Adebayor - The Master Plan Continues

Back at the end of Last Year I asked if not playing Adebayor was actually a master tactic. My tongue in cheek question was basically around the facts that whilst Ade was often the star of the first four months of the season come January he was often a little absent from the Score Sheet.

Now whilst I wasn't 100% serious it would appear that I may be getting proved right. Ever since Sherwood came in Adebayor has scored 6 times in 8 games, Hopefully this will continue to the end of the season instead of running out of steam in January, essentially giving us Adebayor at his best at the perfect time in the season. I'm going to be generous and say this was AVB's plan all along. (I doubt it was, but he is a former Spurs manager so I am inclined to go easy on him!)

the match itself was reasonably comfortable and showed real signs of the summer signings all starting to come together in what has been missing in earlier games, I am actually starting to feel slightly optimistic for the future (Normally a sure sign that a big defeat is around the corner.) Which coincides with the visit of Man City to the lane. I guess we will know better if we are "over the hump" better this time next week.

Goodbye Jermain, Thanks for the Memories

So news has come out today that Jermain Defoe has agreed to join Toronto (And former Spurs player Ryan Nelson) at MLS side Toronto, He doesn't straight away so will still play out a few Spurs games (not often you get football players working their notice period) and I am sure will get a great send off at the Lane.

For me Defoe was the highlight of the Spurs team for many years, in recent years he was occasionally sidelined but was always there ready to be called upon, there has been talk of him joining other teams (And he did join Portsmouth for 1 year.) but he has never seemed to be getting stroppy if he was carrying the whole team or sat on the sidelines I always felt that when needed Defoe would be there and would give his all - funnily enough I remember speaking to a West Ham fan after we signed him who said that he had no Loyalty and he would be off if the going ever got tough, Looks like he proved them wrong.

So farewell Jermaine Defoe, good luck in Canada\America and know that you will always be a Spurs Legend.

Years	Club	Played	Goals
2004–2008	Tottenham Hotspur	139	(43)
2009–	Tottenham Hotspur	135	(47)

Will Adebayor's two goals bring some pride back to White Hart Lane

 

Well after a 6-0 defeat to Man City and a 5-0 Defeat to Liverpool AVB as sacked, I'm not going to say if I agree with the decision or not but as a Spurs fan I'm not surprised and I will say it distressed me less than seeing Harry or Jol going as those two sackings were hard to take, anyway as always on to the future and despite an initial set back to Tim Sherwood's Managerial caretakership, in losing 2-1 to West Ham to go out of the League Cup, we were back to winning ways this weekend thanks to two goals from Adebayor. Now for years I have been joking with mates that Adebayor would be the top striker in the premiership if the season ended at Christmas, year after year he seemed to blast out of the blocks in September only to disappear entirely come January so perhaps despite AVB losing his job maybe he had a master plan, leave Adebayor on the sidelines until December and hopefully he will still be knocking them in come May, seems to be working so far.

The match itself it has to be said was a little more nerve racking than I had hoped from Southampton but as they have Drawn with City and United so far this season (And beat Liverpool) it was never going to be a stroll in the park, Spurs showed several defensive weaknesses which have been evident for a few weeks now (Can't believe the defense was the tightest in the league at one point.) but at least they are now balancing that with some goals at the other end and although Soldardo again had a desperately bad game in front of goal wasting at least 3 chances in 10 second half minutes, he is at least getting into the right positions and linking well with the other players I think as long as we keep faith with him then once he gets a couple of goals he will probably not look back, all in all whilst I am not going to get excited about beating Southampton the future definitely looks a little brighter than it did.

Tottenham Hotspur, Title Contenders?

So far so good for Tottenham this year, after the highs of last year’s Champions League were followed by the lows of failure to qualify it looked like our progress of late may have run aground, this season however has seen Tottenham seriously mentioned as a title contender for the first time since I can remember (I Started to support them in 1991) and it is definitely the first time I can remember them being level with points with Man Utd the business side of Christmas.

