Three and in – not just another football blog

Every so often Lawrence Gray-Hodson, a man who made his name in the upper reaches of Division 2 in the 1970s and 80s as well as being a former Scotland and England international, writes a column exclusively for Three and in.

This week he opines on Spurs title chances

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When I was just starting out as a professional footballer, Tottenham’s 1961 double was still spoken about because it hadn’t happened over 50 years ago. Some of the older pros I played with spoke in hollowed terms of great players like Dave Mackay, Bobby Smith and that inspirational captain Danny Blanchpower.

As time marched onwards that achievement fell further and further into the past, and although there were cup successes (who could forget David Villa running through the Man City defence, his beard still full of his pre-match meal?!), before dribbling the ball into the net. His unconstrained joy only slightly tempered by his countrymen’s decision to invade the Falklands to melt some of our soldiers faces.

There was the triumph in 1991 when Des Walker’s own goal and Terry Venables canny management sent my old mate Cloughy into a spiral of alcoholism resulting in his premature death, and in recent years they’ve won the League Cup a couple of times. So it’s a big surprise to me when I run into Spurs fans and they tell me that they’re contenders for the league. It’s a bit like saying that a white man is a contender for a marathon because he’s level with a Kenyan after 16 miles. We all know how that situation ends up.

Spurs are, and always have been, a cup team. Without doubt this is their best season since the last time they were this high in the league which was a long time ago because I can’t remember it and while I definitely have some issues with my short-term memory I can remember ages ago like it was yesterday. And this isn’t to disintegrate Spurs in any way, there’s nothing wrong with being a team that wins the occasional cup and can’t ever win the league. That just makes them the same as most teams except most teams don’t win the cups so they’re a bit better than most teams.

Sandro: more concerned with his teeth than winning games

It’s not new either. I remember bumping into Steve Perryman in a Soho bar one night back in the early 80s. They were going great guns at that stage but he said there was no chance they’d win the league, blaming Garth Crooks for being a malign dressing room influence, something which came as no surprise. He was the most unpopular man in the league amongst his fellow professionals. Only Everton’s Derek Mountfield came close because he used to run his own finger up the inside of his backside, then give you a poo moustache in the middle of a game.

If I look at this Tottenham team now I see some good, good players. The little magician, Modric. The mercurial Dutchman, van der Vaart. The Welsh wizard, Bale. And the outstanding Russian, Pavlyucheckov. Quite what Harry’s problem is with him, I don’t know, because I reckon he’d outscore your Rooneys and van Persies given the right chance and the right service. If it were me I’d have Alan Lennon firing in the crosses for him all game.

Yet to win a title you need more. You need players with character and Spurs are lacking them. Look at the big Nigerian, Emmanuel Adebayor. His nickname should be Mission Impossible because he self-destructs wherever he goes. How long will it be before he throws his toys out of the tram at White Hart Lane? Ledley King is hailed by many as a great player but he’s lazy, apparently he hardly ever turns up for training! While Scott Parker’s all-action style and Biggles hair cut might catch the eye but it’s no coincidence teams he plays for keep getting relegated.

And that’s not even mentioning Sandro who plays wearing a gum shield. What kind of prissy kindergarten is Harry Redknapp running there that he allows this kind of behaviour. Especially when he’s got a man like Joe Jordan, for whom teeth were a secondary concern, as part of his back room staff. What must big Joe think of Sandro, a man who won’t even put his teeth on the line for his team? How can this group of players hope to win the league when they’re carrying bottlers and cowards like that?

I hope Harry can put things right when he gets off from those ludicrous taxi evasion charges. As if a man like him can’t afford a twenty bob ride across London, because until he gets some real men in the side, the odd cup is the best they can hope for.

Word filtering through the t’Interwebsphere is that Tottenham’s Niko Kranjcar’s notoriously chatty father, Zlatko Kranjcar has been engineering a swap deal with AS Roma’s Mirko Vucinic.

At least that is what ol’Zlato told Walter Sabatini…

Spurs manager Harry Redknapp has quite openly operated a culture of favourites at White Hart Lane, ever since his arrival. He’s a died in the wool East End boy who sticks with what he knows, sticks with who he knows. I don’t think Harry has ever felt he either knows or wants to know Niko. And I think that’s probably Tottenham’s loss.

But Mirko Vucinic is a €25M rated striker and even the most ardent Niko fan will acknowledge this sounds pretty good! But will it happen? Can Spurs be the first club in the history of football to make one of these insane media deals actually come true? Good question. In this instance, let’s hope so.

For Spurs, breaking the top four monopoly in 2009/10 was a momentous achievement. And with it came a highly rewarding Champions League campaign, taking in a thrilling victory over the holders, Inter Milan, before bowing out to Jose Mourinho’s Real Madrid.

