Two Of Our Own

February 6, 2023February 6, 2023Leave a comment

Greavsie

Another football related post. Yesterday, in our 1-0 defeat of reigning champions Manchester City, Harry Kane (above, right) scored the winning goal, which turned out to be his 200th goal in the Premier League, becoming only the third player in the Premier League to reach that milestone. More importantly, it was his 267th goal for Tottenham Hotspur, thereby becoming our highest ever goalscorer. The record he broke was that held by the great Jimmy Greaves, whose tally of 266 was, I always thought, impenetrable. Greavsie, above left, passed away last year and that’s when I made this little image of him. I also made one of Ian St. John, who also died, and was his long-term TV partner. As a kid in the 80s, the Greavsie of the telly and the Greavsie of the Spurs record books were two different people, I just would not believe they were the same guy. We loved Greavsie, he was this jolly bloke who made football on TV fun. Saint and Greavsie, the show the pair of them did, was genuinely hilarious, and Jimmy Greaves was this bubbly balding bloke with mischievous eyes and a bushy moustache, a cheeky chirpy Cockney chappie, cheerful and cheesy, while amiable Scot Ian St. John was his perfect foil, I wouldn’t say the Wise to Jimmy’s Morecambe, but Saint was very funny in his own right and they were a great double-act when talking footy, and Saint genuinely seemed to love Greavsie. We all did. (I loved Saint as well, and knew he was a Liverpool legend). When I would be shown pictures of this great star of Tottenham’s history – which in those days was less than twenty years before – I couldn’t believe it. this guy with short dark hair, thin serious face, no jolly ‘tache, and every time he got the ball he would race past people like they were not worthy of his time, before slotting the ball deftly into the goal, over and over again, for both Spurs and England (as well as Chelsea and AC Milan, from whom we bought him in 1961). It was injury that kept him from playing a role in the 66 World Cup Final, losing his place to a guy called Hurst who ended up doing quite well himself. After his time at Spurs ended he played for various clubs, and the drinking happened, and eventually he became the Greavsie I knew. He was a club legend though, one of the all-time greats, and even though he’s now only fifth on the all-time England charts, his goals per game ratio is one of the best, scoring 44 in 57 (current all-time best Wayne Rooney for example got 53 in 120, and long-term holder Bobby Charlton had 49 in 106; Greavsie was legendary). For Tottenham, that tally of 266 in 379 games seemed like something nobody would ever reach again. For one thing, even our legendary strikers tend not to stay for that long, or maybe wane a little. Clive Allen was the big striker when I was ten, eleven years old, scoring 49 in that one season, but even he didn’t keep that up and we ended up selling him to Bordeaux of all places (and bringing in Gary Lineker! Who scored a bunch before going to live in Japan). Great strikers like Keane and Defoe were never reaching Greavsie’s level, and when someone looked really good, a bigger team that was winning trophies would lure them away, your Berbatovs and your Bales. And then along came Harry Kane. Born in Walthamstow into a Spurs-loving family, he was actually on Arsenal’s books as a boy, but ended up coming through Tottenham’s youth teams before turning pro. He struggled at first to make that first team, spending time out on loan, and then being part of our Europa League campaigns, but not getting much of a shot in the Premier League. Until he did, and then he started scoring loads. He was branded a one-season wonder. He kept on scoring. He wasn’t a particularly fashionable name, but he kept on scoring. That Spurs team of around 2016, 2017, they were so bloody good, and he just kept on scoring. There was talk of other big clubs wanting him, but Spurs were not letting go. “He’s one of our own!” was the chant we would sing, being the local lad made good. He kept banging them in for England, but people were still all, “yeah but lots of them are penalties, they are against weak teams, blah blah”. He changed his game, dropped deeper, starting getting almost as many assists as goals, something ignored by people I would speak to who would always be “he just wants the goals for himself”. His price tag was so high that if anyone wanted him, they would probably need to build as a second new stadium to pay for it. He nearly did get to leave, when Man City wanted to snatch him away, but in the end he stayed, and set his sights on that Greavsie record, and maybe finally getting us a trophy. Well, we have no trophy, but Kane has finally reached the magic Greaves line, and whatever happens now, he’s a club legend for all time. Alan Shearer is perhaps Newcastle’s greatest ever name, with zero silverware to show for it (he did win the league with Blackburn, but kids would believe that now about as much as kids in the 80s would believe that Jimmy Greaves off the TV was some sort of amazing goal machine). Maybe now Kane has done this, if we don’t get a trophy this year, and after his world Cup disappointments with England, maybe Kane will be given his leave to go and pick up a free medal at Bayern or PSG or dare I say it Man United, but it wouldn’t mean as much. Or maybe he will stay, and see us to the promised land? As Greavsie would say, football is a funny old game. Either way, Harry Kane, we salute you, the all-new Greatest Of All Time*. You deserve it.

