It is rare to find a day when virtually everyone is having a bad time of it: but that is the day we have today.
Starting with the Tinies – you might recall that this time last year they celebrated wildly by getting into the Children’s Cup Final, and then promptly managed to go 10 or 15 games with hardly a win. (Sorry I don’t keep exact records of such things – but it was a bad run)
Imagine if they could do that again: a wondrous return to their spiritual home – division 2. And there’s every reason to think that they will achieve this great feat, judging by the disaster of their performance yesterday, not to mention who they have in charge. (Do you know my Chelsea supporting taxi driver in Exeter yesterday reserved most of his venom for Harry Houdini – who let us not forget specialised in falling through trap doors. Must be odd to be so reviled.)
But then while we were getting ready for the Tott-Drop, the Guardian this morning reveals that Manchester Money under the leadership of Sheik Yermoney has tried (and obviously failed) to sign not just Kakakaka but also David Villa (for £100m), Gianluigi Buffon (£100m) and Thierry Henry (price not revealed – our Thierry told them that if he was going to move the last place under the sun he’d go to was Manchester).
Now this is the good bit.
Ready?
“We’re not anybody’s fool,” Garry Cook, City’s executive chairman, said last night. “We’ve turned down negotiations for three different players because we felt the demands both from the [selling] club and, in essence, the players have been ludicrous…. The perception that we are out there throwing money around is simply not true.”
Laugh? I fell over.
Even the one player they got for way over the odds has had to apologise to the Ooze (he’s the one who made baby Cesc apologise to him remember – he collects apologies). he flew to Brazil for a birthday party. Still the Ooze did buy Bellamy.
If the Guardian’s piece is right, Manchester Money have put in about 15 bids so far, and will keep going. Shay Given, up hope of signing the striker Roque Santa Cruz from Blackburn Rovers, even though their last offer of £18m, with Tal Ben Haim moving in the other direction, has been turned down by the Ewood Park club.
“It’s well documented we have put in more than one offer,” Cook said. “The last I heard, which was from [Blackburn’s manager] Sam Allardyce, they were looking to bring in another striker before they made a decision. There is an offer on the table, Sam Allardyce is working through his issues and I fully respect that.
“We’re not trying to create a situation he doesn’t want; we’re just managing our issues. We’ve made it quite clear we’d like Santa Cruz and we’ll continue with those talks.”
A successful conclusion to one of the longest transfer sagas of modern times would certainly give City a lift in a week when the negotiations to sign Kaka from Milan have collapsed, leading to a disillusioned Robinho leaving their Spanish mid-season training camp.
More serious for Hughes is the growing feeling at City that Robinho has been unsettled by the club’s inability to bring in Kaka and that the former Real Madrid player would like to move to Chelsea to join Luiz Felipe Scolari, formerly his coach with the Brazil national team. The London club had tried to sign him in the summer.
Redknapp is a cheque book manager. Sputing out he needs to spend to bring in better players. EXCUSE ME what, better players. Erm you have a squad of internationals out there of which most were over the 10mil mark you blind idiot of a muppett. But then again he is at spurs isn’t he. How much were Modric, Pavulychenko, Defoe, Bently, Placios (lol) oh and god knows how much more as you’ve bought god knows how many. And here he is, the man who apparantly can work miracles with bargains. Don’t make me laugh. Any of the above mentioned would show there class in any OTHER prem club. It’s not the players, it’s Spurs and Redknapp. No wonder Bellamy didn’t come. Told you, Redknapp just loves a cheque book, I’m being honest here Spurs fans, with that squad you should be higher up the table, you have got class players, you have got internationals, Harry doesn’t need to spend anymore money, he needs to work with the talent you got. Thats the mark of a good manager, not how much you spend, it’s how you work with what you’ve got. And as a prime example, watch City and all their spending, under Hughes they won’t go anywhere, no mater how much they spend as Hughes won’t be able to handle the high profile players. And unfortunaetly for you, Redknapp can not handle the talent you have for what ever reason. I’m not sayig this bitterly by the way. He was happy to take the job, he was happy to spend 15mil on Defoe, now 14 on Placios (who has only 1 season in the prem for a mid table club) and still he wants more. He is whinging cos he can’t handle it, you have injuries, so does every other club, your squad apparently is thread bare, well hello, take a look at most of the other clubs. Your situation is really no different to ours, but Redknapp believes his own hype and thinks money sorts everything. It doesn’t. Redknapp is not as good as the hype says
oh no its started again. wenger to real madrid. why this tiring rumour that has no chance of happening? wenger said no 1 month ago no. now because real madrid have a new president its supposed to change wengers mind? the new president being the same man who introduced the galactico policy during his first stint as real president. who writes this nonsense? i just fail to see how any credible journalist can attach his name to a story that reads wenger to real madrid.