There was little disgrace in losing to the battle Real – a side that cost hundreds of millions to assemble. Harry Redknapp, never slow to justify his occasional failures, will doubtless make the same point about the tussle they’ve just lost to Man City over that invaluable Champions League spot.

A year ago, a Peter Crouch header ensured it was Spurs who embarked on that voyage in to the stellar climes of the Champions League. Last night, his own goal confirmed that City will replace them. The form of Kenny Dalglish’s Liverpool means that Spurs may now miss out on the Europa League too.

There is an air of inevitability about City’s ascension – it would require remarkable mismanagement to spend that much money without any discernible success, and despite his conservative tactics Mancini is clearly no fool.

However, I wonder if Spurs fans feel a tad uneasy about how easily they’ve relinquished a prize they fought so hard to obtain. Granted, City have spent money, but Spurs had something more valuable: poll position. For the last twelve months, they have been a Champions League club, and City haven’t. In the summer, that advantage enabled Spurs to pull in big names – the likes of Rafael van der Vaart and William Gallas, both of whom have been inspired signings.

And yet, in January, Spurs were strangely inactive, moving only to snare Stephen Pienaar from Everton – a good player, but not one who was not evidently needed. The weakness in the Tottenham squad has been clear all season: they have lacked goals from their strikers. Whilst the likes of Bale and Van der Vaart have chipped in, Crouch, Defoe and Pavlyuchenko have been erratic. Robbie Keane was shipped out to West Ham on loan, where his poor form has continued. And yet nobody came in.

Tottenham did make a few haphazard deadline day moves, throwing money at half the clubs in La Liga in attempt to bring in the likes of Guiseppe Rossi, Fernando Llorente and Alvaro Negredo. But it was unplanned and unproductive.

It was also unusual for Harry Redknapp, a manager known for his transfer market acumen. Perhaps he wanted to escape the shackles of his ‘wheeler-dealer’ reputation. Perhaps the Spurs board were more interested in raking in the Champions League money than investing it in the squad.

Or perhaps they felt it was pointless, and that City’s riches meant they would perennially be fighting a losing battle.

Spurs lost the fight on the pitch last night. But in many respects, it was lost off the pitch in January. With City now having both the money and the status they desired, it looks a long way back for Tottenham.

Despite missing out on the Olympic stadium to West Ham’s porn barons it has been revealed that Spurs’s move to Stratford is still on.

Stratford-upon-Avon.

According to manager Harry Redknapp this will ensure the traditions of the club will continue.

“The Tottenham way can be compared to that of William Shakespeare who was a triffic bard with a killer left foot, a bit like van der Vaart but with more pace. I know we tried to sign him back in the day. Daniel’s gone round there with a triffic offer but it’s not happened for one reason or another. This way we can maintain the traditions of the club by playing in the shadow the the great man himself”.

It’s little known that Shakespeare, as well as being a poet, playwright and the inventor of Cluedo, was also a soothsayer of high acclaim. Close examination of his works reveal he was clearly a Tottenham fan, and included:

• The Winter’s Bale
• Romeo (Beckham) and Juliet
• Antony and Keaneopatra
• The Taming of Assou-Ekotto
• Ledley King Lear

And, of course, the two classics which sum up Spurs league campaigns every year, “Much ado about nothing” and “A comedy of errors”, as well as the hugely ironic “All’s well that end’s well”.

Every week Lawrence Gray-Hodson, a man who made his name in the upper reaches of Division 2 in the 1970s and 80s as well as being a former Scotland and England international, writes a column exclusively for Three and in.

This week he looks at Harry Redknapp’s obsession with small players

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Jermaine Defoe opined, having seen Everton’s Steven Pienaar turn down a move to Chelsea to join him at Tottenham, that it marked a shift in power. And he’s right, I suppose. No player in their right mind would have chosen Spurs over Chelsea 12 months ago.

Now it doesn’t seem so utterly mental. It speaks to the improvement that Spurs have made but also to the way Chelsea have imploded. I keep hearing stories about a serious rift between Drogba and John Terry and how they’ve had to be separated a number of times in training. It’s rumoured that when practicing set-pieces Drogba spat on Terry’s neck like Frank Rijkaard did to Rudi Voeller. Terry was having none of it and laid out the big African American with an elbow straight to the temple.

So things are not right at Chelsea and things are better than they were at White Hart Lane. However, I do wonder if Harry Redknapp might just be going down the wrong path. Since he took over from Christian Gross he’s got the players motivated, playing well and definitely in the fight for a Champions League spot. Personally I think ambitions of winning the league are akin to my ambitions of a threesome between Angelina Jolie and Fern Britton. It’d be great if it happened but you’d never get Fern to agree.

