Tag Archives: tottenham hotspur

Ange learns Tottenham have “a loser mentality fanbase.”

2 Replies

“What will be will be”.

When I read that before the game it bought everything into clarity to me.

We were not reliant on a favour from Spurs, nor were Spurs going to help us win the league. This was just another game in a marathon of games to determine who the best team in the Premier League were. And in the end the result was what most of us were expecting.

Uninspiring Spurs

Spurs did not really turn up for the game, but this has nothing to do with them downing tools due to the title race situation

Since Ange won London Manager of the Year, Tottenham have played 12, and won just 5. They went into 2024 in the title race, with many online experts claiming they would run Manchester City all the way. They have collapsed in 2024 and the league table since 1 January has them 8th.

It was not their choice to put in an uninspiring performance against City. They are just an uninspiring team who embarrassingly celebrated beating Sheffield United at home back in September like they had won the league.

Whilst their fans celebrated like the winners they are not, yesterday’s defeat was their 5th in their last 6 games. They have dropped out of the title race, failed to finish top 4, and might drop out of the European places all together.

Ange is quickly learning why Tottenham are such a failure of a team. Their fans have a loser mentality.

Over the last 30-odd years, the biggest success for Tottenham fans is Arsenal not winning a trophy.

Whether that was 95, 99, 00, 06, 2011, 2019 or 2023. Tottenham have had so little success in the last 3 decades that they resort to celebrating our failure like it is their victory. And it was no different last night.

Whilst their fans celebrated losing a game at the final whistle, Ange Postecoglou was seething. There is a clear separation here between their manager who wants to win things, and their fans who are more interested in Arsenal not winning.

Tottenham fans may well have been celebrating into the night. But once again they were celebrating their another teams failure rather than their own success.

Tottenham are an uninspiring team with a loser mentality fanbase.

Magnificent City

Last season the narrative was that Arsenal had bottled it. That we had fallen off. What City had done in the 2nd half of the season went unnoticed – To clinch the title they went on a 12 game winning run, and won 14 from 15. It is form that would win the title in any year. Except this.

With Arsenal chasing them all the way, City have had to up their game to yet another level. They are on an unbeaten 22 game run, winning 18 and drawing 4. Zero losses. You need to praise that sort of form (regardless of the charges).

City are not top of the double because Arsenal bottled it, nor are they top because Spurs rolled over and let their bellies get tickled. City are top because they deserve it.

Brilliant Arsenal

The 18 games City played before they lifted the title in 2022/23, City’s form read: P 18 W 16 D 1 L 1. It is that form that won them the title.

12 months on and our form is eerily similar – P 17 W 15 D 1 L 1. Beat Everton on Saturday and we would have showed the exact same title winning from that City showed last season.

Arsenal’s form in the second half of the season has been exceptional. The only difference being our run started with 18 games to go, City’s with 23 games.

In the last 17 games, we have shown the form that would get us the equivalent of 102 points. Over the last 22 games our average drops to an equivalent of 86 points, whilst City’s maintained at 100.

What we now need to do is put together a full season – the first half of last season and the second half of this. But ev en that will not guarantee a title as Liverpool showed when they got 97 points and still finished second.

I am still very very proud of what they boys, and Mikel Arteta, have done this season. We have pushed City closer than last year, stayed in the title race longer, and all whilst playing Champions League football.

But proud does not win you trophies, and that is the next step for this Arsenal side. We do not want to become Spurs under Mauricio Pochetinno who celebrated just competing and never won anything. We are The Arsenal and we need to win trophies.

And it is not over…

A lot of people will be writing our obituaries today. But the title race is not yet over. It still goes down to that last game of the season.

I do not expect West Ham to get anything from Sunday’s game. They are nearly as bad as Tottenham with just 2 wins from their last 6. They have collapsed in the last dozen games and their European hopes have diminished and manager set to leave in the summer.

But where there is hope there is the potential of glory, and I will still be going Sunday with a little bit of belief. Not much, but a little.

The odds are against us. Not since 1989 has a team starting the last day top failed to win the league. But then we all know what happened that year.

UTA

Keenos

Latest injury for long term Arsenal target “means a move is now highly unlikely”

Leave a reply

Is everyone have a zen morning? No Arsenal yesterday, so was a chilled Saturday made better by that Tottenham result.

It does not seem long ago that Arsenal were losing at Fulham, and social media was awash with Spurs fans claiming that they were I the title race and Arsenal would struggle to make top 4.

Three months on and we sit top of the league, whilst that lot up the road are 5th.

Media darling Ange Postecoglou is now being exposed as being the average manager we all knew he was – it is all well and good pointing to his achievement in Japan and Scotland, but the English Premier League is a different kettle of fish.

Spurs fans really have overhyped an average manager and average players. I saw one put out his combined Arsenal / Spurs 11 and it contained just 3 Arsenal players (Raya, Rice and Saka).

Despite Tottenham conceding 18 goals more than us, he had the entire Tottenham back 4! Sergio Romero and Micky van de Ven are basically FIFA pace merchants, and they have a pair of full backs that can not defend.

Yestersay’s defeat has Arsenal 11 points clear. By my math we probably only need 3 more wins to ensure St Totteringham’s Day returns again!

All flights and hotels are now booked for Munich. Anyone else on the 11:50(ish) out of Heathrow on the Tuesday, flying via Frankfurt?

I picture and entire plane of people getting off at Frankfurt, then doing the internal change to Munich. They might as well leave us on the plane for an hour grounded, re-fuel and continue the journey.

I see that Ivan Toney has once again spoken about his desire to leave Brentford this summer. The more the fella speaks the more I do not want him.

