It is all about team effort, not individual players… and then there is Daniel!
By Peter J Arnold
I read that Kane is staying, going, has not decided or will even disappear in a puff of smoke. The truth of it all is that football is a team effort. The six clubs above us did not have Kane but still managed to outperform us. Jimmy Greaves was a great player, but he could not even win us the League or the European Champions League; but lesser players managed it. Even the 1966 World Cup Final passed him by.
Football is about collective responsibility and teamwork. Those that went on to win glories, doubles showed a collaborative power base. I am not too bothered whether we keep Kane or not, but what is more important is getting the right manager/ Coach and his coaching staff in place and then finding those with a team ethos, not just individual star qualities.
Some of the England players that captured the World Cup in 1966 have said that they were not picked because they were the best in their position, but they fitted in nicely to a team mentality. One good example of that philosophy was Jack Charlton.
Only two managers in our history have managed to win us the League Title, and that was Arthur Rowe and Bill Nicholson. Wolves, Blackburn, Huddersfield, Leeds and many more have won the League title more than us (and where are they today? Just teams making up the numbers). So we have been doing something wrong throughout our history. Even where the FA Cup is concerned, we are well below Arsenal and United in the number of times that trophy has been won. As for the European Champions League, we only managed one final appearance. Even though Aston villa have won it once and Forest twice (clubs considered beneath us).
So when people criticise Levy, they should look at the past and see what we have not won. When he came to the club, he had ambitions and knew it would be a long, winding and ugly road he had to travel to build a platform so that we could reach the stars and then challenge them.
The most successful period in our history was in the 60s when we won the League, three FA Cups and one European Cup Winners’ Cup. Before that, it was an uphill road; since the seventies, it has been a gradual decline. A decline that culminated in the club nearly going bankrupt. After that, the Phoenix had to rise from the ashes of destruction and then into an appropriate money-making machine of a stadium and only then into a winning Spurred-fighting-Cockerel. All this takes time, a decade even, so patience is the operative word.
By Peter J Arnold.
My name is Peter, and I have just joined this wonderful Spurs website, and I am looking forward to writing down my football thoughts and then presenting them to you. Agree or disagree; all views are valid and should be respected.
It was the famous philosopher Voltaire who said, “I might not agree with you, however, I will defend your right to say it”. Free speech. I am a journalist by trade for a local news outlet. I’ve been a Spurs supporter since the 90s.