The signing of Pienaar is a curious one and it makes me think that Redknapp is looking at the best team in world football and trying to emulate that. We know how good Barcelona are, the football they play is unmatched and they do it all with the smallest team I’ve ever seen. Ok, they would be giants in China but Spain is not China. Their diminutive dynamos are small in stature but they wear the stilts of skills and the platforms of power.

Watching Messi, Xavi, Iniesta, Pedro and Villa do their stuff is breathtaking and who wouldn’t want their team to play like that? However, Barcelona’s manager Pep Guardiola, was brought up in the Barcelona way. This is how they are taught to play football, they are engulfed in the Barcelona way from an early age. Harry Redknapp is grifter, brought up on jellied-eels, who played for West Ham and Bournemouth and is yet to manage a really big club.

Spurs used to have imposing midfielders like Barmby

He simply doesn’t have the footballing know-how to Barcelona-ise this Spurs team. What he’s trying to do is obvious, fill his team with small players and hope they can click. Rafael van der Vaart, Modric, Defoe, Keane, Krancjar, Lennon, Palacios and now Pienaar. Sure, he’s got a couple of weirdly big lads like Crouch and Kabul to beef things up but they’re sideshow freaks and not at all integral to how Spurs play.

I remember when I was playing we signed a little fella from Dundee called Craig Dougan. He was 5’8, quite tall by today’s standards, but in the dressing room we called him ‘Titch’ and ‘Wee Tiny Boots’. He didn’t like it at all and when he got out on the pitch he gave as good as he got but the bottom line was he was small and got pushed around. Obviously this affected him for many years and after his retirement I read about him going to prison for killing a basketball player in a bar fight.

These are the pitfalls faced by a small player. Modric, for example, has wonderful skill on the ball but how many years can a footballer with progeria really expect to play at the highest level. All credit to him for getting this far but he’s hardly a good long-term investment. It’s yet to be proved if van der Vaart is having anything more than a bit of Premier League beginner’s luck while Aaron Lennon’s sole contribution to the football is being the only man in the game with go-faster stripes on his eyebrows.

The tongues will wag over the Pienaar signing, suggestions that it’s a way for Harry to funnel cash through a corrupt South African bank-run slush fund are probably wide of the mark, but I just can’t help thinking that in order to progress they could do with a bit more height and British height at that. Less Pienaar, more David Howells, less Modric more tough goalscoring bustle like Chris Armstrong.

I like Harry, he was very good to me when my third wife passed away and I’ll never forget him for that, but if we were having a pint I’d tell him ‘You’ve got this one more wrong than Jamie’s tight pants, H’ and he’d laugh and tell me to ‘Fack off!’.

That’s his problem, he always thinks he’s right, especially when he’s wrong.

I’m struggling to make a great deal of sense of the Beckham to Spurs story.

Ok, there’s no doubt he’d add some experience to a squad light on players who have gone the distance. Beckham has been there and done that with United and Real Madrid.

There’s the thing though. Been and Done. Past tense. For the last three years he’s played in the MLS and regardless of what anyone might say the standard is a long way below that of the Premier League. His loan spells at Milan were a relative success but Beckham’s impact was hardly sensational and he benefitted from the slower pace of the Italian game.

Harry Redknapp might bemoan his lack of right-sided options, and it says a lot that he’d take a punt on a 35 year old just back from a very serious achilles injury than play David Bentley. However, as professional and dedicated as he is you can’t help feeling Beckham is just too old for the Premier League.

It’s an incredibly fast league, physically intense and while his set-piece delivery would be a bonus to any team it’s hard to imagine him keeping pace with the Premier League flyers. If he was just there to take corners and free kicks, fine, but otherwise he’ll struggle.

You only have to look at Robert Pires at Aston Villa. After a start against his old club he’s yet to score and has barely played 60 minutes since. You can’t doubt the quality of Pires but it’s obvious the physical demands of the Premier League are too much for him.

Beckham is a couple of years younger than Pires and pace was never his strongpoint. Perhaps it’s a case of not missing what he never had, but if Redknapp is serious about a title challenge, or at least cementing a top four place, wouldn’t he be better off spending some real money on a player who would bring something to the squad in the long run, not just a tabloid-heaven short term loan?

You just can’t help feeling that this is a bit of a ego-trip on both sides. Beckham to strut his stuff in the Premier League again, Redknapp to showcase his wheeler-dealer (fack off!) savvy again.

Robert Pires might not have contributed much to Aston Villa yet, but he continues to make himself a hero to Arsenal fans:

Clearly a lot of animosity between the pair. Hard to explain, until you remember that it was Pires who dived to win a crucial penalty against Harry’s Pompey back at Highbury. Managers, like elephants and Martin Tyler, never forget.

Readers based in Britain will be used to Gary Lineker’s deeply uninteresting introductory tidbits on the increasingly painful Match of the Day. Readers abroad will simply remember him as the jug-eared, crisp-pushing flop at Barcelona. But that’s by the by.

