Spurs 2-1 Arsenal

Posted by Stevio in Tottenham Hotspur on April 14th, 2010

So happy that Spurs managed to pull off an outstanding 2-1 win over Arsenal. Sure, it was a tough game with Arsenal having lots of possession, but for most part of the game, they failed to break Spurs down.

The opening goal was just fantastic, Danny Rose got on the end of an Almunia clearance and volleyed home from 30-yards out. Admittedly, I was shocked to see it go in, but a good kind of shocked!

Rose was a surprise starter in place of David Bentley, but with goals like that, hopefully he’ll have more chances in the Spurs first team.

The second half started and soon after Gareth Bale had put us two-nil up. Jermain Defoe with a beauty of though ball found Bale in the penalty area, who just tucked the ball home. How Bale ended up in a striking position I’ll never know, but the Welshman is so full of running, you can expect him to appear anywhere on the pitch at any time!

Of course, even being 2-0 up the game was never over, especially against a side like Arsenal. They pressed and pressed and eventually got their goal through Bendtner, this despite some wonderful goalkeeping from Gomes.

Thankfully they failed to get the equaliser with Gomes and our defenders standing firm. Michael Dawson was his usual solid self after the disappointment of the weekend, also Ledley King was outstanding considering how long he’d been out injured.

All in all, a wonderful victory that puts the horrors of Sunday to the back of one’s memory.

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FA Cup semi loss and Arsenal preview

Posted by Stevio in Tottenham Hotspur on April 14th, 2010

Well it didn’t go too well on Sunday, did it? I’m still pretty ticked off over it. Sure we didn’t perform to our best, but we still should have won. We had so much possession, plenty of shots, as well as some quite good opportunities to score, but like games against Stoke and Wolves, we just can’t get the ball across the opposition’s goal line.

We can blame the pitch, which let’s face it certainly contributed to Portsmouth’s first goal, and we can blame the referee for ruling out clear goals and giving penalties when he shouldn’t, but the fact is we should have enough quality and know how that these decisions shouldn’t count as much.

So now our FA Cup dreams are over, we only have the little matter of hosting Arsenal tonight. It should be a good game, as it’s unlikely Arsenal will play ‘anti-football’ like Portsmouth, although with no Wilson Palacios due to him finally getting his yellow card on Sunday, and no Niko Kranjcar to injury, it’s going to be tough. Some good news though is that Ledley King could return.

Sol Campbell is likely to play against us, which always brings added ‘entertainment’.

We’ve got good form at home, and we really need to bounce back from Sunday’s disappointment, so let’s hope we can get a positive morale boosting victory tonight!

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FA Cup Semi-Final preview

Posted by Stevio in Tottenham Hotspur on April 11th, 2010

I’ve finally managed to fix the blog, as there was quite a few problems with it. All should be working fine now.

Ironically this comes on a pretty big day for Spurs – an FA Cup semi-final at Wembley!

A week ago I would have been confident, however, our performance at Sunderland was pretty poor. Of course, ‘freakish’ refereeing decisions and fluke goals didn’t help.

I’m hoping today’s referee Alan Wiley will have a good game and not make any silly decisions. It’s so irritating when referees don’t do their job properly – Howard Webb take note!

I’m really concerned over the injuries of late, the loss of Michael Dawson for example against Sunderland was huge. We need him! I also think Tom Huddlestone is a key player for us, with his ability to pass the ball around.

Sadly though, no Aaron Lennon for today’s game. It sounds like he’s on his way back though, just not yet. Yesterday whilst watching Chelsea beat Aston Villa in the other FA Cup semi-final, seeing Ashley Young reminded me of Lennon, of course, Lennon is far superior, but I so miss having him giving left-backs nightmares.

So will we win? Well Portsmouth have had a tough time with injuries too, but apparently they have few players returning from injury, so it’s difficult to say. We did beat them 2-0 at the Lane a few weeks back, so we should be confident of getting the win. Sadly, this is Spurs, and nothing is ever straight forward. So let’s keep our fingers crossed and hope we can make it to the Final!

