Just found this thread. LOL. Brilliant. I remember your brief flirtation with Ledley King and there was one other chap that you used to want to get on the pitch all the time because it seemed as though he always scored a goal when he came on...who was that..?
brief flirtation? you mean lifelong love affair. as to the last part, I don't know; but i'm guessing you might be referring to Jermain Defoe. there was a stretch when Robbie Keane seemed to be getting picked more regularly than Defoe, but the latter had a tendency to trouble defenses when brought on late ... fresh legs, pacey, and all that. I could be wrong, but I think he holds the record for most premier league goals off the bench. interesting that this thread should've been bumped, by the way, as I'd actually been giving it some thought just the other day ... **scratches chin**
Inductee #29 CHRIS HUGHTON Spurs 1977-90 Fullback 398 Games 19 Goals 53 Ireland caps Quote: "Tottenham will be the club I always support." Pook man-love rating: 7/10 Another stalwart of those early-80s trophy winning teams, Chris Hughton was a fixture at left back for over a decade - and a fairly successful decade, at that. He lined up in each of the '81 and '82 FA Cup finals, as well as the '84 UEFA Cup final - winners all. Hughton also scored a North London Derby brace in 'that' game - the 5-0 win that marks our biggest victory over the old enemy. My memories of him as a player are of a pacey left back, making overlapping runs and getting in the thick of it amongst the more illustrious attacking Spurs of that era ... though his rather sparse goals total during his tenure suggests that those memories may be somewhat selective. But if I'm honest, almost as much of my recollections of Hughton with Spurs come from after his playing days. For some fifteen years, from '93 through '07, Chris Hughton was a fixture amongst our coaching staff, serving under ten managers, from Ray Clemence to Martin Jol (thread-of-famers both). When the latter was unceremoniously dumped for (ugh) Juande Ramos, Chris went with him ... and then on to rather successful stints as the gaffer at Newcastle, Brum, and now Brighton. A product of Spurs' youth set-up, all-in-all Chris Hughton spent the better part of 30 years at White Hart Lane, making him a worthy inductee to the ToF.
He did, took the record from Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. However, Giroud went past Defoe not that long ago.
it's funny to me ... the disconnect between my perceptions of Spurs from afar (prior to the internet age, in particular; though the inclusion of Ant Gardner suggests not exclusively) and the reality. I'm thinking about stuff like believing Steve Archibald was black or that Clive Allen was more influential than Glenn Hoddle. that discrepancy is one of the things - in addition to pure self-indulgence, obviously - that inspired this thread ... er ... institution. well, I've been reading a book I picked up at Foyle's in London last week called Vertigo: Spurs, Bale and One Fan's Fear of Success by John Crace. in it, this passage about thread-of-famer Mark Falco: (in reference to who gets remembered and why) There's something almost cruel about it; not to Ricky (Villa, about whom he'd been writing), but to all the other Spurs players who have been largely forgotten. Especially Mark Falco, because I still feel guilty about him. Falco regularly used to score about twenty goals a season, a tally of which any striker can be proud ... but we all used to hate him. I can't even remember why. We would jeer when he screwed things up, and there would be a huge roar when he was substituted. Whatever next year's Spurs must-have book is going to be, it's not My Life by Mark Falco. what?! "we all used to hate him"?! what the- ? "a huge roar when he was substituted'? how can this be? well, at least the author is acknowledging that he and they had been wrong ... and by inference, that I was right. granted, Archibald will never be black, and Allen will remain in Hodd's shadow, but their places - with Mark Falco - in immortality are rightly secure in this pantheon. who knows, perhaps one day people will admit that they, too, had been blind to the merits of Anthony Gardner.
I have some of those same perceptions about Jurgen Klinsman. For his one season with the Spurs in 94/95, he was the second coming of Hoddle himself. As I remember it, he scored close to 30 goals that season, or slightly more. This, of course, is not the case. Conversely, when he came back on loan a few seasons later, the reports say he single-highhandedly brought Spurs back from the brink. But I remember being highly disappointed with him, thinking he was pretty much a waste, and that the reports over rated him. Funny how memory works.
interesting. I remember him as a savior in '98, as his intro into the thread shows. but if you take that Wimbledon game out of the equation, he had, what, 5 goals from 14 games? it's hardly earth-shattering stuff, is it? so I've gone back and looked at that season (on topspurs.com) to see which of our perceptions better holds up. and in retrospect, I think the praise boils down to just how shit we were otherwise. over the whole league season, Les Ferdinand and Chris Armstrong - our two main forwards - got 5 goals each. ginola led the team with 6 and Colin Calderwood chipped in with 4. Klinsmann aside, those were our top scorers. how shit is that? compared to '94-95, he was definitely poor; but compared to the rest of the team, 9 in 15 was bloody good. so while I can easily get onboard with his performance in '98 being very much overrated, it might not be overappreciated. without him, I think we quite possibly go down. so maybe we're both right, eh?
