Players' desperation for Champions League football wrecks their chances of being remembered

Halls of fame at football clubs are accumulating mites and dustballs, so seldom are inductions in the modern day. Loyalty has been replaced by immediacy. Players, managers and clubs must succeed now and to hell with the big picture as everyone chases the dream.

None of this is news to us, of course, but it is a problem that will affect Tottenham more than any other Premier League club this summer, as the chasm between Champions League and Europa League qualification takes affect.

Top player after top player will brush aside our advances in favour of European Cup football unless the club can convince them that we are going places (and that they have to live on slightly less money).

With just Europa League football to offer prospective playing staff, our summer has started on the back foot.

We have already missed out on top target Joao Moutinho from FC Porto and we are failing to keep Gareth Bale off Real Madrid's radar.

The latest warning shot that our fifth-place finish could draw a big red line through our transfer shortlist comes from a long-term target, Internacional striker Leandro Damiao.

Damiao, 23, told the Sunday Mirror: "I would prefer to play in the Champions League but the most important thing is that they share the same ambition I have."

Not only does he almost compliment the club - by hinting that our drive to succeed might just live up to his own heady horizons - but he also leaves the door open for Europe's elite to beat us to his signature.

If Damiao really must chase the Champions League dream to the letter - and the day - then let's hope he joins Real Sociedad and they go out in the qualifiers.

But it's not just incoming players that display this impatient desperation.

Roberto Mancini was fired by Manchester City for coming second in the Premier League, Wayne Rooney wants out of Manchester United because he is not playing as often as he would like and Roberto Martinez has called time on his Wigan reign after being relegated to the Championship.

There is no doubt that agents play their part in convincing subjects to cash in while their stock is high but there are more and more glowing examples of the grass not always being greener.

Harry Redknapp refused to nail his colours to our mast when the England job came up, playing some part in his downfall as Spurs boss and he has now been relegated with QPR.

Mark Hughes left a burgeoning Blackburn Rovers setup for Manchester City - last week he was appointed Stoke boss having been fired by Fulham and almost been relegated with QPR.

Fernando Torres left Liverpool for Chelsea under a £50million price tag. His form dried up dramatically and, without the goals he provided at the Anfield club, Liverpool are not top-five - let alone top four.

Even Cesc Fabregas, who left Arsenal for Barcelona in August 2011, is already unhappy with his role in the squad.

All of the above left behind the opportunity to go down in their respective clubs' hall of fame. They gave up full stadia of fans singing their name and the chance to be remembered as an idol by forever loyal followers.

If there is anything the 2012-13 Premier League season has shown us, it's that the other side of the coin pays far greater dividends.

Manchester United legend Alex Ferguson retired at the top of the pile, Jamie Carragher had TWO farewell parties at a packed-out Anfield and even Newcastle goalkeeper Steve Harper was given a hero's send off, despite making only 157 appearances in 20 years at St James' Park.

Fabregas need only look to Frank Lampard, who has been told time after time that his Chelsea days are numbered only to knuckle down, break Bobby Tambling's all-time Blues scoring record and earn the contract talks he had been denied all season.

Eyeing the big prize can out work - Robin van Persie's title-winning move to Manchester United is testament to that. And nobody can deny the glamour of David Beckham's globe-trotting.

But even new Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho has exchanged a journeyman lifestyle of trophies and galacticos to go "somewhere he is loved", so perhaps those like Leandro should start taking that into account.

Do striker links hold water or are we just being taken for a ride?

FOOTBALL agents must have been busy yesterday as Tottenham fans woke to the news of moves for TWO out-and-out strikers.

That new TV money must have gone to everyone's head.

The links in question report a possible £10million bid for Spain's record goalscorer David Villa and a much-higher figure to bring in Porto's Jackson Martinez.

I'm afraid to say that I can't really get excited about it as it feels like we're being taken for a ride.

It seems like either lazy journalism, or a good news leak to distract from the fact that an announcement on Gareth Bale's contract is not yet forthcoming - or to make up for another early summer transfer disappointment.

Our prime transfer target - the world-class Joao Moutinho - has just signed for Monaco from FC Porto for the £21.5m we refused to match until the August 2012 transfer deadline had passed.

As far as the media goes, we have been linked to Villa a number of times before. 

With us wanting a striker and him struggling for first team football at Barcelona, freelance press desperate for some cash are always going to put two and two together to make a few quid from some easy column inches.

And, as far as Porto's Martinez goes, Andre Villas-Boas' former players are always going to crop up on the list of supposed targets - but if we didn't get Moutinho, we're hardly going to shell out even more this time around.

