Champions League Dream Continues

This has been a great time for football in the last few weeks; well it has for me anyway. Obviously if this is not your first visit to this blog then you know that my first footballing love are Tottenham Hotspur, And The fact that this year I have seen Tottenham triumph over both Milan giants makes this the best season since I started to support Spurs back in the early 90’s. Obviously the AC Milan vs Spurs match is only half over but we must be favourites to go through and even if we crash out at this stage I think we have proved that we deserved our place in the European Elite competition, there is every chance that we will be muscled out by the Money men at Man City and Chelsea but at least we proved that a club built on sound financial management and slow improvement can operate at the highest level, and unlike when Leeds gatecrashed the party built on speculation that it would be a recurring invite Tottenham can survive not playing in next years Champions League (Although if we can keep Bale and Van Der Vaart is another question.) And unlike Everton’s brief soirée a few years later we have also proven that we can match some of the best that Europe has to offer – Although in fairness with our recent records against Arsenal and Chelsea I think we already knew that.

It is a great bit of justification for Spurs fans, when Tottenham qualified last season I was told by many fans of Champions League teams (Mostly Chelsea but this is because I was working in South London and they were everywhere.) that we would not make it through qualification, Then after the draw for the groups was announced it was exclaimed happily that We were doomed and could never beat Inter Milan, then after the last draw I was confidently told, albeit at a lesser volume than the start, that AC Milan would humiliate us at the San Siro. I am happy to report that they are wrong once more, despite this and possibly due to the immense disappointment I have had over the years I am still cautious about declaring Tottenham the victors as it is only a one goal lead and anything can happen however we are in control of our own destiny and the Lane has been an intimidating fortress over the last few years so things are looking very bright.

The match itself was notable for the Attack of Gattuso on Joe Jordan our 60 year old first team coach (And voted number 34 in the list of 100 hardest footballers) This really was a game of two halves, in the first half Tottenham dominated, had most of the good attacks and looked set to dominate the AC Milan team who simply couldn’t find any rhythm the second half however Milan came out in a different move and seemed determined that if they could not out play Tottenham they would try and out muscle them, this also proved problematic however as Milan’s five footers struggled to muscle 6ft 7In Peter Crouch, they decided instead to rely on Cheating and unsportsmanlike behaviour. The main talking points (Other than the diminutive Hair Ball (Gattuso) attacking the Bald Giant (Jordon)) were the tackle by Flamini on Corluka which will hopefully not cause any serious injuries but shockingly did not result in a Red Card and the Tottenham Goal where Spurs particularly Aaron Lennon, Luka Modric and Crouch demonstrated that along with the flair and patient build up play we demonstrated in the first half there is also a killer counter attacking element to the team, one they must be fearful off when they visit the Lane

Champions league draw, again

Well I was told that Spurs would never make it to the champions league, then I was told that we would be lucky to qualify, next came the certain fact that we would not qualify from our "group of death."
You can imagine how happy I am then to be waiting for the draw for the knock out stage of the competition, there are not a lot of easy teams left at this stage so anyone we get will of cause be tough, our opponents will be out of the second placed teams - not including Arsenal or Inter Milan - so it will be out of: Roma, AC Milan, Lyon, Copenhagen or Marseille. Of these I guess I would like Copenhagen and dislike AC Milan - although our last visit to Milan was definitely an interesting event.
I am very glad we finished top of our group however as things look a lot worse for Arsenal who will be travelling to Germany or Spain to face one of: Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich or FC Schalke. So I guess they will be hoping for Schalke but they are by no means an easy team, and I do not really understand Arsene Wenger's assertion that they don't fear Barcelona as they were beaten so badly last year, but I guess that's his job.

Anyway onto the draw:

We got AC Milan in what I am sure is the game of the round, at least no one can say we did it the easy way, the strategy should be to try and keep 11 men on the pitch there and then destroy them at home, it has worked so far.
Other games
Roma vs Shakhtar
Valencia vs Schalke
Inter vs Munich (so arsenal are going to Spain.)
Man Utd vs Marseille
Barcelona vs Arsenal - repeat of last year
Chelsea vs Copenhagen
Real Madrid vs Lyon
So not a great draw for spurs, but at least it is worse for Arsenal.

Tottenham top group of death

The group stage of Tottenham's first champions league campaign ended last night and, despite what I was assured by a Chelsea fan after the draw, Tottenham did not get shown just how out of their depth they are but ended up winning the group and in the process beating the German, Dutch and European champions - not a bad little run.

