Good morning.

Roberto Martinez, then. I have watched with what I can only describe as ‘some considerable confusion’ the adulation of the Wigan manager reach fever pitch. 

How the hell did this happen? 

Let’s start somewhere near the beginning and let’s stick to the facts of the matter, eh? As a manager he’s been accused of achieving much and being a rising star. SO what has he actually done? Well, to say he’s won nothing might be harsh, but it’s undeniably true. But he’s only been in management since 2007.

And so to the first myth. How many times have you read or been told in worldly wise manner that he ‘built’ Swansea? This week I’m hearing it with the frequency of time checks from Alan Partridge. 

Tony Bennett said that he never left so much as an umbrella in San Fransico. All Roberto Martinez left behind at Swansea was a forwarding address. Here’s a list of the current Swanse City squad:  

Gerhard Tremmel, Michel Vorm, Neil Taylor, Steven Caulker, Ferrie Bodde, Danny Graham, Scott Sinclair, Nathan Dyer, Wayne Routledge, Josh McEachran, Leroy Lita, Luke Moore, Darnel Situ, Joe Allen, Kemy Agustien, Mark Gower, Curtis Obeng, Ashley Richards, Scott Donnelly, Lee Lucas, Ben Davies, Joe Walsh, Daniel Alfei , Casey Thomas, Jordan Smith, Gwion Edwards, Kurtis March, Rory Donnelly, Gylfi Sigurdsson, Ashley Williams, Angel Rangel, Alan Tate, Leon Britton, Andrea Orlandi, Garry Monk and Federico Bessone*. 

The names in bold are those who played there at the same time Martinez was the manager of Swansea City. *Bessone was a free transfer brought in by Roberto in 2008 who then left but was then brought back by Brendan Rodgers.

Next up, his track record as  the Wigan manager. 

His first season in the Premiership was a memorable one for Spurs fans, of course. We beat them 9-1 . That game wasn’t exactly a blip for them. Chelsea also did them 8-0.  They escaped relegation on the last day of the season though, by beating Arsenal 2-3. Hurrah.

His second season was almost identical in every respect. Walloped by all and sundry. Yanited beat then 4-0 …but then so did Blackpool. They escaped relegation again on the last day of the season by beating Stoke.

So by contrast, this season was indeed a runaway success. Why because, Martinez woke up sooner and the relegation he had courted for months on end was swerved a few weeks ahead of schedule. 

His apologists will presumably now be found with underpants over their head and a pencil shoved up each nostril mumbling phrases like ‘limited resources’, ‘toughest league in the world.’

I have no kind words for you. 

Good afternoon.

€75,000 a week is the salary being touted by Dutch journalist Jan van Eyck . Personal terms are not the issue. But the stumbling block appears to be the fee. The gap between the alleged asking price and the alleged offer seems big, if not insurmountable. 

Ajax are said to want €16.3M for Jan Vertonghen and Spurs are supposedly offering €10.1M. 

For the Eredivisie player of the 2011/12 season it seems to be small change and we need to get this done before the whole thing goes sour and we’re left clutching  straws. 

Vertonghen’s stock is well valued or so it seems …with Bruins Slot (a scout at Ajax, ex-assistant at Barcelona,  “Vertonghen is a left-footed Koeman. Don’t understand why Barça don’t push for him.”

If anyone thinks this is going to be done before the winner of the  Champions League is announced I think they are being  incredibly optimistic. This guy is the real deal and will not come cheap.

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Guten Abend, meine Lieblinge.

If ever there was a modern day footballer tale worth turning into a movie then it’s that of Adebayor. How so? A plot that includes playing and scoring goals at the very highest level domestically, internationally and even on one occasion under machine gun fire. Moving from Arsenal to City, ‘that’ slide and now these quotes.

He came to us certainly not for the money and definitely not for the frills. Why he came I do not know. Maybe he likes playing Yahtzee with Benny on the bus to away games. Maybe he enjoys practicing bad dance moves with Gareth the whitey.

What I do know is his unselfishness and his goals overall contributions  have been nothing but a breath of fresh air. We haven’t had a striker who offers so much in a dog’s age. We really haven’t.

This club needs men in the Lilywhite who actually want to be in that shirt of ours. As per the Dalglish piece earlier, emotional investment is a key element when you’re following a football club.

Is he the Messiah? Who knows or cares, but if we can land the very lovable lunatic at the right money then I couldn’t be happier. And more to the point it’s my belief that his current team mates would be equally delighted.

