SimplySpurfect

Levy has definitely made mistakes. And big ones. Chief among which was failing to buy a striker for £20m in this season's January window when they were knocking on the door of 2nd place, never mind 4th place. That failure to invest has cost them far far more than the £20m it would have cost. Arsenal's good run would have been in vain and Spurs would be buying much better players than are now rejecting them. Levy has an aura amongst Spurs fans. He is a very good chairman. One of the best. But this notion that Spurs will 100% always 'win' in any deal they do is just infuriating patronising bollocks.

I don't think not signing a striker for £20m last winter was a Levy mistake, to be honest. I don't think there was any striker we could have realistically signed that would've made an instant and significant difference to the team.

As frustrating as it is for Spurs fans to repeatedly see transfer targets slip away because the chairman has such a tight grip on the finances, I think Spurs fans on the whole understand that it has to be done. Spurs don't have the bottomless pot of cash of Man City or Chelsea or the huge stadium and global brand name of Man Utd, Liverpool or Arsenal and the extra revenue that comes with that, so Spurs have to be extremely careful when it comes to spending big money. You can't just spend £20m on a striker in January, along with the massive wages a £20m striker will command, in the hopes that said striker will instantly fit into the team and shoot Spurs into a Champions League spot.

I'd say Levy's biggest flaw is the transfer fees he expects for his own players. I fully support his stance when clubs come after our top first team players (Modric, Berbatov, Carrick, Keane), but demanding premium prices for players that can barely earn a place on the bench seems a bit ridiculous. Every year, our ITKs tell us that x amount of fringe players are for sale and y amount of teams are interested but are constantly put off by the high valuation. I think we'd be better off accepting a lower bid, collecting the smaller transfer fee and freeing up the wages and squad place for someone else.

Joey, any offering on what went wrong with Bentley? I remember at the time I was really disappointed you signed him ahead of us.

There's a good player there. He's failed for a number of reasons. He is one of the slowest wingers I've ever seen. That doesn't have to be much of a problem, but when you're brought into a team and a system that is used to having Aaron Lennon racing down the wing and cutting balls back, the lack of pace becomes much more significant.

His best attribute being his crossing was ultimately a useless asset at Spurs, who have been terrible at scoring from headers and deep crosses for years.

While that is none of his fault, as he was just a wrong fit for the team, he does seem to have issues with his mentality which haven't done him any favours.

I think when he signed for Spurs, right around the time the media were hyping him up as the new Beckham for England, he let it go to his head somewhat. There seemed to be a complacency of someone who has decided they've hit the big time.

It's a shame as off the pitch he looks like a great guy to have around. All of the training videos, interviews etc have always shown him as a Gascoigne-esque comedian, which must have been great for morale at the club. And I've not seen too many players that have looked as delighted as he did when he signed for Spurs.

The Mendes old trafford "goal" was in the 04/05 season when Spurs finished 9th. It was not in the 05/06 season.

Haha. Teaches me to copy/paste a post from SpursCommunity without checking the facts.

Great that Harry has gone - weakens Spurs and should put them back to their rightful position of midtable. They've been punching above their weight...

05/06: finished 5th. Could've had 4th if Mendes goal at Old Trafford was give, also Lasagne Gate

06/07: finished 5th. Unlucky to not beat Chelsea in QF of FA cup and lost to Arsenal in SF of carling cup

07/08: finished 11th. Change of manager in October, but also won Carling Cup and beat arsenal 5-1

08/09: finished 8th. Change of manager in October, "2 points from 8 games" lost on pens in CC Final to Utd.

09/10: finished 4th. FA Cup semi finalists, had a legit goal ruled out, could've changed the game.

10/11: finished 5th. QF's of CL and beat Inter and AC Milan

11/12: finished 4th. FA Cup semi finalists, Chelsea awarded an unfair goal, could've changed the game.

That's the last seven seasons for Spurs. Redknapp was only in charge for three and a half of those seasons, and he only managed marginally better results with Modric, Bale, Parker, Van der Vaart and Lennon in midfield than Martin Jol did Jenas, Tainio, Davids, Davis, Murphy etc in midfield.

Give Jol Redknapp's Spurs team and give Redknapp Jol's Spurs team and the Redknapp hype would've been far less wild.

