Topspur News

The official footage from PSV.tv

Bookmark It

Celtic’s on-loan striker Robbie Keane has ruled out an extended stay at Parkhead and says he will be a Spurs player again next season.

Keane, who joined Celtic on loan in a last-gasp deal on transfer deadline day, says he is targeting success during his time in Glasgow but he is only at the club for a short spell.

“I only have a few months here,” he said.

“I’m at Celtic until the end of the season and that’s as far as it goes at the moment. I will be going back to Spurs in the summer.”

The Republic of Ireland striker had an unhappy start to his time as a Celtic player as he was part of the side that lost 1-0 to Kilmarnock in midweek but says he is targeting silverware with the club. Celtic are ten points behind Rangers in the title race and face Dunfermline on the Scottish Cup on Sunday and Keane says the side need to go on a run of wins to give themselves a chance.

“What I’m concentrating on is trying to bring success to Celtic this season,” the striker added.

“New players normally take time to gel but we don’t have time on our side. The sooner we go on a run of games the better.”

Keane agreed to move to Glasgow in a bid to get regular first team football after slipping down the pecking order at White Hart Lane but. Tottenham boss Harry Redknapp had preferred to start with Peter Crouch and Jermaine Defoe as his strike partnership and, with Roman Pavyluchenko and new signing Eidur Gudjohnsen in reserve, Keane found his opportunities restricted.

In summer, Keane may find himself with a decision to make. Gudjohsen is only in London on a short-term deal, similar to Keane’s at Celtic. Pavyluchenko has been the subject of transfer speculation and could yet leave the club, though a January bid from Birmingham City was rejected.

Keane could stay at White Hart Lane to fight for his place but will be aware that the club is likely to enter the transfer market again, having been linked with Klaas Jan Huntelaar amongst others. A successful spell at Celtic could see him become a target for other clubs but may persuade player and club to look for a way to keep the player in Glasgow on a permanent deal.

Topspur is sponsored by CVPOD.COM Find jobs in your area online start your jobsearch or recruitment today!

Bookmark It

Tottenham boss Harry Redknapp expects plenty more twists and turns in the race for fourth place following his side`s 0-0 draw with Aston Villa at White Hart Lane.

Spurs created a number of clear-cut chances but were unable to find a way past veteran American goalkeeper Brad Friedel.

The result leaves Redknapp`s men a point behind fourth-placed Liverpool, who enjoyed a 1-0 victory over Merseyside rivals Everton earlier in the day.

Obviously it was a big result for Liverpool,” Redknapp said. “They ground out a result. It’s their weekend this week, it will be somebody else’s next week, somebody else’s the week after.

“Of course it’s going to be tight, it’s going to go all the way to the wire. You didn’t see Manchester City getting beat at Hull, not many people would have tipped that one, would they?”

Topspur is sponsored by CVPOD.COM Find jobs in your area online start your jobsearch or recruitment today!

Bookmark It

CHIGWELL, England – Injured England winger Aaron Lennon should be available for next month’s friendly with Egypt, Tottenham Hotspur manager Harry Redknapp said on Friday.

“He should be fit by then,” Redknapp told reporters at the Spurs training ground referring to the World Cup warm-up match against the African champions at Wembley Stadium on March 3.

Lennon has been out with a groin injury since the Premier League win over West Ham United at White Hart Lane on December 28 and the club had feared he might need a hernia operation.

Bookmark It

Leeds Uniteds 4th round FA Cup Replay against premiership Tottenham Hotspur at Elland Road, 3/2/10 Marching On Together www.lufc.me.uk

Bookmark It

Harry Redknapp has revealed he holds no grudges after giving David Bentley a second chance at Tottenham and has backed Younes Kaboul to shine in his second spell at White Hart Lane.

Bentley looked set to leave Spurs earlier in the season when he angered Redknapp with his off-field behaviour and poor attitude in training, but the winger has been given another opportunity following a groin injury to Aaron Lennon.

Last month the Spurs boss dropped the 25-year-old from his 18-man matchday squad because he felt the former Blackburn midfielder did not warrant a place on the bench, only to recall him for the last three games and see him star in the midweek FA Cup win at Leeds.

Redknapp, impressed by Bentley’s reaction, said: “David was out the picture but has trained well and has been fantastic. I don’t hold grudges, I don’t work that way, and it’s there for anybody.”