Levy & Co. are far from daft and I’m confident they will make the right choice.

‘I don’t know yet whether I’ll be here or not next year but my first choice now would be to stay at Tottenham. I am not going to go on my knees and beg anyone this is for others to sort out.’

“I am a huge fan of Tottenham now and I love the club. If I am not at the club in the future, I will be following their games and wishing them luck. I played at Arsenal for three years but today I keep Tottenham in my heart more than Arsenal, even though I haven’t played here for as long.”

The Fenway Sports Group have terminated their contract with Kenny Dalglish and whilst for some, their heads won’t be in the right place to do so it’s actually a  good day for Liverpool fans to have a good long think about how they approach the future.

The emotional investment made by fans of football in clubs is has rarely ever been returned …but the feeling of being short changed is bitterly exaggerated these days by the unrelenting financial leeching that football clubs impose upon those that fund them. Ticket prices up, satellite subscription prices up, polyester shirt prices up, bottle of pop at half time prices up. Same small, crappy plastic seat.

Liverpool fans need to take stock of what it is exactly that they think they are supporting.

Moyes called Everton the people’s club and this simply serves to reflect a sense of community that still exists on Merseyside. It’s an echo if you like of what they called the ‘Blitz Spirit’ of London. 

For those of you joining us late, the game has changed and nobody values your support or gives a stuff about you. Seriously, they don’t. You storm off in a strop and you are replaced in an instant. You’re a client reference number, credit card number with all but the last four digits asterix’d out. That’s all that you are. Getting in you in and out of the ground, communicating with you? A chore.

The upside to the money pouring in and everything going well is easy. The trappings of wealth and success bring problems that aren’t problems at all. What colour shall I paint my yacht? Should I buy an apartment in Monaco or perhaps St. Moritz? Shall I get, ‘Aguero’ on the back of my replica shirt or, ‘Kompany’?

It’s dealing with losing. Dealing with being hurt, sucking, getting beaten and looking like you’ll never win. Scratching together enough for the kids school uniform that requires talent.

Liverpool lost repeatedly this season. I don’t mean in the conventional sense, by conceding goals I mean as a club.

They bought badly and they spent heavily while they were at it. Andy Carroll seemed only sufficiently humiliated and thus motivated to get into shape physically and mentally by the time it was too late anyway. I could go through the others but it would be to no purpose, everyone saw what happened.

The Suarez business was deeply unpleasant to watch unfold. One of the greatest clubs in the world was hijacked by a tin pot victim mentality that whined and bickered until the owners, the paymasters reminded everyone that ‘normal people’, ‘balanced people’ were at best deeply uncomfortable with the whole business. And so, ‘…stop it!’

Suarez, whilst a talented footballer isn’t an honorable man. He doesn’t conduct himself in an open and honest manner. Like Drogba, he fakes, cheats and plays the ‘sportsmanship’ card to such an extent that no matter what genuine good he may ever do, the response will always be, ‘Yeah, but it’s Suarez.’

Dalglish surprised me that he went along with the siege mentality over the substandard players and Luis Is Innocent rubbish. He emotionally over committed to people that didn’t deserve anyone’s love. Dalglish’s post match interviews were cringe-worthy. Masterclasses in churlishness. Dalglish wrapped himself up and weighted himself down in the emotion of it all and it sank him. 

The argument that the Carling Cup was worth anything was naive. The final itself was unremittingly bad viewing. The naivety displayed here though was eclipsed by the belief that Dalglish had that they were going to beat Chelsea and win the FA Cup too. Of course it didn’t happen and if two pots might in some surreal parallel universe have been staved off criticism of a lackluster season, winning one was no good to anyone on any planet.

For Liverpool fans this might be a good point to draw breath and think about their public image. Think about the future. Football clubs need money, nothing else. Just money. They don’t need petitions,  supporters groups, tips on replica shirt design, letters to the chairman, or to have the name of their purely commercial operation dragged through the mud by extremists. 

King Kenny bit the bullet for a whole heap of quite valid reasons and instead of grieving for someone that didn’t die, it might be a salutary opportunity to think about the best way to support your club, rather than feed the vanity of an emotional investment that’s worth nothing to anyone but you.

Good morning.

According to an In The Know type johnny on Spurs Community the white goods wizards Beko are in the running for the rights to push their wares on the old Lilywhite next season.

Beko are a top, top brand. I think that they were originally Turkish and it was they who bought out Grundig. If I’m wrong I’m sure someone will dislocate a vital organ in order to tell me.

