More Than Half A Page Of Scribbled Lines

  Just over a year ago Chelsea brought Ange Postecoglu's unbeaten start as Spurs manager to a crashing end with a 4-1 victory at The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. The circumstances were slightly unusual in as much as we traditionally just lose to Chelsea without the players seeming that bothered about it but this time there were two players dismissed and long term injuries sustained during the game to key personnel. In fact, if my memory serves me correctly we finished the game with a 2-3-3 formation. This time around, one of those long termers from the previous game made a surprise return from yet another injury and one of those issued with a red in that match also returned from injury, both giving a boost to a depleted defence. Unfortunately, Romero lasted just 14 minutes before comically injuring himself. Conversely, Van der Ven who'd been rushed back due to the complete lack of foresight shown in last summers transfer window, managed to make it through to the 79th minute befor...

Desperately trying to avoid getting in any way highbrow here but back in 1972 (just to point out to new fans / ENIC supporters that Spurs won a European trophy that year) a poet called Stevie Smith wrote a very short little ditty called 'Not Waving But Drowning'. It tells the story of a man in the sea, the people on the beach think he's waving from the sea but he's not, he's actually struggling in the water, drowning in fact. I'm thinking that the current squad, or at least the part of it that's left on the pitch and not in the treatment prison  room at the training ground, find themselves metaphorically in a similar position. To someone who's not taking too much notice Spurs are in tenth but they're in the last eight of the league cup and doing OK in Europe. This is despite having half the team unavailable on a regular basis. Even though they've lost six league games, its always by the odd goal. When they win they tend to tonk the opposition, he...

Whilst walking the dog on Sunday morning I was thinking that just for a change, certainly in reference to this season, wouldn't it be nice to have a uneventful one nil victory with no injuries and not too many chances at either end. You know, the kind of game that we saw week in week out in the George Graham era and what we would have had if the tactical plans of Mourinho and Conte had ever come to fruition. Brennan puts us ahead.....again As it turned out, Spurs kind of played their part in an attempt to fulfil that wish by not really creating much over the 90 minutes. This is probably a good point in the story to mention not excuses but reasonable reasons why this may have been. Firstly, the annual injury crisis is beginning to have a serious effect on the team. Now this can be countered if you assemble your squad with this almost inevitable eventuality in mind. But that's not the ENIC way. Not when there's hotels to be built and pop concerts to be arranged. Not to mentio...