The Soccer Blog: Pressure Is Getting To Spurs In Push For Fourth Place

Tuesday, 22 March 2011

Pressure Is Getting To Spurs In Push For Fourth Place

By: Robert Reed | March 22nd, 2011
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‘Ey up! Trouble at mill! The main thing which I was hoping could carry us to Champions League qualification, our team spirit, appears to be falling apart. Alex Ferguson’s famous ’squeeky bum time’ is upon us, and there are ominous squeeking sounds coming from White Hart Lane.

For starters, Jermain Defoe is rocking the boat. He is in a strop that he isn’t playing in the big games, and then not delivering when he gets the chance. He made an utter bell-end of himself at the weekend with his failure to realise that you can see through a white shirt. As usual with Defoe his personal glory is the main thing. Instead of just getting his head down and concentrating on playing for the team and ensuring a vital win against West Ham, he just wanted to get his hundredth goal so he could run around in his ‘100 goals’ T-shirt ramming it down the throats of the West Ham fans who despise him so much.

_48776838_jermain_defoe_miss_chance_getty The pressure on Defoe to score was finally broken when he put two past Wolves. We all know the guy can’t handle pressure but he has now put it all back on himself, leading him to ignore his team mates and snatch at every chance in the West Ham game; scoring none.

Harry has no time for such idiocy and has told him to ditch the T-shirt, but Defoe will not like that. It’s bad enough that everybody saw the slogan on Staurday when he didn’t get to show it off, now if he just bins it he will look like an even bigger idiot. It’s all his own fault.

Then there is Rafael van der Vaart. There’s no doubt he is a good player, but it did seem a little strange that José Mourinho was so eager to see the back of him and we could be starting to see a bit of an attitude which would explain that.

I was previously quite generous about van der Vaart. I suggested that his petulant walks down the tunnel against Milan and then against West Ham were perhaps frustration at his present lack of form. Not so. He didn’t speak to Harry after the game on Saturday and on hearing that his manager would like a chat with him about the incident he responded by saying that he is unhappy with his treatment by Spurs. Having the team built around him and being first choice for all the top games is apparently not good enough for him and he came out with the usual claptrap about being used to playing ninety minutes etc. That is just pure arrogance and these players need to realise that the manager calls the shots as it is he who gets sacked at the end of the day if things go wrong. If the score is 2-2 and the player has scored both goals you could understand their frustration, but if they haven’t been doing the business they cannot expect to be given infinate chances when the result is so important.

Pavlyuchenko is another one. Virtually the day after the transfer window closes he says, ‘I want a move’. What the hell is the logic in that? He knows he won’t be going anywhere until the summer so it just sets up months of acrimony and ill feeling between then and the end of the season. Again though, he isn’t doing anywhere near enough despite having had a lot of chances this season.

9873375 I have come to the conclusion that what we need is a team full of Croatians. I know it is a broad generalisation but it appears to me that Croatians are good lads. We have three; Modric, Corluka and Kranjcar and you never hear a peek out of any of them. When you do it is along the lines of Modric saying he is embarrassed to earn so much money or Kranjcar, a player who should be more frustrated than most considering his performances on the few occasions when he has been given a chance, stating that he may have to move on to play but he understands and just wants the team to do well. Charlie has never said anything in his life as far as I can remember.

Most worrying of all though is Harry himself. I often cringe when Harry opens his mouth; he contradicts himself on countless occasions and sometimes I just think he should keep it shut. Fergie gave him a bit of a lesson in gamesmanship last week when it came to talking about Barcelona. After Redknapp had been waxing lyrical about how the Spaniards are the best club team ever and unbeatable Fergie seemed to refer directly to those comments when he said that it wasn’t good to build up your opponents, especially if you could end up facing them. He went on to say that though they are a good side everyone is beatable and if United drew them they would not be afraid. What happens if we manage to get past Real Madrid now? How is Harry going to go into the dressing room and tell the players they have what it takes to win against Barcelona when they will have all seen him saying that they are unbeatable, while it would be a miracle if Spurs can finish fourth?

