Tottenham

Evening Standard

Managers the length and breadth of the country insist they are only thinking about the next game but Gus Poyet’s mind is already on challenging and, possibly, managing Brighton’s FA Cup fourth-round opponents, Arsenal.

The Uruguayan has the small matter of a 600-mile round trip to Blackburn in atrocious conditions for tonight’s Championship clash while Arsenal entertain West Ham in the Premier League tomorrow night.

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New England chief is thrilled to be back in London this week for an NFL game but reveals why owning a football club here is a non-starter for now

Evening Standard

Robert Kraft, a fan of the New England Patriots long before he bought the club, has always been proud that, in sport, his heart has ruled his head.

So, when he takes his seat on Sunday at Wembley for the match against Stan Kroenke’s St Louis Rams, his feelings will be those of a fan rather than an owner. “Unfortunately the low of losing is lower than the high of winning. You want to prevent losing as much as you can.”

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Insideworldfootball.biz

Change in football (let alone the wider society) is difficult to predict. It is often best left to historians with their long lenses to look back and tell us when one era ends and another begins.

However, despite the fact that we do not know for sure who will win this season’s English Premier League title, it is my firm belief that this campaign marks a momentous season of change in the Premiership – the third such change since the Premiership started 20 years ago. This shift not only affects the top of the League where the power lies but also the survivors at the bottom.

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Spurs Show

It’s the Spurs Show, a podcast dedicated entirely to Tottenham Hotspur. Spurs diehards Phil Cornwell and Mike Leigh give their view from the Shelf Side in the only podcast that Tottenham fans around the world can’t live without. Major moans, lots of laughs and tip top celebrity guests!

Mihir joins Phil and Mike to talk about how Tottenham is currently faring.

Click here to listen or download the podcast (Note: scroll down and select the episode entitled ‘Crisis show revisited!’)

For Tevez and Terry, read Spurs’ Danny Blanchflower

PlayUp

I wonder if we’ve ever had a better season to demonstrate the contrasting effects of player power than recent events at Chelsea and Manchester City.

Yet it would be wrong to see this as reflecting the fact that players are now super stars, and because of the money they earn, they have acquired power that players of previous generations did not have. That is moonshine. How modern players exercise the power may have changed, but players have always had powers, particularly players at the top of their profession.

The most potent example of this was of course Danny Blanchflower, the captain of the great Tottenham teams of the early 6os. Blanchflower will always be remembered for those classic lines that define the game, “The great fallacy is that the game is first and last about winning. It is nothing of the kind. The game is about glory, it is about doing things in style and with a flourish, about going out and beating the other lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom.”

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