Inductee #30 JERMAIN DEFOE Spurs 2004-08 / 2009-14 Forward 360 games 143 goals 57 England caps Quote: "I never wanted to leave." Pook man-love rating: 8/10 When Teddy Sheringham ponced off the Man United in 1997, it ushered in a good 5+year stretch of underperformance from our forwards. Names like Armstrong, Iversen, Ferdinand, Sheringham again himself, and others failed to find the net with the kind of regularity Spurs fans had come to expect from our strikers over the years. It was when Defoe netted 22 times for us in 2004-05 that it seemed we might have finally brought one in the could play the role. Splitting time with the effective Robbie Keane meant that he didn't match that tally over the following few years, and eventually the Irishman's success saw Jermain loaned and then sold to Portsmouth, where he quickly became a fan favorite. But when Pompey's manager, Harry Redknapp, was brought in to steady the ship at N17, it was just a matter of time before Defoe was brought back to Spurs, to considerable fanfare. And in his first full season back, he knocked in 24 in all comps, including 18 in the league, helping us to our first Champions League/European Cup qualification since 1961. Over the next few years, pacey diminutive striker continued on at the club, partnering the likes of Crouch and Pavlyuchenko and taking his Spurs goal tally to 143 before finally moving on in 2014. Defoe's departure roughly coincided with the emergence of Harry Kane, so few lamented his absence, even as his productivity continued at Sunderland and beyond. But his numbers speak for themselves. And while he always carried himself with class on the pitch*, he did (and does) so off the pitch, as well - unlike so many of our wealthy footy 'heroes' - displaying considerable dignity throughout marked personal loss (his brother to assault, his father to cancer, and his young friend Bradley Lowery to neuroblastoma), and earning an OBE in 2018 for the work of the charity foundation he started in 2013. We had a handful of more illustrious players during Jermain Defoe's tenure at Spurs, but few more productive, and none more likable. *edit: er … except for that time when he bit Javier Mascherano. I forgot about that. But it was a long time ago, and I love Jermain Defoe … so he stays in.
My worst ever misjudgement in terms of football viewing. Couldn't watch the game live, so I thought I'd take myself offline and wait for Sky's extended highlights (hour+, basically the whole game without the breaks in play) which came on at about 8pm the same day. When I got home, I thought "what if it was a crappy 0-0 and i'm wasting my evening?", so checked the score. I so wish I could have watched that as live without knowing Defoe is a genuine legend. Some players haven't a clue, some just get the responsibilities they have to fans and as a role model. JD got it, in spades - spectacular goalscorer, thoroughly likeable human being.
I was actually going to go to that one, but it was the week before thanksgiving and my new boss denied to authorize any vacation for me then.* I ended up watching it on tv instead of my preferred Park Lane stand ... which we attacked in the second half ... when we scored 8 of the 9. that would've been great fun. [sigh] in terms of viewing misjudgment, I did something quite similar when watching a recording in which we were 2 goals down to Charlton early in the second half. I thought, 'why waste another hour of my day on this rubbish?', and I checked the final score, only to find out we'd come back to win 3-2. I continued viewing, of course, but it wasn't the same. not bright. *we'd had a 'no requested time off between thanksgiving and new years' rule for years, and i'd taken the preceding weekend off a couple of times before ... but he's a douche.