Last night, Lineker was smarmily welcoming in highlights of Tottenham’s 2-1 win against Gerard Houllier’s hapless Aston Villa, when he accidentally said something that approached a useful piece of information. I wasn’t the only one surprised: Lee Dixon’s remaining hair stood up on end, and Mark Lawrenson’s jowelly draw hit the floor with a satisfying plop.

Going in to the game, 52% of Spurs’ league goals this season had been scored with a left-boot. After the game, and Rafael Van der Vaart’s left-footed brace, it was 53.8%.

It wasn’t just their finishing that owed to the lefties. The fact Van der Vaart drifted to that flank created the space for Alan Hutton to cross for the first goal, while their second was a counter-attack started by Van der Vaart and carried primarily by the southpaw Gareth Bale.

As a left-footer myself, I can look at the Premier League top scorers charts with a degree of pride. As well as Van der Vaart, Florent Malouda features high up, with Andy Carroll on 11 goals already – though how many of those were scored with his feet is uncertain.

Of course, it’s not uncertain. It’d simply require research. Which, at this time of year, I am disinclined to do. Hopefully as the season the Match of the Day researchers will be less lazy. Perhaps next month they’ll conspire to come up with something to rival this groundbreaking news.

They wouldn’t like to admit it, but Spurs and Arsenal are actually pretty similar.  Like bickering brothers, their differences are exaggerated by their general familiarity.  They share geographical proximity, a similarly diverse fanbase, and a reputation for attractive football.

In the past week, that final quality has been discussed throughout the press.  After winning their group in a goal-happy fashion, Spurs have taken plenty of plaudits, with many pundits suggesting they looked the best equipped team to make a stab at taking home the cup with the big ears.

Arsenal, meanwhile, have come under fire in both Europe and at home for being their poor defensive record.  Whatever their attacking artistry, doubts remain about their ability to consolidate and hold out for crucial victories.

The Observer’s Paul Hayward captures the zeitgeisty dichotomy best here:

“London’s Seven Sisters Road connects two versions of one romantic urge. Tottenham Hotspur love to attack and refuse to defend beyond the minimum. Arsenal also exist to advance, but would like to defend if they could only work out how.”

So Spurs are all cavalier fun and games, whilst Arsenal’s attacking game is born out of an inability to do anything else.  What an interesting way for opinion to form.  A look at their respective records in the Champions League stages is fascinating.  Both sides have scored 18 goals, a mightily impressive tally, but Arsenal have actually conceded four goals fewer – and that doesn’t account for Tottenham’s brief collapse against Young Boys in the qualifiers.  Despite finishing second in their group, they’ve also won more games than their lilywhite counterparts.

Yet when Harry Redknapp says:

“We score goals, we let goals in. We score more goals, and we let more in.”

He is applauded for services to quality entertainment.  When Arsene Wenger, however, says of his decision to allow defensive midfielder Alex Song to roam forward:

“I am comfortable with that sometimes it leaves us open in the middle of the park. We want to play in the other half of the pitch and, therefore, we have to push our opponents back.  But my philosophy is not to be in trouble, but to fool the opponent into trouble.”

He is derided as tactically naieve.

It’s not just among the press.  Fans of each club seem to feel the same about their respective managers.  There are as many Arsenal fans who curse Wenger’s reluctance to focus more on the defensive side of the game as there are Spurs fans who embrace Redknapp’s enthrallingly refreshing attitude.

The strengths and weaknesses of the two teams are clearly very comparable.  What separates them, then, is expectation.

Due to their recent history of winning trophies, there is far greater pressure on Arsenal to deliver.  The glass of the beholder, therefore, is inevitably half-full.  They see a team whose emphasis on attacking play costs them success.

Harry Redknapp, meanwhile, manages without the same burden.  He is a master of reducing pressure, constantly re-emphasising the lowly state Spurs were in when he first took over.

They’re the same, but different.  But if the tables were ever to turn, and Harry was to find himself with the albatross of expectation swinging about his jowelly neck, he might soon find that attitudes towards his team’s style of play would swiftly change.  Just ask Arsene.

In a sensational twist today the footballing world was rocked to it’s foundations.

One time Rangers fullback, now Tottenham Hotspur striker Alan Hutton, has today been revealed as the man at the center of an nationwide smuggling cartel of what sources are simply calling. ‘The White Stuff’.

Hutton is no stranger to controversy of course. The Scot hit the the headlines off the park not long after he joined Spurs when he went for a quiet all day drinky poo bender with some family and friends in London. This soiree climaxed with Hutton battering the living monkey out of his old man in broad daylight.

This time though the consequences are likely to be somewhat more significant than merely leaving his dad needing medical attention. Experts told us that the cost of valeting his passion wagon could run into tens of pounds. The Metropolitan Police declined to comment.