“Are you Tottenham in disguise” was joyfully sung by Chelsea fans this weekend as they celebrated the catastrophic start to the season being endured by their London neighbours, Tottenham Hotspurs.
Approximately 20,000 Stoke fans then suggested yesterday that Ramos “would be sacked in the morning” as the Potters were winning 2-1.
After the miserable return of just 2 points in 8 Premiership games, should fans be asking; are Tottenham to good to go down?
Being too good to be relegated is a suggestion often banded around by misguided pundits and blinkered fans. Ask Jermain Defoe, Paul Robinson, Michael Carrick or Aaron Lennon and they will tell you the same thing – no team is ever too good to go down.
These players all have two things in common. Firstly they have all left the clubs they started their careers with to move directly to Spurs. Secondly, they all left their first club’s after being part of a squad being relegated from the Premiership when pundits, players and fans had suggested they had been too good to go down.
Three years after being in the squad for a Champions League semi final, Paul Robinson along with Mark Viduka and Alan Smith were relegated whilst playing for a Leeds United team devastated by the financial fiasco at boardroom level.
The year earlier, future Tottenham stars and England internationals Michael Carrick and Jermain Defoe, along with Joe Cole and Paulo Di Canio had been relegated from the Premiership with West Ham United. This came after supposedly having too many good players and as a unit being too good to go down.
West Ham fans almost suffered the same fate in 2007 when the ‘controversial’ efforts of Carlos Tevez saved a squad boasting numerous players too good to be relegated.
With Tottenham, logic tells any fan that a team sheet boasting Modric, Bentley, Woodgate and Pavlychenko should have enough quality to see off most teams.
Ramos’ plight has not been helped by the antics of Daniel Levy and Damien Comolli. Their chaotic transfer activity in the summer has left Tottenham short of a defensive midfielder and less than ideal replacements for the departed Berbatov and Keane. The fact that the teams promoted from the Championship seem capable of much more than being this season’s whipping boys may also make Tottenham’s recovery harder than expected.
So, are Tottenham too good to go down? Only time will tell. For the sake of Spurs fans, hopefully, there will be more than Aaron Lennon’s voice reminding his colleagues that matches aren’t won on the team sheet alone.
3 comments so far
1 Dave Stopher // Oct 20, 2008 at 10:24 am
Spurs are a very good team on there day but they just dont have the luck at the minute!! I think that there is something really wrong in the backroom at Spurs!! Sort that and I think results will follow.
2 Simon // Oct 20, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Spurs deserve all they get!! Selling Berba, Keano and sacking Shrek last year were massive mistakes
3 john // Oct 21, 2008 at 5:12 pm
Too good to be relegated?Two points in eight games says they are not.