It's no surprise that Spurs performances have improved as the club's stature and ability to attract better players has increased. With a better manager last season, Spurs would've been sitting pretty in 3rd place.

Spurs 1 - 5 Ci£y

Can people stop creaming their Y fronts over Spurs please

In fairness, that game came at a terrible time for Spurs. King, Gallas and Sandro were injured, Parker and Adebayor hadn't signed (though Adebayor couldn't have played anyway) and Modric was still kicking up a fuss about leaving.

Having a central midfield combination of Kranjcar and a wantaway Modric is dangerous against any Premier league opposition, but it was catastrophic against a Man City team that started the season in such storming fashion.

Since then, results have gone better than any Spurs fan could've hoped.

I do think the team will come unstuck eventually. While the results have been fantastic, several performances have been poor. It's sheer good fortune that Spurs walked away from Fulham with an incredibly undeserved three points. QPR and Blackburn threatened to take points away from us in the second half of the games after we'd gotten a decent lead. I thoroughly expected Villa to come out second half, score an early goal and have a period of pressure that has us Spurs fans clenching our arse cheeks.

Until the management and the players can learn to either go for the finishing blow or suffocate the opposition's attempt at a second half revival, the team runs the risk of dropping points from winning positions.

The Spurs midfield had all the time in the world against Villa last night. It completely baffles me how they didn't score a single goal in the second half. It's rare that a team will come to White Hart Lane and give the players that much space, yet the players were content to just keep possession and occasionally play an attacking through ball.

Man City would've scored 5 or 6 last night. Spurs did the exact same thing against Liverpool. I know the final score line was 4-0, but Liverpool were schocking even when they had 11 men. Once they were down to 9, Spurs were in a position to inflict a serious humiliation on them.

Dont get all the hype about spurs again after beating qpr, the manchester teams easily beat them at the start of the season yet because of today they are genuine title contenders? Not for me, especially seeing as candle face will come under huge pressure for the england job after xmas

And the 3rd goal, great goal but ive seen it twice already labelled as good as anything barcelona can do, **** ridiculous

In fairness, against the two Manchester clubs, Spurs were without King, Gallas, Parker, Sandro, Modric (literally wasn't there against Utd, mentally wasn't there against City) and Adebayor. And both Manchester clubs started the season phenomenally well.

Since the first two losses though, Spurs have won 6 out of 7, drawing the other 1. And that includes games against CL rivals in Liverpool and Arsenal and away games against Wolves and Blackburn. Yeah, both teams have been really poor this season, but Spurs traditionally struggle against them.

Spurs obviously won't finish anywhere near 1st place, points wise, but if, and it's a big if, the manager keep the players playing with same spirit, work ethic and attacking movement we saw today, then they'll take some beating to get 4th, and Chelsea ought to be worried about keeping hold of 3rd place.

I reckon three new players need bringing in during the January window though in order to maintain consistency. A centre back to take the pressure off needing King or Gallas fit, a right midfielder to compete with Lennon and a striker for when Adebayor inevitably starts to stop caring.

Cahill, Marin and Leandro would be a fantastic window for Spurs. Maybe another attempt for Rossi as Villareal have declined this season.

Sorry Joey, but so much of that block of text is bull.

Gomes was one of our best players the season before last. We did get another DC (assuming you mean central defender) and we also got in winger.

Yeah, we signed a 21 year old winger on loan, who was previously on loan at Villareal B. I can't exactly see him pushing Bale and Lennon too hard on the wing this year.

We failed to get a striker, but to blame Harry for that is pure speculation, as we have no idea why we couldn't sign our main targets, though Adebayor has said he was set to come in Jan, but then Real came in for him.

How about because our targets were players like Rossi, Aguero, Llorente, Falcao etc. More realistic targets would've yielded better results, don't you think?

We also needed a striker before Redknapp arrived, but couldn't get one, so the problem of landing our targets was already there.

What? Redknapp spent about £38m bringing 3 strikers to the club. Having four poor strikers at the club also meant we had to get rid of one or two before we could even get anyone else in anyway.

When you consider that Gallas, Sandro and VDV were 3 of our success stories last season, it's unfair to say we didn't sign top quality players considering our wage restrictions.