(*though I still love Ossie Ardiles best)

Spurs v Frankfurt 1982

February 2, 2023February 2, 2023Leave a comment

Fast-forward to Fall, here’s something fun. This season (2022-23) Tottenham Hotspur are playing in the Champions League. You wouldn’t know it the way we have been playing, but it’s true. For those unfamiliar, I’m a massive Spurs fan, ever since I was a little kid obsessed with Ossie Ardiles and Glenn Hoddle. It came from my big brother, who used to go to every game in the early 1980s, and still has his collection of programmes, especially the 1980-81 and 1981-82 ones all bound in the official binder, every single game. We were great back then. I didn’t start going until 1983 I think it was (might have been ’85; it was a game against Everton and we lost 2-1, I think it was the 83/84 season because I have a memory of Marc Falco scoring while my brother was in the toilet, but it might have been the 84/85 season, and Graham Roberts scored in that one) (the internet’s great isn’t it, you can look up any old football score, but you can’t tell if you were there, and I don’t have the programme any more). By the way, Americans would say ‘program’ instead of ‘programme’ – “there’s no ‘me’ in ‘program’!” – but to us quaint British folk from Jollie Olde EngerLandde we still use the traditional ‘programme’, same as we use ‘colour’, doughnut’ and ‘aluminium’. We just like extra letters, while in America they are removed to make more room for advertising space. Anyway, I used to have all the programmes for games I went to in my old bedroom at home, and then I remember that a bunch of them got wet because (it was assumed) the cat did a wee on them. I think the radiator leaked on them. Whatever the culprit was, some of my own programmes got a bit damaged. That said I still have a bunch of them in the loft of my mum’s house, and they are mixed in with a bunch that were given to me by my brother-in-law at the time, also a Spurs fanatic who went to a lot of games. Last summer when I was back in London I went into the loft to find these old programmes and bring them back to the US with me, including a copy of the 1981 FA Cup Final, which I treasured when I was a kid. This is another one he left me, when Spurs played Eintracht Frankfurt in the 1981-82 European Cup-Winner’s Cup. That competition doesn’t exist any more, but it was always my favourite one of the three, which in those days were the European Cup – now the Champions League – which only the league champions could play in, your Liverpools, Aston Villas, Nottingham Forests; the Cup-Winners Cups, for the winners of a country’s main domestic cup, so in England the FA Cup winners would play in it, your Tottenhams, Arsenals, Man Uniteds – Spurs won in 1981 so we were in it for the 81-82 season, eventually going out to Barcelona in the semi-final; and the UEFA Cup – previously the Fair’s Cup, now called the Europa League – which was for those teams who came second, third and fourth in the league, your Ipswiches, Watfords, Evertons. I remember the French magazine France Football would always just call them ‘C1’, ‘C2’ and ‘C3’ respectively, indicating the order of their importance. When the Cup-Winner’s Cup was finally given the boot at the end of the 1990s, it became one of those things we old people who go on about the 80s and 90s love to reminisce about. For Spurs it had historical importance – we were the first English club to win a European trophy, that being the 1963 European Cup-Winners Cup, beating Atletico Madrid 5-1 (get in there Greavsie!). We would wear all-white in our early European adventures, so that the kit would appear glow under the floodlights, these mostly being evening games – the ‘Glory Glory Nights’, as they became known. It’s still our tradition to wear all-white in Europe as a home kit, instead of the usual navy shorts. Nowadays if I tell people about Spurs winning the 1963 Cup-Winners Cup, I may as well be saying we won the Anglo-Italian Cup or the Makita Tournament or the Wembley Arena Indoor 5-a-side or something. Hey, I still count Le Tournoi as an England trophy.