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Spurs beat Liverpool 2-1

Posted by Stevio in Tottenham Hotspur on August 19th, 2009

The season has kicked off and Spurs have started well with a 2-1 home win over Liverpool.

I was happy with the performance on Sunday, Liverpool had their usual amount of possession, but they looked rather toothless in attack. Even Steven Gerrard failed to provide much punch upfront.

Benoit Assou-Ekotto’s first goal for the club was a wonderful effort from just outside the box, I do hope he can score more goals now that he has broken his duck, as he’s got such a sweet left foot on him.

Gomez had a moment of madness bringing down Glen Johnson in the penalty area to allow Liverpool to level at 1-1. Can’t blame the Brazilian, he obviously thought he could get the ball – sadly, he didn’t.

Defender Sebastien Bassong looked at home alongside Ledley King in defence, he also looked quite well at home in the opposition’s penalty area, as he scored the winner with a cracking header from a corner.

All in all, it was a promising start with some fine performances, especially from Ledley King and Wilson Palacios. I really do hope we can maintain our performances. If so, we should be in for a good season.

Now Spurs tonight play at Hull City, who we beat 3-0 only a few weeks back to lift the Barclays Asia Trophy. It’ll be an interesting test following Hull’s 2-1 defeat at Chelsea last weekend.

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Gunter joins Nottingham Forest

Posted by Stevio in Transfers on July 20th, 2009

I was sad to hear that Chris Gunter had today had left Spurs permanently and joined Nottingham Forest.

The 19-year-old right-back had shown potential in his 16 appearances for the club.

Admittedly, he wasn’t too great going forward, however, defensively he showed he was more than capable.

Forest have paid Spurs £1.75m for the Welsh international’s services. Hopefully the club will reinvest the cash wisely over the coming weeks.

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Tottenham Hotspur 2009/10

Posted by Stevio in Tottenham Hotspur on July 19th, 2009

It has been quite some time since my last post, a lot has happened. The main thing is that Spurs managed to avoid relegation to remain a Premiership club.

Now it’s the close season and all the talk is about transfers. So far, the only signing is an ex-Arsenal youngster called Anton Blackwood. Ricardo Rocha has been released, and Didier Zokora has left for Sevilla.

At present there’s plenty of talk on who could be coming to the Lane. Ashley Young, Peter Crouch, Klaas-Jan Huntelaar are a few being bandied around.

There’s also a lot of talk on who will exit the club. Tom Huddlestone, Darren Bent, David Bentley to name a few.

I think the present squad is pretty good. We’ve got two very good goalkeepers. The defence is strong, although a new experienced centre-half would be a useful addition to act as cover with Michael Dawson. With Zokora’s departure, a new defensive midfielder would be a good idea, as we’ve only got Wilson Palacios who can play there. Of course, as always, a left winger would be great, but, well, let’s not hold our breaths. Upfront is an area which is up for much debate. We’ve got four quality strikers, however there’s question marks on whether they can play together.

I think with a few new additions we should be more than capable of qualifying for Europe next season, especially if we can maintain our excellent home form. That said, we must keep Jonathan Woodgate and Ledley King fit, as without them, our defence becomes too vulnerable. Also I hope Aaron Lennon can continue improving his game, as he most certainly shone last season.

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Crazy, crazy, Tottenham Hotspur

Posted by Stevio in Tottenham Hotspur on January 22nd, 2009

I’m just about recovered from Wednesday night. What a crazy night.

Spurs were 3-0 down and headed out of the League Cup until two minutes from the end of the extra time when Pavlyuchenko and Defoe popped up to secure a 6-4 aggregate win.

Now we have a final at Wembley to look forward to, with Manchester United our opponents. No doubt we’ll be the underdogs.

Before that we got a decent 1-1 result at home against Portsmouth, which puts us in 16th position in the Premiership. Problem is there’s another four teams on the same 21 points as us, one of them being bottom placed West Brom. We’re still very clearly in a precarious position.

