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Alan’s Diary On Tottenham, England And The Premier League

By Alan Hill

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Alan takes a look back at the past few days with comment on Tottenham, England and the highlights of the Premier League from last weekend.

Alan’s 2014-15 Season Diary No. 6

Thursday 2 October 2014

Tottenham  1 Besiktas 1

We were lucky to get a draw, even though we led until the last few minutes. Poch changed all 10 outfield players from Saturday’s draw with Arsenal – and just got away with it. Slaven Bilic had Besiktas well organised and they were easily on a par with us. Demba Ba had several chances, most of which he almost took well, foiled only by save after save from Hugo Lloris. One of the few bright spots for us was another positive performance from Harry Kane, who celebrated his latest England under 21 call-up with a good goal.

Vlad Chiriches made a couple of timely blocks and interceptions but as with other appearances, gave the ball away at crucial times in crucial positions. He got away with miscuing it directly to a Besiktas player in the first two minutes but didn’t when he did it again at the other end of the game and then blatantly hand-balled it away from Ba in the area. The ref spotted it. Penalty and that was it.

Tim Sherwood pointed out that Ba was the best forward on the pitch and the previous night Danny Welbeck was as he got his first hat–trick for Arsenal. We were in for them both and failed to get either.

Talking of Wednesday night, Liverpool were distinctly average whilst losing in Switzerland. More evidence as to who the real genius was there last season, desperately flawed though he was.

Brendan Rodgers and England

Rodgers has joined the ranks of managers who expect the FA to put the clubs interests before the country. Give his players two days recovery whilst away on England duty?

You must be joking and Roy Hodgson tells him so. England will never return to the top of the World rankings until and unless the Premier League clubs are forced to toe the line. Of course, the attitude is no surprise. The clubs are not owned by Englishman, so they don’t care about England. It should be country first, club second – but that’s another subject that I have previously done to death.

Saturday 4 October

More surprisingly a Football Focus online survey of fans have a significant majority in favour of club over country. Then again, these days a majority of the fans probably aren’t English either, certainly those resident in London aren’t according to recent figures quoted in the national press.

Sunday 5 October

Tottenham 1 Southampton 0

Thank goodness for a narrow 1 – 0 victory over Southampton at the Lane. Another game for which there was no interest for my ticket on Stub Hub at face value. They used to go like hot cakes. I think that’s an indication of our fans, dissatisfaction with the commission-led, fee-heavy nature of Stub Hub as highlighted in the media and the glut of televised home games combined with lacklustre performances.

More from Tottenham News

Christian Eriksen and Hugo Lloris continue to shine as Tottenham struggle to reach the heights of a few years ago under Harry Redknapp and Gareth Bale. Emmanuel Adebayor led the line well but we are still missing an in-form top class striker. Redknapp sadly continues to struggle at what Sky pundits describe as the Loftus Road media circus, with QPR stuck to the bottom after a comprehensive defeat by a rejuvenated West Ham.

We move into 6th place above Arsenal, who were comfortably defeated yet again by Chelsea. Arsene Wenger lost it and assaulted Jose Mourinho (2 shoves in the chest) in his technical area, a place he had no valid reason to enter to begin with. He’ll get away with it because the ref saw it and took no action. Manchester United sneaked into 4th place, flying up front with Di Maria and Falcao scoring. Full of holes at the back though, with David De Gea my man of the match. We are lucky to go into the international break with a win.

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