Kuytinator 9000! Scourge of both penalty boxes, scorer of MASSIVE goals!
What a comeback. Generous of Torres to miss a cast-iron chance of his own, just to make Robinho feel a bit better. Skrtel’s going to be missed if he’s out for long, athough I suppose it’ll give Agger a chance to rehabilitate. Don’t want him sold in the January window, so a run in the first team might be ideal.
Tottenham’s plight, meanwhile, is just too funny for words. As for Hull, they go third. Yes, third. Top stuff.
My flabber is gasted.
2-0 up and we fucking lose it in typical City fashion.
The ref was a wanker and I’m pretty certain he had a Liverpool scarf wrapped around his balls.
Torres? …oh him…right 
Plus that bastard Kuyt
So what is Tottenham’s real trouble? Is it possible that Juande Ramos isn’t cut out to manage in the Premiership?
Spurs have sold Robbie Keane and Dmitri Berbatov since last season, a partnership responsible for 46 goals. The replacements haven’t performed well. The club operates a structure whereby the manager reports to a sporting director, viz. one Daniel Comolli, and I’m not sure how much influence Comolli had in the signing of these new players.
Tottenham’s predicament cannot be entirely the fault of Ramos.
/me does a happy dance!
/me also considers pointing and laughing at chowder but thinks better of it as it’s a long season. 
For those of you that could actually watch - was the sending off a red card or one of those things that’s going to be talked about for the next week?
No clue what the spurs were thinking in getting rid of their top players, but I’m sure they’ll come around in…oh…about three weeks.
I don’t think it warranted a red, on the other hand the “foot up” by Skrtel did.
Then again I’m biased
At least I’m happy for a change. 3 points away from home at a London side will do nicely.
Zabaleta went straight through Alonso’s ankle with the studs up - there can’t really be any complaints. If Alonso’s foot had been grounded he’d have been looking at a broken ankle. Didn’t see the Skrtel incident (I still haven’t trained my family not to call during MOTD, unfortunately).
And I’m not biased. It’s everyone else. 
I’d still back Spurs to come good (well, good enough to avoid the drop). People are carping about Modric being too delicate for the Premiership, but I think he and Pavlyuchenko will turn out to be decent purchases in the end. Playing Bentley at right back was pretty funny, though, as is the suggestion that Terry Venables is being lined up to replace Comolli. Yeah, I can see el Tel forming a brilliant working partnership with Ramos. Who wouldn’t want that wideboy looking over their shoulder?
Hey, I just noticed we get a version history when we edit posts now. Was that always there? Awesome feature, even if it hardly ever gets used.
What I still don’t understand is why Spurs sold Keane and Berbatov.
OK the money I guess but jeez these guys were 2 of your best players, how many goals between 'em last season?
There was no way they could hold on to Berbatov, and they got far more than Keane was worth IMO. Viewed out of context, they both look like sound bits of business, and could probably have been conducted as such. What they fucked up was the handling of the sales. Holding out until the 11th hour on Berbatov may have netted them an extra couple of million, but it severely compromised their ability to find a decent replacement. The Keane sale on its own might’ve been fine, but as it was, compounded the Berbatov mistakes.
We’ve had the “director of football” argument here before, but what’s plain to me is that Tottenham’s specific setup is completely fucked. When selling players, you have someone responsible for whom money is everything (Levy), meaning sales are handled with little thought for the footballing side of the club. And when purchasing, you’ve got someone in control (Comolli) who doesn’t have to work with the players he buys and who doesn’t have to take the media stick when they fail to perform. So the incentives are to make bank balance-enhancing sales as late as possible, leaving a disinterested DOF with very little time to make purchases he doesn’t have a huge stake in anyway. The rest, as they say, is really stupid history.
I think the problem is the management, not the coaching. They have managed to make a cock-up of the start of the past two seasons, last year by waiting until the season started to undermine and then ax Jol, and this year by letting the whole Berbatov/Arshavin mess linger right up until the transfer deadline. Spurs have been an unmitigated disaster this year, its true, but what exactly was Ramos to do with his best player sulking and with one foot out the door and no decent replacement on hand?
