Ta-Da! The New Season Cometh. But What’re Your Hopes and Fears
With good reason football has rather taken a back seat over here on the Small Isles this week, as certain residents do their best to post the country up the river in a smashed up, burning pile of dog turd. It’s the Last Days of Rome. Only the currency these Luddites are dealing in is electrical goods and irrevocable bouts of stupidity. Rumours of youths breaking into local McDonald’s to cook themselves burgers and French fries can only hope to be just that. Rumours. Otherwise it’s a very sad state of affairs indeed.
And the football? Well, as serial Tweeter, Rio Ferdinand, asked on Tuesday afternoon: who wants to see a game of football, when our country is in turmoil? Well, quite.
Still, the game is what we’re all here for and the idea was to get some sphere hoofing up and running this very weekend- if it’s alright with those BlackBerry wielding baddies in bandanas. The season opener with Everton is but a matter of days away and with any luck the men in Lilywhite are primed, permed (Benoit Assou-Ekotto, at least) and ready for action. Hotdog. Hot-diggidy-dog, says I.
So what’s the plan for the campaign ahead, then, I hear you ask? And, more importantly, does anybody know where we left it? Ignoring the fact that we’re still carrying the laden weight of a terribly limp strikeforce- and hoping that there’s still adequate time to crank up the Gs on that front- we remain in possession of a healthy enough looking squad. No fooling, mister. The plan should be to consolidate and move forward. Forever forward.
Three quality keepers on the books now; none without their own brand of concerns. If only we could pop Friedel’s brain into Gomes’ head and give him Cudicini’s ability to look good in an Italian suit. Why we’d have a super hero. Probably a centre-back is something we should be in the market for- what with Woody departing to more northerly climbs and Ledley’s knee joints crumbling like the bottom of a cheesecake by the second. But even without new additions we’re not exactly threadbare at the back. Nor are we to be found wanting in our midriff. If I can get technical for a second, we’re packing some serious heat in there these days. A match for anyone. Bale, Modric, Van der Vaart, Lennon, Kranjcar, Sandro, Huddlestone. The list, as they say, is endless.
Well, maybe not endless. There is a limit. We do still have Jermain. Some things never change.
Up top we’re not without our charms- despite the criminal acts of profligacy they displayed last time around. In Roman Pavyluchenko and Defoe there’s undoubted quality. Goals, too, with a bit of encouragement. And a basic grasp of playing as part of a team or realising you’re not somehow invisible to linesmen if you’re wearing pink boots. In that sense it would be difficult to imagine JD stinking up the place as much as he has already in 2011, and at the very least he could offer a service as the fabled ‘impact sub’. Like the good old days of Jol.
And Peter Crouch…
Anyway, I guess if there’s a message, it’s that there’s a lot to be said for continuity. The prospect of going into a new campaign with the squad not torn to ribbons like the contents of the laundry basket after the cat’s been in there, should be one cherished. For now, at least, we’re in one piece. We’re a team. We are Tottenham.
Even so, that Llorente chap would be awfully handy, wouldn’t he? What say you?
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