by bigmick » Tue Sep 18, 2007 11:24 am
My old mans a Tottenham fan (it's like a song when you read it back) and he's crying in his beer everytime I speak to him. His feeling is that they'll give Jol the elbow but I can't help thinking if they do that he's been a bit unlucky. I think they've finished in fifth in both of the last two seasons and realistically, (though it is quite hard to find a realistic Spurs fan sometimes) that's about as good as they can hope to do. To break the big four up takes either a huge financial investment or the ability to win nearly every game 1-0 (a la Everton). I think by and large Jol has bought pretty well with Berbatov being the obvious stand out buy. This season Bale looks like he'll make a really good player and looks cheap to me at 10 million, while the young French centre-half whose name completely escapes me looks like he'll make a footballer too.
Ultimately though, it may well be the continuing achievement up the Seven Sisters Road which does for the Dutchman. Wenger looks to me to be in the process of building yet another good team, and say what you like about the winging ponce but they always play some really lovely stuff as well. I only got the highlights of the derby game over the weekend but I can only assume that when Jol said that Spurs problem was they didn't take their chances, he must have been getting mixed up with another match. From the little bit I saw, Arsenal could have had about ten and there really was a bit of a gulf between an over-rotated Tottenham who lacked confidence and a resurgent Arsenal.
If he were to keep his job for a few more games, I'd advise him to drop Paul Robinson. Surely no International goalkeeper has ever got beaten from distance anywhere near as often as the ex-Leeds man, and his lack of agility makes me really count our blessings that we've got Reina between the sticks.
"se e in una bottigla ed e bianco, e latte".