Yes, saying he could go Real Madrid was tongue in cheek. But when a player is constantly talking openly about the door being open to depart in the summer you have to question their mentality.

Toney should be concentrating on playing football, scoring the goals that would keep Brentford in the Premier League and secure him a spot on the plane to Euro 2024.

Clubs these days care as much about character as ability, and I imagine everytime Toney speaks, another Head of Recruitment ends up wiping his name off the whiteboard. My bet is he will end up at Tottenham or Manchester United. They are the sort of clubs that will be desperate for a striker regardless of character.

Another one we will unlikely move for this summer is Pedro Neto.

I like Neto, but have never been fully on the hype train. He always came across as inconsistent and his injury issues worried me.

The Portuguese winger has now been ruled out for the rest of the season. His injury record does not make pretty reading.

One reason why we are top of the league this season is due to having a squad that has remained fairly fit.

We still have a handful of players (Tomiyasu, Zinchenko, Partey) who cannot be relied upon. But on the whole we have avoided losing key players for any length of time.

If we are looking to recruit another winger, it has to be someone who is able to stay fit and ready to be called upon. There is no point spending £50m on Neto, only for him to miss half the season injured.

Neto has been on the clubs watch list for a few years now, and we were close to launching a bid for him a couple of summers ago. Injury stopped us progressing our interest back then, and his latest issue means a move is now highly unlikely.

Enjoy your Sunday. I am off to the tip to get rid of some old tyres!

Keenos

Tottenham stadium builders contracted until November

12 Replies

As each day goes past, another story hits social media about the major issues at the new Tottenham Stadium.

We blogged at the back end of July that the stadium would not be ready until October at the earliest. The blog got a lot of abuse from Tottenham fans who claimed that we were jealous, bitter, and asked how did we, as Arsenal fans, now more then them about the state of the stadium?

The truth is that it does not matter what club you support to know the state of play of a construction site if you are within the industry.

A Spurs fans at University in Reading, for example, would know less than an Arsenal fan who recruits construction workers to the Tottenham Stadium project, or a Sunderland fan who has been operating a tower crane on site for the last 2 years.

We blogged in July that the stadium would not be ready until October, but it took the club until August to release the information to the fans. Up until that point the company line was “only Fulham will be at Wembley”.

In fact, there were rumours circulating in March that the stadium would not be ready until after the second international break (October) at the earliest.

It is here where Daniel Levy needs to hang his head in shame for the way he has treated Spurs fans – which all club rivalry aside has been a disgrace.

He knew when season ticket payments were due that the stadium would not be completed before the season started. He knew that it would not be ready for Liverpool – their second home game of the season. He knew that there was a chance that the ground would not even be completed this year.

And yet he oversaw the club telling the fans a story, a fallacy, and selling the countries most expensive season tickets based on this. He took money off hard working football fans knowing what he was selling did not exist.

There have been reports that those who bought cooperate boxes are set to be refunded 50% for the 2018/19 season. Normal fans are getting a game by game refund and then having to buy tickets at Wembley. The excitement of returning to the Lane has been diminished.

Fans have been lied to, and Levy is now hiding behind “health and safety” as a justification for the stadium not being completed. To try and avoid points deductions. To prepare his defence against angry fans miss-sold season tickets.

Part of the reason is Health and Safety, but this is not the only issues. The reality is, the stadium is no where near finished.

As every day goes on, you hear more stories from more people involved in the project about problems on the stadium:

  • Slingers (operatives who direct cranes for lifting operations) refused to take work onsite.. Management were demanding slingers to undertake dangerous lifts. After a recent death in London, slingers are refusing to undertake the danger lifts. They are getting sacked. Problem is there is so much work in London, and so few slingers out of work that no one wants to work there. Lifting operations literally ground to a halt at times.
  • There was a well documented problem with the seats where 15,000 of them were injected with the wrong dye. These are still being replaced.
  • The poor weather earlier this year put the project back two weeks as they were unable to get the roof on.
  • When tested, the fire alarm system failed. The entire system requires re-wiring. As it had been plastered over and the walls finished, these need to be ripped out, re-wired and then made good. This was discovered 2 weeks ago. It is expected to take 4 months to complete.
  • The wrong lines were reportedly installed for emergency telephones; fibre optic was used instead of copper.
  • Ultimately, people just do not want to work there – it is a highly pressurised job and operatives are being coerced into working long hours. Its location is also reducing the worker pool as people will not commute. London is so busy at the moment that you can pick up 10-12 hours a day in Central London where the site is more relaxed, slower. Agencies are struggling to find anyone to fill the skills gap.

There have been plenty of reports across social media of electrical companies having their contracts extended to Christmas. Of Northern based tradesman who have been put up in digs being told to expect to still be here in 2019.

Tottenham are reportedly trying to put all the blame on Mace, hiding behind Health and Safety in order to justify playing at two home stadiums this season. But they installed themselves as Project Managers so knew every step of the way of the problems the project faced.

The truth is the stadium was never going to be ready.

When construction began, everyone in the industry knew that they were trying to complete a 30 month job in 18 months. It was always an overly ambitious deadline driven by greed.

Something like the weather early this year is not their fault, but when you are working to such a tight schedule you can not afford a 2 weeks delay.

Spurs should have been honest and realistic 12 months ago. Hired Wembley for 2 years and ensured the new ground was completed on time. Sold season tickets at Wembley and ensure the project was completed, with safety certificates, for 2019.

Instead Levy was driven by the greed – or need – for the stadium to be completed for the start of the 2018/19 season. Spurs needed the income to cover spiralling costs. The problem they now face is they do not have a stadium ready, and costs are still spiralling.

The project will end up costing over £1bn, and I would be surprised if they play at the new ground this season.

Keenos