It should be remembered that while this is uncharted territory for most of our squad, this kind of top end of the table pressure is new to Redknapp as well. We were underdogs last season and it was all exciting and new, but now it is different and this is the time of year when the top managers, winners like Fergie and Mourinho, come into their own.

After the game on Saturday Harry went on a bit of a tirade, dressed up as his usual good humour, about the expectations of the fans. It was along the lines of, ‘Oh we always finish above Man United, Chelsea, Arsenal etc..I’ve come in and fucked up the team.’ It wasn’t a full scale Keegan meltdown by any means, but it was telling.

_44932393_redknapp512 Frankly, as much as I love him I think Harry needs to pull his head out of his arse. He has been happy to take the ‘miracle worker’ accolades up until now, which as I’ve mentioned before were rather generous considering we’d finished fifth twice in the previous three seasons to when he took over, only missing out on fourth by one game with a squad inferior to that of now, and he has been in the game long enough to know he should take the rough with the smooth.

We are doing great things in the Champions League but that is not currency which makes everyone happy that we have taken two points out of nine against three teams fighting relegation at such a critical time of the season. There are results like that in every campaign, but three on the trot is a worrying trend and has nothing to do with the big four’s wage bills. In fact if the wage bill argument is so fool proof then we should have won all three of those games, or at least one of them.

Expectations have been raised, and he is not blameless due to his absurdly optimistic claims that we could win the Premier League this season. A couple of months later he is saying that it would be a miracle if we could finish fourth, contradicting himself once again. The idea that we would go from a title challenging side to a fifth place side in that time is nonsensical. The truth, as is often the case, is somewhere in between. With our superb squad we should certainly be finishing no lower than fifth but with a very strong chance of fourth. In fact with the frankly lousy form of all the top teams this season third should be a target. We have a bloody good squad! Just because we pay them less than the richer teams doesn’t automatically make them inferior players and while we have been exceptional in the Champions League we have underperformed along with all the other top teams in the Premiership.

Still, all is not lost. We do seem to play better against the big teams and we have yet to play those around us in the league so it is still in our hands. I lost faith last season only for us to have a fantastic run up to the finish. Let’s hope for more of the same.

We all know Harry is the man to gee everyone up, let’s hope he has the same talent for calming everyone down. Cool heads will prevail.

COYS!

You can follow me on Twitter @ RobertReedUK

Some Related Spurs Posts:Spurs Are Where They Should Be, Without Over-PerformingJermain Is Not A Happy TeddyThe Dynamic Way Forward For Spurs.Spurs V Real Madrid – The Tie Of The RoundWhy Spurs Should Be Considered Favourites To Finish Third

Category: Blogroll, Champions League, Harry Redknapp, Players, Premier League, Team News

Tags: Blogroll, Champions League, Harry Redknapp, Jermain Defoe, jose mourinho, Luka Modric, Manchester City, Manchester United, Players, Premier League, Premiership, Rafael Van der Vaart, Roman Pavlyuchenko, sir alex ferguson, Spurs, Team News, Tottenham, Tottenham Hotspur, Vedran Corluka
Tweet « Is Johnson The Answer At £15 Million? | Home | Comments | Add your comment jim | March 22nd, 2011 at 9:07 am

for gods sake, harry said we could win the prem because he was trying to give the players confidence NOT because he actually believed we could win the thing. Some of the more simple spurs fans constantly churn this out as harry changing his mind, contradicting himself. Its nonsense made up by short sighted idiots. 5th IS NOT A BAD SEASON, but because of last year you have got over excited and believe we should be better. WRONG. You are just setting yourself up to be disappointed again, why do you do it?? You know what spurs are like yet instead of learning from this and being a realist, your expectations are ridiculous. Being in the champions league and premiership is real tough, lets see how City juggle it next year, not as well as us is my guess. But we should be praised for the effort this season, yet you lot will berate them for not being 4th again. How short your memories are. 25 years we have waited for this yet you still moan. Great shame.