While we need an out-and-out striker - and an experienced player with a taste for winning would come in handy - Villa is a 31-year-old who has struggled for form since breaking his leg in December 2011.

The last few summers, Spurs have wanted players out the door before spending on new names. 

With Jermain Defoe, Emmanuel Adebayor and Clint Dempsey already on the books, and a 25-man squad to bear in mind, it's difficult to see Daniel Levy splashing out just yet.

More believable is the line on Villa that says Levy is wrangling over a few million quid. Barca want £12m, we value him at £10m. Amazing considering the new broadcasting deal means that clubs are richer than ever before.

The team that finishes bottom of the Premier League next season stands to win the same amount in prize money as Manchester United did for winning the title this season.

Still, Arsenal will probably bid £11m and pip us to Villa before he comes off the bench to score the winner in the North London derby next term.

So you see why It's difficult to take all this news with anything other than a pinch of salt, and maybe a splash of vinegar - balsamic, if you've got access to some of that new TV money.

Eureka! UEFA save the Europa League but stamp all over Spurs' toes in the process

UEFA must be having a laugh at Tottenham's expense.

With our wounds still fresh from Arsenal nicking fourth spot last Sunday, Europe's footballing governors choose now to announce plans that will give the Europa League winner a Champions League spot.

It's all a bit annoying for Spurs as we embark on a third consecutive season of struggling to motivate our players to take part European football's thankless second tier.

The rule would come into place for the 2015-16 season, meaning that the first team to benefit would be lining up for European Cup football at the start of the 2016-17 season. By which time we will be firmly entrenched in Champions League tradition (*cough*).

On a positive note, the decision will save the stricken Europa League.

The promise of a Champions League spot for the winner - or possibly even for a losing finalist, if the winner has already qualified through the league - will transform the Europa League from a footballing backstreet dentist into a silver travelcard to the metropolis.

But why has this Eureka moment taken so long when it makes so much sense?

UEFA's second-tier competition has for years been sneered at by the big clubs ("Thursday nights, Channel 5" goes the chant). And this easy fix was always available but completely ignored - in favour of tarty new names and ineffective rebranding.

Managers of clubs involved have for years seen scant reward in the contest's gruelling 16-game format. They brave long-haul flights to Baltic states to play in cryogenic temperatures in front of hostile, sometimes racist crowds. 

All that, only to be accused of devaluing the competition when they field a weakened side to protect their league season.

And for what? The opportunity to come back and do it all again next season? No thanks. 

Can you see this year's winners Chelsea fighting tooth and nail to defend their title? No, not least because they will have to get themselves knocked out of the Champions League to get the chance.

But who is to say that dangling the Champions League carrot at the end of the painstakingly long Europa League stick will have such an immediate effect?

For a start, it is an admission of the Europa League's rightful place as a second-tier contest. Teams have for a long time been "relegated" from the top tier, but never promoted to it.

The chance of promotion alone gives the tournament a full identity, a much-needed purpose - to find a champion among underdogs and nearlyclubs and thrust them into the European elite - and, dare I say it, even a bit of romance.

Most importantly, it gives those involved the potential of progress, always top of the agenda for modern football clubs.

No longer will UEFA and supporters need to fight tooth and nail to convince viewers of the tournament's importance.

The hope, glamour, extra sponsorship and added clout injected by the possibility of a European Cup place will sell the advertising space all on its own.

And you can bet your left winger it will not be back on Channel 5.

Away from Europe, a positive knock-on effect should ripple down to domestic cup competitions. An indirect route into Europe's top table could even be what the FA Cup needs to be able to hold it's head up and look its proud history in the eye.

With UEFA also poised to change the law  that saw Chelsea nick our Champions League spot, the whole thing seems set up purely to rile Spurs fans.

All the talk is that the European Cup winner will be allocated a seperate spot, so as not to step on the toes of teams who qualify fairly over a full league season.

Nice one, so not only have we been forever falling foul of soon-to-be defunct laws but, if we ever get our own back on either of our rivals, then their backstreet dentist experience may not be so brutal.

Ever get the feeling you've heard it all before?

SPURS' biggest star is wanted by a host of European football giants.

Following a season of top-notch displays by the individual in question, media attention and crowd adulation, the money men have taken notice.

The manager is touting the importance of keeping our prize asset and the chairman is having his heels reinforced ready to dig them firmly into the tarmac on Tottenham High Road.

It's a familiar story.