Whilst it is true that it was not an easy run - 4-0 down against Inter, losing 2 goal lead against Breman - in the end most pundits agree we were the best in the group.

The game last night really summed up our away campaign with letting the lead slip 3 times, the game started in comical fashion with the Twente keeper having a nightmare to watch a simple back pass bounce past his foot for Spurs' opener.

Twente were soon back in it however after the Referee gave a penalty, now I would obviously disagree with the decision whatever it was but this was a very soft decision with the spurs defender punished simply for the human instinct for protection, however as the next goal was the result of an even worse decision by the Referee there is not too much point in dwelling on it.

Tottenham re-took the lead through a quite sublime piece of link up play between Defoe and Lennon which showed a little of what we have missed in his absence before the ref struck again to level the game, this time a free kick outside the box to penalize Lennon for laying a hand on the shoulder of a man around 2 foot taller than himself.
Bad refereeing aside however the free kick was top class so no complaints there.

The Twente keeper who, apart from the first goal, had a pretty good game was unfortunate again for the third spurs goal as he produced a wonderful save from Palacios which fell into the path of the ever alert Defoe to do what he does best. However Twente struck back again with their first goal not directly from a bad refereeing decision (there was a touch in between the free kick and the goal) this was again a greatly taken goal and really showed how good a team Twente are,

Obviously I do feel slightly annoyed at the part the Referee played in the goals but he was not finished yet, after a Twente player went down in the box (which to be fair he should have been booked for as he went down for a tackle that never came.) The Referee, correctly told Tottenham to play on, only to bring play to a stop as Lennon was running in full stride towards the Twente goal. But the fact that the Ref seems to think that his role is to shape the game, should not be held against Twente who did well to capitalize on his vanity. so it ended 3-3 but with Inter losing to Bremen Spurs still top their group, so mixed feelings on the result but the achievements are still massive for a Champions League debut, as an aside spurs became the first team to score two goals in every game in the group stage, now if we can stop letting them in then the future looks very bright indeed.

Tottenham beat Inter Milan

I have refrained from too much football talk since the world cup as the early part of the season is rarely any guide to future performance, and as a Spurs fan, I am always slow to get excited.

Last night however was simply amazing, when the draw for the Champions League was made I thought that simply to see a team of the quality of Inter playing at White Hart Lane would be a great experience, but I never imagined we would, not just win, but make it look easy.

There were hints of what may happen when the ten men spurs team, well Bale and 9 support players, fought back from 4 down to come back to 4-3. Still after that however I had heard people saying we were out of our depth and would get hammered, suspiciously the same people who are strangely quiet today!

Anyway, in case you missed it the most shocking thing was that Bale was not involved in the 1st goal, and that he didn't score any himself, he set up two though so I'll let him off, spurs won 3-1 to go top of the group and within one win of reaching the next stage.

So what of the rest of the season? I would be blinded by my love of the team if I suggested that Spurs were not having a few more struggles this year than I would have liked but clearly the potential is there, we just need to unleash it.

Bale is clearly loving his football at the moment, Van Der Vaart has settled in quickly and last night we saw flashes of Modric at his best, however if we are to see off Man City's challenge for our 4th spot we need to improve.

Lennon needs to step up, with Lennon and Bale on the wings we can run any defence ragged, but he is not quite up to his best at the moment. Also our strikers need to find their form, we have really missed Defoe and the sooner he is back the better. Finally our defence needs to start to look capable of a clean sheet, obviously this is easier said than done with Woodgate, King and Dawson all with prolonged injuries.

My best Spurs 11 (assuming full fitness)

GK Gomes
RB Corluka
CB King
CB Woodgate
LB Ekotto
DM Huddlestone
LM Bale
CM Modric
RM Lennon
AM Van Der Vaart
FW Defoe

Champions League Draw Round 1

With one day down in the Champions League it has been a very mixed bag for British Clubs,

Arsenal and Chelsea both won comfortably, Arsenal hammering Braga by 6 goals to 0(Which is becoming quite a common scoreline this season.) and Chelsea beating Zilina 4-1. To be honest the Chelsea result is probably the best as although the Slovakian champions are hardly Champions League contenders it is a difficult away match out of the way.

Tuesday night there were draws for Tottenham and Man Utd vs Rangers, if I had been asked before the kick off I would have happily taken an away draw for our first game but after powering to 2-0 after 20 minutes I felt a little disappointed by the final 2-2 result, it isn't a complete disaster however as Inter Milan also drew with FC Twente 2-2 so the group is still together but we have one less away game. Man Utd were probably the biggest British Losers of the round with Rangers getting a great 0-0 result against them, this 0-0 at old trafford is definitely a point won for Rangers and 2 dropped for United as the top seeds really shouldn't be dropping points at home, although I still feel that come the end of the group stage you will find United going through and Rangers will still probably struggle to join them.

