted the word-magician Yeats a couple of days ago.
whether we can hold
our magnificent center forward cannot be foretold.
We might be the most powerful football club in the world in 10 years,
or we might join Barcelona in declarations of bankruptcy.
Whether the world will belong to the poets or to the con artists is up for grabs, and it may become difficult to tell the two apart. This will be determined by the small daily actions of all of us.
Do I dare to eat a peach? To walk along a beach?
Thing is TK. Most people on this planet of ours don ‘t really have time for the hundred year old, airy-fairy, day-dreams of a self indulgent, self important poet such as Yeats.
They are far too preoccupied with feeding their families and getting on and surviving in the harsh realities of real-world dilemmas. And not giving a shit about a pompous middle-class, conservative, ani-libertarian, facist loving twat from beyond the grave. Writing of fairies kidnapping young boys!
Football and life will go on. Having survived two world wars and the Spanish flu etc. As will we all. Plague after plague. War after war.
People are not simply divided up as either poets or con-merchants. The vast majority are neither… Just honest hard working, resilient, and amazing everyday folk. Getting on with life, whatever may be.
Or as the Stranglers once sang…
Walking on the beaches looking at the peaches……….
I take it that your comment is a negative take of mine. Okay. You don’t have to read my comments. Skip them. But if you are reading:
As to Yeats’s take on the world–don’t agree with much of his attitudes, but he did have a way with words. His take on Easter 1916 seemed to miss what self sacrifice is all about. But he did seem to grasp the unravellings that take place.
As to the thrust of my comment–I wasn’t suggesting the end of football. Only that it may take a turn that we cannot anticipate, and those on top may not stay there and the old way of doing things may not survive. The weak today might be on top tomorrow. All depends on who catches on to the changing world and who does not. The old empires will not last. I hope DL’s staking it all on the new stadium works for us, but it looks like we took on a lot of debt that may tie us down in dramatic ways.
Daring to eat a peach, by the way, has nothing to do with Yeats, but does have to do with the changes that come with the passing of eras. Written by another far to conservative poet who also had a way with words.
Yesterday’s monumental plans may become tomorrow’s tombs. Perhaps I should have stuck with that.
Sorry I seemed to have irked you, mate.
Kane cash only, 150 mil asking price.
Don’t worry TK we won’t be around when their is a one world government.
Lol. could a one world government be any worse than what we’ve been doing for the last 10,000 years?
The question is: what would the effect be on THFC if that turns out to be the direction that future takes? Would the cockerel rule the roost? If not, I’ll help lead the revolution.
I wasn’t at all irked TK.
I just don ‘t get where you are coming from most of the time. Or what you are saying on here that has to do with anything Tottenham or football, when quoting Yeats. It makes no sense to me…
It seems to me that the poetry you put up from him goes against what you have to say so often about the world. Yeats was a Fascist sympathiser and yet you go on to talk of concentration camps. He was anti-communist and yet you also express Marxist views just after quoting him. He was a supporter of Mussolini (An inspiration to Adolph Hitler no less). And yet you talk of an evil Jose Mourinho. Where’s your sense of perspective, man? Are you confused?
It was Yeats I was having a dig at, not you… And I think what I say is true and that most people don’t give a monkeys for the 100 year old words of a fascist supporting fool of a man, who was against the freedom of his fellow man.
I’m not irked but I am confused myself…I also love some airy-fairy old poets and poetry too… But so what!
I did end my post with joke, TK. The Stranglers bit was meant to be funny…
I was making a point about the unraveling of the world. As to Yeats, I don’t like his politics, but I do admire his way with words, and his words about the unraveling of the world fit the flow of the moment.
I try on this site not to engage others is contention about things political. Someone made a positive statement about Donald Trump one day not that long ago and I restrained myself from responding. Didn’t say a word when Lucas Moura came out supporting the fascist Bolsonaro when he ran for President of Brasil. I did comment in a site about Brazilian football, and I might have if he’d said something similar about politics in London.
