Sweet Talk

Harry Redknapp said the other week after our victory at Stoke, that the Tottenham of old would’ve have lost this game. Notoriously tricky place to go since their return to the top flight, we are now no-longer soft pushovers in such touch assignments.

This was a very uplifting assessment ahead of our biggest game ever, certainly in terms of getting to the Champions League Group stage, at any rate.

We took such a positive attitude into the return qualifier against the Young Boys of Berne and, from being 3-0 down after less than half an hour in the first leg, the comeback was complete with a 6-3 aggregate victory. A hat-trick from Crouch, another one from Defoe, enabled the 4-0 on-the-night victory.

Just before our manager arrived in the Autumn of 2008, we were falling down the league quicker than the leaves on the trees. Every week a new record was being broken … worst start in the Premier League, worst start for fifty years, worst start since 1912, and then, the worst start ever.

We accumulated just two points from the first eight league games and it spelt the end of the Latin American partnership of the non-English-speaking Juande Ramos and his No2/translator Gus Poyet. Thanks for the League Cup, but it’s the Premier League that matters.

I for one triumphalled Harry’s appointment. We needed a good old fashioned Englishman who could use a few good old fashioned Anglo-Saxon phrases in a tone that would have an effect on prima donnas earning tens of thousands of pounds per week.

It was just what we needed to give us a chance in the relegation fight that lay ahead. It worked a treat, and in the end, we were closer to a place in the Europa league that a place in a lower league.

Had Darren Bent nodded in that goal against Portsmouth instead of missing that famous sitter, with it’s famous after-match comments, then we would have pipped Fulham for seventh and competed in the new-fangled UEFA Cup again the following term.

Instead, Harry’s first full season in charge was a Euro-free zone. The lack of distraction of which no doubt helped us in the bread-and-butter league. Fulham’s efforts in playing 19 games in reaching the final, but losing it after extra time meant that ultimately they had nothing to show for it. Not another European campaign the following year, not the European Super Cup that Atletico Madrid display on their mantelpiece, and not even the same manager anymore.

Which brings me back to our man at the helm.

After the one goal reverse at home to Wigan, he was asked by the MOTD interviewer that Spurs fans could be sweetened from this result if there was news of a big-name signing arriving before the window closes.

Harry vehemently denied that there is any need in the first place for the supporters to be softened by such Sweet Talk.

“The fans have had nothing but sweetners since I arrived. We’re entitled to one bad day.”

Fair enough – after where he has taken us in just 22 months. But losing to the likes of Wigan, at home in the league after their first two games, at home, yielded 0-4 and 0-6 defeats could spell the end of any hopes of a repetition of a top four challenge this season. We may have got away last time with the fourth placed finish after the Wolves, Hull and Stoke home disasters – but we had to beat Ars*nal and Chelsea at home in the space of four days. And we had to win on our nearest rivals own patch in the final few days of the season.

We cannot let such results occur this time, and for one to arrive so soon – we’ve played two home league games and scored a big fat zero of goals incidentally – in a league that, by definition will be tougher due to Manchester City’s continued stratospherical spending, doesn’t bode well. We could be out of the Champions League and the Champions League running a fortnight before Christmas. Whilst the it-feels-like-Christmas-every-day City will still have yet another transfer window to use.

It would just be like the Tottenham Of Old to finally get to the Promised Land of the Champions League Group Stage but not to focus enough of the long term goal of staying there. The Wigan defeat may prove more significant in years to come than the fact that we’ve been drawn to play a few games against crack names from Italy, Holland and Germany.

And ultimately for Harry it could be a paraphrase of his predecessors departure.
Thanks for the Champions League, but it is the Premier League that matters.

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