A season of transition for Tottenham Hotspur

By Sunshine
November 3 2004

It was going to happen, wasn’t it? New coaches, new manager, new Director of Football, new medical staff, a shed-load of new players: A recipe for a poor start to the season, if we’re honest...

That it didn’t happen and we actually got off to what, for Spurs, was a flier was a minor miracle.

However, you can cheat reason for only so long and the sorely awaited (by journalists and rival fans), but only-to-be-expected dip in form has well and truly arrived.

Losing the last three league games has been disappointing.

The manner in which they’ve been lost, even more so.

What most people like to forget is that the games in which we got good results were also poor showings…but it didn’t matter, did it, because the points were being racked up.

Well, I’ve got news for you: It did matter, just as much, or as little, as it does now.

Good results with poor showings had everyone in generous mood: 7 elevenths of the team are new, Santini’s only just arrived, there are injuries to key players, etc.

Bad results with poor showings should warrant the same ‘excuses’, but they don’t.

Instead, there is an ever increasing number of whiners who start piling on the doom and gloom. To be honest, they don’t get my goat any more than the optimists who predicted a Champions League finish after the first few games. I find both extremes tiresome, since I just know that they’ll be eating their words within a couple of months, or so.

This year is a transitional year. Now, before everyone starts screaming their dismay at yet another transitional year, let me get a word in: Previous dismal seasons weren’t really transitions: That was the excuse used for poor management, poor planning and poor performances.

I understand the word “transition” not to mean buying time because things are a joke at the moment and the future (and new players) must be better.

No, to me “transition” means laying foundations and then working and developing the material available into something of real promise. It also means identifying chinks in the armour and putting them right, though a fundamental must is that the armour is already sound.

In hindsight, and to the realistic observer, this hasn’t been the case for over a decade. Compared to the work carried out last summer, previous endeavours were amateurish, at best.

At the start of the season (and by the closure of the transfer window I hadn’t seen anything to change my opinion), I predicted a 9th or 10th finish in the league and that is a prediction I’m still standing by. This will come as startling news: A team which finishes 9th or 10th doesn’t win or draw all of its games and can actually go on a poor run or two (or three) during a season, so our current rut isn’t exactly a shock to the system, not mine, anyway.

Looking at the squad, it is painfully obvious where the problems lie: The midfield flanks and up front.

Davies is as far off from being a Premiership player as Bakari looked in his brief loan spell with us, whilst Atouba is about as much a left winger as Defoe is a basketball player.

We’ve had bad luck with injuries (Davis, Carrick, Edman, Atouba) and suspensions (Redknapp, in the light of the injuries to Davis and Carrick), but our real problems are the flanks. Once we’ve brought in a couple of wide men (two of Reid, Wilhelmsson and Routledge would be nice), the team will not only be able to defend, but also offend with, at last, some pace, flair and creativity.

I’d also like another player in the middle of the park, but whilst we’re short of a target man up front, we’ll just have to do with depending on Redknapp and Brown for cover in the engine room.

Target man. Thought I’d mention him, whoever it turns out to be.

For the umpteenth time (I sound like a broken record, I know), Keane and Defoe don’t work together as a partnership. Both excellent players, granted, just not compatible. It’s no use wanting them to be successful together, they won’t be. The longer we (or Santini and Arnesen) hold onto that hope, the farther away our ‘resurrection’ will be.

Defoe-Keane, Keane-Defoe…it’s a tough choice and one of the two will not be a happy bunny, but tough choices are what we pay sack-fulls of money to Santini and Arnesen for.

Defoe is a natural born killer and, to some extent, one of the English players of the moment. He’s also extremely ambitious and the feeling most fans have is that he regards Spurs as a stepping stone, much to our chagrin.

Keane is loved as much, if not more, than any other current Spurs player, but we all know, deep down, that he’s not as good as Defoe, despite his goal scoring record for the Republic of Ireland.

Either Keane gets used to the bench (it’s pointless putting him in midfield, he’s a striker) or he needs to start looking for yet another club, much as that would upset many a fan (me included).

So, where does the choice of Keane or Defoe leave us? It leaves us needing to find a partner for one of the two. Kanouté is a player I like, but he’s having serious difficulty establishing himself and you get the impression that Santini isn’t wildly taken with the big man from Mali. Cue a foray into the transfer market, when the damned thing re-opens, by Arnesen in order to find an exciting striker to dovetail with one of the two midgets. This is going to be expensive, make no mistake. Very good target men do not come cheap…and we really do need one if we’re going to continue to progress and iron out those teething troubles that the squad hastily built over the summer has begun to pay for in terms of games being lost.

Two wingers and a striker, I can’t see Santini and Arnesen coming up with any other solution if we’re to turn our New Era into a true ‘Season of Transition’.

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