If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
So this is it: the final furlong, the last hurdle, squeaky bum time. The question is 'Can Gareth Bale haul the flaccid, deadweight of his Tottenham Hotspur team across the Champions League finishing line'? Wednesday's clash with Chelsea will most likely provide the answer.
The bottom line is that Liverpool at their peak - and it was a hell of a peak - typified all the values of football that some of us remember from a pre-Sky, pre-glitz, pre-greed age when it really was all about a ball. Now, it's all about money, and contracts, and egos, and snide bitching to the media if you don't get all your own way.
Arsenal can only improve now. With rumoured targets in Stevan Jovetic, Ashley Williams and more, we are finally improving rather than replacing - something Wenger has sought to do for a long time now. This season is yet to be concluded, but boy, am I ready for next season.
Gareth Bale may be the name on everyone's lips, or newspaper, app, radio or however else you keep up to date with football. While his recent run of form has been breathtaking, it's worth mentioning three players - all of whom arrived in the summer - who have been just as important.
The virtually unanimous praise of Villas-Boas from Spurs players and even Monday's mass celebration on the touchline show a team that's united, happy and fully behind their manager. Either that or the Spurs squad are more deserving than Daniel Day-Lewis of an Academy Award for good acting at hiding their dislike so well.
There's only one man who's been making the headlines at White Hart Lane recently, but Sunday's performance against Arsenal showed that Tottenham Hotspur have much more about them than just Gareth Bale.
For all of football's status as a European cultural icon, for all its intangible preeminence, the meat of its success, the living, breathing organism that is the European football fandom, is actually millions of organisms: individuals, countless raving, screaming, chanting, singing fans, all convinced like the followers of many a world religion that any and all non-subscribers to their creed are doomed to damnation
The stats are impressive but much of the transfer hype is based around a striker who is able to do a lot more than just score goals. He is excellent at holding the ball up, linking with other players and positioning himself during counter-attacks.
Another striker is imperative. With Adebayor away, Defoe is effectively the only senior forward at the club and an injury to him would be nothing short of disastrous. Furthermore, over the last few weeks Defoe and Adebayor have shown that they struggle to score when playing together, so even when they are both available options are sparse.
I'm a Jewish Spurs supporter and have had a season-ticket for two decades. The Tottenham faithful have incessantly chanted Yid Army throughout that time. And while I have witnessed the occasional flurry of anti-Semitic chanting, it has been decidedly rare.
Nothing surprises me about the ignorance, stupidity and aggression of some fans. What shocks me is the inability of the governing bodies, teams and federations to respond with any sort of intention of stamping this behaviour out.
For Spurs fans, Yid is not synonymous with Jew. It incorporates all minorities and makes Tottenham unique as the outstanding multicultural, accepting club in Europe.
While winning the Under-21 Premier League or the NextGen series may do little to excite the White Hart Lane faithful, the importance of such achievements should not be underestimated.
Signs of improvement are evident at White Hart Lane and the promise of an Andre Villas-Boas revolution is still alluring but there are just a couple of infuriatingly obvious errors of judgement which need to be ironed out.
Though identifiable as a music writer, Paolo is also very much a social historian. 'The thing about the internet these days, and home recording, is that music has become so much more accessible, but to be honest with you, I can't keep up with it all.'
It seems that while the majority of Tottenham's fan base have spent the best part of the start of the season pointing fingers at one another, passing around 'the blame' quicker than Danielle Lloyd through the Spurs dressing room, the real issues have been cast to one side, ignored.