Unfortunately I have still been a spurs team throughout the 90’s and the 00’s so I am still slightly reluctant to believe that it isn’t all going to go wrong (Just too many false dawns.) this may all change however in the next six weeks as we enter our “Hell” period:

22nd January Man City (A)
31st January Wigan (H)
6th February Liverpool (A)
11th February Newcastle (H)
26th February Arsenal (A)
3rd March Man Utd (H)

Yes in 6 weeks will meet 5 of the top seven including trips to the City of Manchester, Anfield and the Emirates, this next 6 weeks should tell us if we are title challengers or just a footnote on a future sky sports premier league years programme. If we can arrive at the evening of the 3rd March in the top four then I will feel quite confidant of a top 4 finish (as I think we have a very easy run in) If we can actually win 3 or 4 of those encounters then I see no reason why we should not be considered title contenders. Personally I will happy with a draw against Manchester City and Arsenal. Think we should be able to beat Man Utd and Newcastle at the lane and would hope we can get a result from Anfield, but no matter how good we have been this year part of me will still be suspecting that we may lose all of them and be faced at the start of March with a tough road to re-qualify for the Europa League, either way these next few weeks will decide our season.

Another Season Comes to an End

Well the Premiership is over for another year, Tottenham could not match last season by qualifying for the Champions League but their fifth place is only the 22nd time the club have finished in the top 5 in their history and the fourth since I started to support them so I am happy. It was always going to be a tough ask as although we have several players with Champions League experience they had never played at that level as a team, in the end I think we were simply suffering from a few injuries at the wrong points and in the end the team just ran out of steam. (Not to mention the Ref in the Chelsea game who cost us three points.)

Question is can Tottenham get back in the top four next season? I hope so but I think if it is to happen it will need to be at the expense of Arsenal and probably with a harder challenge from Liverpool. Obviously it would be slightly pointless to try and work out the strengths of the teams next year before we see the effect of the transfer window but I would fully expect the champions to come from one of Man Utd, Man City and Chelsea - And Chelsea are my least favoured team - This will leave Tottenham, Arsenal and Liverpool to fight over the final Champions League space and I think a lot of this will come down to how the teams strengthen and the effect that Arsenal and Tottenham competing in Europe will have.

Congratulations to Everyone at Crawley Town

Despite Tottenham losing 4-0 to Real Madrid I do have something to celebrate in the football world as Crawley Town have secured the Blue Square Premier Championship and in so doing also guaranteed their place in the Football League next year for the first time in their history. Not just that but Crawley now need just 3 wins to beat the highest points total ever in the Nationwide Conference (Currently 102) Obviously next year will be a tougher test for the reborn Crawley Town but the fact that it was in the end very comfortable (Winning with 5 games remaining) should take nothing away from the fans who have been there through all the hard times (Not just got interested after the Crawley- Man Utd game – in case your wondering I don’t include myself in either group as I maintain a consistent interest in Crawley Town which is well below the level of fan regardless of how they do.) Whatever is written about Crawley it should not at any point take away from the fact that they have had an impressive turn around, in fact their history has been quite remarkable ever since I started following them after moving to Crawley, First they won the last ever Southern League to enter the conference during the start of the big shake up of non league football, the first year they did really well but fell into mid table by the end of the season, this was followed by years of repeated financial instability which brought the club to the brink of extension on many occasions – in fact as I was a councillor on Crawley Council during this time I actually got to see at very close quarters how close this came, something many commentators do not seem to realise, now within a couple of seasons the team are heading to League 2, Next season may be a struggle, may be a season of mid table performances or it may be another blinding success as Crawley continue racing up the league pyramid the fact it is unknown, what we do know is that the Crawley Town are the best Non-League team in the country and that with a great squad and finally a stable management structure the future has never looked brighter for the red devils.

Updated Premier League Predictions

I have re-evaluated the stats on my league table prediction programme (Replaced the predicted values with the real values and increased the Co-Eff of the new values by .2 to weight reality over predictions)

There have been big changes at the top since last time, Mainly for a Tottenham point of view that Chelsea will swap places with Man City but that Tottenham will still qualify for the Champions League – perhaps more remarkable however is that Arsenal will win the League overtaking Man Utd on the 30^th April after victory at the Emirates stadium and not looking back from there.

Sunderland still sit in a highly likely Europa League place just needing either Arsenal to win the League Cup Final against Birmingham or Arsenal/Man Utd to play Man City in the FA Cup final and they will feature in the Europa League for the first time.