My great great uncle had a Grundig TV. In the early eighties he asked my dad how much he thought he might get for it second hand, because he wanted to buy a video recorder. That’s my gene pool for you.

Of course, negotiations for the shirt worn in Europe won’t get underway in earnest until Bayern beat the Blue Racists on Saturday.

Good morning pop pickers.

And the hits just keep on coming. The Loic Remy piece of yesterday appears to have legs as a French journo, Matt Spiro who writes for Ligue.1.com has revealed that…

Matt Spiro  @mattspiro

Marseille have told Loic Remy to cancel his planned visit to Spurs’ training ground this week. They want to agree fee with #THFC first

This positively reaffirms the idea that we are ‘properly’ in for the player, but it also rather comically might indicate that they’ve just found out who our chairman is and want to get all the money side of things nailed before their boy starts choosing this coat peg.

Elsewhere, if you haven’t seen it then the Blackburn boss is the unwitting star of a covertly shot mobile phone video that is said to have been shot in a bar in Hong Kong while Rovers were doing their preseason. The clip is here. The interesting bit is where he’s asked about Sam Allardyche. He swiftly repsonds, “Because he’s a f*cking crook.”

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Good evening.

This is from a video featuring Under Armour’s Kevin Plank (Founder, President, CEO and Chairman) who was the Plenary Speaker during the National Academy of Engineering Regional Meeting at the University of Maryland April 18. 

This appears about 5 minutes and twelve seconds in and looks rather nice.

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Wotcha.

I keep reading comments from awfully well meaning types this morning saying that at the beginning of the season they would have taken fourth.

Wow. How noble. But more to the point, what a really odd thing to say.

In isolation, finishing fourth is a good thing – no; an excellent thing. Champions League football and peck on the cheek from the Prom Queen. So what if another team outside the top four wins the Champions League and nudges us out? What are the odds?! You can’t legislate for crazy, madcap things like that happening. Can you? 

Well you can.

Because this finish wasn’t in isolation to anything. To assert otherwise is insane. Not optimistic, not naive but just common or garden bonkers. 

Given that Spurs weren’t struck down with any season wrecking injuries or suddenly faced teams that revolutionised football the flushing of the 10+ point advantage is why we’re all now nervously making pro Bayern noises. 

Some of you can’t cope with the reality of the situation. You’re the same lemmings that haven’t noticed that since he’s run out of exit doors that Arry has started calling us, ‘us’ again and not referring to us in the third person.

What happened to this Club this season is nothing shy of scandalous. 

And now we have the rogue playing the health card as many do when they’ve run of legitimate reasons why people should bother paying them any attention.  He’s saying he might not got to the Euros with the BBC because of his trials and tribulations. Ooh my heart, ooh me tax case. Ooh naff off you chancer. 

“I want Bayern to beat Chelsea, whether Frank plays or not.

 ”He knows there’s no love lost. My allegiance is Tottenham only. I want Tottenham in the Champions League next year.

Err… 

“I’ll be rooting for Chelsea I want to see an English team win it anyway and I think they can do it.”

Arry Redschnapps April 21st 2012

  “If people get carried away with what Tottenham should achieve, they need a reality check.”

Arry, the only reality check people want is the THFC Board to replace you with one of those orange Keepon things off the EDF advert …or something equally competent. 

Guten morgan Bayern fans überall!

Loic Remy is making his loyal to the last noises, ’I’m not ready to go for now. I did not feel they have really done a full season in Marseille. My sense of unfulfilled duty.’ it is suggested by the French press that Spurs have recommenced talks that were left for dead at the beginning of the year.

La Provance the French newspaper are running the tale that Tottenham met with Olympique Marseille on the 4th of January in Paris. A deal was proposed that Spurs buy Remy for a figure thought to be in the region of €24m and loan him back for the remainder of the season. 

With the  seasons in both countries more or less done and dusted the quote from the French paper is, ‘The contact has been renewed in concrete with a stated goal: to settle the matter as quickly as possible, before the European Nations Championship.’

Hurrah. Probably.

Happy Christmas?

Who knows, but it was him and he was there alright. Spotted by many flitting around in Corporate. 

This is also confirmed by one or two Dutch Twitterati sources, which gives the information that sort of feel one only otherwise gets from lovingly prepared home cooked food.

Deal done? Who knows, but Levy & Co. were seen meeting and speaking privately with the player at half time.

Triffic.

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