Since this is supposed to be a series of articles primarily about what it’s like to be a Spurs supporter in the United States, I figure that I ought to change pace from the past few weeks and lead off with some news:
We've signed our papers and are sending them off to @spursofficial to be 100% certified as "North Carolina Spurs!" twitter.com/RDUSpurs/statu…If you have had the chance to read Part 1, you’ll know that I have been heading up the drive to get two Official Supporters Clubs of Tottenham Hotspur within the state of North Carolina. Over the course of the past month, those plans have evolved and moved forward, and the end result is that those two potential OSCTHs have merged into one single OSCTH, to be named North Carolina Spurs. The “Founding Fathers” of sorts gathered at the Crabtree Tavern in Raleigh (where the owner, Leslie Lewis, is actually an English ex-pat and Spurs Supporter)! We got together and watched the Wigan match, and afterwards finalised our plans to go official. That picture you see above is me signing the Official Charter that will make North Carolina Spurs an Official Supporters Club of Tottenham Hotspur!
— North Carolina Spurs (@RDUSpurs) April 27, 2013
In a slight twist of irony, the photo was inspired by Trumbull’s famed Declaration of Independence painting, which you can see here: http://bit.ly/11RpEHM. My apologies to any Brits that might be offended, but we figured that it would be a nice way to start off as on OSCTH.
Moreover, my peers have decided to elect me as the first-ever Chairperson of North Carolina Spurs! To say that I am chuffed might be a little bit of an understatement. It was quite rewarding to see an idea that has been in the works for almost 10 months now finally come to fruition. For me, it’s been a long time coming. I always knew it was going to happen… I just needed to find some other Spurs supporters nearby. Now that I know of a few other Spurs fans in the Tar Heel State, we’re going to work together to grow the Tottenham love down here…I wouldn’t mind making it the most-supported English club in the state (and that’s a title that is still up for grabs. It will go to he who works the hardest to get it- I can promise y’all that we’re going to do our best)!
At any rate, I would invite the e-Spurs readership to check out our twitter page, which is currently @RDUSpurs. However, that will change to @NCarolinaSpurs once we get the Official Welcome Pack back from Tottenham Hotspur. That will likely be a few weeks from now, but I will let everyone know here via my “Spurs With A Side Of Barbecue” series of articles when that transition happens.
Long and short, we have an Official Supporters Club in the state of North Carolina now, and I am excited about the future of Tottenham Hotspur here! We already have a few plans for events next season that will undoubtedly be the subject of many “Spurs With A Side Of Barbecue” articles. Keep an eye out on us!
And to the real article, I suppose:
In my article last week, I said the following:
“In my mind, the match away to Chelsea isn’t the most important one remaining.”
Well, you all are welcome to call me a complete idiot now, because this weekend’s results rendered that completely incorrect. My predictions last week were all based on a caveat that we would be able to handle the business that we were supposed to handle.
But this is not a regular club. This is Spurs. Thus, I am a complete and utter fool for thinking that we were actually going to be able to handle our business!
For almost all of Saturday’s match (save for the final five minutes), we looked completely lacklustre. There was no width to our play, and no real effort being made to get Gareth some help (Wigan would crash on him every time he got the ball, and when those 2-3 defenders reached him there were very few options forward for him to get the ball to). It was pitiful.
I also think that this game confirmed my suspicions that in addition to a proper striker, the Left Back position will need some addressing in the transfer window.
To me, it looked like when Kyle Naughton tried to come forward, he would end up giving the ball away somehow and would leave the rest of our defence out of balance and completely open to a Wigan counter (which happened more than once and really should have resulted in another Wigan goal- that Arouna Koné chance in the mid-80s sticks out in my mind as a perfect example of this).
If we hadn’t figured it out by now, Naughton is just not suited to play out there as a predominantly right-footed player, and AVB clearly doesn’t rate BAE, so if we don’t have an in-house option (and to my knowledge we don’t really have any member of the U21 squad that is quite ready to step into a starting role on the first team) we really ought to do something about that. Shoot, we ought to do something about that anyway, even if we have Younes Kaboul coming back from injury next season. I feel like our defence has been Vertonghen-Vertonghen-Vertonghen-Walker all year long, and playing 2 at the back never really works out well for anybody, does it? At least we should have room for a move like that if we sell one of our Right Backs (which needs to happen within the next few seasons, because we’ve got too many between Naughton, Walker, and Adam Smith) and BAE (and hopefully Livermore too, just because we all know that he won’t be a part of AVB’s plans in the future).
But then…there is Danny Rose. He might be the solution at LB that we’ve been looking for this season, because he’s had a whale of a spell on loan at Sunderland. The question is whether or not we take him back, or if we sell him and get a significant amount of money for him. I’ve heard through the grapevine that the Black Cats are willing to offer £8 million for his services- for a kid his age, that’s a pretty big sum of money for a player. But can he develop into a starting LB and end up being valued at something like £15 million or more in a few seasons? Will it be worth it to take him back and try to turn him into a starter that will do great things and be worth massive amounts of pounds for us? Questions, questions!
Regardless, I think a good chunk of our problems on Saturday started when Kyle Naughton tried to come up the pitch, because Kyle can’t really play out wide all that well when he does come up. That leaves us struggling to find space in the centre of the pitch, and when we don’t have space in the middle, we usually struggle to be creative in any way, and we can’t break down teams that we should be pounding into submission. Not to say that Naughton was the sole cause of this, but he certainly contributed to it and it isn’t the first time that this has happened this season.
At any rate, the Wigan draw completely flipped the end of our season around. AVB has said on record that he thinks that 70 points will be enough to grab a Champions League place. In order to reach that mark, we have to win all of our remaining matches. And that means…
That we are going to have to go into Stamford Bridge and win. Nothing less. AVB’s got to treat that like the bloody Championship Play-Off Final, since the financial implications might as well be the exact same anyway!
At this point, I almost don’t care about any of the other matches (even though we can’t afford to do that either). We come out of the Chelsea match with anything less than three, and we’re all but assured of another season in the Europa League.
In my article last week, I also said that we need at least four wins from our final five matches, and can afford one draw. That still stands, although now we have used up that draw.
It’s not looking good, guys. Not at all. I just hope that my intuition is wrong about that.
-James
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Great news guys and graeat article James! I always look out for your news on here! COYS
ReplyDeleteKeep up the good work James keep spreading the word!
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