Tottenham Memorabilia

At last someone has admitted it, Spurs prolific strikers do not score enough goals.

Don’t be daft some will say but stop and think how many chances Tottenham create. Often Spurs are all over teams but do not tuck the ball away. This has to improve.

There have been over 100 goals at White Hart Lane, but not enough of them scored by Tottenham. Attack is the Spurs philosophy now, that’s great, but you have to back it up will goals aplenty, 4 - 4 draws are not good enough.

Look at the Chelsea game, Spurs could and should have won 5-4 in the dying moments. This is exactly the type of chance that Tottenham have missed to many of, the type Spurs must score more of.

During the summer Ramos must be ruthless with under achievers and buy quality. Tottenham after the sale of Defoe have 3 strikers, Bent will surely go, Berbatov might be tempted by the Champions League, leaving Spurs only with Keane. To try and find 2 quality strikers is difficult, 3, well I just can’t see that much money being available when you consider the need for a central defender, a full back and a new creative spark in midfield.

Having just returned from Lanzarote where I watched the Tottenham games against Chelsea and Portsmouth with an Arsenal fan (who would rather watch Spurs because we entertain) I caught the Newcastle match.

Oh dear, the boys have given up, well not all of them, Woodgate, Hutton, Dawson, Bent and Keane are trying, the midfield are on holiday.

Since this game we are being linked with Michael Owen, so let’s look at this and see if it is a good idea.

His goalscoring record in today’s game is not in question, many people had dismissed him for England before his last injury, not me. Owen scores goals, full stop.

As a striker you need people to create chances, you make the runs, give them to opening to play the ball into and tuck it away. Michael Owen does this without question.

Fitness, injuries, lack of pace, are the downsides we are told. Owen has shown that he needs games after an injury to get his sharpness back, notice he has started scoring again. Jonathon Woodgate and Darren “Sicknote” Anderton suffered from injuries, people dwell on this too much, no player is always injured, he has had his share, is he therefore due a change of luck?

Has everyone forgotten a certain Alan Shearer, he kept scoring goals at Premiership level as he gradually slowed down. Michael Owen has been a world class goalscorer, Tottenham create stacks of chances, he will score goals in the Premier League given our service, but can we accomodate him?

Berbatov and Keane are the number 1 pairing, that won’t change if Berbatov stays. Our other target man Darren Bent is starting to show signs of ability, great header verses Newcastle and the cameo against Portsmouth. Life has been tough for him, just look at what Defoe is doing at Portsmouth now he is playing regularly.

Michael Owen could fulfill the Keane roll on a rotational basis, the worry is that Defoe factor.  How much football would he get and would it be enough to keep him sharp?

This for me is the only question to ask ourselves and the answer to that determines wether we go after him or not.

Tottenham players ask themselves, should I stay or should I go?

With the season effectively over everybodies thoughts have now turned to the summer clearout, the next step in the Ramos Revolution. Not many games left to win over the boss and claim a new contract. here is our verdict on those who’s future is on the line.

Paul Robinson - we are actively seeking keepers so his days are numbered.

Radek Cerny - a very average keeper to my mind, sell and bring in a younger understudy to whoever we sign as our number 1.

Pascal Chimbonda - he wants to leave. He dribbles to much out of defence and was sold two dummies completely taking him out the game on the halfway line against PSV Eindhoven. We are told he is good in the air but has little effect in the opposition penalty area. He makes a good squad member but he will be going.

Lee Young-Pyo - surely he must be able to play at right back as he is right footed, he can’t cross with his left. I would retain him as a squad player if he is able to play right back.

Michael Dawson - some reports suggest he will be sold, I am a fan. He and King formed a great partnership and he carried our defence last year. I strongly think he should be one of our four centre backs.

Younis Kaboul - he is young but has not shown yet he is reliable, like Chimbonda he likes to dribble out of defence too much and gets caught. Because of his age I’ll come down on the side of keeping him.

Ricardo Rocha - he is not really good enough, reliable yes for a mid table side a good squad player, but as we are looking beyond that, sell.

Aaron Lennon - why has he stopped going past players with pace? He is playing the ball backwards a lot more and needs to start running at defenders again. His final ball still needs work and I think he is one that should be retained and developed, a bit like Shaun Wright-Phillips has at Chelsea.

Kevin Prince-Boateng - again very young, we have players who have promise but are not ready to deliver. All he seems to do is play a simple pass and keep the ball apart from getting booked every time he tries to make a tackle. We need players who can deliver now so another for the boot.

Darren Bent - goodbye. Dimitar Berbatov scored with a volley against PSV, Bent missed the target, that sums it up.

