THE HORROR OF N17…A HALLOWEEN SPECIAL

And so it continues…Tottenham Hotspur’s nightmare season, a freefall the likes of which no-one anywhere expected, continues apace. Today’s 2-0 defeat at Udinese further underscored the central issue which has caused this situation, namely the lack of a proper forward. Darren Bent fooled this writer with a glowing pre-season, but said-scribe should’ve reverted to the skepticism he’s always held with regards to the player’s ability to play in more than one system. Because the proof has come that he cannot. Indeed, asking Bent to make creative runs, to drop deep and drag defenders out of position or to use his body like a classic hold-up centre-forward is futile. He cannot. It is the starting point of our problems, that and the loss of  (on average) 65-70 goals a season during both transfer windows of 2008.

 

The midfield has thus had it’s metaphoric balls chopped off by this rather large problem (along with having no natural enforcer/holding player), most notably because there isn’t a striking brain cell to be found in front of them. Which forces them sideways. Which makes us the easiest team in football to defend.

 

Once Modric was on the field, he again showed that Tottenham have the midfield ability to service any strikers who are prepared to work and who have some dimension to their game. And when Bent was given a golden chance to stick the ball home from 7 yards out thanks to a wonderful cross from Dos Santos, he contrived to ball-watch a split second too long, and rather than using a striker’s initiative to attack the chance, he instead waited for it to come to him. You know what happened next. Nothing.  Later on, just before Udinese’s breakaway second, he planted a strong header goalwards right at the keeper.

 

O’Hara saw red after two correct yellow card decisions for rash challenges, whilst Jenas blotted a copybook which had been filled with effort by unforgivably contriving to stop running to the goaline and thus fail to clear the second Udinese goal off the line before it trickled in off a post. He thought it had already gone in. Players like Owen Hargreaves or Frank Lampard don’t.

 

It is obvious that Daniel Levy’s transfer policy this summer messed things up drastically. That has been broken down already in this column. No, what now needs to happen at Tottenham is a miracle to arrest the freefall. And that miracle has to happen inside every single player and club employee.

 

It starts with simple stuff. What more can be done with regards to the blame game? This is what they’re stuck with until January, and by God, that is what will have to scratch out 20 points minimum before the club can buy a few strikers if they want to have any real chance of surviving. So it’s really time that everyone made sure they’re giving 100%. From the tea lady to the tacticians, from the programme sellers to the players, EVERYONE needs to pull together and give everything…of course, that’s the problem. Trusting that they can and trusting that they will. AND wondering if they trust EACH OTHER to work out of this mess. David Bentley’s Spurs career hasn’t amplified hopes of such things  (it hasn’t helped his cause that he’s drastically under-performed thus far) Woodgate’s comments post-Udinese weren’t hopeful, and Juande’s cryptic clues didn’t exactly offer a bucket-load of inspiration.

 

Perhaps the saddest thing about it all, is that nobody seems to know when the point will turn anymore. Something you teach your children is that however bad a situation gets, it will end. In the case of Spurs, no parent could say that with any degree of conviction, because the freefall appears so thoroughly entrenched.

 

It is going to take a special act, no, a special SERIES of acts, to save Spurs from slipping into the abyss. And as people go round and round trying to detail the exact reason it’s all gone so horribly tits up, the truth appears to be that there is no one specific reason more than there’s multiple contributing factors.

Yes, getting rid of people and buying safe passage would be nice, but it can’t happen (as mentioned) until January 1^st 2009.

 By which time everyone will know if Spurs managed to sort it out or if they’re heading towards the championship…the optimist will always say that they’ll have proven themselves too good to go down by then, and the realists might not be invited just yet!

JOE KINNEAR…A HERO ONCE MORE!!!

When Newcastle Dis-United announced that they had dragged Joe Kinnear from suburban convalescence to sit in the hot-seat equivalent of a Mexican jumping bean for a whole 6 weeks if-lucky, the laughter rang out  from Tyneside to Tennessee. It was reasonable to assume that Kinnear’s doctor might have been the reason behind Joe taking the ‘job’, as working with Newcastle right now’s a sure-fire way to test your ticker, but truth be told, it likely had much more to do with the Dennis Wise connection than health. Oh, and also perhaps the challenge; Kinnear’s never been one to hide after all. But there was no mistaking the message this appointment sent-out; desperate. And behind the times. And even a little bit silly? Given the names being touted (Guus Hiddink for example), by the sheer misfortune of proxy, Joe Kinnear’s name was always going to be a let-down. Obviously, the press had a field day, especially when it transpired that Joe’s first day at Sid James Park clashed with a scheduled day off for the players. The unofficial argument amongst press and public was that they’d already had enough days off on Saturdays, Sundays and Wednesdays, but no matter, pundits queued up to state that it was Kinnear’s fault, etc, etc. It was, in fact, a bit of an open season on the man. Ridiculed for a ridiculous job that he hadn’t even had five minutes to try and do. Thinking about it in those terms, we’re all guilty as charged.