Who said we didn't sign top quality players? Van der Vaart is a quality player, but his inclusion required us to completely change the way we play. Surely, we should've spent time in training during the pre-season practicing the 4-5-1/4-4-1-1 system so we didn't look so lost when we immediately switched to it upon Rafa's arrival.

The main problems in defence were that Dawson got a long injury and King only played in 5 Prem games, compared to 20 the previous season. So even though we brought in Gallas, who was really good for us, we were still weaker.

The main problem in defence was that 50% of our defensive options were incredibly injury prone. Plus Gallas arrived at the club completely unfit and was forced to start immediately.

Dawson and, in particular, Bassong both also suffered dips in performance last season compared to 09/10 where they were both predominantly excellent.

The striker issue was the real problem and it's hard to say exactly what happened there and to simply blame Redknapp is pure based on nothing more than guess work.

Do you actually watch Spurs games? It's not guess work. Our strikers spent the whole of last season being completely static in and around the box. Against the relegation battling sides for instance, we absolutely dominated possession, but we constantly failed to score. Why? Because the other team defended deep and tight and just had to stay there as none of our attacking players were making runs to create space for team mates.

Our strikers, Defoe and Pavlyuchenko in particular, didn't give a damn when we didn't have the ball. They only move when the ball is at their feet, and then all they do is take a touch and smash it towards the goal, regardless if there's a defender standing 12 inches away from them.

Other Spurs fans might not like to accept it, but 5th place is good for us. At the end of the day, we finished one place lower than the previous season and that was with the team that had previously finishing 5th, spending insane amounts of money on transfers and paying ridiculous wages.

Again, bull. Between the AC Milan away game in February and the Man City away game in May, we won one single game in the league.

Man City's spending had absolutely nothing to do with our failure to win more than one game in 13 weeks.

It's easy to say we shouldn't have prioritised Europe, but what is the point of qualifying if you don't have a go when you get there?

What's the point of qualifying once if you're never going to qualify again? It was our first season in the Champion's League. It should've been used as a fantastic learning experience for the players as well as an incentive to bust their balls in the league to make sure they qualified again for the following year.

We were never going to win the Champion's League. Re-qualifying again for the following year, allowing another large injection of cash, as well as a higher reputation worldwide, would've given us the cash and allure to go out and sign a couple of top class players, which would've allowed us the opportunity to compete fiercely in the Champion's League without weakening ourselves in the league.

Also Harry did say the league remained our priority, it's just we weren't good enough to finish 4th last season and to be honest I don't think, given the size and stength of the clubs we were competing against, there is much wrong with that.

Had we managed a couple of wins against Wigan, West Brom, West Ham and Blackpool, we would've finished 4th.

Were it not for so many abject, passionless performances throughout the season, we could easily have finished 4th. City were far from convincing last season, and Arsenal utterly imploded after the Carling Cup.

Tottenham's failure to finish in the top four is a result of Tottenham's own actions. You can look at the money spent by other teams as much as you want, but if you're using that as an excuse then you clearly didn't watch Spurs play too often last year.

We finshed 5th, which is our joint 2nd ever highest Prem finish, got 62 pts, our third highest total and got to the 1/4 final of the CL. In my book that is a very good season for Spurs.

Jol finished 5th twice with a significantly weaker squad and got sacked for it.

Holy balls, that post was a lot longer than I intended it to be.

Basically, Redknapp **** up big time in several areas last season. But his chummy relationship with the press has kept him safe in his job when most other managers would be getting torn to shreds.

What is it with spurs fans recently moaning about Redknapp

The majority ive heard calling in to talksport and posting on forums are constantly criticising the man he's done wonders for that club got them into the champions league built a good squad with quality players such as Van de Vaart and Modric yet they moan about the bloke constantly they should be happy with what they have and be careful what they wish for... Look how shit we have become practically overnight. Dont get me wrong i cant stand the twitchy eyed tosser but he's a bloody good manager and if i were a spurs fan id be worrying about him going to manage england who are they going to get in to replace him? Have they not taken the foreign manager route before and failed with people such as Ramos.

I'll answer this for ya.

For a start, "done wonders for the club" is a massive over reaction created by the media. His achievements look far better because of the oh so infamour 2 points from 8 games when he took over.

