Beef Bagel

There’s a few people out there who say all the right things and Director of Football Damien Comolli is just such a man.

“We will never do what Arsenal have done.”

There’s plenty more to this quote that’s far, far more informative but this is the only bit I’m interested in. As soon as I read this, there was a big smile on The Bagel’s chops and even though my eyes read on, my brain just played ‘The Girl from Ipanema’ as it waited for my body to finish the article. The rest of it could have said anything.

“We will never do what Arsenal have done. We will never get into the Champions League or win anything ever. We will sell all of our best players and buy old ones instead. We will fire our manager, take a sword to Aaron Lennon but first we’re going to kill The Bagel and stick his head on a spike in the Emirates Stadium.”

Actually, that’d be the only way I’d ever get to watch that fixture. 250 bloody loyalty points or don’t apply! Oooo….ooooo…that’s a rant for another time. Calm….breathe….

Yes, that’s right, Damien Comolli does not want us to be like Arsenal in any way, shape or form and for that I love him. What he was actually trying to say is that we wont stuff our ranks with Johnny Foreigner unlike our North London neighbours, who are trying to set the equivalent record of how many people you can squeeze into a Mini, except substitute the word ‘people’ with foreign players and ‘Mini’ with poxy red club.

It does put a most enjoyable, disgusted sneer on my face when they field an all non-British affair, the flipside being that it’s good, solid, ammo against any uppity Gooners one should meet; that and choking against Barca. One simply pats them on they back, to which they ask what you are doing. One then replies,

‘My apologies, I thought you were choking again.’

Unfortunately, this opens up a whole alley way of lasagne gags and our own splutter at the end of last season, so best stick to the foreigner tack.

Heffe Comolli has put players in priority saying first, we go for English, then foreigners in the Premiership and then anyone else. There is a little confusion in his talk with English and British and I imagine soon he’ll be dropping the ‘English’ bit should we actually sign the likes of Shaun Maloney and Aiden McGeady. All the same, it’s proud comments to make as a Tottenham fan, which seems marginally ridiculous as I myself am only three or four generations English/British and really don’t give a toss about nationalism anyway. There are as many British wankers as there are foreign ones but Comolloi and the board have shown themselves to be neither and I applaud their transfer policy. It’s done us well so far and it’s respectful to the British game and any home grown talent we should wish to produce.

Damo also goes on to address our left winger worries and mostly the way our eyebrows are still raised by the fact we didn’t score one over the summer. His answer is that they are simply hard to come by. He’s not wrong either. If left footed equates to left handedness, which it does more or less in numbers, if not individuals, then approximately 10% of the footballing population is likely to be left footed, so that kind of narrows it down. What’s more, how many of that 10% are actually going to be any good? Fair point.

So what are we going to do? There are three options:

1) Bide our time - ok, but I’m getting sick of that. I’m nearly bidden.

2) Go through with Operation Liberty and make Shaun Philips play on the left

3) We must all go to Brazil and sleep with as many gorgeous, left handed woman as we can. We start up a branch of the Spurs Academy, based in Rio or perhaps somewhere with a really good beach and an excellent Caipirinha bar. Then we buy a private jet to fly over members of the coaching staff and squad to give master classes to our left footed proteges. Perhaps we should do this as well as 2) so that we can use the left over counterfeit notes, being produced in Toby the Yid’s sweat shop as we speak, to fund the project.
Oh, I’ve thought of a fourth option…

4) We clone Little Aaron…in a mirror! Genius.

The head of the Academy could be Jurgen Klinnsman. He may only be out of work for a short while longer though, as he’s being linked with the job as head coach for the US soccer team. Spurs legend Jurgs, has been sunning himself at his home in Californ-i-a basking in the glory of a pretty damn good World Cup performance by his unfancied German national team. He looks to be first choice to replace Bruce Arena, which I always thought was the name of the Australian National Football stadium but apparently not. Perhaps if we get in there quick enough Jurgen will see the light.

Another fine member of staff would be Teddy and the reason I’d like to mention him today is purely as a salute to his weekend’s achievement as the oldest player to have scored in the Premiership. He may be wearing claret and blue but we all know what colour he is on the inside. Come home soon Mr. Sheringham.

One who has returned to the fold is Didier Zee. He’s back in full scale training after his bout of tropical flue and it should be interesting when and how he fits into the side, given Man Mountain Tom Huddlestone’s recent form. Play ‘em both together, ruling the middle as father and son, I say. Not quite sure who’s who in that image?

Should we, or he, have any doubt as to what we know to be true, Paul Robinson has been well and truly backed up today as England’s No.1 ( England’s, England’s No.1!). By whom? England’s No.3, Ben Foster.

“I’d like to think I won’t get my England chance just because of what happened to Paul - that could have happened to anyone,” he says in reference to ‘that miskick’.

“I thought Paul was our best player in that game and I don’t think he could have done anything about that incident.”

“I spoke to him after the game and told him he was different class.

“Paul is a great goalkeeper. He is No 1 and I am No 3 at the moment and I can accept that because he has been doing well.”

Rather nice of Ben to say that. True and nice and now he’s in The Bagel’s good books. I imagine there’s a good dose of insurance involved in that statement should anything similar happen to him but all the same, well may you fare Mr. Foster, well may you fare.

Farewell and fare bagels.
The Bagel.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 1st, 2006 at 4:52 pm and is filed under Bagel News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.