Beef Bagel

To say there’s little to gain from today’s game would be an understatement. There’s a five point gap in front of us and a five point gap behind us and unless we win and West Ham not only lose but also get points deducted for masquerading as a proper football club, we ain’t goin’ nowhere.

Motivationally it’s going to be a tricky one - not just for the players. I find myself speaking to LB and catching myself saying phrases like “We don’t have to watch the football”. Criminal. I think The Bagel must be suffering some sort of post-traumatic stress disorder after Wednesday’s shoot-out; a denial of the pain perhaps. But trust me, the minute I see the first Lilywhite emerge from the tunnel at Eastlands, my bpm will up by 100 and my adrenal glands will kick into overdrive. It’s not about the points, it’s not about our league position. It’s about going out there and beating other teams; showing them and us that we’re better, that we’re going to kick them into the ground.

According to Safety First, Michael Dawson: “Every game we take as seriously as the last one,” which is fine if the last game is PSV but it wouldn’t exactly bode well if we were talking about the West Ham game. No particular offence to the Hammers but if your team don’t take it seriously, how can you expect ours to?

Today’s opponents aren’t exactly going to be full of beans themselves. It’s been a sluggish slide for Sven’s Men down from the giddy heights of the CL spots to ninth in the table. Eleven points off Everton in the only Uefa Cup spot, bar a late run, it looks to be a fruitless campaign. If that’s not enough of an invitations, they’ve got no Richards, Petrov is suspended and Richard Dunne faces a late fatness test.

We’ve beaten them at Eastlands already this season - with ten men I might add - so we’ve nothing to be afraid of except our own lack of arse and with Juande’s words ringing long and loud in Tottenham ears, we’ve a decent chance of some spirited play. After all, according to just about every bored newspaper hack, there’s an end of season clear out at the Lane this summer.

The latest player to be singled out in this alleged cull is the original pace dwarf, Little Aaron Lennon, sparked by Ramos’s exclusion of the man with the go-faster-stripes in his eye-brows from the starting XI of the game in Holland. Has it occurred to anyone that it just wasn’t the right kind of encounter to play a mini-winger? PSV kept it tight, physical and the likes of their captain, Simmons, spent most of the game kicking our players about the park - not what I’d call a Lennon-friendly encounter.

But, if we must indulge the whims of the Mirror, rumour has it that he’s good to go to the tune of 10 big ones. Sure, the guys not the world’s best crosser of the ball but, you know what? He doesn’t have to be. Juande’s got the kid cutting inside a lot more than he did under MJ. The plan is to get him to the by line on the edge of the area and pull back a rolling cross to one of our forwards. It’s got us a hell of a lot of goals this season. I can see the frustration from the fan’s point of view and it look like that’s al the Mirror’s done as well. We want the kid to skin his way into the box and beyond with a bee-line to the goal but he’s not that kind of player. Fine perhaps no the winger of Tottenham future but still a damn good footballer and not one to sell unless we’ve already replaced him. Ten mill? We could have got twice that a year ago.

The good news is we may just hang onto Dimitar the Great. I’m such a sucker for these stories. Juande reckons he’s persuaded the world’s favourite Bulgarian to stay put at our cup winning club - go on say it aloud, it feels good - and whatever else is going on for Tottenham it gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling inside to know that we’ll be watching Dimi’s shimmies for a few years to come. Fingers crossed there’s some truth in this one.

Finally, and most ludicrously of all, some clown got it into his head that we’re after Robert “Filth Chops” Pires and asked him how he felt about that.

“Is that a joke?” said the diving, cheating, filth-bag cheat diver; a for once he and I agree. ”They can ask but I wont play for Tottenham,” which comes as a relief to all connected with our club and the groundsmen at Bill Nicholson’s cemetery who would have had to pat the earth back down beneath which the Tottenham legend would have been spinning.

As for today, we’re looking good apart form a Kingly absence and the perennial hole left by Gareth Bale and his golden left foot. Come back soon you little Welsh wonder. Enjoy the game.

I see dead bagels. All the time…..

The Bagel.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 16th, 2008 at 3:34 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.