http://goonersworld.wordpress.com/2009/01/22/eduardo-plays-well-but-its-the-jack-wilshere-show/
last night’s game was a real hum dinger wasn’t it – no thanks to Tottenham Hotspur. They didn’t turn up, their players to a man had an absolute Weston Super Mare and once again Harry is in the papers moaning about just about everything apart from his own tactics and game plan (or lack of…)
When he took over he inherited a ‘decent squad’ of players in his own words. Since then his Spurs side went on a decent run but have since slumped and are still well and truly in the mire. They scraped through to the Milk Cup final last night and Harry is all over the papers this morning saying that he won’t play his best players on Saturday because he can’t risk them – he’s basically saying “sod the FA Cup”. And there was naive old me thinking it was just the foreign managers who did the historic trophy down. He, his son and his cohorts (Tim Sherwood, Sir Les etc etc) are the first ones to slag off any foreign manager that rests players in the FA Cup, saying they don’t understand the British game or the passion and history of the cup.
Yet there’s no criticism of him today in the papers for admitting he’s going to throw Saturday’s game against Man U. Neither is there any widespread criticism of him for the shocking way they are playing football at the moment, the mediocre results he’s achieving or the ludicrous amounts of cash he’s lashing out left right and centre on players. It seems Redknapp himself is above criticism.
Bah, I’m rambling a bit here. I just wanted to vent my spleen I suppose. Harry is not the best English manager around. He is not a man that runs a club on a shoestring budget and achieves amazing results – he’s a decent man manager that splashes the cash and achieves below par results. And he has a tendency to walk when things get tough. If he was your average Carlos Kick a Ball, the media would be all over this. But as we all know, Harry is a media darling (of sorts) – he scratches their backs with stories and stuff and in return he has a get out of jail free card that means he’s immune from negative press coverage. And to boot, he looks like a celeriac.
Can I urge everyone to follow the link that has been provided in one of the posts above. That goal is something else.
I’ll pick this up the moment I have a chance – thanks to the reader (whose name I have forgotten – sorry) who sent it in.
Whilst I’m fairly certain that Spurs will escape relegation this season and I’m sure that Harry Redknapp is a good football manager in many ways, his man-management skills and ego-centric approach to dealing with defeat has caused him problems before.
Back in 2005 as manager of Southampton he seemed more concerned with his own reputation than the Saints’ efforts to avoid relegation – constantly harping about the poor standard of the players he’d inherited (commenting after a 4-1 defeat to Pompey, “We’ve got a big squad, and quite a few of the players are not good enough in all honesty. The staff needs pruning and we need a bit more quality in.”) Back then it seemed as though Harry was keen to reinforce the idea that he’d inherited a terrible side and should they be relegated then it couldn’t possibly be his fault – in other words he was protecting his reputation at the expense of his side’s chances – how to motivate yourself as a player when your manager continues to question whether you’re good enough to stay up?
Sound familiar? This season Harry must have thought he was onto a winner with a Spurs side packed with quality and in a false position at the bottom of the league. Since his relatively lucky start – the draw with Arsenal and the win against Liverpool – things have changed and again Harry’s taken to protecting his reputation at the expense of his players’ flagging confidence. I fail to see how complaining that your players lack character and aren’t good enough, that the transfer policy has left you with a poor ‘mish-mash’ squad of players, and that your keeper will have to play against Manchester United (despite not being good enough) is going to help Spurs improve results.
In effect, Redknapp’s up to his old tricks – effectively saying “it’s not my fault, these players are hopeless”. That’s what I’d call a self-fulfilling prophecy and the man should rise above all that and concentrate on making his players feel like they can win games again – they’re certainly good enough to. In short, Redknapp should spend less time worrying about what his reputation will look like and more time concerning himself with his playing staff and Spurs’ fans.
If Spurs do go down, and Southampton go bust a friend of mine reckons that on top of winning the FA Cup last year (he’s a Pompey man) he could effectively retire from being a football fan since every conceivable dream will have been achieved. An amusing idea indeed.
Tony, below a better link:
Stoke highlights: BRING ON JACK THE LAD: http://www.101greatgoals.com/videodisplay/1995551/