Entries Tagged 'Spurs Wonderkid' ↓

I’ll write thoughts on the match once I can wipe the shit that is covering my eyes from sitting through that 90 minutes of utter dross. But Jol’s recent press quotes are really starting to piss me off,

“I feel we have had a pretty good spell (three successive draws), the only thing we needed was more wins. A win today and we would have been fine,” Jol said.

“We lack a bit of leadership (in defence). Someone has to stand and pull the strings at the back. Hopefully Ledley King will be fit in a couple of weeks. He was not there and wasn’t there for the last seven months so we have to get results without him.”

About the pressure on him, Jol told Setanta Sports 1: “I’m already used to it, even before the season started.

“The only thing that counts is results. We’re still in a good position in the cups and hopefully, on Thursday (in the UEFA Cup) we can get a result.”

Three successive draws are not good results. Lacking leadership in defense is the club’s fault for only having 1 alleged leader in Ledley (although I think he’s just our best defender rather than a leader) and choosing to buy young talent rather than experienced winners.

And we are not still in a ‘good’ bloody position in the cups. Passing the first round counts as good now? Well yes, I suppose it does.

Well, we did it. The last two seasons have ended up with our club looking stronger than it ever has been thanks to a surge in fortunes on the pitch, a respected, successful and secure management regime and a chairman and board ready and capable of making the right decisions for once - Spurs have posted record profits and revenues. Hang on a minute…

Levy said that breaking the 100 million mark was “largely driven by the club competing on four fronts, both domestically and in Europe.”

Now what would be the appropriate thanks to the manager who helped achieve that?

So the rumours hitting the street are that Jurgen Klinsmann has answered Daniel Levy’s ad in the classifieds to replace Martin Jol and finally expressed his interest in the job. On the one hand, Jurgen is an incredibly progressive coach who will introduce the latest techniques in training and fitness. On the other, he has done absolutely nothing on a club level and only managed to take a German national team to the semi-finals of the World Cup on home soil. A decent, if not particularly surprising result. But other than actual managerial experience, Klinsmann ticks all the right boxes. He showed the strength to pick unknown, form players for Germany in the face of public disapproval. He introduced training techniques that got him laughed at in the press, but ultimately proved innovative and decisive.

But at this point its moot. Levy and the board’s utter mishandling of the manager search earlier in the season has forced them to back Martin Jol publicly, far more than they would have wanted to, and are slave to results rather than availability of the right man. Only if Spurs are still struggling come Christmas, hardly an unlikely scenario given our upcoming fixtures, can Levy pull the trigger on Jol without massive backlash. Even if Jurgen is the right man and wants to come, the board will not have the balls to do anything now after all the bad press they’ve received for their treatment of Jol.

Yet that is the comparison Steve McClaren is making, adding to his ever growing list of quotes or actions that he eventually lives to regret the England boss claims to have the same faith in Tottenham’s hilarious stopper as he did in one of the greatest goalkeepers in Manchester United, and football, history.

I’m glad to see Robinson maintaining his place for England but, like making Keane captain, it is one of those things that appears to influence Martin Jol’s team selection and force him to pick a team based on some factors other than performance on the pitch. Keano hasn’t been playing great despite the goals and it does seem that Bent and Defoe would have had more chances had Keano not also been team captain. The same goes for Robinson, Jol has said before that being England’s #1 is important to Robinson and the club and if Robbo is suddenly dropped from Spurs’ eleven then how can he start for his country?

Although with McClaren comparing him to Peter Schmeichel, maybe it won’t be such a problem after all.

As we expand our little site, we’re opening the doors to anyone who’d like to start submitting their thoughts, rants and opinions on Tottenham Massive.

Just email us at editor[at]themassivenews.com with a little bit about yourself and we’ll go from there.

- After 60 minutes, gesture to the team to settle the ball and defend for the next 30 minutes despite this tactic having almost always resulted in an equaliser against us.

- Fail to take into account an incredibly leaky defense in putting 10 men behind the ball and not going for a 3rd goal.

- Fail to take into account a low confidence keeper not capable of commanding his area against crosses or set pieces.

- Proceed to concede late equaliser from a cross after inviting wave after wave of attacks from a top four team.

- Talk about how we ‘deserved to win’.

I’ll put out more detailed thoughts when suicide is less top of my mind.

Both Peter Crouch, no doubt thinking fondly of the years he spent toiling away unappreciated in the Tottenham reserves, and Rafa Benitez have stepped forward to praise our fighting spirit against Aston Villa, and the overall work Martin Jol has done at Tottenham respectively.

Sounds more like their attempts to keep themselves grounded ahead of their match with use rather than any genuine admiration for what is happening at White Hart Lane this season. Though this is the kind of match where we’d pick up a point, just enough to keep the vultures from devouring our corpse but not enough to really do us any good. And after resting players, and resting during the match itself, against Famagusta the lads better come out swining.

Great result. 1-1 against a bunch of part time hotel workers.

The key here is that managers can get the best out of some players, but not others. There are too many examples to count of a coach being toss at one club but then winning trophies all over the place at another. Martin Jol is a good coach with good ideas and probably some good motivational skills judging by the public backing he gets from his players, but he clearly is struggling mightily to get the best out of Tottenham Hotspur’s players.

With news that Martin Jol intends to let Robinson play his way back into form after his clanger(s) against Aston Villa, I find myself once again questioning the ability of our coaching staff to spot and correct problems in our players. Who do we have that has really progressed under the tutelage of the current regime? I can think of none, but I can think of of a couple who actually seem less effective than when they started (Aaron Lennon).

Allowing Robinson to get a clean sheet and make a few easy saves against the Cypriots makes sense if the performance and errors against Villa were a one-off, in which case a quick fix is all that is needed. But it was the culmination of a year or so of poor form from our keeper where he has displayed an inability to command his area, instill confidence in his teammates, and make any save other than reaction stops low and close to his body. Dropping him isn’t about punishment for the last game, it’s a recognition that Robinson in his current state has been costing us points for a long time now and we need to try alternatives.

Look at how many keepers Sir Alex has gone through and how ruthlessly he has done it, look at Wenger giving Lehmann the boot without a second thought. If Cerny is too crap to play in the eyes of the coaching staff then why the hell haven’t they gone out and gotten a better #2?

No matter how you look at this situation, it stinks. Again.

I don’t know a single Spurs fan who hasn’t written off Ledley King in the short or long term. His return to match fitness keeps getting pushed out and every time he does come back he’s injured again after a couple of weeks. The club has always tried to pull the wool over our eyes (and perhaps the eyes of whoever might pay some money for the lad at this point) but Martin Jol seems to have written our captain off as well,

“I can’t rush him,” Jol said. “I can’t wait for Ledley all the time because I have other players to focus on.

“If he will be back, it will be a big bonus for us.”

“Can’t wait for Ledley all time time”? “If he will be back…”? The splurging of cash on Younes Kaboul was may have been to cover Ledley’s prolonged absences but its another area that our youth-only transfer policy is hurting us. Buying young talent is great, but when you buy youth you are also buying inexperience and errors - both of which we have seen from Kaboul already. He’ll take at least a season to adapt to defending in the Premier League and… well I guess that doesn’t matter since we’re pretty much screwed already.