We have all been here before.  Luka Modric went to Real Madrid for £30million in the final week of August 2012 and chairman Daniel Levy eked an extra few bob out of Manchester United in the deadline-day 2008 sale of Dimitar Berbatov for £32m - and we all knew it was only a matter of time until it was Gareth Bale under the spotlight.

If the Modric saga is anything to go by, then we might just keep Bale another season on a "wait and see" basis but when we fail to strengthen enough to match the player's ambitions next season, he will be off.

Is there really reason to feel renewed hope that, this time around, we might get it right?

All the sounds coming out of the gossip vents around White Hart Lane seem to indicate "yes".

Bale is "set" to sign a contract extension, manager Andre Villas-Boas has "identified" a big-name midfielder and a marquee striker to strengthen the squad, certain "names" will be sold to make way for improvements and owner Joe Lewis has agreed business must be "done early" in the window in order for the side to ready for the start of the season.

That would all be very encouraging to hear but is it just a smokescreen to keep us all quiet after yet more ultimately self-inflicted heartache? Many Spurs fans have been calling for these things for years, so why has it taken until now for the club themselves to realise?

It's not always that simple - obviously - but in the opening three games of the 2012-13 season we took only two points. We lost at Newcastle and drew at home with West Brom and Norwich. A run of four straight wins followed.

Players rarely arrive just ready to slot in. They need accommodation, language lessons, not to mention overcoming homesickness or just convincing/arguing with their families or other halves over the move -remember the furore over Hugo Lloris not getting first team football immediately after his arrival last summer?

A few more weeks to settle down - without the August departure of most of our midfield (Modric and Rafa van der Vaart) - might have yielded those two vital extra points to put us in fourth place.

Surely we learned the perils of a bad start after losing Berbatov, when an impressive pre-season campaign spiralled into an infamous - and, thanks to former boss Harry Redknapp's penchant for repetition, unforgettable - two points from eight games.

To Villas-Boas' credit, he seems to have the players, the press and the board on his side - all key ingredients for a successful summer.

But until we arrive at next term with a squad ready to give it their all from the word go, then the fear will remain that all these encouraging signs are just to drive up the season ticket renewals until we rush out deadline day with a chequebook flush with the funds of a freshly sold Gareth Bale.

Rarely has a team arrived at White Hart Lane with as little ambition as Aston Villa

The reason the Premier League is seen as one of the greatest football competitions in the world is that a game is never over until the final whistle - or until one team is truly out of sight (see Manchester united 8-2 arsenal). Once in a while, though, comes a game in which one team coasts from start to finish.

For Spurs fans, these stress-free, blood pressure-friendly encounters are very few and far between but Harry Redknapp's ticker could not have had an easier 90 minutes against Aston Villa last night if his doctor had written the match himself.

Villa fans must have been pretty worried by what they saw. We were impressive but we weren't tested by our opposition. They caved too easily in the first half, and then spent the second waiting to get back on the coach - there was simply no industry and no fight from them at all.

If there's one thing that Villa can do this season, it's score goals; Gabriel Agbonlahor's pace is a constant threat and it's always a concern that Darren Bent is going to prove himself to us at some point. But we needn't have worried.

Alex McLeish set up a defence-heavy side, possibly in the hope that their pace up front could hurt us on the counter. He obviously didn't do his research, however, as Younes Kaboul, Kyle Walker and Benoit Assou-Ekotto out-paced even his fastest assets whenever asked.

It's our front six that get the pundits and the punters talking but it took only two of them to do the damage as Gareth Bale and Emmanuel Adebayor twice combined to put us in firm control by half-time. That's not to say that the others weren't a threat. Luka Modric, Rafa Van Der Vaart and Aaron Lennon were relentless in probing the wings and switching possession trying to pierce their way through Villa's two banks of four.

The sixth member of our "front six" is surely up for debate. You would assume it was Scott Parker but Kyle Walker gets forward even more often and his power, pace and link-up play with Lennon are fast turning our right-hand side into a force almost as potent as our left.

At the Lane, we always give our guests chances and maybe Villa thought that if they just let us have the ball then they could hit us on the break when we slipped up - but we didn't slip up.

A noticeable change in our attitude last night was that we were in no mood to give the ball away cheaply. Even at our best, we have had a horrible habit of squandering possession with a difficult ball, when a short pass would do the job. But last night's possession stats tell the story; we had 59 per cent overall and a massive 68 per cent in the second half.

Modric and Parker were at the centre of the way we kept the ball for long periods, pushing Villa back, then tugging them out of possession and attacking the space created.

This morning's headlines suggest that the Premier League title is a possibility for us "on this form". I won't get that carried away just yet. We rode our luck against both Blackburn and Fulham and, although it's great to see us "grinding" out results, we've come mighty close to coming unstuck on a few occasions.