I’m in the States so I’ve only caught about 4 or 5 Spurs games so far, but from what I’ve seen, Modric may indeed be too small to be successful in the Premiership. He gets run the ball a shocking amount of times. With such a mediocre group of strikers the midfield needs to do more to carry Spurs and so far it just hasn’t happened.
Not sure I subscribe to the “Modric is too small” theory - Fabregas is no giant, and while Modric is possibly not in Fabregas’ class, I do think a bit much is made of the physicality of the Premiership. It may well take a bit of getting used to, but I don’t think there’s any insurmountable barrier to smaller players succeeding. After all, it’s only been seven games in an unfamiliar league, in a club undergoing severe problems. His size didn’t stop him sticking it to England in the Euro qualifiers…
(Mind you, England would get relegated if they were a Prem side, so this may not be the best argument ever.)
All of this is true, but at what point do we have to expect that a really good coach could manage to coax a few more points out of the team? I mean, are they really the worst team in the Premiership?? So far, their results would seem to argue they are exactly where they deserve to be.
Someone step up and offer some evidence that Ramos is a decent manager?
Well, a little bit of their run is down to bad luck - ace though Hull’s win over them was, they were a bit unlucky not to come away with the points (even my housemate the Hull fan agrees with this). This still wouldn’t have put them in great shape, but it might’ve restored a bit of confidence, something that’s sorely lacking.
Evidence for Ramos at Tottenham is thin on the ground. He certainly injected a bit of morale into the team on first arrival, and his increased emphasis on fitness had an initial effect. But he’s hardly had a settled team to work with at any point; he came in mid-season last year and managed a run to win the Carling Cup, but his off-season preparations this year have been rendered all but useless by the transfer shenanigans. You can’t just transplant an entire front line and expect the team to gel from the first match of the season, yet that’s the hand he’s been dealt. Like I say, I’d back them to find some sort of form by Christmas, assuming he doesn’t get sacked. If they’re still playing like cack at that point, then we can start saying there’s coaching problems, too.
For solid evidence of his skills you’d have to look to his record at Sevilla, which almost brooks no argument. Delivering back-to-back UEFA cups, the domestic cup and regular top 6 finishes is a formidable run for a team that was out of the top flight as recently as 2001, and not one that was bought with unsustainable spending, either. Sevilla really did not want to let him go, and with good reason.
Reasons why that might not translate to England? Well, his English still isn’t great, so it’s possible he’s not established a good rapport with his players. I don’t know though, that’s just a guess, and he has Gus Poyet on hand to smooth that side of things. Any way you look at it, though, Tottenham have sacked one good manager (Martin Jol is going great guns at Hamburg) and replaced him with another, achieving only worse results. It has to be time to point the finger elsewhere, IMO.
I think this is it. When you combine this off-season’s transfer nonsense, waiting until last season started to undermine Jol, and baffling acquisitions like Boateng and Taarabt, its time to question what is going on in the front office before blaming a coach with a sterling C.V. That said, I agree with DSYoung, a top manager should have been able to grind out a result at some point here. Perhaps Spurs haven’t beaten my optimism out of me yes, but I think that they will turn things around soon. Then again, I was saying the same thing 3 weeks ago. 
…after the international break.
Torres is out with his stupid hamstring which shouldn’t bother us against Wigan, but I’m already fretting about Chelsea.
Owen’s out as well, which should turn the joke that is Newcastle into an actual laugh riot.
Arsenal’s hurting and I’m not so sure they’ll do well against Everton; Ballack (and likely Droghba) is out for Chelsea but that shouldn’t hurt them against 'Boro; and it’s a battle to the bottom for Stoke and the Spurs.
Think Aston Villa and Pompey could be the most healthy match of the weekend? :eek:
I’m in the company box today for Bolton vs Blackburn.
Prawn sandwiches anyone? 
I predict Chelsea might win by a reasonably large margin today.
Don’t look at my post time, please.
I don’t know if I can take this season if it carries on in this vein. Don’t think we can ship a lead to Chelsea and count on coming back, though.
That’s the third match in a row someone has been sent off for a foul on Xabi Alonso, incidentally. Weird.