leffe186

Could be even worse, we've got two bloody keepers on the bench. Again. eh? That makes absolutely no sense. I see Woody is back on the bench. Third time this season I think. I know Gomes was doubtful for the game, but still.

Could be even worse, we've got two bloody keepers on the bench. Again.

Can't do Arsenal for obvious reasons. I actually no longer care about who of the others wins, as long as it isn't spread around too much (and Liverpool don't win). Part of me wants City to win this year, because it will be a bit meaningless. Unlimited money?

Just out of blind curiosity, where are you from originally and where did you live in Scotland? I live in Ohio now, was born in Oz and grew up in London....but I lived in Scotland for a few years.

Agreed. There's definitely a little bit of kindred souldom in there. The issue I have with the Chelsea point though, is sure, that might be a 20M payback, but they just spent over 70M to do so. When their operating loss is 70M. We might sell Bale, but the idea that this covers our losses from not qualifying for the CL is misleading - like most clubs since Leeds we simply cannot budget to get into the CL. We've got to treat the CL money as a bonus. Two of the top four have bonkers money because they've earned it, and the other two have bonkers money because it fell into their laps, and that means that they can essentially spunk whatever it takes. The gap cannot be bridged, unless us or Everton do a blinding job of getting a new stadium, or Newcastle, Liverpool or Villa do a blinding job of rebuilding their squads. Even if that happens, we'd need the new financial regulations to hit hard. Villa are the one club of the four that have a sugar daddy, which might help them out.

OK, I'm going to defend London here. London has an awful lot of people living in it who come from outside London. It also has an awful lot of people who really don't care about football, for example, a huge rugby-following community in the South-West London. It has a few thousand people who support Barnet, a few thousand who support Orient, a few thousand who support Brentford etc etc. AFC Wimbledon had 3400 supporters at home to Southport, people who could have gone to several other better clubs within 10 miles on that day. Gateshead had less than 1000 turn up when they played Wimbledon. I'm not saying that people from Gateshead are necessarily glory-hunters if they support Newcastle of course, but your average Londoner will not necessarily be more of a glory-hunter than anyone else. Of course you'll see more different shirts here, because there are shit-loads of people here.

I agree, and I think your club should be rooted in a community that lives and breathes that sport. It's easy for me though, because I supported my local club, one that my Dad had supported before me and one that many around me supported as kids. And they were pretty good. The difficulty is - and the Carroll saga is obviously why we're all navel-gazing - in many cases the sport has moved a long way from being rooted in its local community. Barcelona is particularly rooted in its community because of Catalonian identity and the Franco years, Newcastle is particularly rooted because it is the only club in the city, is physically rooted in the centre of the city and there is a strong local identity. People are often attracted to that if they don't have that outlet in their own lives - if they don't have a local football team or reject theirs for another reason. You can tap into that community feeling so much easier nowadays through t'internet. There have been enough posts over the last couple of days from people who questioned their own loyalty because (a) their club's owner sold their best player or (b) that player may have rejected his community for money. Neither would matter if they felt that the team was strong enough to deal with this. Ultimately I think that the thing that hurts most is if there is a transition to a point where someone else is "bigger" or "better" - that they can take players from you despite everything seemingly stacked in your favour simply by throwing great wodges of money at you. That bloody hurts. If you're a plastic fan, you get to avoid that feeling. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I feel uncomfortable condemning someone for their choice of team precisely because I had no choice. That's not something afforded to everyone. If I was born where I live now (a small university town in Ohio) how would my football team be able to choose me? The Crew are all well and good (and I actually go to see them fairly often) but they are still about 150 miles away. How rooted in that community am I?

The difficulty is, if you come from a country where there are no local football teams or all you see are Prem/la Liga games, how will the team choose you? I always find myself rooting for one team when I watch football, even if I know absolutely nothing about the team. Maybe that's the same for everyone. For the record, I never like Barca (despite the fact that I really should for historic reasons) because I once saw a UEFA Cup (or was it Cup-Winners?) game against Villa in the 80s when they were unspeakably dirty, cheating bastards. One game was all it took. You can try to generalize about US sport, but just look at Cleveland. Haven't won anything in ages in any sport, but some of the Cavs fanbase is rabid. Then you come to the Browns, widely and fervently supported. When their club was taken away they managed to essentially get it re-started from scratch. My Italian club was Milan as a kid - absolutely no idea why but when they were fucking brilliant in the 80s I felt great. Was I a glory-hunter? No idea. I'm lucky in that my father was taken to Spurs by his Uncle Cyril as a kid, then he took me and we were close enough to walk to the ground. I'm proud of that, but am also proud of any Spurs fan who chose us (poor bastards). It's the old dichotomy, if you're from, say, Cleveland and are a Spurs fan then you're a brave, thoughtful man of taste. If you're an Everton fan then you're a misguided plastic.