Champions League Draw

I watched the Champions League Draw last night, for obvious reasons this is the first one I took a real interest in, the draw itself is one of the most mind numbing experiences I have ever sat through. UEFA seemed to be unsure if what they wanted was a draw or an award ceremony, they mixed in draw between annoncements of UEFA player of the Year 2010 (Strange to have in August.) The draw was split into a very confusing structure in which each team is drawn into a group where they can not play against a team from the same country and where each federation would have their games split between Red and Blue groups to spread out the TV coverage.

It was a strange draw with one person drawing the team and Gary Lineker Drawing the group which ment that Tottenham didn't get a choce of Group and missed out on the easiest group (B) as Shalke could not go into the same group as Bremen.

Anyway the Groups are:

Group A
Inter Milan, Werder Bremen, Tottenham, FC Twente

Group B
Lyon, Benfica, Schalke, Hapoel Tel-Aviv

Group C
Manchester United, Valencia, Rangers, Bursaspor

Group D
Barcelona, Panathinaikos, FC Copenhagen, Rubin Kazan

Group E
Bayern Munich, AS Roma, Basel, CFR Cluj

Group F
Chelsea, Marseille, Spartak Moscow, Zilina

Group G
AC Milan, Real Madrid, Ajax, Auxerre

Group H
Arsenal, Shakhtar Donetsk, Braga, Partizan Belgrade

So for Tottenham I think that drawing the Holders, Inter Milan, is never a great draw however With Breman and Twente at least we have no long haul mid week flights. I still think that Group B is the easiest group but at least we avoided Group G where AC Milan, Real Madrid and Ajax have 20 wins between them. so not great, but could be worse.

Champions League fever comes to N17

Tonight is the kick off of Tottenham champions league campaign, the first match should not be to difficult as we are playing again Young Boys of Bern, who despite having plenty of Champions League Qualifier experience have never made the Group Stage.

There are a couple of concerns, there always are for Spurs, this time we have to worry about an astro-turf pitch and our simple lack of experience of champions league football - also there may be a touch of over confidence which could be an issue but I think we should be ok, oh well we'll have our answer in a few hours.

Champions League Draw

Well for my money the most interesting champions league draw ever has just taken place - I wonder why I think that? - Tottenham have been drawn against Swiss runners up, Young Boys - warning do not try and Google them without safe search switched on!! - there is lots of excitement from Spurs fans who think that the group stage is a dead cert, perhaps I have just been a Spurs fan too long, but I struggle to feel that confident, after all they did just beat Fenerbache so are having a good season. But I do think it was one of the easier draws, but so was our World Cup group, so no chicken counting.

Spurs are the only British Team in the draw today as Celtic went out and everyone else already waiting in the group stage, however the Europa League (Uefa Cup) had there draw as well today, no real problems for the British teams

Liverpool vs Trabzonspor - Turkey
Celtic vs Utrecht - Holland
Dundee Utd vs AEK Athens - Greece
Rapid Vienna vs Villa - Austria
CSKA Sofia vs TNS - Bulgaria
Odense vs Motherwell - Denmark
Timisoara vs Man City - Romania

So I am not expecting too many British Teams to miss out with TNS, who are the lowest rated team in the competition and Dundee having the hardest matches, but still you never know. All I need to do now is get my ticket for the Spurs game, I'm actually going to get to see a Champions League game!

David Villa to Barcelona

News has just filtered through to me that David Villa has joined Barcelona. I read the news without much interest as although I respect Villa as one of the best strikers in Europe, the fact that it increases speculation that Henry maybe on his way out does not interest me at all - I could hardly imagine Henry in a Spurs shirt!

But then I realised that there is a chance we may have to play Barcelona next year, and so for the first time in the competitions history I care about the comings and goings at other Champions League Teams!

On an aside, As a Tottenham fan it does feel good to talk about "other champions league teams."

Come on Next Season

Champions, Champions

Well Champions League anyway!

Losing on the final day, and to Burnley at that was a bit of a downer it is hard to be to upset after our best ever Premier League season.

With my usual Spurs optimism I am hoping this isn't the start of a "Leeds" situation, but if there is one thing I have learnt in recent years it is to trust Mr. Levy for my money the best chairman in the football league.

Now bring on the World Cup