Some positive news this week was Wilson Palacios making the move from Wigan Athletic to White Hart Lane. Admittedly I haven’t seen much of 24 year-old Honduran and so can’t say if he’s worth the reported £12m fee. He’s seems very highly-rated and did look decent when he played against us a few weeks ago, I just wonder about his disciplinary record, as he seems to get booked every game.

With just over a week to go of the transfer window left, it’ll be interesting to see if there’ll be any further signings. Two leaving appear to be veteran Cesar Sanchez and Hossam Ghaly, who look set to join Valencia and Al-Nasr respectively.

This weekend Spurs travel to Old Trafford to take on Manchester United in the FA Cup. It appears that we’ll be fielding a below strength side. Admittedly I find this disappointing, however, with a game at home against Stoke three days later, I can understand it. I just hope whatever team is put out that they put in a good performance.

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Goal difference

Posted by Stevio in Tottenham Hotspur on January 18th, 2009

With Spurs not playing until tomorrow (Sunday) we find ourselves at the foot of the Premiership, again.

West Brom beat Newcastle 3-0 to go above us, while Stoke lost to Chelsea 2-1 to remain third from bottom.

Amazingly if we beat Portsmouth tomorrow we’ll rise up to 12th position, that shows how crazy the league is this year.

I’ve always thought that goal difference is rather telling, and usually come the end of the season, a lot of the teams are positioned similarly when you compare points and goal difference.

Going by goal difference, Spurs would be placed 11th in the league with -6, with Middlesbrough -15, Stoke -16, and West Brom -17 in the relegation zone.

It shows that defensively Spurs aren’t that bad, and if we can improve our attacking game, we may just have a chance of avoiding the dreaded drop.

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The good, the bad and the ugly

Posted by Stevio in Tottenham Hotspur on January 17th, 2009

It has been quite a while since my last post, since then things have improved, sadly even with a new manager installed, the results and the performances have not been good enough.

With 21 league games played this season, we’ve won 5, drawn 5, and lost 11, scoring 20 and conceding 26. We’re currently third from bottom in the relegation zone.

Something positive is that we’re still in all the cups, and all being well, we can at least look forward to a League Cup final.

The performance in our latest game – the defeat at Wigan Athletic – wasn’t our worst this season, however, it was far from our best.

Even though manager Harry Redknapp had made changes to compete with a physical Wigan side, many of our players failed to perform, most notably Gareth Bale.

In recent months there have been some positives, defender Michael Dawson has once again found his form and has been a rock at centre half, also Heurelho Gomes has overcome a spell of uncertainly to show that he’s more than a capable ‘keeper.

Upfront we’ve seen Darren Bent struggle despite scoring 12 goals this season, while fellow striker Roman Pavlyuchenko has improved of late with goals in the FA Cup and League Cup against Wigan and Burnley respectively.

Since the transfer window opened Jermain Defoe has returned to White Hart Lane in a big money move from Portsmouth. He scored 15 goals in 31 appearances for Pompey, fingers crossed he can keep the same 1 goal in 2 games ratio up at Spurs.

I have faith in Harry Redknapp to turn it around, however, the problems at Spurs are chronic, and I’m unsure whether the team’s problems can be solved in time to prevent relegation.

Harry needs to build a new team. The current one is so fragmented, sometimes it’s like watching a team of eleven strangers. You’d think after training and playing together the players would be able work together and know each other’s game – sadly not.

If it’s true that the club are splashing out tens of millions on players in a desperate bid to avoid relegation then I fear we may find out it’s a big mistake, as sadly I doubt a big turnover of players during this transfer window will save us from heading down into the Championship.

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Spurs make Redknapp approach

Posted by Stevio in Tottenham Hotspur on October 26th, 2008

Following Juande Ramos’ departure from Spurs, the club have made a move for Portsmouth manager Harry Redknapp.

Spurs said in a statement: “The Club has requested permission to hold discussions with Harry Redknapp and Portsmouth FC has reluctantly agreed.”

At 61 years of age, I’m not 100% sure whether Redknapp is the man to take Spurs forward, however, we’re currently in deep relegation trouble, where the ex-West Ham manager has much experience of battling against. So perhaps, as a short-term measure, Redknapp is the ideal man.

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