I think that gurantee is invalid tbh. You think wrong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height#Average_height_around_the_world Hmm, some interesting findings with that. Yeah, not least that people seem to self-report their height as taller than it actually is.

I'm with you on this, even as a Spurs fan. You know that you're never going to leave your club whatever happens, but I despair of the game sometimes and this is one of those times. A club that has an operating profit of minus 70M pounds (which is still its best performance for years) just spent more than that amount on two players, allowing another club to spend far far more than we've ever spent on two other players. Both are clubs we're supposedly in competition with, but what kind of competition is that? Yet you still get dickwads like Vincent Kompany trying to tell me that it's good for English football, that "You want to have a competitive league and big spending attracts the top players." f*** OFF. Said this already and can't be bothered to type it out again. The one thing I would say, though, is that the fans of almost all clubs bar the top 5 or 6 have had to come to terms with this kind of thing for far longer than us. How have Southampton fans dealt with Bale and Walcott leaving? Even Spurs had the Carrick and Berbatov moves. I realize that they hadn't come up through our ranks (Sol Campbell, anyone? Wayne Rooney?) but they were the centrepiece of teams that were going places until a bigger fish came and threw money at them. I moved to the US two years ago, and it all looks even more unseemly from over here. I've been a fan of Spurs for over 30 years now. All along, it's been down to us fans to maintain the facade of tribalism, clubs rooted in their community, clubs that mean something more than the cut-throat businesses (yet beholden to the vagaries of fortune) they've always been. It's been a hard job, and I'm tempted to say screw it, send Man U, Man City, Arsenal and Chelsea off to a European league and be done with them.

I'm with you on this, even as a Spurs fan. You know that you're never going to leave your club whatever happens, but I despair of the game sometimes and this is one of those times. A club that has an operating profit of minus 70M pounds (which is still its best performance for years) just spent more than that amount on two players, allowing another club to spend far far more than we've ever spent on two other players. Both are clubs we're supposedly in competition with, but what kind of competition is that? Yet you still get dickwads like Vincent Kompany trying to tell me that it's good for English football, that "You want to have a competitive league and big spending attracts the top players." FUCK OFF.

Psychological assessment?

Nothing tips like a cow.

It is paltry. It's a f***ing laughable amount. It's just not though, "in the current climate". Bent went for 18M rising to 24M, and Suarez for 23M. You can discount anything Chelsea and Man City pay as it's come from a limitless piggy bank. If he'd said that it was a paltry amount compared to your valuation then fair enough, but if Suarez goes for 23M then it's a reasonable amount to offer for Carroll.

I'm a moany old bastard right enough, but the last thing the Premier League needs is for Abramovich to go bonkers again. With Liverpool, Newcastle and Villa turning themselves round I could see next season being cracking, but if things carry on as they are the Top four will be miles ahead.

That's probably the best outcome TBH, try the track for a few years and reconsider if it really is terrible. Spread the cost of changes to the stadium as well. Would be a bit rough on Spurs, basically saying we were right all along. I'm a bit miffed by some of the stick Spurs have been getting - not on here but from people like Coe and several journalists. It's not as if we made the promises about an athletics legacy ourselves, or designed the bloody thing in the first place. We've just said we're interested, this is our plan and we reckon it's the most viable one (though we would say that). I'm backing the mighty O's.

My suspicion is that they'll go with West Ham, then a couple of years down the line - when the layout hasn't worked - they'll rip up the track anyway.

Well Spurscommunity has fallen over, so maybe something really is happening.

Agree, made a thread on it a while back. I did have some sympathy for it, but it's now distorting the lower divisions too much as well. Loaning in the same division is patently wrong, there just doesn't seem to be much need for debate there. I'd say no loans (in) allowed for the Prem (unless you have two keepers injured), one per team for the Champ, two per team for Divs 1 & 2. Maybe restrict it to Under-23. Those are pretty arbitrary restrictions, but what the hell. I actually think the transfer windows are a good idea, but the Leagues need to tear up the loan system and start again.

Damn, and I was hoping that Abramovich was losing interest. That's the top four locked in for the next million years then.

no chance. studio says 45% BBC possession stats are always wildly unreliable. Someone once said that they are based on what the commentators think.

You were saying?

Mint.

I'm watching you, watching this, if that helps. It's on delay in the US.

The last couple of games I remember when I came on here and you guys were so negative you won.