I thought I’d draw this though in honour of Spurs playing Eintracht Frankfurt once again (twice actually, two legs), this time in the Champions League, or ‘C1’ as France Football calls it. I believe they still call the Europa League ‘C3’; there is no ‘C2’. I wonder if the new Conference League, in which Spurs played last season in the inaugural competition, is called ‘C4’? I know you don’t really care. So I found this old programme, which I think was one of the earliest exposures I had to German football, indeed the German language, as we used to always have a section in the language of our guests, welcoming them to White Hart Lane (in this case, Wilkommen to Weiss Harz Strasse) (actually I think it would be “Weißer Hirsch” but as with all translation it’s much funnier when it’s wrong). I used to look at all the players they had, not really knowing who any of them were, although one of their subs in the programme was a young Joachim Löw, future excellently-dressed World Cup-winning boss of Germany. They also had a player I remember called Bum Kun Cha, who was the most famous South Korean player I knew until my favourite guy Sonny years later, and I remember seeing him again in the Mexico 86 sticker album (and yes, child me giggled that he had the word ‘Bum’ in his name, which middle-aged me would of course not do). Frankfurt’s assistant manager was called ‘Dieter Stinka’ though, which middle-aged me still finds very funny. Their coach was Lothar Buchmann, which makes me think of the library cop from Seinfeld, Bookman – “well I gotta flash for ya, joy-boy!” – and he looks a bit like your secondary school’s deputy headmaster in 1985. Their main player was Bruno Pezzey, who I don’t know much about but German friends I know who were watching football at the time are very familiar with him. I looked him up, Bruno Pezzey, it turns out he was Austrian, and born in the very small town of Lauterach, in Vorarlberg. Lauterach is where I spent two weeks in 1991 on a school exchange trip to Austria, staying with a family there, riding a bike around in the rain, hanging out with students from the Lauterach high school, doing a work experience in a small advertising agency up a mountain next to the nearby town of Dornbirn. Pezzey tragically died in 1994 aged only 39, and his youth club FC Lauterach have a sports center named in his honour. The things you learn. The other people on the cover are our great boss, General Burkinshaw, under whom we signed Argentinian World-Cup winners Ossie Ardiles and Ricky Villa, and won three trophies (the FA Cup in 1981 and 1982, the the UEFA Cup in 1984). These days of course we don’t need to win ‘trophies’, just being good sometimes is a trophy in itself, just participating in the Champions League occasionally is definitely something we hang in our trophy cabinet, or the half-and-half scarves with teams like Monaco and Dortmund at least. The other guy is our long-time captain and club legend, Steve Perryman. When I think of the phrase Club Captain, I think of Steve Perryman. A tough little fellow, I never actually met him, but I did get a nod from him as he walked past me when he was player-manager of Brentford back in the like 1989 or something. Maybe he was nodding at someone else. On that same day I did get to actually meet Geoffrey from Rainbow though, which was a massive deal, and he drew a little picture of Zippy for me. Not a very good picture of Zippy admittedly, but I don’t think Geoffrey did the artwork in Rainbow, that was probably done by Bungle or someone. I do have Perryman’s autograph though – on my 40th birthday, as a special present my older brother got me an official programme from the game Spurs played on the day I was born, a home game vs West Ham, and had it signed by Steve Perryman himself. I have it framed on my wall, and Steve wishes me a Happy Birthday “Pete”, with my name in inverted commas like it’s some kind of nickname or alias. Still, it’s something I treasure.

Incidentally, Tottenham won this game 2-0. We also won the game in 2022, 3-2.

it wasn’t to be, this time

June 18, 2019June 18, 20191 Comment

It felt like a World Cup game. I don’t want to talk about it. I’m just glad we got there, we really shouldn’t have even made it out of the groups. That quarter final against City with the late VAR screen ‘no goal’, that dramatic late goal at Ajax after being three down on aggregate, the fact we didn’t have a home stadium until late in the season, the fact we never bought a single player in a year and a half, it’s a whopping great achievement getting to the Champions League final, our first ever one, my beloved Tottenham Hotspur. It was a wild ride. The final itself was killed off by a dubious penalty decision in the first 30 seconds. Liverpool sat back and soaked us up easily, but both teams looked like they hadn’t played for three weeks. I had all of my Tottenham shirts, which number a good many, hung up around the house like a museum of football kits. I made a couple of banners of all the old home kits, we played the old Spurs music and watched old Spurs videos all morning. I never thought we’d actually win it, years of watching real World Cup games has taught me enough of that, but Liverpool have won it enough times. It would have felt better to lose to a non-English team really. Oh well. We can say that Poch should have done this or Harry should have done that, but at the end of the day it’s a football game and one wins, one loses, and there you go. That’s life. I had always said that if Spurs win the Champions League I would put on all of my Tottenham shirts at once and run around Davis singing Chas and Dave. Well the weather was in the high 90s so at least I didn’t have to do that.

I had a walk downtown that evening though, minus all the shirts, minus the Chas or the Dave. I just needed to sketch and have a pint, and hopefully it would be somewhere that wasn’t showing a replay of the final. I stopped into Uncle Vito’s, who were showing golf, and sketched the above before walking home. Oh well. At least Arsenal lost their final too (unfortunately it was to Chelsea), but that means no North London Supercup. Some other time maybe.