Liverpool's recent improvement in form is not enough to lift them above Sunderland, so if things go the way I predict then Liverpool will miss out on European Football next season unless both of the above come true.

The other big changes are at the bottom where Fulham are no longer predicted in the drop zone and West Ham end up getting relegated along with Blackpool and Wigan.

So here's the latest table

I must again preface this with the acknowledgement that I know that this is all rubbish and will still quite likely bear no resemblance to the final league position – especially as I have so far managed just 46% of correct results.

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

Another Record Transfer Window

Well the Transfer Window slams shut for another January and for the first time I can remember Spurs failed to buy anyone on the last day, The big news was the Chelsea – Liverpool – Newcastle switch around in which Liverpool swapped one of Europe’s best strikers for an injured Geordie, not that I think that Andy Carroll is a particularly bad signing, it is simply that he is no Torres.

For me as a Spurs fan the transfer window was for the main a disappointment, we purchased Steven Pienaar and failed to buy Charlie Adam on the last day of the window, personally I am very glad that we failed to buy Adam, again I think he is a quality player and I understand why Blackpool are so keen to keep him, but again he is not what is needed. If you look at Tottenham this season one thing you would not say is that we have looked lacking in midfield, I see a fully fit Tottenham squad as consisting of Lennon – Modric – Van Der Vaart – Bale so I am not really sure the part that Pienaar can play and I definitely do not see a place for the Blackpool skipper. Apparently we also spent our time looking for a striker, this I do agree with a little bit more as Peter Crouch and Roman Pavleychenko still do not seem to have what it takes when the chips are down and I don’t think it would be unfair to say that Jermaine Defoe is not firing at his best.

If I was to name all of the players that I believed Tottenham had that were of a Champions League standard i.e. Able to play consistently at the highest level. I would have to say we have Defoe (When fully fit again) Van Der Vaart, Modric, Bale, Lennon (Again when at peak performance) and finally I would include Woodgate although with his injuries he can’t really be counted. We then have several of what I would call Europa League level players who would be at home at any second level European Club – Huddlestone, Dawson, Bassong, Corluka, Gomes, Gallas (Although he has obviously been a first tier player previously.) King, Benoit and Hutton. As you can see from this list what I am trying to get at is that it is our defence that needs the work, all of our defensive players are either highly injury prone, or struggle to keep up a “Champions League” level of performance. I was very disappointed therefore to not see a decent stabilising defender coming into the squad over this window. Still it could be worse, we could be Liverpool!

Can I predict the rest of the Premier League Season?

Of cause I can't, however I have been messing around over the Christmas break and I have come up with a Prediction model for the premier league. As I like to put my neck on the line I am going to publish my prediction of the final league table now.

So I am showing that Manchester United will win the Premier League with Arsenal Second, Man City Third and Spurs retaining forth place at the expense of Chelsea. Other points of note are that LFC finish 9th and so do not qualify for European Football and West Ham avoid relegation at the expense of London Rivals Fulham in the last week of the season.

So how did I come up with these predictions? Basically I built three values based on Home/Away and Combined performance.

I then applied a sliding prioritising to these values based on the time between the game and the current date so that the previous games ratio was 1, the game before applied at 0.9 down to all games over ten weeks ago based at 0.1 these then combined to give a rating for the home and away teams, Then combining the Home/Away score with .25 score from the total combined score I applied these to the results of the last match between the two teams to come to the predictive final score.

So for example tonight’s game against Stoke I have Man Utd with a score of 0.95 and Stoke with an Away score of 0.39 these values are applied to the reverse fixture a 1-2 victory for Man Utd and so the model predicts a 2-0 win for Man Utd.

Now before I head down to William Hill to make my fortune I should say that the model has a predictive accuracy of 53% (On Correct results rather than direct scores) which may sound like a wide margin of error (And it is) but it is considerably better than the first instance of the model which ran at 14% accuracy.

The main limitations of the model are that it will always produce a very low amount of draws preferring to predict direct Home and Away wins (Mostly Home) and the scores predicted are usually low as it can not correctly predict when a team will collapse to a 6-0 defeat.