Off on holiday next week with a Gooner and 2 Hammers, think I might enjoy myself!

And so I thought we would have a laugh with some funny football before the big night on Wednesday. Good luck boys.

Below I have listed a couple of web pages for your entertainment, I dare you not to laugh;

http://hubpages.com/hub/Funny-Football

http://hubpages.com/hub/Funny-Football-2

Who remembers Steve Perryman MBE, her is a site devoted to Mr Reliable the Smiling Assasin;

http://hubpages.com/hub/Steve-Perryman

Why not pick up the Steve Perryman Signed Autobiography available from Tottenham Memorabilia for £27.97 including FREE postage and packaging. Amazon retail price £35.00.

Enjoy.

Will he be a Hit or  a Miss?

It’s very hard to tell after half a game but if you had to side one way or the other which way would you go with Spurs new signing Gilberto?

He can certainly use his left foot, seemed to be the only one he could use, which does beg the question, why can players of today not use both feet like Sir Bobby Charlton?

Whenever possible Gilberto was seen going down the left touch line and wanting the ball with some attacking flair. He reminded me of an England and former Gooner full back, being left footed and adding width. When settled next season with Gareth Bale in front of him they could form a left side pairing not many sides in the top flight have.

Clearly he is comfortable on the ball, has skill and a mean line in rugby tackles!

Ok the goal was his fault, a pass to Chimbonda and not a dribble was called for. He had no idea what his fellow defenders were doing and was constantly getting caught out of position, but they will be resolved with a greater understanding of his team mates, which only matches can provide.

Gilberto’s first game makes me think back to the debut of Kaboul, he looked skillful and very promising before the realisation that he wants to dribble his way out of defence every chance he gets.

So for me pushed to side one way or the other, he will be a hit. How about you, what do you think?

A couple of things catch my eye today.

Reports suggest Spurs are making a second attempt to sign Aiden McGeady from Celtic and Juande Ramos waiting until the summer before appointing a goalkeeping coach.

Aiden McGeady plays on the left of midfield for Celtic and has 17 caps for the Republic of Ireland. I have watched him twice and he looks a very skillful player. I was very impressed especially for one so young.

The 21 year old Scottish Premier League February Player of the Month states on his website, that his is playing a more direct style, using his pace and ball skills to tryand get to the byline to cross.

He is not the finished article and at 21 you would not expect him to be, but he is of the age that the club like as an investment for the future.

Have you seen him play, what do you think, would he be a good addition to the squad? Leave a comment and let’s hear your views.

It has been forgotten that we have not had a goalkeeping coach since Hans Segers left with Perry Suckling from the Youth Academy filling in. Like everyone else goalkeepers need a coach, but for them it does have to be a specialist coach, otherwise all they are working on are the basic training routines and not improving their positional play for instance.

I do feel this is where Paul Robinson has been unfairly left to work on his own problems with an inexperienced coach at Premier Leagus level. I am sure this could not have helped him when his confidence was low. Personally I think he should have been taken out of the firing line earlier, but I totally agree with him returning. Presumably the manager was not impressed by Cerny and had to stick with Robinson.

Backroom staff are often overlooked but are vital, just look when England won the Rugby World Cup in Australia under Sir Clive Woodward. he left no stone unturned putting in place an array of specialists the like of which England had not seen before. This is an overlooked area when you consider most sports these days are played in the mind. On the field it is all about making the right decision at the right time and that not only comes from the experience of playing but also from the mental approach.

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For all those Spurs fans remembering the glory years, make your way over to Tottenham Memorabilia where you can pick up his Limited Edition Autobiography on CD, Steve Perryman - Tales of a Tottenham Legend.

 It is a 60 minute question and answer session about his career and comes with a signed photograph and Certificate of Authenticity for £27.97 which includes Free postage and packing.

There have only been 1,000 of these made and they are not widely available. You can pick one up for

It didn’t take Avram Grant long to start bleating did it, is he Arsene Wenger in disguise? The pressure of losing is clearly getting to him. The reports in the paper were commincal this week, he has to win a trophy or at least finish in the top 4 to get money to spend this summer! That’s no target, finishing below 2nd is abject failure for that squad for goodness sake.

 There have been many injuries in football but never to my knowledge has a manager come out and said a player should never be allowed to play again. That, despite a later retraction, is despicable and Arsene Wenger should have been asked at least to explain his comments. Just ask yourself how can a player get a 4 game ban for a tap on the face (whilst the other guy gets nothing) and a manager making a comment like that gets off scott free?