When the Spurs go Marching Home

March 8, 2019March 10, 20192 Comments

And here it is, the brand new Tottenham Hotspur Stadium! The new home of my beloved team. I have wanted to come and sketch the construction for ages, but never made it here until a couple of weeks ago – fortunately, construction has taken many months longer than the original optimistic plan, so I was able to get one sort-of in-progress sketch. The stadium is huge. It’s so different walking out onto Tottenham High Road and seeing it loom out, much larger than the old White Hart Lane ground. I wandered about taking photos, before settling on a spot to sketch on Park Lane by Northumberland Avenue. Lots of workmen in their hi-viz jackets, cranes still putting the panels onto the side. And then it was time to go into the new Spurs Shop, much vaster than the old one, and they’re even better at getting me to spend my money. One of the many things I did buy was the new book, The Spurs Shirt, an amazing (and very heavy) book covering the history of the Tottenham shirt. Very much up my Lane. When I was finally done, my backpack much heavier than before, I went off to my friend’s place in south Tottenham, for a fun night out in Stoke Newington.

After Tottenham’s historic home White Hart Lane was knocked down, the massive new modern stadium (with a retractable pitch, so that some NFL games can be held there) was built with an expected opening date of the start of the 2018-19 season. Maybe a few games in. Alright it’ll be September. Ok maybe not September, maybe a bit later. January? Hmm not January, let’s just say “coming soon”. In the meantime we have been playing at Wembley, waiting to move into the new home, couch-surfing in north-west London. Today, Spurs finally announced two test events, ahead of expected Premier League games at the new ground, with the expectation that our Champions League quarter-final will be, finally back home in Tottenham. Come on you Spurs!

the kit parade (part 1 of 2)

August 11, 20171 Comment

Ok folks, that time of year has come upon us again, the start of the new PREMIER LEAGUE season. Am I excited? Totally! Have I missed football this summer? Totally! Am I nervous about the fact Spurs are playing at Wembley and have made no significant signings? Totally! This year marks 25 years since the Premier League began, having been previously the exact same thing but poorer and with fewer games on TV. It was an exciting time, the summer of 1992, and I remember it vividly. I was, you will be surprised to hear, a little bit obsessed with football kits and that was a great time for kits, baggy and colourful with ridiculous goalkeeper shirts and the transition from skimpy 80s style shorts to long baggy 90s style shorts. I will do a run-down of those 1992-93 kits at some point, redesigned in MS Paint, but in the meantime I am presenting to you my annual, long-awaited review of all of the new kits for each Premier League team, in order of appearance in last year’s table. So let’s waste no more time: kits out, socks up, let’s get shirty. Like a reverse Top of the Pops, we will start off with the Top Ten…

CHELSEA:

Let’s be honest. Spurs should have been in this spot. In many other seasons what Tottenham did would have been good enough to win the Premier League…but in 16-17, Chelsea were just even better. In fact in all Premier League history (since 92-93) their points total of 93 was the second-best (second only to Chelsea of 2004-05). It helped that they didn’t have a European campaign to distract them, but they also had a new coach, Antonio Conte, and he is pretty awesome. How will his difficult second season be? I don’t know, but they will probably be in the top three. Blah blah blah. They have ditched Adidas though, and now have a simple new kit made by Nike, who use the same template as pretty much every other team they make kits for this season (which is handy for someone making a lot of Nike kits in MS Paint, by the way). The away kit is just a direct reverse of the first. They will have a third kit for sure, as will most of the Nike teams, but since they aren’t released yet I’m not drawing the template (bit hard).

TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR:

My beloved, beloved Spurs left White Hart Lane in May for the last time, and will play all of 2017-18 at Wembley Stadium while the new Tottenham stadium is built on the site of the old Lane. Rainbows and sing-songs and a record points total and the most goals in the Premier League. Now the Lane is rubble, and Spurs have ditched Under Armour for a Nike template. Very very similar to the one Chelsea got. I really like the away shirt, and I like that Nike have just said, you know what, just wear the same navy shorts home and away (unlike last year’s very slightly different navy home and away shorts). In fact I ordered the away kit from the Spurs shop in the UK, best part of a month later, still not here. We will get a third kit, which is a kind of dark purple/black colour that reminds me of a chewy sweet. How will our season go? Kane, loads of goals again please, Erikson, totally amazing. We lost Walker and will probably lose Rose, full-backs who want a ton more cash. Don’t they know we have a stadium to build? Our team is nevertheless growing up strong, and Pocchettino has proven himself to be a remarkable coach. I don’t think we will win the league this year, unfortunately. Then again, I said that last year. (Oh yeah, I suppose I was right…but we were bloody good!) If we do, and I promise you this right now, if Spurs win the League I will put on ALL of my Tottenham shirts, every single one, and run around the streets of north Davis shouting COME ON YOU SPURS!

