Beef Bagel

Valentine’s Day? I ask you. Shouldn’t there have been some sort of UEFA ruling against any fixtures today? Maybe they did in on purpose? If one’s partner ever asked the dreaded question, “Who do you love more, Tottenham or me?” one could justifiably evade it by replying, “That’s not fair, Tottenham never asks me that,” but isn’t his just what Tottenham has done to us today with a little help from the European governing body. Incidentally, the other way around the question is by replying, “Why, you my love,” with your fingers crossed behind your back and then running off in the dead of night, getting your sorry arse down to WHL, climbing the West Stand and kissing the cockerel’s feet with a photograph of Ledley King in one hand while self-flagellating with a match-day program in the other. A severe punishment, you think? A severe crime, say I.

So, what of The Bagel? What have I chosen? Am I in Prague? The answer, sadly, is no. I tried, believe me I tried. I think it went something like:

“Sweetheart, do you fancy going away for Valentine’s Day……………..Prague but the thing is that there is an UEFA Cup game at the same time. Now obviously, I could have just lied, disappeared for two hours in the evening, return with some kind of ‘you’ll never believe what just happened to me’ story and dismiss all the pissed up Yiddos on tour as Bolton fans….from London.”

Funnily enough not lying to LB didn’t seem to buy me much in the way of credit.

“Now, I’m just putting it out there. It’s a beautiful city; very romantic?”

It was worth a go.

The funny thing is, though, between you, me, the entire internet and LB, who I’m positive is reading this, she had said that she hated Valentine’s Day. Now, before you all groan - I know. I know they all say that but, I don’t know I thought LB would be different. How many non-footy fan girlfriends do you get down to U18 Spurs down at the Lane on a cold Wednesday night? How many non-footy fan girlfriends insist on watching the Man U v Tottenham in the FA Cup with you? One of our first dates was watching last year’s Cup Final for Pete’s sake. So understand my confusion when I find myself in the middle of Selfridges with queuing up for two gifts, a card and an over-sized teddy bear. No, I’m kidding about the teddy bear. I have my limits and I’m sure the novelty three-foot “I love you” card will suffice.

For me the choice for Valentine’s Day was simple. Spurs aren’t going to dump me for missing a game.

The bright side is that I’ve been to the Slavia before and it was a hell of a lot warmer than it’s going to be tonight in that cold open concrete monster of a stadium perched high on the windy top of Prague. Oh yeah and there’s a big fat athletics track around the edge to ensure you haven’t a clue what’s going on when play’s at the far end of the ground. Yep, I’ll take it squarely on the chin this time. This time.

Prague’s sub-zero conditions aren’t just going to be a problem for the fans as they try not to break their necks on the icy terraces when we Keano bags his hat-trick. King Ledley, who has been saved for our next crucial 10 days will not be played because of the cold. He flew out with the Tottenham crew but the temperature will reek havoc with his gammie knee. He’s not even out training with the squad. Instead he’s working on his own in a private, heated gym with a tartan blanket over his legs, a hot water bottle under his arms and a cup of tea in his hands. No game for our captain but an episode of Countdown to look forward to by the sounds of things.

With Safety First still out as well, it’s going to be Woody and another. Personally, I’d go for Big Bad Tom but Younes Richards is always an option. Sun Block Hutton is cup-tied, which is a same because he’s probably the only player that’d thrive in the arctic conditions. He’d probably play with his shirt off and ice cubes strapped to his nuts if UEFA would let him. Instead, of course, we’ve got Bonders but get this: we’ve got to play Lee on the left! Why? Because Gilberto is injured.

We’ve got four full-backs; we buy three more and still we’ve only got three we can chose from out of the seven. Still, if there’s one position that worries me least it’s full-backs. They’re nice and out of the way and even a journey man can make his name there. God forbid we should ever go back to the strikerless late Hoddle era whenever Keano got injured.

Speaking for strikers, after years of waiting, Tomas Pekhart has his chance to shine against the very club from which we bought him. When I say “chance to shine” I mean he may make the bench; the pitch might be a big ask on first appearance but, well, you just never know. He dreamt he scored at the Strahov Stadium (right next door to Slavia) for Spurs and I’m a big believer in such omens where football is concerned.

Pekhart’s been a bit of a naughty boy in the press, though, revealing that Robbo refused to warm up when he wasn’t picked to start in at the New Library in the Carling Cup. It’s not really a big deal and no major surprise that England’s No.None threw a strop after all the stories we heard but doubtless the kid will be receiving some kind of internal reprimand in case next times comments are a little more serious, Damian Comolli likes to black up and run around the Lane pretending he’s Ledley King for example.

What the press have really got hold of today, rather than us playing football, is the one we’ve heard before about the new diet for the players at the club since Juande and fitness coach, Marcos Alvarez, arrived. This has all been sparked up again after a radio interview with Alvarez in Spain talking about his genuine shock at what he saw in the White Hart mess hall. He said:

“The truth is, the first buffet I saw, I took photographs of it because it was very interesting. Lots of sauces, a lot of cakes, chocolate muffins, a box full of sweets.”

Sounds great. I’m imagining some kind of Willy Wonka scene of chocolate fountains with Tom Huddlestone as Augustus Gloop and Little Aaron dressed up like an Oompa-Loompa.

“We realised straight away that the team was carrying excess baggage. I made a very simple comparison with the Seville team that we had been working with and, taking into account the size of the players, the team was basically 100 kilos over.”

One hundred kilos, so that’s around 16 stone. That’s actually not that much. There’s around 30 players in the first team squad, so they only had on average 7 pounds more each, but let’s face it, most of them were fine. Ten of that excess 16 would have belonged to the Man Mountain and that only amounts to 2% of his total body weight. He loses a stone every time he nips one of Bungle’s fingers off at the knuckle. The rest would have belonged to Robbo who never quite shed the pounds after he came back one season all lardy. All the same, the squad has lost 50 or 60kg since and the plan is to turn the rest into muscle.

So, the press have focused on this rather than the game tonight against a worried opposition who may be a little rusty from a mid-season break - although I fear this could be a rouse. They’re barely interested in the story of two of our players returning to their previous clubs, our potential advance to the last 16 of European competition or the fact that we played these guys and beat them last year. So, instead enjoy the difference in subtlety and witt between the papers:

Spurs’ hunger was not a recipe for success - Guardian

Who ate all the paella? - Independent

Still too fat - Mirror

I asked for a car, I got a bagel. How’s that for being born under a bad sign?

The Bagel.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 14th, 2008 at 8:59 am 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.