I’m not a Marxist, although I think Marx did get some of his analysis right. He was a bit too Hegelian for me, and a bit too much from Feuerbach, although the dialectics is appealing. I am anti-fascist without a doubt. But my quoting Yeats was simply because we had a few comments back and forth about poetry, and Irish poets in particular, and it fit, I thought, some comments I was making about Gareth Bale and the absence of loyalty these days. The center indeed is not holding, although my sense of center is not Yeats’s sense of center.
Sorry if I misread your comment, but these things happens and we continue is the same brotherhood. For the most part, I find your comments on point here. More obviously so than some of mine, although almost all of mine do have a take on football and Spurs, although not always directly.
I think of coming on here as a substitute for therapy in this insane world. This is my site for group therapy, and that’s why I expect a bit of craziness from all of us, including TK.
We are united in the one thing that matters most here: Love for the Spurs way to play. At least I hope so.
By the way, when I encounter someone saying something–here or elsewhere– I’m less interested in whether I agree with them or not, but in whether they provoke me into considering something I haven’t been considering. That can come from any direction. Even Boris Johnson does that once in a while, although, I’m sure, not in the way he had in mind. Yeats, too. Even John Knox. LOL.
stay at home in England is ending? a prayer for the health of one and all. supporters in Tottenham Hotspur stadium? Be well and cheer loudly.
Ireland will be in lock down for the summer, pls neighbours, give us some jabs, our corrupt and useless, clueless government couldn’t run a bath
Seems like that’s under consideration 123 although it will no doubt piss off the beaurocrats in Brussels! 🙂
As if politicians didn’t have a bad enough reputation (well earned indeed), the COVID pandemic has exposed every weakness to the nth degree. Greed, pride, corruption, stupidity make for a formidable opponent to what is good and decent. my adopted second country, Brazil, is having 4,000 new cases a day. I’ve lost several friends and neighbors there. I got the two doses of Moderna vaccine in NY. Wish I could smuggle some with me when I go back. If I can I’ll be there in June for a few months.
HT
I think you may have gotten me wrong in my comments re HK, there is, a lot of speculation around HK’s move, I never mentioned to Real Madrid.
I was using the Bale analogy as a point for not moving, even though he did all those things, CL goals, League winners in Spain medals etc… Bale is still largely disliked by those supporters in Madrid, whilst I know it’s not a popularity competition, it still helps at a club if the supporters like you. (see comments on Mourinho)
My actual point was, to clarify in my head what B108 was saying about HK “PX”
Also to say that if he did leave this season I could understand why, but also using the Bale /Torres transfers as a sort of warning that everything doesn’t always go the right way when you move.
You may move but hate the place or they hate you or the team you move to may not play to your strengths.
Re
Yates I also like some of his poetry, for me as the “stolen Child” describes the areas around Donegal, Sligo, perhaps in a magical way. It may have taken you to have been in those places to get his writings.
I like the Eagles songs, don’t particularly like Don Henley.
Similarly Van Morrison wrote some lovely songs (the Mystic) absolutely dispise the man.
BTW Hate “walking on the Beeches” Love “Golden Brown”
By the way guys. I didn’t say I didn’t like some of the guys poetry. I do … LOL.
And his words can be magical.
But the poem that TK put up was not about the magic of Irelands land, its myths, fairy tales and legends. It was about him being against the rebellion and uprisings in the world that were from ordinary people, against the dictators of the world. Based on his view that people should not be free spirits and need to be controlled……. Which for a romantic poet as he was, comes across to me as one huge hypocrisy… But it’s just my opinion… I never knew the fellow…
But his idea of the world being in turmoil was more to do with him being against folks fighting for their freedoms. Whereas this pandemic is about us losing so many everyday freedoms. Albeit temporarily…
Anyhow, I’m not so cynical or negative about how we come out of this pandemic. Humans are a resourceful lot and can fight such negativity and move forward into the world, as it comes to them…
Niall. No you didn’t mention RM. But Block did. And you were responding to him. But I did write Real or wherever… You said the grass is not always greener. I agree. But Bale may not.