The Benty Bandwagon

On a night when the controversial departure of fans favourite Robbie Keane was finally wrapped up, what better tonic for the faithful than a 4 goal super-show from the player who must be about the most under-rated member of the Spurs squad.

If Darren Bent was looking to send a message to the fans and the manager then he could not have picked a better time to do so. Granted a hatful of goals in a pre-season friendly against Norwich does not make him the messiah, but if he continues in this vein then the departure of "Mr. Tottenham" may not be the catastrophe many seem to believe it is.

I have always been a big fan of Benty. Here is a man that arrived for a club record £16m and may have rightly expected to have been a major player for the team. Instead he has hardly been given a fair crack at nailing down a regular starting berth - not due to a lack of talent, but because dislodging a partnership as fruitful as the Keane/Berba one is a difficult task.

Yet he has not complained, not released snidey comments and veiled threats to the media, he has not pestered his agent to start touting his services and has even turned down guaranteed football elsewhere if recent reports are to be believed. Instead he has got his head down, worked hard and done his best when given his chances. How refreshing!

I think many Spurs fans are too quick to write this guy off as a waste of money. He has the potential to be a 20 goal a season man and is a natural for the lone striker role in Ramos' 4-2-3-1 formation as he will thrive on the service that 3 tricky attacking midfielders could provide.

I for one was very excited by the new look team. Dos Santos looks set to be a huge favourite at the lane (did you see his backheeled nutmeg on 67 minutes???) and with Modric and Lennon also buzzing around the edge of the box and Jenas roaming from deep it could be another season of we're-gonna-score-more-goals-than-you football. I can't frigging wait!

So, although the Setanta cameraman seemed obsessed by shots of a relaxed and suspiciously happy Dimitar Berbatov (maybe he's trying to change his image!), last night was about Darren Bent.

Well don son, now go do it against Arsenal!

The Sorry Story of Younes Kaboul

When Spurs signed Younes Kaboul last summer he was roundly touted as "one for the future". Fans who are usually quick to criticise were told to give the lad a chance to develop and the usual cliches about a young player in a new country were brushed off and served up on internet message boards around the community. Wise words indeed, young players, particularly defenders should be given time to grow. If only someone had bothered to tell Younes.

With the ongoing saga of Ledley King's fitness Mr. Kaboul got several opportunities to show why he was so highly rated. He showed glimpses of why the French U21 coach made him captain and looked strong, comfortable on the ball and not lacking in half a bag* of pace.

*bags, I think you'll find, are the unit by which pace is measured.

The only snag with all this is that Younes Kaboul, upon being thrust into the Premiership limelight, decided that he was by far the best player ever to grace our hallowed turf and figured that he would play defence, midfield and maybe even a striking role too if he jolly well fancied it - much to the chargrin of his defensive partners.

Nonetheless BMG stuck by him, even though we never won a single game in the league when he played. All was well with Younes until that fateful night against Getafe when the cuddles dried up and the Spaniard took over.

"I played the entire first half of the season but since the change of manager, I have not played," said Kaboul whilst kicking the floor in a huff.

"Ramos has not really given me a chance. When a player doesn't have the confidence of his coach, he can't do much on the pitch. But when a coach has confidence in you, you take the handbrake off and you race away." said Kaboul, welling up a little.

"I have had no explanation from him. He doesn't talk with anyone. Communication doesn't exist with him. He isn't playing me? That is his choice - I respect it, I am a professional." said Kaboul, by now choking back floods of tears.

What he failed to mention was that between Jol getting sacked and the first of March, Younes Kaboul featured in a further 19 games for Tottenham. Now here we are on the cusp of a new season, with all those old corners turned and nothing but a straight road to glory ahead, but Younes doesn't want a part of it. No sir, his feelings have been hurt and the damage has been done. How very dare we make him endure a few games on the subs bench, a player of his quality too!!!