A ridiculous number of people have claimed that he single handedly turned Spurs from relegation certainties to Champion's League qualifiers, which just isn't true. Spurs vastly under achieved in the league under Ramos. A combination of the manager heavily favouring the cups, not being able to accurately convey his ideas and philosophies along with losing our strike force and making several poor signings that summer all led to a terrible start.

But at the time, Spurs had a squad capable of finishing in the top 6-7 that year. So any manager worth half a damn could've come in, steadied the ship and got the club to safety.

The season Spurs finished 4th, they did it with the 4th best team in the league, with the 3rd best squad at the time. Helped, of course, by City's poor early form under Hughes, the managerial transition to Mancini as well as Villa falling away after 2/3s of the season.

And that year Spurs did play great football a lot of the time. Yeah, Dawson and Assou-Ekotto had a tendency to over play long balls up to Crouch, but people claiming that was the only way Spurs played are the people with an anti-Spurs agenda. The majority of the attacking play was Modric and Huddlestone controlling the ball and using Lennon and, later in the season, Bale to attack down the wings.

So at the end of that season, all was rosey with Redknapp. Spurs had achieved CL football for the first time, they were playing exciting, attacking football and several players (Gomes, Dawson, Assou-Ekotto, Huddlestone, Bale, Modric and Lennon) had made huge strides forward in their abilities.

That brings us to last summer, where Spurs have a chance to really push on and make themselves a real force in the league. Every man and his dog knows a new top class striker needs to be brought in.

Spurs have the money and the CL allure to attract a number of very, very good strikers to the club. The players and clubs were sounded out and revealed they were available for transfer and willing to join. All Redknapp had to do was give the go ahead to whichever player he wanted and Levy would've made it happen. Instead, Redknapp constantly changed his mind and refused to make a decision for fear of it backfiring and then end up with nothing.

A sheer stroke of luck saw VDV join at the last minute. Redknapp later claimed he had been after him all along but was originally quoted too high a price. Except that Van der Vaart's arrival required a shift in formation to accomodate him, meaning Spurs had to play with one up front. Except of the four strikers Spurs had at the club, not one of them could play the lone striker role half competently.

So if Van der Vaart was always a target, surely Spurs would've had to sign a striker to play alongside him, right? But no. Instead, Spurs have to pursist with watching their current strikers fail to score until January where Harry can repair his earlier mistake by signing a new striker.

Yet again, Spurs have the opportunity to sign one of several top strikers and yet again, Redknapp refuses to make a decision. Eventually resulting in Levy's desperate deadline day attempt to take matters into his own hands and offer crazy money for several players.

Along with the failure to sign a striker, we also got to watch our team go from playing quick, exciting goal hungry football to watching the players move around the final third as if they're wearing concrete boots. We got to watch Redknapp burn out Bale and Van der Vaart around January by constantly playing them while half fit or carrying injuries.

We got to watch Bassong, Palacios and Kranjcar, three of the stars of the previous season, get completely shafted. Destroying their confidence, making them want to leave and then refusing to let them leave. We got to watch Gomes drop dramatically in form, Dawson revert back to his old unconfident self, Lennon lose the drive to attack players, Huddlestone decide he doesn't want to work hard defensively, Bentley become even more useless. Not bad considering Redknapp has built a reputation on getting the best out of players.

We also saw Spurs manage to win only one game in ten from February onwards, despite having a very favourable run in. Despite the incredibly poor form, Redknapp refused to change anything at all. Spurs constantly played the same drab football, constantly failed to create real goal scoring opportunities and failed to stop conceding soft goals.

He then had the nerve to call it a "fantastic season" and "the best it'll ever get for the club." Yet, take out Milan away, Inter home and the second half of Inter away, and you struggle to find many top class performances.

So having seen the club take a small step backwards results-wise, and a massive stride backwards performance-wise, the fans understandably feel like they deserve better and that the club has underperformed and vent their frustrations on TalkSport etc.

Redknapp then calls in to a radio show to say that the only people who call in to radio shows are idiots. Also stated that any Spurs supporter who thinks Spurs should've done better should go and support a different team.

So any fan who expect Spurs to win at least one game out of the eight games played against Blackpool, Wigan, West Ham and West Brom is an idiot for expecting so much from the manager and the team.

