‘The Biggest Game of The Season’
Possibly not from where we’re sitting. But I think it’s quite a big day for them. The official site declared it ‘The most anticipated fixture of the season!’ Cute.
So, plenty of unhappy campers in internetland this week as Tottenham jettison their Carling Cup campaign neatly into the offal in a blaze of general wrongness. A first half watched almost entirely through the gaps between my fingers, before an extra-time a goal short from yours truly having to explain to those upstairs why they could see the silhouette of a television set being flopped out onto the street from three stories up. All burnt-out plastic and clumps of wires. Not an easy watch, that. Too many half-baked performances; too much to expect of a team seemingly thrown together by virtue of a tombola.
That aside, I’d wager that from some corners the reaction has been a bit over the top. Big picture and all that. It’s hardly a season ender. One or two things I’ve read over the last few days, while understandable in some lights, has done little but make me thankful that I didn’t read any Spurs forums in the 1990s. With the despair I felt on a regular basis during that epoch, I think I’d soon be thumbing through the Jewsons catalogue in search of a good sturdy rope and a collapsible step-ladder. On a list of reasons to be thankful, I’d say ours is looking none too bad. If that’s the worst thing that happens to us this term, we can look back and say it’s gone pretty darn spiffy.
And with that, we travel to Upton Park.
West Ham away. They’re in a right old mess. Once lauded for having a spine of bona-fide English quality, now look to have a central core about as robust as a spear of asparagus. At one end a ‘keeper two mistakes away from being wheeled off in a straight-jacket and, t’other, a striker who needs to be prodded every few minutes in order to remind him which way he’s supposed to be facing. Carlton Cole and Robert Green have lost their way. And, as well as Scott Parker is doing at the moment, how ever much he insists he can drag The Hammers single-handedly over the line every weekend- he is, I’ve been told, just one man.
For us it’s an exercise in exorcising the memory of midweek. Two derby defeats on the bounce will be a tough one to take and folk will be looking toward West Ham as a means of nabbing three valuable points. It’s usually a place where we do just that. Bale’s been on ice for a week (not literally) and should be primed and ready to bring all manner of grief to some luckless full-back. Lennon, you’d think, would be itching to do similar. It seems a long time ago now, toward the end of 2009 and early into this year, where the wee man’s mojo was apparently inextinguishable. A white hot streak which made us look toward Theo Walcott across the road and chuckle derisively. Walcott? Pfft. Good luck with that. Now, sadly, it’s all gone a bit flat and we pin our hopes on tomorrow’s outing as a place where some of that fizz might be rediscovered. I’m optimistic as ever. Two goals for us. Nought for those lot. Lennon to get one of ‘em.
20 Responses to ‘The Biggest Game of The Season’