Progress Towards Perfection

Category: Football

  • He’s One of Our Own, or are all Professional Footballers Money Hungry Assholes?

    He’s One of Our Own, or are all Professional Footballers Money Hungry Assholes?

    It’s been four years since I added something to this blog. The fact that the last post was about a player seemingly wanting to leave Tottenham, the same subject of this new one, may make it seem like I am flaming with anger right now. You might think that I’m ready to start replying to Harry Kane’s social media accounts with sweary rants. Maybe I’ll boo his every touch for the rest of his career.

    That’s not how I feel. In fact I’m not actually that bothered. I’m not angry at him, I’m just disappointed.

    I said it in my Danny Rose blog, I don’t begrudge any football player wanting to move clubs for more money or for a better chance at silverware. Harry Kane has given a lot to Tottenham Hotspur, and he doesn’t owe us his loyalty. What he does owe the club though is the respect of fulfilling the contract which he chose to sign.

    The main person to blame in this current situation is Harry Kane. He signed a six-year contract with a team who are best known for not winning anything. Nobody held a gun to his head. Signing a six-year contract at any team is a bold move. He choose to do that. And yes, Spurs have regressed in that time. The club haven’t matched his ambitions in terms of performance or investment. But they don’t have to. The deal was they would pay him a wage and he would turn up to train and play. One side of the deal have kept their end of this bargain. The other side of the deal have burned the bridges with the fanbase who have defended him for years.

    As football fans we project our own love for our club onto the players. We want every player who pulls on the shirt to love that badge the same way that we do. The truth though is that even when that player is a fan themselves, they are swayed by their own needs and desires. We got suckered in to it all. The Roy of the Rovers story. The youth academy boy done good. He became the best striker in the country, the second best striker in the world (maybe the best depending on how you feel about Lewandowski). He became captain of his country. He was one of our own.

    I fucking loved that fairy tale. Very few fans in football will ever get to experience what we have with Kane. It was proper football magic. And now it’s ruined. It doesn’t matter what happens now, it will never be quite the same.

    When the Gary Neville interview leaked back in May I said that Harry Kane wouldn’t be leaving. I stuck by that every time the subject came up. And for the record, I still don’t think Harry Kane will be leaving Tottenham. It’s a depressed market right now, and nobody is willing to pay the asking price. With three years left on his contract there is no real pressure for Tottenham to sell, and lord knows that Daniel Levy has a lot of work to do to rebuild his own bridges with the fans. Selling Harry Kane right now is not going to help that cause.

    If Harry Kane wants to leave and Manchester City want to buy him, that is fine. City can pay the asking price. They are set to pay £100m for Jack Grealish so based on their own value we can open negotiations at £150m. Nut up or shut up.

    I don’t know how Harry Kane thought that no-showing training was going to play out. Maybe he thought this was a power play? I don’t believe it is. It will get Sky Sports talking, sure. It has also irreparably harmed his relationship with the Tottenham fans. Football fans are fickle. If he stays, we will cheer when he scores, but no longer is he one of our own. He’s just another mercenary being paid £200,000 a week. Some fans may forgive easier than others, but for me he’s now just a Tottenham player. I always had this image of him as a hard-working, down to earth guy. Somebody that understood our love for the club. He may well be those things, but the lack of professionalism, more importantly the lack of respect is annoying.

    No player is bigger than the club. Remember Hossam Ghaly throwing the shirt down on the pitch? To me that is less disrespect than what Kane is showing the club. He’s paid to attend training sessions. Not doing so is disrespect. It’s disrespects the club, the fans, the manager, and his teammates. I’ve seen talk of this gentleman’s agreement but what is a gentleman’s agreement? Does it somehow supersede your contract? Does it fuck.

    And if we want to talk about silverware, how about the three cup finals he has played in for Spurs? I don’t think it’s fair to point the finger for losing those games solely on him, but it’s not unfair to say that his performance in all three games was pretty underwhelming. Success or failure is not purely on one player, but he is an integral part of the team that has failed to win anything.

    Tottenham fans stood by and defended him through a lot. That embarrassing mess when he insisted he touched the ball to get another goal on his tally? A bit pathetic really, and maybe telling of the man, but at the time we stuck by him. As the diving creeped into his game? We stuck by him.

    What price is a fair one for Harry Kane? City will argue that £100m is fair for a 28 year old with repeat ankle injuries, Tottenham will argue that £150m is fair for a talismanic player who simply cannot be replaced. No matter what the fee, Spurs will be weaker without him. The power here is with Tottenham. There is a lot of time on the contract. City can use their sports washing bloody money if they really want him. Otherwise Harry, get in training and start doing your job. It’s pretty simple.

    I don’t believe he will go. If he does, then fine. I’ve seen great players leave before. A year or two ago I’d have been hurt at the idea of Kane going, but now I’m genuinely over it. He’s not the same Harry Kane to me any more. And if he stays, I will clap when his name is on the team sheet, I will cheer when he scores, but the love can’t ever come back. There’s no going back. He’s not Roy of the Rovers. He’s not one of our own. He’s just professional footballer Harry Kane.