Finally due to the ratings that I calculate the rating will evolve and change with each week so even after one game the prediction model will adjust all future games and therefore the weekly predictions I am planning to publish (If I get the time and remember) will be highly unlikely to reflect the current predictions as this is based on if the teams play the rest of the season in their current form. For example when I built the model last week it predicted Arsenal Third, Chelsea Forth but now predicts Tottenham Fourth and Chelsea fifth based on the change in Chelsea’s rating after the Aston Villa game.

So in short all of this means basically that there is no point me listing the league table as it has come from the model but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

I will however be publishing my predictions each week so that you can see how I am doing over all, just the results though as the scores are seldom actually correct.

So here goes for this weeks

Blackpool V Birmingham – Blackpool Win
Fulham V West Brom – Fulham Win
Man Utd V Stoke City – Man Utd Win
Everton V Tottenham Hotspur – Tottenham Win
Arsenal V Man City – Draw
Aston Villa V Sunderland – Aston Villa Win
Newcastle V West Ham – Newcastle Win
Wolves V Chelsea – Draw
Blackburn V Liverpool – Blackburn Win
Bolton V Wigan – Bolton Win

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.

Football Season is well under way

Well we are into week three of the football season and I have not made any mention of Spurs so far due to my holiday, It has definitely been a mixed bag so far with a Draw against Man City followed by Defeat by Young Boys and finally our first win against Stoke, so I will do a quick review.

The Man City game was a very frustrating match as I feel we were the better team for a vast portion of the match however I did question last season if it was in fact our strikers who are making our opposition goal keepers look good, at least three times last season it was said that we dominated but the Keeper had the game of his life, it leads me to suspect that we are slightly too obvious in our attacks and perhaps we need a striker who can do the unexpected.

Our first experience of champions league football was definitely not a happy one with the synthetic pitch causing us more trouble than we expected, we were 3-0 down by the 30th minute and all seemed lost, luckily we pulled it back to 3-2 which gives us a great chance however the real cost could well be our injury list with Keane, Defoe, Pavlychenko and Modric all out injured we were seriously short on attacking options for the trip to Stoke.

The Stoke game was again looking to be frustrating as we simply couldn’t find away through the breakthrough eventually coming from Garath Bale’s face, some sloppy defending let Stoke back in with an equaliser before Bale scored what will probably be the goal of the week, There was controversy when Crouch cleared of the line after the goal appeared to go in. in my opinion it was over the line and should have been a goal, however there was a foul leading up to it so in fact I feel the actual result should have been a free kick to us before the ball even came close, but I think we will have to put it down to a bad 5 minutes refereeing. But we had our first win and with tonights visit of Young Boys it really could be a turning point in our season, if we win tonight the confidence will be back, we will be in the group stage so the defeat will be irrelevant and we will still be unbeaten in the league, lose tonight and it is all different the news will be filled of only one win, out of the Champions League etc… so we will see.

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!

New Premier League Rules

With the new season just a few weeks away the talk is all about transfers and The new Premier League squad rules, basically each team has a squad of 25 players with at least 8 being home grown (this means a player must be at a club registered with the English or Welsh FA by their 18th birthday) on top of these 25 the clubs can have an unlimited amount of under 21's,

I am not sure what kind of effect this will have, Spurs should be ok though as we have Huddlestone, King, Dawson, Bale, Lennon, Defoe, Crouch, Bentley, Jenas and O'Hara who are all home grown, and that is just off the top of my head, but Arsenal may need to dip into the market over the next month.

I was slightly disappointed to discover that Spurs drew 2-2 with Sporting Lisbon in the New York Challenge, this is after we went behind midweek against Tierry Henry and his New York Red Bulls, (Finally Winning 2-1) Luckily however my spirits were lifted when I saw that our Closest Rival last season and Worlds Richest Club Manchester City lost both games. Although as City lost to Sporting 2-0 it is Sporting Lisbon who win the title beating us by 1 goal on Goal Difference. Still they do have Pedro Mendes who I will always be a fan off, especially after his disallowed Half Way line Goal for Spurs vs Man U 3 Years ago.

So now the boys are coming home and we will see how we do in our last three friendlies Villarreal, Benfica and Fiorentina – These three will give us a real test of where we are ahead of our Champions League Campaign.