Nope, he wants out, he's had enough of this treatment and has been gazing lovingly toward the outstretched arms of 'Arry Redknapp and the might of Portsmouth Football Club. Except what's this on the fax machine? Roy Keane of Sunderland is interested in taking him up North as part of the buy 3 get one free deal running at the Spurs shop this week?

Laugh? He damn near shat himself!

Younes was so sickened by the thought of moving to a club of Sunderlands stature that he couldn't even be arsed to comment, instead he left it to his agent:

"Younes wouldn't join Sunderland even if there was an earthquake."

Now, quite what the relevance of this might be is unclear. I for one would like clarification as to when natural disasters started to influence the decisions of football players. Would he perhaps join if there was a tidal wave? Or what about a plague of locusts, would that be reason enough for him to pen a 4 year deal?

Anyway, the noble agent assures us that Kaboul has "more interesting options than Sunderland." which is hardly groundbreaking news, "he would prefer to have his chance at Tottenham rather than moving to Sunderland." and there you have it - who said loyalty was dead?

Younes Kaboul is a decent enough player and I would quite like to have seen him as part of the 4 central defensive options we need. Given time, quality coaching and a well paced integration he could even have been a long term replacement for the King, but I just get a feeling that "Younes knows best" both on and off the pitch and for this reason I think we are banging our heads against brick walls with him.

The problem is Younes, that until that fax machine starts whirring again you are a Tottenham player. You may yet be on the bench at WHL next year and any more of this bollocks, combined with one or two dodgy performances and the boo boys will have a field day with you. Then my friend, Sunderland may suddenly become a very attractive proposition after all.

Spurs Stick Two Fingers Up At Members

In this modern era of football one cannot really be naive enough to believe that business savvy is not equally as important to big clubs as their on pitch efforts, but it strikes me that Tottenham Hotspur have a very special disregard for their supporters.

There are two things that have tipped me over the edge recently, first of which is the frankly pathetic members package I received in the post the other day. I swear it wasn't that long ago that I was paying £28 for the privilege of being able to buy a ticket before the public could, and in reward for this investment my club would send me an assortment of goodies including quality pens, scarfs, clocks and car stickers (OK, most of it was good anyway). Regardless of whether I need these things, it showed me that Tottenham Hotspur appreciated me. My Spurs clock still sits on my work desk today and the pen from a couple of years ago travelled the world with me as a prized possession. I may be a sentimental old fool but I like this crap.

This year, the price of basic membership has topped £40, and what I got for that is a bloody joke! My face was a picture of disappointment when I opened my eagerly awaited package to discover a DVD/CD ROM that looks suspiciously like the one I got with my application pack, and a poxy pin that is identical to one they sent a couple of years back (what exactly am I supposed to do with this pin?). On top of that Tottenham refuse to cap the number of members so that the benefit on purchasing early tickets gets more tenuous. I seem to have to be logged on at 10.01am on the launch day to get tickets for any opposition of reasonable quality, and God forbid I get that ticket and then Spurs change the match date a week before the game to a date I can't make - don't get me started on that one!

And so the price goes up, the deal gets worse, nobody complains (or if they do they are ignored) and Tottenham get away with it. I'm not even going to get into ticket price hikes vs on-pitch success...

The next point is this: Why do football clubs completely disregard the views of their members when it comes to transfer policy. Obviously I'm not suggesting we hold a referendum over every aspect of running the club, but I reckon if you asked 100 supporters whether we should sell Berbatov, 99 of them would say no. I can't believe the board doesn't know this.

The manager doesn't want to sell, the fans don't want him to leave and yet here we are on the brink of shipping our best player off to one of our Premiership rivals. Don't give me this bullshit about him wanting to leave and that "you can't keep an unhappy player"- utter twaddle. Somebody could easily remind him that he is under contract and that unfortunately Mr. Berbatov, you are going nowhere son.

