SimplySpurfect

Are you joking? Or have you not seen him play at all in the last month or so, where he's been either man of the match or at the very least a strong contender for the award.

Dude, John Bostock only turned 18 a couple weeks ago. Bit early to be writing him off just yet, don't you think? And, for all intents and purposes, Giovani was loaned to Galatasaray in the hope of it installing some discipline and professionalism into him. According to a few accounts, the kid has a party addiction and regularly flies off to Spain with some of his old Barca buddies for a few dozen sangrias. Hardly the attitude you expect from a young player hoping to break into the first team, don't you agree? Plus I'm sure Michael Dawson, Ledley King, Gareth Bale, Tom Huddlestone, Aaron Lennon and Jermain Defoe all regretted joining Spurs when they were "poor young hopefuls."

Very difficult game for Liverpool tonight though. A team that has lost five out of nine away fixtures against a team that has only lost once at home. Another worrying stat for Liverpool is that they've only beat one of the current top 10 teams this season. But they absolutely also have to come away with three points tonight, otherwise, as you say, their season will practically be over. They have three difficult fixtures coming up; Villa away, Spurs home and Stoke away and they're gonna have to look at those fixtures and be needing to get seven points, which, judging by their form so far this season, looks very unlikely. It wouldn't surprise me at all if they ended up with 2-3 points after those three games.

Completely agree. But I also hope it's not Man City that finishes fourth because otherwise, nothing will change. City will take Liverpool's place and they'll continue to spend a crap ton of money on even better players and end up a Champion's League mainstay like Chelsea. Meaning, the other teams will have to settle for being "the best of the rest" and hope that another team, likely Arsenal, start to decline in the same way as Liverpool. Whereas, if a team like Villa were to finish 4th, it'll give them a bigger reputation across Europe, which'll help them attract better players, which in turn makes them a better team, yet at the same time not being significantly superior to be guaranteed a top four place next year, which makes the league more competitive. This season has been great so far for that reason. Chelsea will have the League won easily in my opinion. But, with half of the season gone there are only four points separating 2nd-5th place and all of a sudden every game we play bears a lot more significance. I'm just loving it, to be honest. And long may it continue.

I am a bit of a grammar nazi, I admit. Even my text messages are grammatically correct. :oops:

Nah, we didn't play particularly great football. But it's kind of hard to do so when the other team's sole tactic seems to be to kick the crap out of every player on the pitch until they no longer want to receive the ball. Still, it was a good, important win against the kind of team we normally really struggle against. And two consecutive clean sheets is a decent accomplishment, which is quite pathetic when we're challenging for the top four. I suppose it shows just how important it is to have a settled, consistent back line for a change. I agree about the 4th place challenge. It looks to be only between Spurs and Villa at the moment. Although I'd actually go one further and say it was between Arsenal, Spurs and Villa for 3rd-4th as I don't think Arsenal are too much further in front of the other teams in terms of first team quality or squad depth. With regards to the news about Redknapp; we all knew there was something dodgy with him. Although I doubt anything big will come of it. He'll pay whatever money is needed, given a slap on the wrist and it'll be over. As long as he's been clean since he's been at Spurs, which I imagine Levy would've been extra careful about about, and it doesn't have a negative effect on the club then I'll continue to support the ugly, bent bastard.

His surname is Ranieri, so possibly one of his parents is of Italian descent. Reading on Wikipedia, this caught my eye. "Sandro is a favourite with the fans at Internacional, who regularly sing a song to him - "Sandro scores the goals, Sandro scores the goals, Sandro scores the goals, so we will give him a cow, and he will milk it" - a reference to Sandro's agricultural upbringing." Quite possibly the greatest football chant I've ever heard.

Have you seen him play? Or is that just an assumption based on the fact that they're both young Brazillian central midfielders? I've not actually seen him play so I can't give an opinion yet, though many reports of him have been positive. He may well be the next Lucas. Or he could be the next Dunga. At this moment in time, I have no idea what he's gonna be, or if he's even able to adapt to England enough to even get into the first team. However, he's a tough tackling defensive midfielder, so he shouldn't have as tough a time adapting to the English game as many other South American players seem to do.

It's just PR stuff. If Redknapp comes out and says he's looking to spend £20m to buy two or three players, then clubs can raise their asking price for players as they know that Spurs have cash to spend. Whereas, if they say there's not much cash to spend and offer, say £5m for a player, the other club aren't as likely to think, "Hm, we could probably squeeze another couple of million out of this sale, Spurs are good for it." Besides, I'm sure you know by now to take everything Redknapp says in the press with a very large pinch of salt. Yeah the "'Arry is lying" option does seem the obvious choice but why would he say he's bringing nobody in if a deal has already been reached? He's just marking himself out as a liar. It doesn't make sense to me. If reports are to be believed then the Sandro deal is already completed, and has been all but done for a couple of months. I don't know if maybe Redknapp was worried about another club making a late bid for the player, forcing him to raise his offer, but either way, if the deal is done, he may as well have said the deal is done.