MANCHESTER CITY:

man city 1718 It’s great having untold pots of cash. You can say, oh you want to earn double what you earn, come here then. But good luck selling players you have on those massive wages when they fall out of favour (looking at Samir Nasri, still on City’s books). Pep had a tepid first season, and has spent big this summer so he can have a Pep-tastic second season. It’s what he is best at, being at a club where you can just spend loads rather than actually be any good. They can buy millions of pounds worth of players and win a few games and everyone will call Pep a genius. They will start like lightning , but I don’t see them doing much. Halfway through the next season, if City start to slump again, he will get glum and start saying he doesn’t like football any more. I don’t mind City though, I always liked their fans who were loyal when City were utterly terrible (just a reminder, just over ten years ago their manager was Stuart Pearce; I’d like to see Pep try to manage that team) and definitely don’t begrudge them their riches, after all those years in Fergie’s Shadow (TM). I like this season’s kit, another unimaginative Nike template, and white shorts is always better for City, but I am especially fond of the colour of the away kit, they’ve had a few nice ones in similar colours.

LIVERPOOL:

liverpool 1718 Liverpool’s kits are made by New Balance and the home kit is a pretty sweet one, a throwback to the 80s, the good ol’ days when Liver-poool were grreat. Like, proper grreat. Ian Rush, Kenny Dalglish, Mark Lawrenson. Modern Liverpool haven’t won a title in the Premier League era (in fact, not a single title since Maggie Thatcher left office). They won’t win it this season either, but they have a fun coach in Herr Klopp. So the second kit is interesting, a throwback to a famous green and white quartered kit from the mid-90s, the MacManaman / Redknapp / Collymore / Fowler era. I loved that kit, one of the best they ever had in my opinion. This one is nice but the green bits are pinstripes. The collar is boring. The third kit is orange. Or amber? Either way it should be in the middle so they can look like traffic lights. Eh eh eh.

ARSENAL:

arsenal 1718 If you believe the newspapers, Arsenal have apparently stopped winning things under their manager Arsene Wenger (who has been in charge of the Gunners since the Herbert Chapman era). Oh, except for the FA Cup three out of the past four seasons. What is this devilry, do I defend Arsenal? No, not going to happen (those scars run too deep), but I am glad they have stuck with Arsene, and he has doggedly refused to move on. Since he has been at Arsenal, Mourinho has managed seven different clubs, one of them twice. Arsene has been at Arsenal so long, he was there when they were in Woolwich. When he arrived they were still called Dial Square and in fact the club is named after him. He is becoming the Guy Roux of French football managers. He was the Ronaldo to Fergie’s Messi. So now Arsenal find themselves away from the Champions League for the first time since it became the Champions League with an opportunity to fall out of the Europa League early and ‘do a Chelsea’. I have a feeling they just might do it you know, send ol’Arsey off with a final Premier League trophy before he retires on a high to a nice villa near Monaco and oh who are we kidding hey won’t win it and he will stay there forever… Oh the kits, yeah they are ok, Puma, second kit is nice, not too sure about the third kit though. Home socks are decent.

MANCHESTER UNITED:

man utd 1718 Ok I hate saying this and I really hope they don’t, but United will win the league this year. I was hoping they would have a Liverpool sized post-Fergie title drought (or Tottenham-sized, even better) but it’s that Mourinho second season (is he still living out of the hotel?), they have spent biiiig (again, spend loads and they will call you a genius, Jose, if you win; try doing it at another club such as, I dunno, Leicester). Jose has more signings to make (stay away from Spurs! No seriously Daniel Levy hates you) and has offloaded aging stars Zlatan (whose book is no longer above mine in the amazon rankings, hooray!) and that fellow Rooney, who went back to boyhood club Everton (he looks younger already!). No I sense something is in the air, I think this is the year Jose will win his United title, and if you thought Trump’s gloats about his f***ing electoral college win were annoying enough, just wait for Jose Mourinho, the Gloaty One. The United kits this year, the home kit is pretty sweeet, I like the simple button-up collar and the short adidas stripes on the shoulder. The second kit is like a black version of their 1991-92 blue and white away kit, the one covered in what look like maple leaves which they won the Rumbelow’s Cup in (am I remembering that right? Normally I do my homework on this stuff but I can’t be bothered looking up who sponsored England’s third-tier trophy 25 years ago) (I’m all about remembering the Premier League 25 years ago though, huh) (now that is the proper definition of an elitist). Anyway United apparently liked that design so brought it back a quarter of a century later. The third kit is grey and has a picture of old United players on it, a statue from outside Old Trafford. I remember that other grey kit they had in the 90s, the one they had to change at half-time vs Southampton. Stop me if I’m boring you.