Then this summer we have to constantly listen to him complain that he wanted to sign Rossi, Falcao, Llorente, Dzeko, Suarez etc but they were too expensive or wanted CL football. Yet every single one of those players could've joined the previous year and, in Rossi and Falcao's case, for a fraction of the price their clubs wanted this summer.

He also constantly moaned about the fact that Spurs can't compete financially with the other top clubs. Even though he spent big money on Palacios, Keane, Defoe, Crouch, Bassong etc. Spurs then spent most of the summer trying to sell all of those players, most of them at a loss.

We also get the start the season as we finished the last, with terrible performance and terrible tactics, formations and team line ups. You'd have to be mentally retarded to think it's a good idea to use a central midfield pairing of a half hearted Modric and Kranjcar against Man City, especially when Jake Livermore, a strong, tough tackling central midfielder, had just delivered a top class performance against Hearts a few days earlier.

Lo and behold, Spurs get destroyed. The scoreline wasn't due to City playing brilliantly. It was down entirely to one of the worst performances I've seen from Spurs in my lifetime.

Redknapp later claims that he wasn't surprised by the result because he "felt something wasn't right. I could sense it." So basically, he sent out a team that he felt was going to lose. Rather than setting the team up to be tight and strong and play for a draw or a 1-0, he sends a team out to get slaughtered.

In Adebayor, Spurs now have a striker with the footballing ability to score goals and assist in bringing the midfield into play. A midfield of Sandro, Parker, Van der Vaart, Modric and Bale is one of the strongest in the league, defensively and offensively.

If Redknapp can't get the team playing good football and picking up good results again in the next few months, he simply has to go.

As if my previous post needed more weight behind it.

You seriously spend a large amount of your free time trawling the internet for every little bit of anti-Spurs propaganda you can find, can't you?

"Yes, one Fulham fan said something negative about Spurs! I must share this with the world because I also don't like Spurs and I need something negative to say about Spurs because it's a welcome distraction to all of the negative stuff I say about Villa!"

It's the arrogance from the Spurs fans.

If you had a reason to be arrogant it would be understandable but even Huddersfield Town have won more top flight league titles!

And as a Villa fan, you have a reason to be arrogant, right?

Your Spurs mate might eat is words.

Should the Welsh monkey be tempted away from Spuds by a big money, big club offer, then 'Arry's first choice for a replacement is Marc Albrighton.

He is extremely high on the Spuds coveted list......

Huh?

For one thing, Bale won't be going anywhere for at least 18 months. Levy already point blank rejected one offer for him in the summer, so there'd be no reason for him to need to accept another in the next couple of windows.

Secondly, I've never seen Albrighton's name mentioned with Spurs in any way at all, barring the match reports of the two games this season.

Ashley Young and Pienaar are the left wingers that have been linked with Spurs, with a Pienaar deal seemingly progressing already.

Have absolutely no idea where you got that Albrighton stuff from, to be honest.

Their fans have the biggest chip on their shoulder of any in the league!

I'd prefer anyone but Spurs!!!

Re-read most of this thread. In particular, re-read ALL of your posts in this thread. Then re-read that comment in bold.

Do some research before jumping the gun next time.

Some people are obsessed with Spurs DVDs. I really don't understand it. It's a money making venture, which is what all businesses are about. Although a lot of them are less successful at it than Daniel Levy and Spurs.

I hope he dies.

You're a bit of a pathetic individual, to be honest, Stevo.

Try focussing that unrelenting anger and hatred on the kind of people on this Earth that actually do deserve to die for their actions, rather than a football manager.

Also, about the booing last night. While I can't speak for every person at the stadium, I know for a fact that most of the boos around me were aimed at Howard Webb. I know this because amidst the boos, a lot of the fans were shouting, "You're a word removed, Webb!" etc.

Spurs fans - after our kids showcased exactly what they can do, where are these super-kids a lot were boasting about? Bostock was the next big thing, and Parrett, and Caulker, and Kane... what has happened to them? Bostocks taking in loan football at Hull I think... but how are you going to get these kids integrated into your team?

Bostock is at Hull, currently stifling himself. He won't make it as a Premier League player. Seems to have an attitude problem. He went to Brentford last season, was their best player for the first three games, then coasted until he got dropped from the team. Same thing at Hull. Played really well for a couple of games, scoring a great goal on his debut (as he had for Brentford) but now can't stay in the team. Clearly a talented kid with a lot of potential, but he's not going to reach it with his current attitude.