We only really have three central midfielders in the first team squad in Palacios, Jenas and Huddlestone. And our central midfield options at the moment are Palacios + Jenas or Huddlestone. Sandro is supposedly going to be cover for and compete with Palacios, who's been looking off his peak for a fair while now. As for his current ownership, I seem to remember hearing he's owned 70% by Internacional and 30% by his agent. But Levy's no idiot and especially after the shit storm with Tevez and Mascherano at West Ham, he won't sanction the deal unless Spurs take complete ownership of the player.

It's just PR stuff. If Redknapp comes out and says he's looking to spend £20m to buy two or three players, then clubs can raise their asking price for players as they know that Spurs have cash to spend. Whereas, if they say there's not much cash to spend and offer, say £5m for a player, the other club aren't as likely to think, "Hm, we could probably squeeze another couple of million out of this sale, Spurs are good for it." Besides, I'm sure you know by now to take everything Redknapp says in the press with a very large pinch of salt.

So can we expect you to make a similar half a million loss on him as you did with Gunter? Possibly. It's too early to tell yet, but if he plays as few games as Gunter did (about five, I believe) then it would make sense that his value would depreciate. Though, Naughton seemed to be much more highly rated than Gunter, so I don't necessarily see that happening again. Couldn't guess either way about Walker, though. As for Sol Campbell. I don't believe Levy is self destructive enough to ever sanction his return. The most hated player in Spurs history back at Spurs, it's just suicide. I wouldn't think RSol would even want to come back to a club that has hurled years of abuse at him anyway.

I don't think playing in the reserves or sitting on the bench at any team increases a players value. We have players who are in a similar situation, IMO it does them more harm than good, unless they are on the fringes of the first team (get occasional games) I agree. We have quite a few young players that are supposed to have great potential to make the step up into the first team (Bostock, Parrett, Rose etc) yet they're never given a chance, although the players I just mentioned are still very young. But we've done it with so many young players over the years. I can only think of King, Dawson, Huddlestone and Lennon who have been youth success stories, but even Lennon was quite well known at the time, having been the youngest Premier league player in history at one point. The rest of the players just waste away in the reserves before being released or sold on, a lot of whom never get a sniff of first team action. However, Harry as recently been a bit more pro active with a lot of our young talents by sending a significant amount of them on loan to gain first team experience in competitive matches. So, who knows, we may see some of these young players dislodge some of the current first team.

I think that's just made up paper talk, in all honesty. We get linked with half a dozen player swap deals each window and none of them have ever happened. Another rumour at the moment is Pavlyuchenko for Babel which, again, I think is just some journalist trying to reach his weekly quota of "news" stories. Although, unfortunately, it wouldn't actually be all too farfetched to think it could actually happen. It fits in with Harry's recent transfer policy of buying players with Premier League experience and there have been rumblings for a while that Hutton is going to be off.

On the grave yard that is the bench at white hart lane. Not even on the bench most of the time. It looks like we'll be selling Hutton in the January window, if possible, so Naughton will be able to make the big step up to bench warmer. He looked good for us in pre season too, and covers a number of positions, but still never plays for us so I have no idea why he's here when we could've just left him at Sheffield United with Walker. To be honest, I think the only reason we bought them both was because Everton wanted them and they have good potential sell on value. Same with Chris Gunter.

You just may be the biggest hypocrite I've ever seen. And you're either too blind or too dumb to even see it. Spurs fans over-rate their players. All of Villa's players are better than all of their players. Lennon's a crap player. Yet Villa had to double up on him whenever he got near the ball last week, and he still managed to produce some dangerous runs and crosses. Spurs are shit. Yet Villa had to defend like their lives depended on it for seventy minutes at their own ground to prevent Spurs from walking away with the win. Spurs are a small club. Yet they're currently sitting in 3rd place, have a 56,000 seat stadium in development, are able to spend more money than almost every club in England whilst still obtaining profits and have more international level players than most other English clubs. Seriously, change the record. This retarded hatred you have is starting to come across as jealousy and resentment. Which just makes you look like even more of a fool.

Yes, I quite clearly said Laursen is average. You can see it in my previous post. Wait. No. No, you can't. Wow, I love the way so many of you are quick to slam Spurs fans, yet manage to prove yourselves to be idiots at the same time. With seemingly each post I read here, I lose a little bit of the respect I had for Villa fans. Always pegged you all as honest, rational, respectful and decent fans. I guess the Spurs fan was over-rating something again, eh? Also, it's "you're".