EVERTON:

everton 1718 Everton got Rooney back, and they have a nice new Umbro kit. It is blue. Some bits are darker blue. I like the shorts. They are white. The socks are also white. Ok enough of this Jack and Jill talk. The greying away kit, a reference no doubt to the age of Everton’s tenure in the top flight, actually features a bizarre maze-like pattern running over the whole shirt which was designed to annoy me while trying to recreate it in pixels in MS Paint, like by line. Everton will probably have a third kit which will be in dark blue and purple with fluorescent yellow trim, but they hadn’t released it when I drew this. Everton are going to finish in 7th place this year. They are like the Wall at the North of Westeros, acting as a huge barrier to the between the Wildlings and the Top Six. Occasionally one Wildling will break through, as Leicester did, but in the end they all bend the knee.

SOUTHAMPTON:

southampton 1718 If Southampton were a kingdom in Game of Thrones, they would be the Dornish. For literally no other reason than they are in the South. I tell you what though, I really like their new kits, made by Under Armour. The home kit is reminiscent of a famous Southampton kit from the 1980s (teams like doing that don’t they), which I have distant childhood memories of (I vaguely recall Kevin Keegan, big perms, and the words Rank Xerox). The away kit, and this is genius (Pep-level maybe?), but it’s what you would get if you took a Southampton shirt and inverted the colours. Mind. Blown. Southampton have Ronald Koeman as their manager (what? He’s at Everton now? Who replaced him? Claude Puel?) sorry, I mean, Frenchman Claude Puel is Southampton’s manager (sorry what? they sacked him? Who is in charge now? ‘Mauricio Pellegrino’? Really?) Southampton are now coached by their former coach and current Spurs boss Mauricio Pocchettino (what? oh right sorry, mis-heard) former Man City boss Manuel Pellegrini, who (eh? sorry what is it now? Not him either? Well who is this guy then? Are you sure that’s right?) Ok, Southampton, who have a new manager, will be looking to break past the Evertonian wall and into the top six or seven or whatever.

BOURNEMOUTH:

bournemouth 1718 Hang on, sorry this must be wrong. It says here Bournemouth came ninth in the Premier League last season. Is that right, does that sound right? Apparently it is true! Wow, what times we live in. They have signed my dude Jermain Defoe, who I hope will keep scoring goals. Bournemouth is a popular south coast summer holiday destination and definitely isn’t known for being a favourite retirement destination for senior citizens who want to live beside the seaside (to quote myself from last season); Jermain definitely isn’t retiring. He spent a little while on loan at the Cherries a million years ago (scoring a bucket load, as he does). Bournemouth have replaced JD Sports with Umbro this year, and it’s a decent enough design, very plain. I think I preferred last season’s actually. Where will they finish this year? Jermain will keep them up! He couldn’t keep up Sunderland last year but he gave it a good go, bless him. I want the south coast teams to all be in the Premier League. We have Southampton, Bournemouth (I still don’t believe it), now Brighton have been promoted too, let’s get Portsmouth back, then we need to work on Exeter and Plymouth, oh and don’t forget Torquay United.

WEST BROMWICH ALBION:

West Brom 1718 Okay last one in this segment, West Bromwich Albion, who came a dramatic tenth last season. I remember when Spurs used to come tenth and I’d be like, well, it’s the top half of the table, that’s something. West Bro have gone from mostly white with stripes to mostly blue with stripes. The back of the West Bra shirt is all blue. This is in my opinion just typical of 2017. The West Bruh away kit is an odd choice and I’m sure they will need a third kit. The new sponsor was fun to draw in MS Paint. My prediction for West Bruv is that they will come in mid-table, like between 9th and 13th, which should filled all Baggies fans with boundless optimism. Hey West Bro have the highest stadium in England at the Hawthorns so if this is still like Game of Thrones they are like the Knights of the Vale. Also the WBA Heavyweight boxing belt is named after them, so there’s a little known alternative factoid.

Ok part one is done, it’s late, and there are plenty more to come. Amazingly the Premier League season kicks off in about eleven hours from now (on a Friday? What, are they busy on Saturday or something?) so if you’re so inclined, do enjoy. I will be moaning about kits and making non-committal predictions and weak Game of Thrones comparisons a little while longer (oh and then I will finally show you my Venice sketches too…)

audere est facere

May 14, 201711 Comments

I’m so sad. My beloved team, Tottenham Hotspur, are playing at their home White Hart Lane for the very last time. Kick-off against Manchester Untied is in about an hour, a selection of my many Spurs shirts are hanging around the living room, and my head is in all the memories from down the years. Tottenham have played at White Hart Lane since 1899, but we need a big upgrade, so we are moving to Wembley Stadium for a year (“Spurs are on their way to Wembley…”, Ossie’s Dream is one of my favourite songs), while the new stadium is being finished. The new stadium is actually on the site of White Hart Lane so we’re not really moving permanent location, but the ground is just next door, currently being built, about the swallow the old ground within like a giant Pac-Man. The old Paxton Road North Stand is where the new South Stand will be in the new stadium; I wonder if we’ll still refer to it as the Paxton end?

