Tottenham Hotspur

Sixer’s Soapbox: Spurs add to an already cruel February

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It may be a taxing time for Harry Redknapp, but Pete Sixsmith sees his Spurs team show Sunderland exactly what you need to be a Champions League team.

T S Eliot (not a renowned football fan) wrote that “April is the cruellest month”. For Sunderland fans, replace April with February and you have a truism if ever there was one.

February sorts out the teams who will and the teams who won’t. Go into March top of the League, be it FA Premier or Northern, and the chances are that you will finish the season there. Ditto at the bottom.

Hit a slump in February and you can wave goodbye to a top six finish – it happened in 2000 with 2 points out of 9 and again in 2001 with a similar return and with an FA Cup exit thrown in.

This year we have played three games in February and have lost all three. We have scored some good goals, played some neat and tidy football – and have defended like Stockport County on a bad day.

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Steve Bruce: on not learning our lesson

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Mrs Logic

Who’d be a defender?   Forwards make mistakes, midfielders make mistakes, but when the defence is at fault, there’s no hiding.  As a former defender, Steve Bruce had comments on our failures at the back that raise some interesting questions …

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SAFC v Tottenham: Quinny knockdown inspires Sunderland winner

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Mrs Logic

Spurs fans heading for tonight’s game may like to read this Tottenham preview, but not this piece about transfer speculation. Sunderland fans worried about my headline – will it prove a hostage to fortune? – can be reassured that it refers to a contest already won …

Salut! Sunderland said a couple of weeks ago that it would award a prize to the writer of the best comment posted between then and now.

Monsieur Salut is delighted to announce that we have a winner.

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West Ham v Spurs: two Olympic winners

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Olympic Stadium from the DLRBen Sutherland


Jeremy Robson normally has little time for Seb Coe and cannot bring himself to doff his cap and address him as M’lud. But he agreed with old Seb on the best future for the Olympic stadium and is delighted that the right result seems on the point of being announced …

What a load of hot air and waste of time!

It would appear that the Olympic stadium which is likely to cost somewhere around 565M GBP has been granted a stay of execution. It will not, after all, be razed to the ground when the shadows of the Olympic torch lengthen.

In fact it is more than a mere reprieve: new life will be breathed as a result into a grand old lady of English football, dressed in a traditional frock of claret and blue.

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Tottenham Hotspur ‘Who are You?’: forgetting past glories

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Football fans come in different forms. Jim Duggan* has formidable knowledge of and deep love for his club, Tottenham Hotspur. He runs an impressive website, www.topspurs.com, and looks forward, not back to the Spurs golden era, despite powerful respect for the Spurs “holy trinity” … but wild horses wouldn’t drag him to the Stadium of Light for Saturday’s game, and he doesn’t get to WHL these days either. None of which stops him having some strong views on his team and the game generally …

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Son of Durham, star of Spurs and Burnley: Ralph Coates RIP

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Image: Tottenham Canadian Supporter’s Club

Technical issues may have prevented this smashing tribute by Jeremy Robson being as widely seen as it deserved. Ralph Coates, who died a week before Christmas after suffering a stroke, was one of the great Durham-bred footballers who made a mark away from the region. He was a man in the mould of Jimmy Armfield, grateful for the career and life his skills had given him: “When I was playing, our wages reflected the era – I was on nothing like the £30,000 a week that today’s top players can earn, but I lived comfortably and was not looking to see if I had the money to pay the next bill when it came through the post.” …

The internet provides instant access to information about any subject.

Or at least so it seems. It came as a shock at the start of the Spurs v Newcastle Utd game when there was a tribute to Ralph Coates, the former Burnley, Spurs and Orient winger who had recently departed. I hadn’t heard the sad news of Ralph’s death even though he had passed away on Dec 17, aged 64.

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Ralph Coates: honouring one of the best players we never had

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Fans at more than one ground gave him a one-minute silence on Tuesday. Now Jeremy Robson, in far-off Canada, pays tribute to a player who came from Durham mining stock and ought really to have played for Sunderland, but instead joined what was then an exodus of talent from the region to follow his trade elsewhere …

The internet provides instant access to information about any subject.

Or at least so it seems. It came as a shock at the start of the Spurs v Newcastle Utd game when there was a tribute to Ralph Coates, the former Burnley, Spurs and Orient winger who had recently departed. I hadn’t heard the sad news of Ralph’s death even though he had passed away on Dec 17, aged 64.

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Tottenham 1 Sunderland 1: ducking and diving

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The photo shows the penalty box aftermath of David Bentley’s booking for a dramatic dive (‘appy ‘arry reckons it was a blatant penalty so we must be on safe ground in saying the ref got it right). What follows is Salut! Sunderland‘s attempt to fill the absent Pete Sixsmith’s large boots …

The heavy burden of duty, and the idea that nothing’s too good for a lad who grew up in County Durham, has led me to some fancy dinner tables.

Master chefs at establishments from Raymond Blanc’s Manoir aux Quat’Saisons to the Emirates Palace have seen to it that I have been served the finest food and wine.

Last night, it was small cod and chips in a cardboard container along the Tottenham High Road after horrendous acquaintance with Tetley’s Extra Cold in The Ship, a pub I could swear used to stock drinkable beer.

Even so, I had the fear of a born pessimist that this £3.99 culinary experience (the “beer” was another £3.20), and the honour of being interviewed by BBC Radio Newcastle by phone on surfacing from Seven Sisters station, might be the high points of a tough evening. I have not seen us win at White Hart Lane and didn’t really expect my luck to change.

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