The good news for Bentley is that Lennon has not started training with the ball yet and is limited to running in straight lines and the former Arsenal man is keen to take advantage of his opportunity.

“I’ve just been looking to perform,” said the England international. “It’s been a difficult time since I came here and you can’t help that when the team have been doing so well without you.

“I just look forward to every game I play now and don’t take it for granted. I go out there and enjoy myself.

“I just want to stay in the team and play as many games as I can. I am taking it game by game at the minute because you never know in football.

“My time at Spurs has been hard but hopefully I can start enjoying it now.”

Another player with a second chance at Tottenham is Kaboul, who was bought back by the club after being sold to Portsmouth for the start of last season.

Despite winning the Carling Cup under Juande Ramos, his first spell at Spurs was characterised by high-profile blunders – but Redknapp now believes the 24-year-old could even force his way into France’s squad if he continues his progress.

“Younes has the ability and potential to be a top player. If you’re looking for a centre-half he has everything – marking, heading, pace and good on the ball,” Redknapp said.

“The only problem was concentration – he could switch off. But he’s matured with more games. He’s gone to Portsmouth and become a better player.

“Now he’s ready to push on and could have a chance of making the French squad for the World Cup.”

Spurs centre-back Ledley King also has faith in Kaboul’s ability.

“I’ve spent time with him before and we spoke about him becoming a better player and concentrating,” King said.

“I’m sure that’s going to happen. All young players make mistakes, especially in defence. But it’s down to us as a team to nurture his talent because he has fantastic ability.”

Kaboul’s last-gasp equaliser to secure a 4-4 draw against Aston Villa was one of the few highlights during his previous year at Spurs and he could make his second debut at White Hart lane against the same club this weekend.

Topspur is sponsored by CVPOD.COM Find jobs in your area online start your jobsearch or recruitment today!

Bookmark It

I found this on an old VHS tape of Top of the Pops. It may interest Spurs Fans – as well as fans of Chas and Dave – since it features clips from the 1981 Cup Final. It also features the Top of the Pops Dancers Legs & Co, and the Tottenham Squad with some fairly awful miming.

Bookmark It

Striker Jermain Defoe revealed a half-time jibe from Les Ferdinand spurred him on to claim the hat-trick which sent Tottenham into the fifth round of the FA Cup.

Defoe missed a sackful of chances in the first half against Leeds, but made up for it by adding two goals after the break to his first-half opener as Spurs won the Elland Road replay.

Harry Redknapp’s men, who face a trip to Bolton in the next round, could have been out of sight by the interval had Defoe taken his opportunities, a fact that was not lost on coach Ferdinand.

Three and easy: Defoe slots home his third late on at Elland Road

Defoe said: ‘Les did say to me at half-time, “if you don’t get a hat-trick today then you’re gonna get it”. That spurred me on a bit.

‘He realised watching the game there’d be chances, especially second half.’

The chances duly came, and Defoe claimed his third hat-trick of the season to ensure there would not be a second heroic comeback from Leeds.

Luciano Becchio briefly gave the hosts hope, sending them in level at the interval with a stoppage-time equaliser.

But Defoe’s second-half fireworks ensured his dreams of a Wembley final remained intact, an achievement which would be all the sweeter for having missed out on two showpieces in the last two seasons.

Finisher: Ferdinand enjoyed six years as a Spurs player from 1997

He was cup-tied for Portsmouth’s FA Cup final date back in 2008 and injured when Spurs reached the Carling Cup final last season.

‘Everything happens for a reason,’ said Defoe. ‘Looking back now maybe I just wasn’t meant to play in those games.

‘Obviously when I came back here, I was so close and I got injured, broke my foot – and it was my first injury ever.

‘I had an operation, was out for 10 weeks and wasn’t meant to play in it. Hopefully this time I can get there.

‘It would be special knowing I missed out last season. It’s hard for me to take – I was there supporting the lads, but when you miss out through injury it’s difficult to take.’

Topspur is sponsored by CVPOD.COM Find jobs in your area online start your jobsearch or recruitment today!

Bookmark It

Tottenham Hotspur are the 14th richest football club in the world, a £113 million-a-year business, whose most valuable players each cost the same as a Francis Bacon painting, or a middle-sized cultural centre, or a block or two of affordable housing, or a few schools.

Yet its ground stands in the most deprived ward in London.

Tottenham High Road is a thoroughfare that goes back to Roman times, somewhat battered now but still lined with ornate fragments of Victoriana and handsome Georgian houses from the days when this was a prosperous rural satellite of London.