Parrett is on loan at Plymouth, performing well if unspectacularly.

Caulker is on loan at Bristol City, currently earning great reviews from their fans this year after earning the Player of the Year award from Yeovil last season. He's massively rated at the club.

Harry Kane has only just turned 17 a couple of months ago, to be fair, but he's scoring goals for fun for the academy.

As for integrating them into the first team, they'll get there when they are ready, to put it simply. They get plenty of training time with the first team squad and the players out on loan are regularly brought back to the club to participate in specially arranged friendlies with the first team squad players that aren't playing regularly or are recovering from injuries.

Then obviously those Spurs fans know as little about the club as you do.

David Bentley, Darren Bent, Illie Dumitrescu the list is endless my Spud friend.

You consider Bent and Bentley to be fantastic players? Seriously? Good players, no doubt, but fantastic? If so, why aren't they mainstays in the national team and why have none of the big teams been at all interested in them?

Besides, after a poor start, Bentley performed reasonably well in the second half of last season. And Bent was just out of his depth at Spurs, simple as that. Spurs didn't make him a bad player, it just highlighted his limitations.

Real Madrid have a history of making fantastic players look poor.

Pretty similar to yourselves then.

Really? Care to list some examples of fantastic players that Spurs have made look poor?

Bale won't be going to City. He'll be at a Milan or one of the big Spaniards. That was always going to be the case. Last night was just the next step on that journey. They've already been turning down Madrid. The calls will just be more regular and determined now. I said a year ago and got laughed at that in a year or two he could pick any club side on the planet. People are finally seeing that now. I applaud the resilience of the haters who laughed at the claim that Bale was a genius and who are now laughing at Spurs because their genius is 'too good' for them and will be leaving.

I personally hope he leaves for Barcelona. Real Madrid have a history of making fantastic players look poor.

Although, if he does leave for Madrid, Levy could always put in a buy back clause to be activated in 18 months when Bale's no longer the flavour of the month with their fans.

Except for Bale Spurs were a disgrace to English football last night. Inter could have put 7 or 8 if they were bothered and Assou-Ekotto, Bassong and Gallas were dreadful. Huddlestone was just as bad.

How is taking a 45 minute beating away to the European champions in your debut season any more disgraceful than, say, getting knocked out of the Europa League in the first round by a small Austrian team?

Especially when the team plays 80+ mins of the match with ten men is missing Dawson, King, Woodgate, Van der Vaart and Defoe, as well as losing Gomes and Modric after 10 mins due to the sending off?

Also bearing in mind that Inter beat the alleged "vastly superior" Werder Bremen 4-0 at the San Siro.

As poor as Spurs were in the first half, and they were seriously awful, I think most people would agree that if the game was going to last another 5-10 mins, Spurs were far more likely to get another goal than Inter were.

While the scoreline won't paper over the cracks of yet another poor start to a game this season, a lot of other people around Europe will have seen that as a new English team that managed to score three goals at the San Siro after going four goals down with only ten men.

He won't leave before then, he only signed a new contract this summer, and neither Levy nor Redknapp will be willing to sell him

Like Keane, Berbatov and Carrick before him

Entirely different scenarios.

Carrick only had 18 months left on his contract, so selling him for 16m profit was the only option Levy had.

Keane and Berbatov, Levy initially refused to allow either of them to leave, and had prepared dossiers to report both Man Utd and Liverpool to the FA. It was only after Ramos instructed Levy to sell them, that Levy caved in, as he had put all of his faith in Ramos turning Spurs into a Champion's League team.

Now with Bale, he's just signed a new contract, Spurs are in the Champion's League and are well positioned to maintain that position, as well as potentially building on it.

Any profit made on the sale of Bale would have to be offset against the loss of income for not qualifying for the Champion's League for the next season or 2.

Levy's a businessman, but he's also a Spurs fan. I'm not normally a betting man, but I'd be perfectly happy to put money on Bale being a happy Spurs player on September 1st 2011.

I think some of you are just hoping that he'll leave because both Barry and Milner left for the money in recent times.

He won't leave before then, he only signed a new contract this summer, and neither Levy nor Redknapp will be willing to sell him.