Inductee #31 BRAD FRIEDEL Spurs 2011-15 Goalkeeper 67 games 82 USA caps PL consecutive appearances record holder (310) Quote: "For a keeper, there is no hiding place." Pook man-love rating: 7/10 I didn't really have the opportunity to watch Spurs even semi-regularly until the late 90s, during Ian Walker's tenure between the posts. Since then, though, I think it fair to say that, during his brief time as our number one, Brad Friedel was - to my mind - the best keeper at the club. Some will argue it to be Hugo Lloris (and fair enough), and we've had a number of other fantastic shot-stoppers; but none has performed with Friedel's consistency. Not only was he brilliant, he simply didn't make mistakes. In fact, had Hugo not had the advantages of chronology - he'd been brought in as the keeper of the future, and Brad was past 40! - who knows how long it would have taken to get the starting spot. At any rate, the point is not 'who was better', but simply that Brad Friedel was fantastic for Spurs. Having signed on for us from Villa at the age of 40, he was clearly brought in as a 'stop-gap' until we could properly replace Heurelio Gomes. But he made the position his, displaying the same consistent form that had made him great at Aston Villa and a legend at Blackburn Rovers. He even stayed on as a hugely capable backup as Lloris emerged as world-class. The only thing weighing against him in consideration for this honor was that he pretty much single-handedly kept us from winning the 2002 League Cup final in a man-of-the-match performance for Blackburn. That one hurt.
Inductee #32 MAURICIO POCHETTINO Spurs 2014-19 Manager Quote: "Nothing is impossible in football." Pook man-love rating: 9/10 Despite having won no silverware in his time at the club (and the fact that others have), Mauricio Pochettino is probably the finest manager at Spurs in my time as a fan. He not only cracked the top four - seemingly our default objective (for better or worse) - he brought us home second, and for two years had us in with a shout for the League in April. Not to mention taking us to a Champions League final, which is, in retrospect, mind-boggling in and of itself. Moreover, he did so by having us play some beautiful football, and with none of the head-games smarminess of so many of the League's more successful managers. Undone by the better part of a calendar year of admittedly poor League results, Poch and the club parted ways in November of 2019. More will be said and learned of what went wrong, but whether we recede to pre-Poch levels or move on to even better things, Mauricio Pochettino's tenure at the club will have been extraordinary compared to all that preceded it over the last 30 years. If Martin Jol made us respectable again, Poch made us top-class again. Under him, we played some of the best football in the world.
I posted that back in November, right after he got the sack. Then I thought to myself, 'we don't know what all happened'. Pochettino seemed very unhappy at Spurs toward the end, and I was afraid that it might come out somewhere down the line that all wasn't as it seemed between Spurs and Poch. So I hid it for awhile. After seeing that video of him saying his work's not done with us, though … the man-love's back in full force.
This is a very accurate assessment. Jol and his squirrels were quite entertaining, Redknapp brought the team belief, but Poch really took Spurs to the next level.
Inductee #33 JAN VERTONGHEN Spurs 2012-20 Centerhalf 314 games 14 goals 118 Belgium caps Quote: "I know where I want to go, and I think it is clear to everyone." Pook's man-love rating: 8/10 All throughout the 2011-12 season, Spurs interest in the Ajax centerhalf was pretty well known. Better still, though, was that his interest in Spurs was also made clear (see quote). Despite Arsenal and others being in for him, Jan made no bones about where he wanted to play football come August 2012 - White Hart Lane. If he was wanting to get into the ToF (and why wouldn't he?), he couldn't have got off to a better start. Vertonghen signed in July within days of Ledley King's retirement. One might think that filling the boots of such a club legend would be a lot to overcome, but from the very beginning, he showed himself to be composed both on and off the ball, and the fans took to him quickly. Once new manager Andre Villas-Boas came to his senses and brought Michael Dawson back from the brink of a transfer to QPR, the two settled in to what would become one of Spurs most consistent centerhalf pairings in memory. Flash forward a few years to the arrivals of Mauricio Pochettino and Toby Alderweireld, and it got even better, with Vertonghen in 2015-16 anchoring the best defense in the Premier League as we chased the League title right up to the end. That's right, Spurs - Spurs! - allowed the fewest goals in the League. Verts would continue to be a pillar in defense over what would be arguably the best stretch at N17 in decades, solid on and off the ball until the end, when he left on a free for Benfica in the summer of 2020.
Just wanted to provide this little update on a Charter Member of the pookster HoF 🗞 BBC: Since lockdown, Spurs legend Gary Mabbutt has spent two hours a day calling vulnerable Spurs fans to provide some company. He is now nearing 1,000 telephone calls. pic.twitter.com/4p2bdCgAi2— The Spurs Web (@thespursweb) September 18, 2020 "Legend" gets thrown around willy-nilly these days, but this man is a true legend, and love Spurs as much as anyone.