Having said that, if this is how we play while we're grinding out results, I can't wait to see us in top form.

Harry's absence no cause for concern

Firstly, obviously our best wishes extend to Harry Redknapp. We wish him well in his recovery and look forward to his return in a fortnight - but just how do the side get on without Chief Motivator in the dugout?

No sooner did I get into work this morning, somebody made a smart-ass comment about last night's result. "Spurs aren't the same force without Harry on the sidelines are they!" To which I spent the next five minutes explaining in no uncertain terms how he had totally - - and gloriously missed the point.

A few people have labelled our Europa League campaign as pointless; fielding a reserve team in far-flung destinations such as Russia and Greece. I would argue, however, that this is exactly the reason that the competition is so important.

A youthful second-string side put up another good fight last night but the fresh new faces do seem to be struggling in front of goal. That's now the third European outing in which we've failed to find the net.

Our four goals in the Europa League proper have so far come from Jermain Defoe, Roman Pavlyuchenko and Gio Dos Santos - all seasoned internationals, and it does make you wonder at just how high a level our squad players can compete.

Tony Gale was on Sky Sports News this morning discussing the merits of our midfield unit and just how well Scott Parker and Modric work together.

But what happens if a few of that midfield suffer injuries? Can the youngsters cope with being thrown into the fray? Our draw at Newcastle last month is starting to look like a very good result but, whilst you can't win them all, we were in front twice and a midfield shake-up clearly weakened our attacking options.

Jake Livermore has been solid in his ascent to the first team but far from a revelation and it leaves me unconvinced that our strength in depth is currently sufficient to account for injuries and to challenge at the top level all season.

Only time will tell if Livermore, Tom Carroll, Ryan Fredericks et al have what it takes but the chance to play regular football can only be a good thing. They will be far more capable of dealing with an away substitute appearance at, say, the Stadium of Light, having experienced a tough away encounter at Rubin Kazan (conquerors of Barcelona, lest we forget.)

But what of Redknapp's two-week leave? While his effect cannot be underestimated, his deputies Kevin Bond and Joe Jordan are more than capable of keeping the ship on course. When Harry arrived at the club, he insisted on complete control of his own backroom staff and, in situations like this, that will play a key role.

Bond and Jordan have worked with Harry for years and form part of a working unit that knows how to apply the gaffer's methods to ensure that the team aren't adversely affected by his absence.

QPR result is good prep for important run

Three points at home against QPR was no more than the fans expected but the national press exaggerometer is already swinging wildly out of control. Suddenly, not only are we a shoo-in for fourth place but we're the team the neutrals love to like.

If you add Sunday's 3-1 victory over our newly promoted neighbours to battling victories away at Wolves, Blackburn and Wigan then maybe they have a point.

One of the banes of Martin Jol's reign as boss was our inability take points off "the big four" with any regularity; a step which was seen as essential to make that final push towards Champions League football.

This term we have already beaten Arsenal and put four past Liverpool but last season we took only three points in total from our post-San Siro fixtures against Blackpool, Wolves, West Ham and Wigan and that's why the QPR result is so important.

Optimistic Spurs fans will now be etching a big '3' on their prediction sheets alongside Fulham, Aston Villa, West Brom and Bolton, whereas cynics will be counting the banana skins - but a good win with some terrific football is exactly the sort of preparation we needed.

The arrival of Gareth Bale into goalscoring form is more than welcome as Adebayor seems to have lost his compass. The big man fluffed a few chances on Sunday but is linking up well with Rafa Van Der Vaart and his (current) work rate more suits our style of football than Jermain Defoe or Russian whinger Roman Pavlyuchenko.

Scott Parker goes from strength to strength and Saturday proved once again just how convincingly he and Luka Modric can control the centre of the park. I had backed Bassong for a start and, whilst it can only be to his benefit to secure a run of games, you always want your strongest 11 on the pitch and it's now clear that Sunday was our strongest line-up.

One niggling concern tapping away at the back of my mind is that we'll have used up four of our five home games against the big sides by Christmas (we face Chelsea at the Lane on December 22).

In early 2012, we have away games at Eastlands, Anfield, the Emirates and Stamford Bridge all within an eight-game stretch and one of the home ties sandwiched between those is Manchester United.

It makes for difficult reading and highlights the significance of making our current good form count. With the youngsters filling the Europa League line-ups, the senior names can be kept fresh and hopefully we can rack up some points before the going gets really tough.

Regardless of shoo-ins or banana skins, the next six games will define our season.