Peace of Mind

And if all you've got to do today is find peace of mind
Come here, you can take a piece of mine.
You could be taking it easy on yourself
You should be making it easy on yourself

- Catatonia, Road Rage

Tottenham have sacked Juande Ramos, and replaced him with Harry Redknapp. They also sacked first team coaches Gus Poyet and Marcelo Alvarez, and director of football Damien Comolli. They don't do things by half-measures, do they? And this is Daniel Levy's explanation for all his machinations. 

Redknapp is a very good manager, but one who's better known for saving relegation-bound sides than for creating championship-winning sides. I suppose it's recognition that Tottenham should shelve those "Top 4" plans, at least for a year, and concentrate on staying in the Premiership. And I can just imagine Redknapp rubbing his hands with glee at the amount of horse flesh he gets to trade in January. 

Sorry, got a bit side-tracked there. 

I've been in Budapest for a couple of days now. It looks surprisingly old for a city that only boomed in the late 19th century. It takes a while to appreciate it, especially after you've been in well-scrubbed places like Vienna and Prague, but it's interesting. There's a "lived-in" kind of feeling to it, from the faded neon signs and the graffiti on the buildings, to the way the grime and soot covers everything from elaborate fin de siecle facades to Stalinist Lego block buildings.

There are a lot of things to do in Budapest. There are caves under the hills of Buda, limestone caves that are the most extensive in Europe. The Turks extended the ones under the palace to turned them into a labyrinth of cellars and dungeons. There's a room in the castle with a fountain than gushes wine. There's this thermal bath near Heroes Square. There're bars and cafes and bakeries that are cheap, and a pub crawl that offers unlimited shots for around $12AUS. 

But I'm exhausted. It's quite worrying how tired I'm been since Berlin. I think I'm going to have to take a leaf out of Cerys Matthews's book and step down, sit back and try and find my peace of mind. We're playing West Ham in a few hours. In a little while, I'm going to step out and find a pub to watch it. And a train ticket to Brasov for tomorrow. 

Bentley's all grown up

"Hopefully they want to see characters. They don't always go just to watch the football, they'll come to abuse me. I'll get the banter but I'll enjoy that. You don't to have a boring life as a footballer. If you don't get a buzz off that's probably where you fail."

- David Bentley, anticipating his first north London derby

David Bentley gets off on abuse.

I don't have that kind of personality and I must admit, I've always admired people who have. It must take a great deal of self-belief to listen to all those insults and just laugh it off as good fun. Then again, I guess a footballer's wage helps cushion the ego.

Bentley's done the obligatory "I've been a life-long supporter of X" interview, but something about it rings true. Bentley doesn't seem like a guy who would suck up for the sake of sucking up. He sounds like he's really, really looking forward to shoving it up us Bentley-detractors. He wants to show us that he warranted a place in the Arsenal first team when he was younger, and he wants to show us what we've been missing.

It's going to be really strange for all parties. David Bentley was hailed as the next big thing at Arsenal, and I'm sure spent a lot of his teen years anticipating future matches against Spurs. He would've imagined lining up with Henry and Cole, Cesc and Reyes, and being part of a dominant Arsenal side. He would probably have expected to be a first-teamer for England, as well. Back in the early 2000s, all that would've been a distinct possibility.

It's gone a bit pear-shaped since then.

Well done to Bentley for making the England squad, for forging a Premiership career and for signing for a reasonable sized club. He's always had the talent, and he's making the most of it now. I'm not sure about everyone else, but I regret his departure. I wish he'd waited at Arsenal, because he would be a quite handy player to have around. He's probably not as good as Nasri, but less injury-prone than Rosicky and better than Walcott.

Tottenham have a lot of creative players now. Bentley, Giovani dos Santos, Luka Modric, and possibly Arshavin and Pavlyuchenko, give them quite a threatening side. And Ramos is a very good manager who's had six months to observe how English teams play. So it'll be interesting to see how they'll go next year.

Are We Tottenham In Disguise?

I read a comment on CaughtOffside the other day that was quite disturbing. We're taking pride in the way we play, rather than the results. It's a bit complacent. We're a big club in England, and we should be aiming for trophies, not appeasing armchair asthetes.

It's Tottenham-esque.

I admit I'm falling into this trap as well. Our thin, callow squad is so frustrating that it's easy to think that results don't matter, and that beautiful tiki-taka football is an ends to itself. It's a lot easier on my heart than to lose 0-1 to a Middlesborough because we're rubbish at set pieces.

However, the object of professional football is to win things. That should be the primary objective. Asethetics and style should be secondary. I remember Rijkaard saying that Barcelona plays the way they play because they think it's the most effective winning strategy. That should be our mindset as well.

Kudos to Wenger for having a vision and sticking with it. It takes a lot of guts to dismantle a side that's been very successful and rebuild based on youth. And he's pulled it off before, and shown that he CAN perform minor miracles. But it's a bit frustrating when he's sticking to his vision at the expense of the primary objective - to win stuff.

To an outsider, we were so close last year. We ran out of steam because of our thin squad and lack of inexperience. And if we'd done something in January, we could've been champions. And now, we're back where we were last year - thin squad, good players leaving, and shitting ourselves because there's no light at the end of the tunnel.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that Wenger should pull his finger out and buy an experienced, monstrous centre-half.

What The Fuck?

"Chelsea reject Adrian Mutu has given up cocaine, which he took to boost his sexual performances with porn stars. Mutu is now happily married and the star of a Romania team that Holland could not beat in the qualifiers."

- Myles Palmer, Arsenal News Review

The above quote has no correlation to the subject of this post, other than that it's fucking with my mind. Not the bit about Mutu kicking his habit, nor that he's happily married - I'm just wondering what relevance this had to an article previewing Euro2008. Myles writes some pretty fucked up things, sometimes.

Anyway, the theme of this post is "WTF".

The subject of this post is that Giovanni Dos Santos has moved... to Tottenham!

What The Fuck?!

I've read a lot of dodgy transfer rumours over the years, but this takes the cake. Why Tottenham? Why 4.7 million? Why so little for a player that has so much potential? Why to such a small club? Do Barcelona have rocks in their heads? Does Dos Santos?

And why the fuck didn't Wenger try to scupper this deal?

I'm a bit too shell-shocked to continue...