Beef Bagel

While the world still echoes with the possibilities of a Berbatov/Eto’o swap, I’ve found a much more interesting topic of conversation. After all, we talked about that one days ago.

Today, we have a mystery on our hands, a treasure hunt, and the prize is a Cameroonian defensive midfielder by the name of Jean II Makoun. I can only assume that its “II” in the middle. I did read an article with a font that one make a “1″, an “L” and an “I” all look the same. Still, I’m not sure if that’s “Jean the second Makoun” or “Jean two Makoun”.

Anyway, this is what Jean Two’s agent Jean-Christophe Thouvenel said in an interview with Setanta…

“The discussions are very advanced with a London club. It is not West Ham, no. Tottenham? Well, I cannot reveal it to you right now. To give you a clue, without naming the club, their manager is not English, they are a very good club that have a very ambitious project, they want to attack well and defend well.”

Now, as far as I can see, that only leaves two clubs Tottenham and arsenal.

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At last, a reason to enjoy the European Championships this summer and I’ve a feeling we’ll all be getting a few funny looks as we sit there watching the coverage from Austria and Switzerland wearing that ridiculous gingham tablecloth of a strip with a certain number 14 on the back.

It was announced a little earlier today that the Modric deal has been confirmed and, so long as he gets a work permit, it equals are record transfer fee of £16.5m and who knows, if he really is that good a ball playing midfielder, he may just start making Sergei Bent look for like his price tag. The contract is for a healthy six years and the cash will be paid in installments over the next four years. I wonder how far you can eek these deals out? Yes, well pay the £55m for Kaka but in installments over 110 years.

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Very interesting words from Bilic indeed. Clearly the opinions of a Hammer and Ali, dead on about the peeled dogs bollocks that was exactly the way it felt. Not that I go feeling dogs bollocks much, unless I’ve peeled them firs of course. My red bits were so swollen that I could feel the wind colling strange normally protected parts of my eyes as I walked about. Quite disturbing stuff.

As for matters of the ball (not dogs), I suppose the big news is that it looks like we’ve settled on Espanyol keeper Carlos Kameni, which is useful as I was badly falling behind on my profiling of all the other goalies we’d been linked with. According to all manner of peeps, we’ve successfully fought off Valencia, Villa, Athletico Madrid and ‘Boro - hopefully with big sticks - for the 24-year-old’s signature.

Good news I suppose but I was starting to warm to the idea of Gomes, character that he is. I’m sure we’d all have enjoyed his pre-match jumping routine and his shot stopping is very fine indeed. Perhaps we’ll be facing him again next season in an all too familiar shirt?

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I really not feeling very funny today. I managed to catch the last 10 minutes of the Champions League game last night - commiserations ‘pudlians - and ended up helping a Scouse friend drown his sorrows in his London hotel room along with five others, and lots of beer, and some champagne, and a porn channel that was still on this morning when I woke up with my lips glued together and not a drop of water in sight.

An assortment of beer cans in a variety of states from empty to full littered the room with cigarette butts next to the “No Smoking” sign on the table. John, the Scouser and official tenant of the room down for a business conference, worked his way about the evidence; a detective trying to piece his forgotten night together. He learnt the hard way at every turn, stepping on broken glass from the tumbler smashed when one of our number disappeared into the night never to be seen again, scrabbling at the toilet door before seeing the broken, bent brass lump on the floor which he himself had fallen on from the top of the table.

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I hate headlines like that. Ninety per cent of the time you read them on blogs, I’m sorry to say. I’m beginning to hate blogs. They’re so bloody untrustworthy. I’ve stopped reading most of the other Tottenham ones because they just try to pass off farcical conjecture as word on the grape vine, and then you get titles like this one and I read the headline and think, “Oh my God, who’s leaving?” Then it turns out the star is Radek Cerny.

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Standing doing the washing up, cleaning up the Bakery and generally feeling like a domestic god, I was quite content to be listening to the radio coverage of Wigan vs Spurs.

“There’s a chill wind whipping around JJB on a really bitter afternoon under this battleship grey sky in Wigan,” said the commentator. Good words and although I was happy enough to be sitting this one out with my hands nice and warm bathed in the water of my Fairy suds sink, my mind reached out to the Yid of the North and the Mini Yid wrapped up in the matching big and little black puffer jackets that my mind’s eye hoped they were wearing, bracing themselves against the gusts.

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Well, I hate to say I told you so but today marks the official beginning of the end as far as our love affair with Dimitar the Great goes. The pin-striped ponce Emil Dantchev has said that talks of a contract extension with General Levy have twice broken down…

“His future will be decided in the next couple of months. We have twice given up talks about Berbatov’s new contract and this is due to the fact that Tottenham are unwilling to fix Berbatov’s transfer price.”

He’s talking about a buy-out clause, isn’t he and I don’t blame Levy for not budging on that one. What the hell is the point of four-year contract if there’s emergency rip chord any time the player wants to leave? How can you build a squad when you have no idea if you’re players are going to stay or not?

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Why I love Juande, reason No.58: Juande the psychologist.

“We did none of the things that the team was doing before our arrival. If they used to train on one pitch and leave through a certain door, then we changed the training to another pitch and sent them out through a different door,” said the great man to Spanish magazine El Mundo.

“We changed timetables, diet, everything. We wanted them to forget everything from before, like it never existed. When you want to change something you have to break with routine.”

I think these kind of things are so important in sport. A manger is dealing with a squad full of young men with not all that much life experience and often not as much mental strength as we may like to think. Their minds are still for molding and Jaunde can see that. I don’t care for the psychology of mind games between managers but as a general to his troops, moral belief are so very important. Hang on I’m sure there was a bit more of that quote elsewhere…

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April’s always a funny time for football and this April doubly so; the sunshine in your eyes, the warmth on your face - often followed by snow - but that undeniable feeling that summer’s just starting to win the fight against it’s rival, and summer’s great but it does mean the end of the season.

The end of the season. Where were we all those months ago, when the only pleasure in the end of the hazy days are the hopes of a new campaign. August, funny to think back then. We thought we had a good chance at fourth, maybe we did. Looking at the strength of Liverpool yesterday and the weakness exposed at arsenal’s lack of depth is a stern reminder. Even if we hadn’t lost that first game, if luck had gone our way, if MJ had worked out, there would still be more reasons why the task was so unlikely to be bested.

But then who would have expected Ramos, 5-1, Wembley, the cup, all of it? The reason I ponder this seemingly premature end of season review is of course because the season ended for us a few weeks ago - according to the papers - but on Saturday, against ‘Boro, the season ended for me too.

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I feel like I should be starting with all the Berba-talk but the one that’s got me today is the quote from ex-Spur Luke Young on his expectations of us lot when ‘Boro come to visit tomorrow in a rare Saturday 3pm kick-off. He said:

“I used to get a good reception when I first went back.”

Did he?

“Now I get a good reception for about three minutes. If I take throw-ins I get a little bit of stick and then it turns sour, especially if we score.”

And it was only after reading the rest of the article that I realised he was referring to his strike in the reverse fixture earlier in the season. I barely remembered it, and as if it’s really had any relevance to our season. We give him stick because he’s a bit of a knob. We may have given him one good reception the first time he came back with Charlton but it’s not like we boo him either. He’s not good enough.

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