I love being a Spurs fan right now. We’ve had a lot of lean years since the 1990s, but the past decade we have been building a much better consistency and this year in particular we’ve been better than any time in my life. It’s just, Chelsea were a bit better, so they won the title on Friday. We have thus far gone the entire season unbeaten at The Lane (first time since the mid-sixties), and I really hope that record continues today against Manchester United. I don’t think it will, I think the occasion and the fact we are mathematically unable to catch Chelsea will have an effect on the players but that’s just me being an experienced Spurs fan. We have been incredible this year (and finally came above Arsenal, confirmed with a 2-0 victory in the last North London Derby at The Lane – I wish that had been the stadium’s Finale!).

I drew these tickets that I have lying around at home. The newest was from a game I went to with my older brother John, nephew Leo, and son Luke; my final game. the one above was from a game against Everton that I went to with my mate Terry in 2000. The other two aren’t mine, I think they were my brother’s. It’s through my big brother that I became a Spurs fan. The early 80s had Ossie Ardiles, Glenn Hoddle, Steve Archibald, Garth Crooks, Ricky Villa, my heroes. “When I grow up, I want to be Ossie Ardiles” I wrote once at school. My brother took me to my first game at the Lane in 1983, a 2-1 defeat to Everton (Mark Falco scored for us, Johnny missed it because he went to the toilet). I will never ever forget the first time, approaching the ground, the long walk up Tottenham High Road from Seven Sisters tube station, hearing the crowd roar as the Lane comes into view, but its emerging from the tunnel, seeing the green of the pitch, the sound of the thousands of fans (the swearing, the songs about Arsenal…), the players I’d only seen on TV or in football magazines actually there moving about in front of me; it was like magic. It never really stopped being like that either, every time I would go. I do love a football stadium, but none more than The Lane. My brother used to go to every game (ever-present in 80-81 and 81-82) and started taking me, but we couldn’t afford to go too often; I do remember one game, an evening cup match against Birmingham, we turned up late to see if we could just be let in, but the only places left were in the member’s area, so Johnny spent his last few quid getting us memberships so we could get in (Spurs beat Birmingham 5-0). Because we got membership that year (I was a Junior Member, got all the fun stuff in the post), we were able to go to the FA Cup Final at Wembley (my first Wembley experience; we lost 3-2 to Coventry, I was devastated). We went a few times that year though, 86-87, watching Clive Allen score a bunch of goals. The years of Lineker and Gascoigne came, followed by the Sheringham, Anderton, Barmby, Klinsmann years, followed by some truly pants seasons with the likes of Ramon Vega and Sergiy Rebrov turning out for us. I would only go once every couple of years, tickets being pricey for my meagre budget and always selling out. The stadium changed a lot though – while I’m sad about the departure, the stadium looks totally different from when I was a kid (the North and South stands used to be much smaller, and back then we had standing on the Shelf and big barriers; I spent a lot of time on the shoulders of taller fans!). Since we moved out here to America I’ve been to a couple of games on trips back, to make sure my son got to experience The Lane, seeing Harry Kane, Dele Alli, Hugo Lloris, before we inevitably moved into a 21st Century ground. That will come, we hope, in 2018. It’s still “at” White Hart Lane, you still go to exactly the same place to get there, but it will be different. One corner has already been taken down; the rest starts coming down tomorrow. We will always be Tottenham, Super Tottenham, We are Tottenham, FROM THE LANE.

Goodbye White Hart Lane! Thanks for all the memories! COME ON YOU SPURS!

the boy bale

February 18, 2013February 18, 20132 Comments

He’s been brilliant lately, hasn’t he? This is Gareth Bale, Tottenham Hotspur’s great young Welsh star, drawn on another Chinese envelope. I have him up between the drawings of Messi and Ronaldo next to my desk, and he is probably in that company. His free kicks lately have been spectacular, Spurs have barely needed a striker with Bale moving about up front. He needs to do something about his barnet though. Young people, eh.

