Triffic Tottenham – Spurs News Blog and Forum

Following yesterday’s Chelsea game Harry Redknapp talked about his central defenders after he was down to his last fit pair in Michael Dawson and Sebastian Bassong and even Dawson himself has just returned from a 3 month lay off.

“Michael did well. It’s his first week back and I had to play him.

“I was hoping Kaboul would be fit, Gallas did his hamstring on Friday, so we had to throw Michael in. I was worried he wouldn’t last the game and you have to be careful. He’s done great, a fantastic competitor and an amazing fellow.

“Kaboul could be back next week. I don’t know when Gallas will be back. He stretched for the ball and felt it tear.

“We’ve coped okay whoever has come in. Luckily we’ve got plenty of centre-halves who’ve done well.”

Harry then talked about Tottenham club captain Ledley King and a possible return. “Ledley is improving and he might be back soon.

“We have a date for Ledley to have an operation. The surgeon is available until December 23 but is then away for four weeks so we have to make a decision by then.

“He’s coming on well. If he feels okay we will not operate. If he has to have it, it will be five weeks. But he’s feeling good.”

So hopefully either Kaboul or King is fit for next weekend, even to just go on the bench because if something happens to Dawson or Bassong we have nothing left.

You will have to forgive me for this one because I know primarily we are a Tottenham blog but I just want to discuss the Newcastle situation at the moment.

Chris Hughton, done a fantastic job in his first managers position since leaving Tottenaham. He steadied the ship and got the team playing again as a unit, they worked for each other. The players loved him and the fans recognized what a great job he had done. Chris took Newcastle United back up to the Premiership where they looked comfortable in mid table but that twat Ashley wanted a big name manager in and was waiting weeks for Newcastle to lose another game so he could sack Hughton.

Anyway so Mike Ashley wanted a big name manager in so what does he do? he appoints Alan Pardew! Come on that is an insult to Chris Hughton, he has done a better job in his short time as a manager than Pardew has his whole career. To be fair to Pardew I thought he done a decent job at reading then I thought he was a bit harshly treated at West Ham but come on what has this bloke ever done that warrants sacking Hughton and replacing him with Pardew. I might be able to understand if it was Jose Mourinho who replaced Hughton.

I am sorry to all you Newcastle fans, you have been through a lot the past few years but Ashley has got it wrong and I think you all know it. I will poke my eyeballs out with a rusty spoon if Pardew is successful with Newcastle but I can really see this upsetting things again and I can really see that eventually you will slump down the table again.

Your chairman is an embarrassment to football, he doesn’t have a clue and he doesn’t listen to the fans and most of all he has disrespected Chris Hughton who has done a great job and replaced him with a pony manager. I think it tells its own story when you see the small number of people who turned up to welcome Pardew to the club compared to previous managers. Us Spurs fans know how you feel, whenever we lost our managers we used to end up with David Pleat.

Once again I feel for you Newcastle fans, things were starting to look up for you, hopefully they still will but I am not so confident anymore. You deserve better than the chairman you have.

I normally love watching the latest act of idiocy on Tyneside, be it calls for a “boycoutt” or another fumbling screw-up from Mike Ashley.  I hate the ongoing media love-in over the Geordies and their football, the way we’re always being told we “don’t understand how much football means” in the North East, and I enjoy watching them being taken down a peg or two. But the sacking of Chris Hughton has absolutely appalled me, and not just because of Hughton’s Spurs past. It’s such a ridiculous decision that I can’t help but be outraged, and for once, I really do feel sorry for Geordie fans, who had thought there was finally some stability and pride back at their club, only to see the chubby purveyor of jockstraps who calls himself their owner needlessly ruin it all again. And their obvious confusion and anger sent me on a trip down memory lane to our own dark days of “we want our Tottenham back” misery. Haven’t heard that sung for a while. Remember singing it at Leyton Orient before going absolutely mental when Gary Doherty scuffed an injury time winner? God, we were pathetic.

Football is a fickle game, and as we cruise into the CL knockout stages, we should remember one thing – until very recently, we rivalled Newcastle as the biggest circus in the Premier League, and one day we probably will again. Right now is an absolutely sublime time to be a Tottenham fan, and we should enjoy it while we can.

Just in case you’d missed it, take a look at Pot One for the upcoming Champions League last 16 draw:

Schalke 04, Manchester United, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Chelsea, Real Madrid, Shaktar Donetsk, Tottenham Hotspur.

There we are, one of an elite eight clubs at the pinnacle of global club football. It’s what we’ve been waiting for, for years and years and years. Who would have imagined it that day on the terraces at Brisbane Road?And yet I’ve noticed that some fans seem to have already started taking it all for granted.

Against Werder Bremen a couple of weeks back, I was stunned to see fans leaving in large numbers well before the final whistle. We were about to qualify for the Champions League last sixteen, having never before been in the competition at all, and yet people thought beating the traffic was more important  than clapping the team off? Are we already so infected with “Big 4” arrogance that we can’t appreciate what we’re seeing, and give this side the love they deserve?

This season has seen us come from behind to beat the Scum away, destroy the reigning European Champions at the Lane, witness one of our players become one of the most talked about midfielders in the world, top the Champions League scoring charts, break records and set Europe’s top club competition alight. It is, to borrow a phrase, Schoolboy’s Own stuff. Let’s make sure that the atmosphere at the Lane reflects that, and let’s think very, very carefully before we bitch about anything, because before you know it we could be appointing Alan Pardew.

*UPDATED*

Here is the final list of who we could face in the knockout stages of the Champions League.

In this round we can’t face any English teams neither can we face a team that has won their group, it has to be a 2nd place team from another group.

Eight of the 16 teams in the draw – those that won their sections in the group stage – are seeded, with the eight runners-up unseeded. The runners-up are drawn first and play the first-leg matches at home. They cannot be paired with either the winners from their section or clubs from the same association. The draw will be on 17th December.

1) Lyon (Runners up group B)

2) Valencia (Runners up group c)

3) FC Copenhagen ( Runners up group D)

4) Roma (Group E)

5) Marseille (Group F)

6) AC Milan (Group G)

7) Shakhtar Donetsk (Group H if Arsenal top the group after tonight)

So who would you fancy and who would you like to avoid?