Southern Softies At Squeaky Bum Time as Tottenham Play Liverpool

Tottenham the “Southern softies” travel up North to take on Liverpool at Anfield, as history shows, one of the club’s least successful grounds. With the weather forecast predicting unpleasant conditions, will Spurs battle against all the elements to take three points or return to type in this crucial Premier League match?

Scott Parker – no Southern softie. [Photo: Jav The_DoC_66]In my wildest fanciful moments I kid myself that some Spurs players might actually read my blogs. That there is a chance that what I say might somehow get into their heads and inspire them to find an extra reserve of strength and belief to supplement the manager’s team talks and help to get an extra per cent of performance out of them at the most difficult times. I know I’m living in cloud cuckoo land but it’s just possible isn’t it? You never know…I love this team and just wish I could make a difference. I guess it’s the difference between being a supporter and a fan.

With all that in mind, I woke up this morning with the bones of this blog in my head. When I went to bed last night, I had no intention of writing any more about the Liverpool game before kick off – and now it is 6.30 am, my tummy is rumbling because I haven’t stopped for breakfast and I am sending it off to Logan, my editor after typing for an hour. He doesn’t know it’s coming. It’s Sunday and he has a hell of a lot on his plate. The chances of him being able to publish it before the game and then any Spurs player even reading it must be virtually zero. But if I don’t send it, I’ll never know whether against all the odds I might have helped influence the result just one tiny bit.

So…

Does this sound familiar? It came to mind watching the horrible weather conditions on the Match of the Day highlights of the Norwich game last night.  Everything seems fine. Spurs are in top form, in a great sequence of consecutive wins having recently beaten some top teams and progressing in Europe. Next up is an away fixture against a northern team. The weather is cold, wet and windy and the ground we are playing on is several hours’ drive from White Hart Lane and the opposition’s manager pays us compliments in the press.

What happens next? I’ll tell you what happens next. Our players look like they don’t fancy it right from the kick off. Some foreign players from warmer climes look like they would much rather be down south at White Hart Lane, or better still, back at home. The team play like a bunch of good time Charlies who just want to get the game over and go home.

We get turned over and drop all 3 points. After the event the opposition players are all hugs and smiles and their manager goes on about what an achievement beating us was and how his players have heart and dedication. In a nutshell, that’s where the term “Southern softies” came from. In recent years trips up North have borne more fruit, just like our record against former hoodoo clubs.

We have started to overcome this unwanted epithet but now is the time to put it to bed once and for all. Everything seems to be going swimmingly but you win nothing in March (except the League Cup). This is the countdown to the future when a redoubling of effort is needed. It seems unreasonable to ask for it but the next 10 weeks or so is really going to sort the men from the boys. This team really could go down in history. From my childhood I have the exciting sound of the introduction to “Stingray” drumming away in my head “5…4…3….2….1…anything could happen in the next 5 minutes…”

COME ON YOU SPURS!