Modern decorum dictates that unless you’re one of the big 4 managers, you keep your counsel and tread gingerly with the press, occasionally making sure to show you have a pair of testicles, but not in a particularly challenging or offensive way. Indeed, most managers try and butter up a journo or two so as they can do things like spread rumors, tap-up players and have a friendly word on their side if the proverbial ‘form’ hits the fan.

So when Joe Kinnear held his first official press conference yesterday, everyone could’ve been forgiven for expecting the usual empty rhetoric that wafts through the air like stale wind from a chili cook-off. What they didn’t expect was an introduction like this (all quotes come courtesy of The Guardian).

Joe Kinnear: Which one is Simon Bird (the Daily Mirror’s North-East football writer).

SB: Me.

JK: You’re a cunt.

SB: Thank you.*

A stunningly unfriendly and politically incorrect entrance, and one certainly not designed to have the snarling Fleet St mob covering your back when everything’s going to ruin. Of course, Kinnear realizes that it’s already pretty absurdly awful at Newcastle and that the phrase ‘on a hiding to nothing’ is becoming the new management motto, engraved as it is on the revolving incumbent’s office chair. What he did not realize was that in the nu- Premiership, in it’s rarefied air, you’re guilty and have to prove yourself innocent. Since Joe took a bunch of ragamuffin geezers called Wimbledon on the sort of carpet ride that Hollywood makes movies about, things have changed. And since he suffered a heart attack and subsequently had to go into semi-retirement, the behind-scenes politics have changed too. Managers? Only part of the equation. It’s as much about owners and chairman and PR value in the nu-Premiership.

So when Joe Kinnear called one of his perceived-smarmy detractors a ‘cunt’ within the first few minutes of his first official press conference, the air turned so unbelievably fresh that most of the journos in there nearly choked on the cleanliness. In one fell-swoop, Kinnear had decided to abandon protocol, to abandon the rules and to not only defend himself against criticism for a job he hadn’t started doing, but defend himself against the hoardes of mindless, clueless idiots in Fleet St who make a living peddling rumors that they leech from message boards and gossip moles.

Kinnear was, as must be clear, only getting warmed up. During the rest of the conference he told the assembled (both generally and sometimes specifically) that they were ‘fucking out of order’, that he was being ridiculed for no reason, that the press were doing it simply because they enjoyed the position Newcastle was in and that he had had enough. 

After rolling around with laughter at the sheer brazeness of Kinnear’s behavior, it’s very, very hard not to find a new, deeper respect for the man. Not because he got sweary, of course not, but because Joe Kinnear stood up for himself and his new club in the face of the usual, smarmy, two-faced smirk-handed Fleet St onslaught. He decided he’d had enough. He decided he wasn’t going to take it anymore. And he said exactly what he needed to say. In JFG’s book, this is nothing short of heroic, a proper stand against an increasingly large pack of unscrupulous bottom-feeders. Who can be sure what The Guardian’s motives are in printing an edited transcript of this nature, but if it was to further ridicule Kinnear, then it might well have back-fired. Because football is political but it ISN’T politics. Managers don’t have to adhere to fear-induced soft-shoe shuffles. Managers don’t have to concern themselves with behaving obsequiously towards the media they don’t wish to. And in the case of a Newcastle manager, it really isn’t worth the ‘politically-correct’ hassle. The liklihood is that Joe Kinnear does not have long left in a job he’s only just begun. New buyers will come in and pick their own manager. Which means even more that Joe Kinnear does not deserve the ridicule he got from everyone. JFG enjoys a good laugh at the expense of foolish work like the best of them, but the FACT remains that Joe Kinnear had not even had a chance to START the job before the journos were wading in to give him a good kick in. Kudos to him for having the brazen courage to say it EXACTLY as he felt it. Because at least the man will be able to look himself in the mirror and realize that he did not let a group of cheap, unscrupulous bastards drag him from pillar to post in their cowardly quest to ridicule yet another pawn in the nu-Premiership game. Perhaps the next time they consider arrogantly riding rough-shod over someone, they’ll now think twice.

 

*For the entire transcript, go to  http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2008/oct/03/newcastleunited.premierleague