Views On World Cup As Focus Turns To Premier League

With Germany’s win over Argentina bringing an end to the World Cup in Brazil the focus of attention now turns to the Premier League.

Alan’s 2014 Summer Diary No. 16

Friday 11 July

With the arrival of Alexis Sanchez from Barcelona Arsenal continue their new policy of buying quality top class established star players. Arsene Wenger is giving the fans what they have been asking for for years. Is this finally the icing on the cake that will bring our rivals the Premier League title?

New stadium for Tottenham [Photo: Logan Holmes]CPO Granted

Good News for us, the Compulsory Purchase Order for the new stadium has been granted. Let’s hope it does not now enter a long dragged out appeals process.

I hope Spurs quickly agree a fair compensation deal for the family business that was in the way. Secondly, please do the deal to use Wembley or at least another London ground in the interim. We don’t want to and some of us couldn’t trek to rumoured alternatives such as Ipswich for home games.

Saturday 12 July

Thank You Brazil

Brazil go down again, this time 3 – 0 to Holland and are booed off in the meaningless 3rd place play off.

Sunday 13 July

Germany win the World Cup Final beating Argentina 1 – 0 with a world class goal from Mario Goetze in extra time. In many ways, it would have been a shame if they had not won, having trounced Brazil the way they did in the semi. Argentina had the chances to win. Gonzalo Higuain missed an open goal when Toni Kroos did a Steven Gerrard and headed the ball on to him free and clear on the edge of the area. It just reinforces what I said about luck. Gerrard does it and it costs us the game. Kroos does it and the Germans get away with it. Immediately afterwards he buried another chance but he was offside.

[Photo: Alan Hill]Argentina had other chances too. Lionel Messi did not quite bring his A game and missed 2 chances he would normally put away. Then he blasted a chance to equalise from a free kick high over the bar with almost the last kick of the game. God only knows how he got the player of the tournament award.

Then it was all over. Germany made history. First European team to win a World Cup in South America, 4 – time winners. Congratulations.

Thank you Brazil and good night.

Now the world’s best football teams have all been given a German lesson we are going to have to get used to using umlauts. For example, Joachim Low should be “Joachim Löw”. I don’t have the technical nous to set up Word so that when I am typing in English it inserts those two little dots above vowels in certain German words. In pronunciation it changes Low to lurrve which is how it should sound. (Also in German, “w” is pronounced “v” and “v” is often soft so it sounds like “f”.

If you ever want to test a German’s mastery of English get him to say “a very wet Welsh village”. If you get anything better than a “a ferry vet Velsh willage” he will be doing very well. I knew my German A-level would come in handy one day. Thanks Jack. Ozil/Özil, Goetze/Götze. Interesting to see how the national press deal with the issue. In today’s supplement, the Times uses the umlauts correctly, the Sun on the other hand, doesn’t bother. Meanwhile I am having to cut and paste from web articles. It’s a right pain.

Louis Van Gaal is on his way. There are also rumours of Edinson Cavani heading to United or Chelsea. I have this gut feeling that Rooney won’t be at United this time next year.

Monday 14 July

Premier League

More from Tottenham News

Sky announces the Premier League games to be televised live until the end of November. Champions League teams are each going to be featured at least 6 times, Spurs 3. The Liverpool game has been put back to 1.30pm on Sunday 31st August. The Everton game to 4pm on Sunday November 30th.

Sky also quote changed odds for the Premiership title. Liverpool’s sale of Luis Suarez has seen them drift out from 6/1 to 10/1. Arsenal have come in from 10/1 to 13/2. Spurs stay at 66/1. Chelsea 7/4, Man Cheaty 2/1 and Man Untied 11/1 are the first 3 favourites.

Common sense did not last long in the world of sponsorship. Nike decided that they no longer wanted to be paying through the nose for a bunch of under achievers and refused to bow to Untied’s inflated demands for a new deal. Today though, United announce that Adidas have stepped in with a £750 million kit deal. They clearly don’t share Nike’s concerns. Nevertheless it must be embarrassing for the Untied board knowing that for the next year their players will be running around in kit from a company that doesn’t think they are worth it.

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