The Battles of Manchester

Article by Sean Walsh

Monday August 22nd 2011- Manchester United 3-0 Tottenham Hotspur

Sunday August 28th 2011- Tottenham Hotspur 1-5 Manchester City

Harry Redknapp’s Tottenham are trumped twice in a week by the Manchester clubs. The future didn’t look bright for Spurs, but ultimately gave them the kick up the arse they needed after the poor end to the previous season, squeezing points against Blackpool and Birmingham City- both of whom were relegated.

Fast forward to 2013:

Sunday November 24th 2013- Manchester City vs. Tottenham Hotspur

Sunday December 1st 2013- Tottenham Hotspur vs. Manchester United

The outcome of these results could prove to define Tottenham’s season, or could leave a certain wheeler dealer smiling in his armchair by the time the first box of everyone’s advent calendars are opened.

Let’s go back to those two games; as the score lines suggest, we were beyond poor- Crawley Town of the Conference put up a better fight against the Red Devils in the F.A Cup that year. However, the scores could’ve been very different. The first halves against them saw some extraordinary chances missed, Peter Crouch’s free header at home to Manchester City the one that springs to mind most. And after that? Well, we never really picked ourselves up. Resiliency wasn’t really the strong point of Harry Redknapp’s blue-and-white army- 10 months later and he’s out the White Hart Lane doors.

Step forward Andre Villas-Boas.

Under the Portuguese’s guidance, Tottenham tallied their highest ever points total for a season, despite missing out on Champions League qualification. The football may not have been as entertaining as Harry’s, but at least we weren’t shipping goals like Arsenal ship out key players. There was certainly a lot more thought behind what Villas-Boas was doing, unlike his predecessor’s tactic of ‘Modric, to Bale, to van der Vaart or Adebayor’. Admittedly, many of Spurs’s goals came through a certain Welshman, but the way we played was with more finesse, more thought- the Tottenham way.

This season, however, has been one of up’s and down’s, and more recently they’ve been down’s. Home defeats to Newcastle and West Ham and a loss in the North London derby have tarnished a good opening few months in the Premier League. Lack of goals and intention has also made the new season a frustrating one so far for Tottenham fans all over the world, with the highlight of the season so far being a penalty shoot-out win against Hull City. Hull City. Hull ‘let’s start Danny Graham up front’ City. We’re Tottenham Hotspur; we should be walking all over any team that comes to White Hart Lane, let alone the Premier League new boys, regardless of what AVB says. Harry Redknapp may not have had the tactical knowledge, but he made White Hart Lane a real fortress, beating the likes of Arsenal, Chelsea and then-European champions Inter. A respectable draw with AC Milan and a very narrow defeat to Real Madrid also works in Redknapp’s favour.

In the next 10 days, we’ll learn a lot more about Tottenham under AVB. If he realises the errors and flaws in his tactics, we could get 6 points out of the Manchester clubs- we got 7/12 last season, and could’ve easily won more. 2 defeats, though, and it could start an infamous Twitter meltdown amongst Spurs fans, and Daniel Levy may even be questioning his decision to back AVB in the summer. The players will have to do their part, to, just like they did for Redknapp. It’s time to step up.

Tottenham against Manchester- let’s prove ourselves worth title or at least top 4 contenders

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