Views On Tottenham News, Sepp Blatter, Steven Gerrard

Alan’s Diary looks at the past week, including Tottenham news on transfer dealings, Sepp Blatter and FIFA plus Steven Gerrard’s decision to retire from England duty.

Alan’s Summer Diary 2014 No. 17

World Cup – something being overlooked?

Is it me or are they all brushing some really big issues under the carpet in the final reviews of the World Cup in Brazil? Nowhere in the summaries can I find a mention of the 2 dead and 19 injured when the flyover into Bela Horizonte collapsed. There is the odd mention of the roof collapsing at a stadium – but didn’t a construction worker die in that incident? Yes it was a wonderful tournament but clearly some corners were cut on the infrastructure in the panic to finish on time.

Out of respect for the dead this should be remembered in the summaries and someone should be checking to ensure that more of the building work isn’t also going to collapse in the months to come. Already we are hearing horrendous stories about the treatment of workers on the Qatari stadiums. FIFA should take some responsibility in these areas.

Monday 21 July

Tottenham News on the Transfer Front

Tottenham news on transfers gets worse for Spurs. Another striker we were after is choosing Champions League football over Tottenham. Loic Remy wants to go to Liverpool. Pochettino wants Morgan Schneiderlin but Arsenal are also in the hunt.

He is also rumoured to be about to put in a £20 million bid for Jay Rodrigues to stop Liverpool getting him too. That would clearly be a poor decision. Anyone can see that there is a serious risk that he may not be the same player when he tries to come back from his injury. To sign him now would be an emotional decision based on their previous relationship, not a sound business decision which is what we need.

Out of 6 or 7 top quality Southampton players, for us to only get the seriously injured one is poor business and bad reasoning. I sincerely hope Rodriguez makes a full recovery and goes on to play for England many times but for Spurs to stake their major transfer outlay on him now would be poor use of our resources. If Pochettino draws a line in the sand over this one it is not a good sign for the future. It is more a sign that he does not possess the judgment that Levy was hoping for after all.

As for strikers, it looks as if we are going to be relying on Roberto Soldado to transform himself in his second season. The Champions League clubs must be quaking in their boots.

Nice to see Lewis Holtby back with the squad on the USA tour.

Tottenham news. Lewis Holtby [Photo: Jav The_DoC_66]

Tuesday 22 July

No World Cup Bids

Greg Dyke has announced that the FA will not be bidding for the World Cup again whilst Sepp Blatter is heading FIFA and running it like North Korea. Greg has realised that we have no chance of being allocated a World Cup whilst old Sepp is in charge. I doubt if it will change much when he finally succumbs to natural causes. He’s made sure that is the only way he will go eventually, having got the holders of the polonium umbrella firmly in his camp.

Coincidentally Private Eye No 1367 from 30 May in an article entitled “FIFA’s Fiddles” said that Blatter had hired former New York US attorney Michael Garcia to investigate allegations of FIFA corruption. The article says the “serpentine Blatter rewrote FIFA’s laughable “ethics code” to ensure that evidence collected in FIFA investigations cannot be revealed. Eat your heart out Kim Jong-un.” It continues, “nobody in world football wants to go to sweltering, booze- free Qatar stepping over the corpses of Nepalese slave labourers.

It’s a tough one for slippery Sepp because if Qatar is cancelled attention will turn to how the oligarchs acquired the 2018 World Cup for Russia.”

Dyke says that the Qatar World Cup is bound to take place in the winter. If I were the FA, I would wait until the Russia World Cup is over and then withdraw from Qatar and possibly FIFA all together. It is clearly a corrupt organisation that has as much time for England as the Eurovision song contest. I can foresee a split coming in football, like in boxing with alternative governing bodies and competitions being set up.

Wednesday 23 July

Tottenham News (2)

Sky Sports confirm that Spurs and Swansea have done a straight swap; Ben Davies for Gylfi Sigurdsson. Seems fair enough. I liked Sigurdsson but we did manage to end up last season with a surfeit of players for the same midfield position and were short of quality in defence. Michel Vorm will be a good deputy/competition for Hugo Lloris.

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