Modern football stadia, by contrast, are vast relentless machines for processing tens of thousands of people, objects at an utterly different scale from an ordinary high street.

So when Tottenham Hotspur propose a new 58,000-seat stadium, rising to 42 metres high, as well as 450 flats, a hotel and a supermarket to help pay for it, worlds collide.

Power meets poverty, and the silvery disc of the arena descends like a UFO, whooshing pubs and shops and the odd listed building into oblivion. It is as pure a symbol of the relative might of club and borough as you could wish for.

Except Spurs are not having it all their own way. The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) has pronounced itself “disappointed” with the project and “does not support it”.

It finds it “incoherent” and “awkward”. English Heritage, while still finalising its position, says that the plan threatens “a serious and significant level of harm to the historic environment”.

Objections like these can prompt a public planning inquiry, or derail the whole project, whose cost will be £400 million. And, as things stand, it’s hard to disagree with CABE.

It’s not that the stadium shouldn’t be there. Spurs considered other options from Milton Keynes to Wembley to taking on the Olympic site and opted to stay where they are now, relocating just to the north of their current ground.

It wouldn’t do Haringey any good if this local icon, major employer and earner of revenue went somewhere else. Spurs, like other self-respecting modern football clubs, also make much of their outreach to the local community.

The new development would remove the current stadium, no thing of beauty, and would brighten up its dingy surroundings.

It would greatly enhance the space outside a neighbouring school that currently resembles the death zone along the Berlin Wall.

A supermarket, hotel, conference centre, and housing — affordable and otherwise — are all good things for Tottenham.

The club have hired the famous American landscape architect Martha Schwartz to create a “vibrant” and “exceptional” public square and an ice rink is promised in winter.

The ground itself, designed by the stadium specialist KSS, aims to create a rare intimacy between fans and players, even as it increases the current capacity of 35,000 by two-thirds.

At one end, a vast bank of spectators, uninterrupted by corporate boxes, is proposed, with the intention of creating an array of passionate humanity unlike any other English football ground.

It is meant to be the opposite of the chilly cathedral, the Emirates Stadium, that Arsenal have built for themselves.

Externally, the proposed stadium is a silvery, swooping thing, none too subtle and a bit blingy.

There are awkward crunches where the right-angled geometry of its floors and columns meets the curving arch shapes the architects have applied to the exterior.

It is not, in other words, a sophisticated work of architecture, although it is sleeker than most British football grounds and has a certain oomph to it.

But the real issue is how all these elements add up. In the present plans the stadium looks as though it were designed to sit in an open plain, with little recognition of the bits of street and town around it.

At one end the supermarket is a standard blind box; at the other the hotel and housing, designed by Make Architecture, are noisy, jagged objects with juddering rhythms, rising up to 20 storeys above three-storey surroundings. Taken together, it makes for an inchoate whole.

What’s needed is architecture that can walk and chew gum at the same time. The stadium should be splendid — and there’s no point trying to disguise the fact that it’s enormous — but it should also respond to the fact that it’s shaping a public place in everyday use on the 340 days a year when there’s not a match on.

The hotel and housing present an opportunity to create a transition between the scale of the existing streets and that of the stadium, but instead aim to be expressive icons in their own right.

It’s not an easy task but it’s possible, and achieving difficult things should be the reason why architects are paid their fees. More than that, it’s dramatic encounters like this that make architecture interesting — think, for example, of the way medieval cathedrals rise from narrow streets. Done well, this slab of Tottenham could become an astonishing part of London.

I write this as a supporter of Tottenham Hotspur. Having been born in Hastings to a largely football-hating family, I can’t claim to be a dyed-in-the-wool fan, but I was drawn to the club by its tradition of finding the most stylish players.

Now, going to matches with my daughter, we have a well-worn joke as the blue struts of the existing stadium come into view. “That’s the most beautiful building in London,” we say. It isn’t, of course.

The point is that, once inside, the look of a stadium becomes almost irrelevant compared with what’s happening on the pitch.

Most football fans would watch their team in stadia built out of plastic drain sections and reused scrap metal, which is what, indeed, many of them look like.

But, given the chance to create a wholly new stadium development, why wouldn’t you want it to be as classy and skilful as the best players?

Topspur is sponsored by CVPOD.COM Find jobs in your area online start your jobsearch or recruitment today!

Bookmark It