schoolboy’s own stuff

February 9, 20132 Comments

Paul Gascoigne, as I will always think of him. For those who read my blog and don’t know the names of every footballer I mention (and I mention a few), Paul Gascoigne – aka “Gazza” – was a player from the late 1980s to early 2000s, who had perhaps his greatest playing period while a young cheeky lad in the white shirts of Tottenham, scoring a bullet of a free-kick against Arsenal in the FA Cup Semi-Final in 1991. As an England player he was perhaps the most ‘gifted’ player of his generation, playing with unrivaled passion yet a tinge of tragedy, famously crying on the pitch after receiving a yellow card (undeservedly) in the 1990 World Cup semi-final against West Germany, meaning he would have missed the final, if England had been any good at penalties. He became a national hero and an international icon. His golden spell at Tottenham ended with an FA Cup medal in 1991, though he never finished that match, having been so hyped up that he attempted to kick a hole in the chest of one player (laughed off by the Gazza-loving ref) before seriously injuring himself trying to remove the legs of Nottingham Forest’s Cary Charles. That injury put him out for a year, after which he was transferred to Lazio, and so on and so on. You can look up his history in Wikipedia or something. While he had a few moments of wonder, such as his amazing goal against Scotland at Euro 96, Gazza never quite reached the heights we knew he was capable of. Injury, personal issues, drinking, (cf Chris Evans and Jimmy Five-Bellies), famously being left out of the 98 World Cup squad, he never could live up to the hype of being Gazza. For me and so many other Tottenham fans, that free kick against Arsenal was the defining moment (and for me, all the more fun as I watched the match with my Arsenal-supporting dad). At his best there was nobody in the country even close.
Gazza has had a lot of trouble in his life since his glory days, alcoholism, domestic troubles, mental health issues. And now last week he was admitted into a treatment centre in the US, having suffered another setback in his health. It’s unlikely he will ever be free of his demons, but I’ll always think of him like this, young, cheeky and brilliant.

AVB-in

January 12, 20134 Comments

AVB – or Andre Villas-Boas as he prefers to be called – is the manager of Tottenham Hotspur. He is also Manager of the Month for December, following Spurs’ fantastic run lately. He is young too, and the first Spurs manager ever who is younger than me. He doesn’t like shaving (I can relate, though I can’t do stubble for very long without getting grumpy about it). I drew him yesterday lunchtime, when I was too tired to leave the office for lunch, and stayed in to draw on one of many envelopes I get at this time of year (this one is from Shandong University in China). It has been a very busy week, with an even busier one to come. In fact I was so tired yesterday that when I got home I fell asleep almost straight away, and when I woke up at half past five this morning this man was on the TV, leading Spurs in a 0-0 draw against his predecessor, Harry Redknapp, now boss of bottom-placed QPR. I like AVB. “A valuable boss.”

white hart lane

June 18, 2012June 18, 20121 Comment

White Hart Lane Stadium, on Tottenham High Road, home of the mighty Spurs. Well, we could be a bit mightier, but still we’re pretty mighty. We ‘might’ have come third, etc, we ‘might’ have gotten into the Champions League, Harry ‘might’ have committed to staying about four months ago rather than let uncertainty about England affect our previously epic season, etc. It’s all water under the Stamford Bridge now (by the way we did finish above Chelsea, though of course Arsenal pipped us in the end). Ah well! New season, new manager, new kit, new dawn at White Hart Lane. New stadium too, in a few years time, or so the plan goes. I hadn’t been up there in a good while, to the Lane, so on tis one day when a day trip to Brighton was aborted due to very bad traffic, my friend drove me over to Tottenham to look around the Spurs shop (I picked up a nice retro 1981 Cup Final top), and gave me a bit of time to sketch the stadium. There’s no truly great angle to draw it from the outside, so I chose a spot which I think sums up this block. Many of the older buildings which were there the last time I visited have been knocked down, in preparation for the possible new ground, to be built directly north of the current ground which Spurs have occupied since 1899. My older brother, an ever-present at the Lane for several years as a boy himself, took me to games when I was a kid, back in the days of Hoddle, Ossie, Falco, Clemence, the Allens. Whatever happens with this club, I will always have that. The thrill of approaching the stadium after a long walk up the High Road from Seven Sisters, and entering the ground which was smaller then but seemed massive with the packed terraced crowds, reading the matchday programme while bigger men around me sang, swore, shouted and clapped, as real-life football sticker heroes ran around the perfect turf; now that was football.

I didn’t have a great deal of time to sketch, so I drew the stadium and the outline work of the rest, and finished off the detailing and colour later on. I had to make sure there was a lamp-post – legend has it that the grammar school boys who founded the club as Hotspur FC in 1882 would meet beneath a lamp-post (and shortly after that they sacked their first manager, changed the lightbulb and ushered in a new dawn, the first of many).