To paraphrase Nathan Hale, I regret that I have but one rep to give to this post. This reminds me of my folks in my youth. My father was a prosthetist (made artificial arms and legs) and he ran his own business. My mom was his receptionist. Well into the 80s and 90s - by which time house calls were a thing of the distant past - when they had aging customers who had a hard time getting out and about, they would often send a tech out to take care of them at home. And I don't know how many times I heard my mother say to one of the guys things like, "now, that repair might not take long ... but don't you rush right back. Mr. So-and-so can't get out much anymore, so you make sure to stay and visit with him for awhile", or "Mrs. So-and-so's been lonely since her husband died. You give her a reason to call me here, so we can chat." Not exactly how most businesses are run - but successful in ways that most are not. Absolutely massive, massive kudos to Mabbs and the club for making this kind of effort. It may sound like a minor gesture, but to some folks, it can mean an awful lot. Unanimous* first ballot Thread of Famer. *ok, they're all unanimous, as there's only one vote. But you get me.
Inductee #34 RYAN MASON Spurs 2008-16 Midfielder 70 games 4 goals 1 England cap Quote: "I am and always will be eternally grateful." Pook's man-love rating: 7/10 Ryan Mason emerged from our youth system at what was a very, very exciting time. Tim Sherwood's brief, turbulent reign saw a dramatic shift toward the promotion of Spurs' youngsters into the first squad - a policy that initially continued under Mauricio Pochettino's tenure. Players like Harry Kane, Nabil Bentaleb, Tom Carroll, and Mason, himself, began seeing considerable time in Spurs's first team fixtures as the club sought to equal, and then exceed, the levels achieved under Harry Redknapp. It was in September of 2014 that Pochettino gave Mason his Premier League debut ... away to Arsenal in the North London Derby! He put in a solid 90 minutes in a 1-1 draw against the auld enemy and was on his way. Mason's boundless energy and commitment in midfield made him a good fit into Pochettino's pressing style and his ability to aggressively shut down passing lanes contributed to a defensive solidity that longstanding Spurs fans still find hard to believe. The post-match photo of Mason, Kane, and Bentaleb sitting together having just seen off Arsenal 2-1 at the NLD return leg at the Lane is for me the iconic image of that exhuberant time. But the Pochettino trajectory was steep, and with the exception of Kane and Harry Winks, most of those youth products would, ultimately, not keep up. Additions like Alli, Eriksen, Lamela, and Dembele were making the minutes harder and harder to come by and by the summer of 2016, Mason was reluctantly sold off to that destination for so many Spurs alums (e.g., Dawson, Huddlestone, Livermore), Hull City. The following February, in a League game against Chelsea, Mason would sustain severe head injuries from clash with Gary Cahill that would threaten his life and ultimately end his playing career. The response from Pochettino and the club would display just how much he had meant to Spurs, and by the Spring of 2018 he was back at N17, as a member of the coaching staff, where he has recently been promoted to Head of Player Development - the program that saw him and so many others through at such an exciting time.
Inductee #35 Lucas Moura Spurs 2018-23 Forward/Winger 221 games 39 goals 35 Brazil caps Quote: "Football gives us moments we can't imagine." Pook's man-love rating: 9/10 On the last day of the January transfer window in 2018, Mauricio Pochettino brought in the Brazilian in from his old club, PSG. Hailed for his pace and dribbling skills, it was their combination with his commitment and attitude toward the club that set him on the path to thread-of-fame status. In squads with Harry Kane and Son Heung Min for the entirety of his Spurs career, he was never going to be the star forward at Spurs. In fact, he never started more than 25 league games in a season. Of his 221 appearances for Spurs, 86 came from off the bench, injecting pace and directness (is that a word?) into our attack - and always, with passion and proper effort. A casual youtube search will show the quality of his goals. A number of them were truly impressive efforts. But he will always be remembered amongst Spurs fans for three in particular, in the second leg of the Champions League semifinal v Ajax. He would surely have found a place in this thread even without that performance, but that's the one that he'll be best remebered for, without a doubt. In light of the outcome, that he didn't get into the final (left out for an unfit and ineffective Harry Kane) makes its memory slightly bittersweet ... but on the day ... oh, my. Only the oldest of fans will have any Spurs memories better than that one.