Spurs star shipwrecked

By European Football
March 23 2006

Daniel Defoe wrote these words at the opening of chapter two of his novel Robinson Crusoe: THAT evil influence which carried me first away from my father's house-which hurried me into the wild and indigested notion of raising my fortune,

and that impressed those conceits so forcibly upon me as to make me deaf to all good advice, and to the entreaties and even the commands of my father-I say, the same influence, whatever it was, presented the most unfortunate of all enterprises to my view; and I went on board a vessel bound to the coast of Africa; or, as our sailors vulgarly called it, a voyage to Guinea.

Now if you replace Guinea with Germany and sailors with footballers, you may just have the feelings of another Defoe, Jermaine who is seeing his chances of a world cup berth sail off to the horizon.

Sitting on the bench at Spurs, may or may not be a comfortable place to be, but when a man has his eyes set on international glory, the pitch is where he needs to be.

It does however give him time for reflection, and that reflection must be making him wonder where it all went wrong.

Previously he was scoring for fun, and had certain newspaper reports and over excited Spurs fans claiming he was worth 20 million and on his way to Madrid, Milan or somewhere else beginning with a capital M, Madagascar perhaps.

This season he has merely had a very good view of Mido & Keane, burrowing away upfront.

The man that Daniel Defoe based Robinson Crusoe on was a Scotsman named Alexander Selkirk, who by all accounts was so unpleasant, that the sailors that eventually rescued him, seriously considered dumping him on a different island.

While I do not suspect for a moment that Defoe is an unpleasant man (I mean he might be I don’t actually know him, but he seems alright on TV.) The world cup may prove a stumbling block too far for him, and he may very well begin to look for his own new island in the shape of a new club.

Time will tell, personally I think he should be going to Germany, Owen and Rooney aside, who else is there?

Crouch, possibly, but I can’t get over the feeling he is merely a stretch Armstrong that never quite snapped back, who else would you realistically want there?

He needs games though and for that when he gets the chance he has to score, which he is singularly failing to do at present, perhaps he is low in confidence, what is certain, that while he was never really in the 20 million bracket, he is not suddenly a bad player.

So will he find salvation in his very own Man Friday (or being a footballer Man Saturday I suppose) or do England take someone else, and if so who?