I pride myself on being a bit of a film buff and as such I concur to the popular theory that its rare to find a sequel that is as good as the original..There are exceptions of course:
The Dark Knight was better than Batman Begins
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Superman II is definitely better than SupermanThe Empire Strikes Back is quite simply the daddy of sequels, although I’ve never succumbed to the populist view that the Godfather Part II is better than the Godfather
But most of the time the sequels reek of gashterontitis.Look at the entries:
Jaws 2 better than Jaws, I think not…Grease 2 might be a cult classic but its also shit.The Lion King 2: Simba’s pride was so bad it never even made it to the cinema, despite the Lion King being possibly the greatest animated movie ever madeMore recently Iron Man 2 anyone???Spidey 3??Honey 2 without Jessica Alba??? Actually Honey was shit, it just had Jessica Alba in it. Obviously I’ve never watched it, I just heard about it…anyway moving onAnd of course the worst of the lot the Matrix sequels….
Everyone knows this, you’re always tempted to go back, but the head tells you the magic has gone, things just aren’t as good the second time around.Are Spurs at that crossroads again?
We have our erstwhile hero a certain Bulgarian, who according to popular theory has a mum who washes windscreens at the Bounds Green crossing of the A406. He made the grim journey from the bright lights of the glorious capital to the dark and dingy North. He traded his place at a club that values Style over Substance, and loves players with a bit of swagger to one where they expect their players to work hard and dig in.
To be honest in many ways you can’t blame him. Manchester United at the moment are the biggest draw in English football and probably will be for the foreseeable future. In fact we knew he wanted out after his first season, but here was a player so good that he even made Robbie Keane look half decent.However Dimitar Berbatov is an indictment of what the advent of the Champions League has made football, if you’re you may have a minimum of two seasons to reap the benefits of your decent players before the predators come snapping at your door. Invariably the player will want a move because understandably they want to be playing football at the highest level.
The new footballing food chain dictates you can either offer extortionate wages or CL Football or a combination of both. Unfortunately for Spurs we could offer our hero neither and he left. However it was the way he left that grates, the obvious contempt he showed for the club. He refused to play for us apparently, he alienated his team-mates, all to force a move to Manchester United. Now he wasn’t alone to blame for the whole sorry saga, Daniel Levy’s brinkmanship in getting top dollar for Berbs meant that we came up the last day of the transfer window with £30.75 million in the club’s coffers but in exchange for Berbatov ; we also got Frasier Campbell on loan. Wow, seriously just Wow.
I live quite near Leyton Orient’s football ground, the day the whole Berbs saga was going on, Spurs had a reserve game at Brisbane Road, walking past the ground I saw Ricardo Rocha ( remember him?) standing outside the Super O’s stadium, dressed head to toe in Spurs training gear, he obviously had been subbed at Half Time and had enough, he looked pretty disconsolate. As I walked past to him, we exchanged glances and I said to him
“Its alright Ricardo I know how you feel, Up the Fucking Spurs eh?” and shrugged my shoulders, he gave a knowing nod and went back to his own thoughts. It was a dark day for Tottenham Hotspur, let there be no doubt. Levy deciding to try and palm him off to Manchester City rather than United just showed the sheer pettiness of the man at the helm of the club. Whilst Berbs was to blame for his lack of loyalty, Levy’s failure to understand that a football club is more than just a healthy balance sheet caused as much of a problem, his brinkmanship meant we had no adequate strike force and were rooted at the bottom of the table with 2 points from 8 games before Harry came and saved us. Its amazing how harry is so modest about that achievement of course, never heard him mention it..not once, honest.
But despite all this Berbs shat on us, from a massive distance. Could he have shown some loyalty to the club that gave him his chance, quite possibly yes. We were on the cusp of greatness and he threw the club into crisis.I remember going up to Old Trafford that season for the away game against United, and it was noticeable that the home crowd were booing him. Even this season when he started like a house on fire for them, he never quite seemed to be loved.
Lets be honest a fit and firing Berbs would be an asset to us, he’s better , far better than any of our current strikers. But he would come back a humiliated man, who thinks he owns the joint. He certainly isn’t that player any more. I liked him but I never loved him, not like I loved Freddie Kanoute, who incidentally if he hadn’t been discarded by Martin Jol, would have ensured that we went into the CL in the lasagnagate season.But Berbs betrayed us, why should we offer him an escape route, if indeed that is what he’s looking for.Why should we if United want Modric take him as a makeweight?
And let’s not forget the tale of the ex, the sequel, the downtrodden hero returning to Spurs for one last payday before being put down has run its course too many times for my liking during the Premiership era without much success
Yes Jurgen may have saved us from relegation but it wasn’t the same as when he illuminated us for that single season in 94-95Teddy, wanker numero uno in my book, came back when he was practically creaking and pouted his way through two rather underwhelming seasons with us.Robbie Keane, who we somehow managed to get rid off to Liverpool, came back and last about 2 days before we shipped off to Scotland and then West Ham and now god knows who, my money is on QPR though.Peter Crouch- need I say more
Arguably the only successful buy back was Jermain Defoe and we ended up paying over double what we sold him for!So I don’t want Berbs back, firstly because he’s a Grade A Wanker in my book and secondly because I just don’t think he’d be that good. Harry needs to be more creative with his chequebook, Levy needs to stand up to Fergie and those comical looking owners at Manchester United and tell them to do the Foxtrot Oscar back up the motorway.
Just touching on the Luka saga, that a lot of Spurs fans are getting into a tizzle about. This is what Levy said on the last day of the season“We have spent years and hundreds of millions of pounds investing in our First Team squad and in creating a settled team. Having quality players means they automatically attract attention from other clubs – but I can assure you that we have no reason to sell, and every intention of retaining, our key players. We shall simply not entertain any approaches for these players.”
There is nothing United can do, Luka is on a long contract. If he is sold, Levy has to go with him, its that simple. Besides Clubs don’t sell to rivals clubs in the same league to strengthen them, it just ain’t done when you are in our position.
So in summary yeah we need a striker but lets not belittle our club by getting the grumpy one back again.Its gonna be a long hard transfer window, lets hope our owners have the balls to deal with it.
