TOTTENHAM ARE STILL A BIG CLUB!

tends to play off the left ie bale's position

not got the speed or game stretching capacity of lil aaron

Demsey will be useful cf cover tbfh

xp Two true statements, neither really contradict my two though.

i like dempsey but he just doesn't look like an avb player

deems otm but even though he seems to be potentially a useful cover cf, has he ever actually played there

Idk has he but ito getting onto aerial ball i'd have fewer concerns than adebayor tbh

long nightmare over: http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story/_/id/1153053/spurs-midfielder-bentley-joins-rostov-on-loan?cc=5901

Rostov have Pletikosa as well, and Florent Sinama Pongolle.

Ha! Levy must have been hitting all the +007 numbers in his phone book.

bond, kevin bond

Dempsey wouldn't get into our first XI (I dunno unless he displaces Sigurdsson) but I can see him playing virtually every game for us. Better to have one effective guy who can play in four different positions than sign two or three mediocre squad players.

Areas where he's especially necessary - cover/competition on the right. Lennon is usually injured for about a quarter of a season.

Wouldn't want him as CF on his own. But when Adebayor is injured, Demspey should allow Defoe to function better in the team because he can provide some more height, presence and link play further up the pitch.

in a 4-3-3 i think dempsey offers more than lennon on the right, basically what jonathan wilson says here what he doesn't say and what i am interested in is whether defoe could be effective playing wide in that system.
also i probably missed it on the pl thread cause i was away, but dembele's goal v norwich was class.

LIVERMORE FOR ENGLAND

Perhaps the best insight into how Levy operates as the clock ticks down can be found in the recently released autobiography of former Crystal Palace chairman Simon Jordan – although admittedly the stories within are probably to be taken with lashings of salt.

Back in 2004 Palace had just won promotion to the Premier League under the management of Iain Dowie and academy product Wayne Routledge had been one of the team’s stars on the right hand side of midfield. He’d caught the eye of Spurs and at lunchtime on deadline day Levy contacted Jordan with an offer for the player in the region of £1m. Jordan laughed that off but says he was then contacted at regular intervals for the rest of the afternoon by Levy and people acting on his behalf increasing the offer in increments so small they barely covered the cost of the fax paper they were sent on.

Eventually, at 11pm that night, the bidding had increased to £1.2m and Jordan lost his temper, saying the whole thing was going nowhere fast and in any case even if Spurs did make a serious offer for the player there was now only one hour to go until the deadline and it would be impossible to get Routledge to White Hart Lane, have a deal agreed and complete a medical in time. It was at this point that Levy admitted that Routledge – a contracted Palace player who hadn’t been given permission to speak to Spurs or had a bid accepted for his services – was sitting in a hotel round the corner from Tottenham’s ground with his agent Paul Stretford with everything in place ready to sign.

a heartwarming anecdote from the ever-brill loft for words' match preview which i recommend to anyone

Couldn't care less about Routledge but any opportunity to punk Simon Jordan should be enthusiastically taken.

Reckon this happens quite a lot tbh. When Man United signed Berbatov, Fergie basically picked him up at the airport and handcuffed himself to him.

yeah it's more the troll bidding than anything

250k for phil neville probably being the high point of the artform iirc

like think about it with that routledge story, that is 12 whole hours to go up by 200k

Nothing impresses me more about the Swansea project than apparently making Wayne Routledge resemble a competent Premiership-quality player.

This was the same summer we got Aaron Lennon for £1m. Good times.

routledge has always been a decent mid epl level player tbh, just an old fashioned winger that went out of fashion

Nah he never really established himself even at PL clubs who still played wingers. I think dropping back down to the Championship for a few years probably helped him.

too old fashioned as wingers go but technique good enough to excel as nippy inside forward guy, perfect for swansea in other words

hard chap to love but really impressed for qpr in championship and would have done so again in the prem imo, ending up with swp instead was p much a tragedy in the end

lennon's still only 25, fucking hell

Bar that brief few months under Ramos he's been a fixture in the first team since he was 18. It's only injury that keeps him out.

think it's fair to say a large part of my surprise there is down to feeling like he still hasnt matured as a player yet

but then again i've been lennon-sceptic for years

i'm pretty excited about avb and the midfield, but lennon defoe bale won't be a very effective front 3. bale and lennon maninly looking to get down the line and defoe not being able to get on the end of crosses enough. everyone seems to hate it, but i think bale should play on the right so he can cut in and shoot, and maybe have dempsey on the left. or play adebayor.

villas boas is just trying to keep defoe interested and adebayor motivated

defoe is unlikely to start 10 more pl games unless ade is injured

Please god not Bale on the right ever again. Just play Adebayor really. Or have Dempsey at the tip of a midfield triangle.

Suspect Defoe gets way more goals assisted by Lennon, who is better cutting in and passing than he is at crossing, than he does from Bale.

i think nakh is right about defoe, but not sure. matt certainly right about lennon/bale assists
bale is a good finisher though, so i think he can improve on the right and score a lot more.

is adebayor injured?

He was yesterday yeah.

adebayor and naughton are doubts for sunday. might see vertonghen at left back.

without ferdinand, mbia, traore, and fabio hughes could be stupid enough to play clint hill and ryan nelsen together so it might not matter who you put out tbh

no johnson, taarabt, diakite either

:/

knew we should have tried to sign some players this summer

bale's a bigger goal threat on the left.

Hughes said: ‘Maybe Michael’s situation had happened too quickly for him to understand what his future is at Spurs. He would have been a good buy but it wasn’t to be."

Hughes revealed he played a part in ensuring Fulham placed a £15m minimum release clause in Dembélé’s contract, with the Welshman confident the forward will thrill Spurs fans following the departures of Luka Modrić and Rafael van der Vaart.

“I was the one who stipulated to place a bigger figure on him. I made sure it was at a decent figure,” he added.

milan badelj getting rave reviews since his move to hamburg. considering he was zagreb's replacement for modric, i hope spurs were at least aware of him.

watching hamburg, they're being completely outplayed but badelj hasn't done anything except rattle the crossbar with a 30 yard thunderbolt. think spurs should sign stuttgart's martin harnik, though.

ryan smith looking v useful for eng u21s

yeah but so did jordan henderson

ryan henderson, they're all called ryan

Today is a big test of big clubness imo

for both clubs tbh

Think it very unlikely Spurs will win today, even though the quality of our play has been improving if anything, beating Arsenal, Inter and Liverpool in the space of eight days just feels far-fetched to the point of soft-headedness. Also the players are probably knackered.

Spurs are bigger than us if we go on 3 year cycles which is a fair enough criteria I think. Win this and I'll start to believe we can win say 7 of our last 9.

Both clubs included, yes xp

Oh there was a Spurs thread all along

In the interests of openness, fp

didnt even know about this match today, kewl

i hereby propose anyone even mentioning the united chelsea game before evening immediately recieves a months ban, let's make this happen ppl