Funny how you talk about over-rating players players but then you go and make that comparison between Laursen and King. Oh well, it takes all kinds, I suppose. Does King have a Champions League winning medal? Laursen got one by default, he didn't even play in the final. What exactly does that prove? There are a lot of good/great players that don't have CL medals and there are a good sum of average players that do.

That's very true and exactly how most Spurs fans would see it. Although I can't really comment on McGrath as I was only a wee kid when he was at his peak so never really had the pleasure of watching him play.

Funny how you talk about over-rating players players but then you go and make that comparison between Laursen and King. Oh well, it takes all kinds, I suppose.

When Spurs nearly finished 4th in 05/06, which coincidentally is also the last full season King managed to play without an injury disruption, he was part of the best defense outside of the top four. King also earned rave reviews in Euro 2004 against France in the opening game, and would've most likely played in the rest of the competition had he not have to leave after the game to be at the birth of his child. "King, who was starting his first match for England, looked impressive and the anonymity of Henry in the first half owed much to the Spurs centre-half's concentration at the back." Link But overall, this is a pointless debate to have. The average non-Spurs fan is going to remember Ledley King as a a good but injury prone player, in the same way as Darren Anderton, which is entirely understandable. But Spurs fans, who've seen a hell of a lot more of him than non-Spurs fans, will always remember King as one of the greatest defenders they've ever seen, and will always look at his injury record and dodgy knee and wonder, "If only.."

Lennon is good, no question, but certainly over-rated. I've read on a forum saying he's the best English winger there is. There's obviously bias involved, but Ashley Young is far superior, the awards he's won the past 2 seasons suggest this also, but Spurs fans seem to have none of it. I do only know one Spurs fan. The comment I responded to said "I know x amount of Spurs fans, they all think they're on par with Arsenal". The key being him saying "I know". I do only know 1 Spurs fan, so could only respond with the opinions of that friend. The rest of my post was based on what I read on Spurs forums, hence the generalisation. Anyways, you seem a decent poster, stick around. To be fair, I think they're referring to this season. If you were to judge each player from this season alone, I'd say Lennon has been the better player. If you'd have asked on a Spurs forum in pre season which player was better, I'd imagine most fans would've said Young. In fact, when we were linked with a bid for Young in the summer most fans were drawing up hypothetical formations with Young on the wing and Lennon on the bench. I think you'll always get that kind of hype though when any player hits a decent spell of good form. Look at all the buzz around Defoe this season. He's been on fire so far and suddenly he's Englands second best striker. Now if he fades in the second half of the season and Bent maintains or improves his current form, then Bent will be England's second best striker.

I don't disagree with the rest of what you've said, but this annoys me a little with Spurs fans. They always seems to think that nothing can happen to them to make them go on a bad run or anything. There's nothing to suggest you'll slip down the table, no, but there's nothing to suggest you will stay there either. That's not really true. Spurs fans in general (if you read on Spurs forums anyway) are constantly looking at the next few fixtures to see where our run is gonna end. I did have a look at a Spurs forum before the game, they all seemed to really hate Robbie Keane, like really hate him. Thought it was very odd! That does seem to be a growing opinion since he came back. It stems from him making a statement after we won the Carling Cup in the February that he loved the club and wanted to see his career out here, which was met with the approval of most Spurs fans. But then Liverpool expressed an interest and he was off in a shot. Then, when his dream move to Liverpool turned sour, he couldn't wait to come back. And his performances have been rather lacklustre since his return too. I don't hate him, the guy has scored more than 100 goals for the club, but I can understand why some people do.

King was an awesome player. Injuries unfortunately ruined what would've been an incredible career for him. There's no doubt in my mind if King didn't have his injury problems, he'd be a first choice starter for England and probably Man Utd. Thierry Henry even rated him as the greatest defender he's ever faced, which is some compliment. Woodgate is a good player, but I wouldn't say we over rate him. Huddlestone is in no way over-rated. A vast amount of fans think the cons outweigh the pros with him. In fact, from reading a few posts on this forum, I actually think Villa fans rate him higher than Spurs fans do. And Lennon has been immense this season. But a season or two ago, a lot of fans wanted him dropped for Bentley, or even sold. So again, wouldn't say he's over-rated either. What does strike me as odd is that you say you only know one Spurs fan, but you then go on to make a generalisation about Spurs fans.

I don't disagree with the rest of what you've said, but this annoys me a little with Spurs fans. They always seems to think that nothing can happen to them to make them go on a bad run or anything. There's nothing to suggest you'll slip down the table, no, but there's nothing to suggest you will stay there either. That's not really true. Spurs fans in general (if you read on Spurs forums anyway) are constantly looking at the next few fixtures to see where our run is gonna end. My post perhaps wasn't very indicitive of that, but that comment was purely to counteract someone saying we're definitely gonna fade ala Villa last year.