Tottenham Memorabilia offer our best wishes to Eduardo and hope for a speedy recovery, which was a pure accident. He just got to the ball as Taylor was making the challenge, a guy 3 clubs have sold or tried to sell because he is too soft.

Onto better things a Spurs tie away to Birmingham City which we must be looking to win even if we do not need a league place to qualify for Europe. A cup double would be nice but that is a long way off yet.

Who is the 19th highest payed player in the world on basic wages? Why it’s the overpriced Darren Bent, he must have a good agent or our board are idiots to pay him £4.55 million, no wonder we can’t wait to offload him at a hugh loss. Great business guys!

Hutton has settled in well, as has Woodgate, it will be good to see Gilberto and of course next season we will have Gareth Bale back, that will seem like another new signing. I can’t wait for next season already.

Typical, we thrash Arsenal and every goal we scored did’nt count according to Wenger, we totally outplay Chelsea and Grant reckons Chelsea were the better side.  What game was he watching? Bad losers the pair of them. Even at the end they wanted the rules changed to suit them, the game is over when the time is up, not when play breaks down.

Spurs were all over Chelsea at the start, we hit the bar after 9 mins and Carvalho should have been sent off for an elbow on Jenas after 35.

After Drogba scored from a free kick, they tried to play boring football for a 1-0 win, they got what they deserved, nothing.

Bridge was clearly seen bringing hand to ball from the replay view the linesman, or is it still assistant referee, had. Just look at what it meant to Berbatov when he tucked away the penalty.  Spurs wanted it more than Chelsea.

Zakora, who had a wonderful game, should have wrapped it up after 79 minutes but Man of the Match Woodgate scores after 4 minutes of extra time.

We had a Keeper and defence that had not played together before, Robinson in only his second game back, a right back playing at left back, Hutton playing only his third game since signing from Rangers, Woodgate playing only his fourth and King back after 6 games out.

Can we hold out, yes we can, well done boys, Carling Cup Winners 2008, European football secured for next year.  Now for the UEFA Cup.

The wait is over, the Carling Cup Final is here, another exciting day in prospect full of nerves and drama.  Players excelling themselves, others performing below expectations as the occasion gets the better of them.

The beauty of cup finals is you don’t know who it is going to happen to, how each individual will react and how that affects the team as a whole.

Both sides have “big game” players but that guarantees nothing.  The retoric you see throughout the papers from players saying they are ready, up for it etc etc some genuine, some masking nerves.

It’s a chance for former Spurs greats to have their say and voice their support and get involved in the day, players like cup winner Graham Roberts, who is travelling to Wembley by coach from White Hart Lane with 53 fans, Pat Jennings once rated the world’s best goalkeeper above Gordon Banks, the wing wizzard David Ginola, former captain Gary Mabbutt, the media have wheeled out programmes on Ossie Ardiles and Ricky Villa.

let’s hear that song one more time ringing from the rafters at Wembley and around the pubs and clubs at the end of the game “Glory Glory Tottenham Hotspur.”

Make us proud boys.

White Hart Lane and Slavia Prague in the UEFA Cup today with Robinson back in goal and I for one am delighted.

Radek Cerny does not fill me with confidence, he has looked very ordinary to me and is certainly not our number 1.  Robinson has played big games for England, he played in a World Cup remember under that buffoon McLaren (the worst choice as England manager since Kevin Keegan).

The secret to Jenas was not fitness as everyone assumes but confidence, feeling he was wanted, loved, in short man management.  So is this the secret to transform Robinson?

The question I have not been heard asked is how did Robinson come to lose his confidence over one mistake for us and a piece of misfortune for England, when the ball bobbled over his foot, that could have happened to anyone?

Who destroyed it, was it Steve McLaren or Martin Jol or the sensationalist journalism in the papers and their need for a scapegoat all the time?  Whoever it was and it was probably the press in my view, you have to question the man management of Martin Jol at the time.

Now don’t get me wrong, I was a fan of Martin Jol and he would have been even more successful for us if the board had not gone behind his back and tried to recruit Harry Redknapp, long before the Jande Ramos affair.  He was then totally undermined and I wonder if that is not the true root of Robinson’s woes?

Did Martin Jol then take his eye off the ball and not pay enough attention to the man management side of his hansomly rewarded job?  Yes obviously a mistake, an unjust public slating through the press started the ball rolling and it went from there.

I’d love to hear your views.

Paul Robinson was Tottenham’s number 1, he was England’s number 1, he was a good goalkeeper, he will be again.  I am right behind you Paul, you’re good enough so will the real paul Robinson please stand up.  We want you back.