    When Dane Scarlett breaks through, somebody remind me not to fall quite so hard for the narrative next time. Remind me not to put my hopes and my emotions on him. But you know what? I will, because I love my club and I want the players to love it, and respect it, too.

    COYS

  • Danny Rose, or are all Professional Footballers Money Hungry Assholes?

    Danny Rose, or are all Professional Footballers Money Hungry Assholes?

    So first thing this morning my thoughts could be summed up as “Fuck Danny Rose”.

    Let’s start by being honest, nothing that was said in that interview was news to anybody. Tottenham are a club that have bucked the trend of exorbitant wages for professional footballers. We’ve long avoided extravagant spending in the transfer market and instead make an effort to sell players to cover the cost of new signings.

    It’s important that I start this by describing that I consider myself a very rational football fan. I’m not one of those who will slag off every player who leaves for another club. Football is a short career and I don’t begrudge a player leaving for more money or for a better chance at trophies. I didn’t begrudge Berbatov, Modric, or Bale leaving (though all three could have handled their moves in far better fashion).

    Some fans would love for our club to go wild and start making marquee signings and paying wages comparable to those of the Manchester clubs. That’s fine but that’s not what I want my club to be. I like that, for the most part, we have not become another part of the broken football financial machine. The entirety of top-level football is based on the false economy of clubs either running at continual losses or having their spending underwritten by billionaire owners (let’s not waste our time pretending that Financial Fair Play is in any way relevant).

    More than anything, having had time to take it all in and gather my thoughts, the thing that annoys me the most is the timing of the interview being published. This coming out mere days before the first game of the season has been done for no other reason than to generate bullshit football media headlines and, in a more cynical thought, lay the groundwork for Danny Rose to leave the club (something that I don’t think will happen this season, for the record).

    The fact that Danny Rose shares an agent with Kyle Walker should be a strong hint as to where some of the influence in all this is coming from. “Here, Danny, look how much Kyle is earning now!”

    Is Danny Rose capable of earning more money based on his performances the last three seasons? Certainly, but let’s keep in mind that he was happy signing his current deal less than a year ago so you’ll have to excuse me for not having a lot of sympathy if the man feels he is worth more. I know that if my employer offered me a new contract which I felt was significantly worse than what I deserve I would turn it down.

    At Spurs, we are in a very difficult position where any signing we make would have to be real world-class quality and therefore probably involve breaking our current wage structure, or it needs to be a player who is happy to play second choice to a Kane, an Alli, or an Alderweireld. Fans have complained on twitter all summer about the lack of signings but who do we really want to bring in? I know that I’d rather us sit back and sign nobody than for us to splash money on another Moussa Sissoko.

    This brings me on to Rose’s comment about not wanting the club to sign players that he as to google. I suspect this was more of a throw away humorous comment but it’s worth remembering that anybody wondering who Danny Rose was 10 years ago would have been googling him. Dele Alli when he signed for the club had made a good number of appearances for MK Dons but let’s not pretend we all knew about him and what he would become. We have a manager in Mauricio Pochettino who has a proven track record of significantly improving the performances and form of players in his squad, and for the most part has made good signings that have benefitted the team. If our next signing requires me to google his name I’ll keep my faith in Poch to help assure me it was a good move.

    Oh yeah, Danny Rose wants us to sign Ross Barkley. I’ve never been against this move but it’s not something I’d like to see us put too much money into. He’s been a very inconsistent performer for Everton but maybe consistency is exactly what Poch could give to him.

    The long and short of this is that sometimes professional football just fucking sucks. The system is broken and flawed and there are no signs of it being addressed anytime soon. So we as fans have to make the most of what we can. Perhaps as a Tottenham fan that means accepting that this current squad now has its days numbered and that in three seasons time Danny Rose, Toby, Kane, Dele, Eriksen, and Lloris will all be playing for other clubs and all we will have to show for this period will be a second place finish and some great football to remember. You know what? I’d prefer that than for us to become the next Leeds and piss money away into the wind at the potential detriment of the club’s future.

    Without some foreign oligarch taking over, not something I want by the way, we’re unlikely to ever be able to seriously compete with the silly-spending clubs of the world. This summer, if nothing else, has taught us all that transfer fees are now meaningless in terms of valuing a player and instead just show how much money there is in the game following recent television deals.

    A friend of mine pointed out to me on twitter last night that “Palace, West Ham, and Watford are now paying more in wages and transfer fees than us”. You know what? Let them. We’re building a new stadium, we have a squad that most teams in the world would be envious of, we played (in my opinion) the best football in the country last season. Maybe this year we will go and win something, more likely is that we’ll flirt with some form of success and miss out as that is the Spurs way but I’m not sure I really care. I find myself loving the club and the players more than ever each game regardless of whether there are medals and trophies at the end of it. I’m enjoying football and that’s what, in the long run, I really care about.

    To steal some words from the legendary Bill Nicholson “There’s no use being satisfied when things are done wrongly. I want perfection.” Similarly, I would find no satisfaction in us risking our financial stability for large transfer fees and massive wage bills. I want perfection. I want a club that lives within its means, and who knows maybe with a few seasons at a larger stadium under our belt we might just have the money to do that and still balance the books.

    Oh yeah, and fuck The Sun.