International

Good to see Ledley King and Paul Robinson distinguishing themselves for England. It was a pretty comfortable match overall, but I think each of them made positive contributions - especially Robinson coming out quickly to close down one of Estonia's chances.

In the meantime, 4 straight days on my own at the office has led to an odd relationship with work. It is the story of my whole time working for this company: I'd have thought that I've been working alone for at least half of the days I've been there, which covers about 20 months. I'd quite like to know what it's like to have lots of colleagues.

Sitting alone in the office, laughing out loud

This made me do it - specifically, the bit with the new, stripped down, Fox News "Look" channel, which: "repeats every 15 seconds, features more and simpler imagery, and forgoes the use of verbal language in favor of newscasters who gesture emphatically at video clips and hoot in approval or growl in derision, depending on the story."

The Onion: one of my favourite things [to do while mooching on my own at work].

Transfers

With the season just finished, it's an odd time to be beginning a football blog. However, I figure it's all about getting into the swing of writing it before anything serious starts happening. So the next couple of months will be dominated by posts about transfers.

Today's news that Man Utd are buying a couple of wingers from Portugal is good for Spurs. Along with the purchase of Owen Hargreaves from Bayern that takes their spending to well over their £25m annual budget (which is, I'm pretty sure, what the Glazers capped it at), making any deal for Dimitar Berbatov highly unlikely (don't know if that Facebook link will work, but it's the Berbatov Appreciation Group). Needless to say, the loss of Berbatov, at pretty much any price, would largely dismantle the club's credibility as challengers for the Premiership top four - with repercussions on future transfers and retention of top players. We'd stumble on without him, but it would require a remarkable coup in the transfer market to retain our competitiveness.

I didn't really mean to start using "we" etc. when referring to the club, but it there ya go.

Introduction

This is a blog about Tottenham Hotspur, a team characterised by the hunt for glory - a quality quite different from the "success" that others seem to be satsified by. Being a fan is all about waiting for things: waiting for a hit provided by the unpredictable live action unfolding in front of you. For most, the hit comes from winning, but at Spurs it's about winning with style; indeed, losing with style is often better than winning with none. Our memories of 1999 are not dominated by Allen Nielsen's goal in the Carling Cup final, but by Ginola's mesmeric run and goal against Barnsley. Somehow this seems to be a more pure form of sports fandom than that practised by a "win at any cost" fan. But this blog isn't here to knock others: it's about venting the routine frustration of unrealistic expectations dashed.

Actually, the real reason I support Spurs is that my Dad did, and my formative football experience of club football was watching the 1991 FA Cup final on TV with him. As I recall, it wasn't a great game, and we had to rely on an own goal to win. But I've since learnt that the semi was a glorious victory over Arsenal, so it counts as a fairly glorious beginning.