He hardly seems to me like the type to go on strike, and so what if his value plummets by half next summer, or he eventually walks out on a free? If selling him costs us a Champions League spot it is a false economy. Berba is the perfect player to be up front on his own in Ramos' rumoured 4-2-3-1 formation. He holds a ball up brilliantly and has sublime vision with which to bring the attacking midfielders into play. I don't care who we sign, Dimitar Berbatov is irreplaceable and, having funded his original transfer, the fans have right to watch him ply his magical trade for the duration of his contract - if we so desire.

And yet the board hear the cash register ring with the quick profit of Mancunian dollars, the money burns a hole in their bank account until we panic buy someone in mid-August for a fraction of the price and the fans views continue to stand for shit.

I thought we were supposed to be part of a CLUB. I will support Spurs until the day I die but I want to feel like a member of that club. I want to feel like everyone who coughs up their £40 (or more) is part of Team Tottenham and together we are working towards success, that somehow we are more valued by the club than someone who's support runs to donning last seasons shirt and turning on Sky Sports One. (I'm not saying those people are worse fans, just that... well you know what I mean!).

At the moment I feel like I am a customer of Tottenham Hotspur Plc, not a member of Tottenham Hotspur FC. Why is 90% of the correspondence I get from my "club" junk mail trying to sell me stuff from credit cards to ludicrously expensive photo albums? I am not adverse to Spurs making money out of us, I just think it's about time they thought about how they could give us a little more value for it. The problem is that the board have a bigger responsibility to the shareholders than they do to the members.

I don't think it would be too much to ask to expect the following for my £40:

• A return to decent gifts!
• A cap of 50,000 members (exluding season tickets) - or at the very least a tiered system that allows basic members with more loyalty points access to tickets before others
  
• FREE season ticket waiting list entry to all members who want it, with those who have more loyalty points getting priority
  
• A complete no questions asked refund on tickets if the match date is changed
• A return to an online booking system where I can choose my exact seats
• FREE THTV accessible via my online account (this may even pay for itself with the extra site traffic generated)
  

The reality is that unlike our money, our views are not important to those in charge. They have the luxury of brand loyalty to an extent other industries can only dream of, and those running Tottenham Hotspur Plc are experts in how to exploit it. Perhaps if we got to vote for our President, like they do on the continent, Mr. Levy would give us a bit more consideration...

The Signing That All Spurs Fans Wanted

In what could well be the best bit of news Spurs fans hear all summer, The Sun, in it's infinite wisdom, are today reporting that Pompey have signed Liverpool's Peter Crouch for £10m. The word is that the lanky target man will pen a 4 year deal - as soon as they can find a table tall enough for him to lean on.

Taking £20m in cold hard cash for Robert Keane is one thing, but a deal for half (or less) that amount with Crouchie as a makeweight would have had me crying into my beer wondering why Tottenham had undone all their good closed season work in one disaster-deal.

Now, if I am being 100% fair I do concede that The Beanpole does get a bit of a tough rap when it comes to his reputation. He's not a bad player, well he's better than me anyway. Fans will point to his record of 14 goals in 28 international appearances as proof that he is world class (even though they conveniently forget that this includes 4 against Caribbean opposition and strikes against other footballing powerhouses such as Andorra, Macedonia, Hungary and Estonia).

Although mostly a bench warmer for the Scousers, he has popped up with the occasional goal, and the cliched moniker of "quick feet for a big man" seems to have been invented for him. He does have an eye for a pass sometimes, and is decent in the air (obviously) but I think that's where the praise ends - unless you include his robot dancing, which in this writers opinion could have been one of the greatest signature goal celebrations in history if he had persevered with it.

Apart from his obvious lack of pace there is one crucial reason why having Peter Crouch in your team is a bad idea, and that is due to it being an easy option to suddenly resort to the long ball when things aren't going so well. Dawson already believes he is capable of 60 yard Hoddle-esque clearances and having someone 10ft tall to aim at would only encourage him. I for one don't want to watch that for the last 20 minutes of every game for the next 4 years.

So all in all this is a good news day. I very much doubt that Keano will be allowed to go to Liverpool, but at least now we can rest easy in the knowledge that if the unthinkable does happen, it will not result in a double slap in the face.