The Daily Dose is our unique daily round-up of all things Spurs. Catch the e-Spurs Daily Dose each night at 9pm exclusively here!Tonight's Dose written by Matt Tumminia.
Internationals Still Suck, “The So-Called Messiah” Can Write, Azza Returns and Other Ramblings
Another 10 days of this international break before we can get back on the pitch to fully banish the painful memories of this past Sunday and I am slowly going mad waiting for the return of our beloved Tottenham. I understand that these matches need to be played but why is it that we end up losing in a painful manner immediately prior to each of these 2 week breaks thereby allowing the slanderous media outlets to fabricate stories of how, although only being 3 points from the top, our season is in tatters already and the players are ready to revolt.
I would be willing to put money on the fact that during the next 10 days, there will be at least 2 stories published by crap journalists which state something similar to my previous statement and 1 will likely be from that tool, Adrian Durham, who apparently has some kind of beef against our club. Maybe it’s because he sucks and graduated from the Duchess Community College of Journalism or someplace similar (to those who don’t know what type of college Duchess CC is, it is not a very good academy of higher learning).
Anyway, international breaks are absolute torture and while the players go off to their respective national sides, us Tottenham supporters are forced to relive the nightmare of our past match and completely inept performance against a local rival with strong anti-sematic ties. Fun times for us.
He Can’t Read But He Sure Can Write
It seems that a certain loudmouth former manager cannot keep his pie-hole shut about how integral he was for our progress over the past 3-4 years. While I cannot disagree with the fact that he did bring some kind of stability to our club and was able to get under performing players to actually play like the highly-rated internationals they are, for him to attempt to grab all the credit for the maturation of a certain Welshman and the evolution of a squad once considered a mid-table pushover is low, even for his standards.
Our readers are well aware of the disdain I possess against our former coach, and I must stress coach as he was no leader, leaders don’t pimp themselves out to sip from a poisoned chalice immediately after a massive show of support from our chairman, our players and our fans, but with his recent autobiography being published, it seems that old bacon-face is once again at it, rambling on to no ends of how he was the greatest thing since Bill Nicholson at the Lane. The sound you just heard after reading that was me falling off my chair laughing and almost wetting my pants.
Sorry bud, under your watch we let two big leads slip away over the course of 7 weeks, essentially ruining 7 months of work prior to these collapses while you continued to run out the same lineup to the point of physical exhaustion and endured two of the more humiliating losses on the big stage with semi-final thrashings laid upon us by hated rival, Chelsea and the now League 2 club, Portsmouth. But you know, he was responsible for Gareth Bale becoming the most expensive player in the world and our squad becoming one of the more respected and feared clubs in Europe thanks to his incredible tactical insight and ability to offer such inspiring advice such as “go f*ckin run around a bit” or “stop fixing your hair”.
These are the statements of a manager who must have learnt his trade from the legendary Brian Clough, Bill Shankly or Jock Stein. Regardless, the old man can write a controversial biography about his career and needless to say, our club is a big part of it which backs up my point all along, we made him, not the other way around. Now back to the dugout of QPR and keep quiet.
The Return of Lennon
Reports have come out this morning that our favourite diminutive speedster, Aaron Lennon, has returned to full training and has finally shaken off his niggling foot injury. This has got to be some of the better news that we have received for some time as his return will allow us to actually have some real width to our play, thereby alleviating the traffic jam of play through the centre of the pitch. It is no coincidence that without the still-young winger, our attack had seemed to be missing something in the final third and that something is pace and width, two areas that Lennon excels in.
Hopefully, he can stay out of the physio’s room for the remainder of the season as he will play a major part in our success over the next 8 months and his wide play will be needed to break down stubborn opposition who wish to jam-pack the middle of the pitch to nullify our combination play. I just hope that AVB can learn from this past weekend’s schooling at the hands of a local rival the value of actual width and start to use Azza and Nacer Chadli as wingers to stretch the defensive backline when they wish to crowd the middle. Having Aaron back will be a welcome sight as he can represent a bit of an X-factor and another type of weapon in our arsenal.
Random Ramblings
That loss on Sunday is still bugging the hell out of me. Many different thoughts have come into my head the past 3 days, going over the lack of actual quality we had on the pitch, well, the lack of quality shown by our talented and expensive squad, and how a simple plan set up by a determined opponent made us look like a Sunday league team. I have hit on many of these points in Monday’s dose so I won’t go back into them but now that teams have seen how ineffective we were against such a system, it does force us to go back to the training pitch and analyse the proper way to break down such a formation. AVB will definitely be interested in tweaking our attack to incorporate more width and the use of natural wide players playing on their favoured sides as to alleviate the constant cutting in and overcrowding of the central areas.
If we are to progress from the Europa League while staying near the top of the Premier League table, we must do a better job of squad rotation and leave our primary starters at home while we go on these long trips to Russia, Moldova or wherever else we must travel. The inclusion of the majority of our first squad for our trip to Moscow was a huge mistake by AVB and we saw the consequences this past match day, a mistake that our manager hopefully will not repeat and one that he will likely learn from.
I am not against sending out a strong XI for these Europa League matches and the chance of silverware but maybe we should try to focus on our league form as the priority as I am sure Champions League qualification is the number one goal for the chairman, manager and club. We just need to find the right balance and find some method to ensure that while we may not be able to send out our strongest lineup for every match, we should still be able to put out a squad full of high quality players that can win and be competitive in all competitions.
Comment on this article below!
© e-Spurs 2013 All rights reserved no part of this document or this website may be reproduced without consent of e-Spurs
you haven't supported spurs for long. you don't know what the badge means. harry did. Tottenham are an attacking club. if we set up like avb does we will never score 3 goals against a decent team again. rip greaves, hoddle , ginola klinsmann,et al.
ReplyDelete