Titanic Tottenham should avoid the drop

The press are making a lot out of the fact Tottenham's start to the season is their worst since 1912 - the year the Titanic sunk. But is that really a fair comparison? The Titanic was a mighty ship, whereas Spurs are more like pedalos in comparison!

The massive amount of money been thrown at the English Premier League's version of the game was always going to cause one of the "established" clubs a lot of problems. That it happens to be Spurs is irrelevant to an extent, as if it wasn't them, it would have been someone else.

But can Spurs really, like the Titanic 96 years ago, actually go down? On the surface (the best place for a boat to be) no team is too big to go down, but there is still a long way to go. Just as some pundits have been making wild claims Aston Villa will challenge for a top-four slot, it's far too early to be making serious predictions about a club the size of Tottenham Hotstpur.

One thing worth considering is that Spurs are one of the seven clubs to have played in every season of the Premier League since it began, on that terrible day back in the 1990s, along with Arsenal, Aston Villa, Chelsea, Everton, Liverpool and Manchester United. Of those, clearly Everton and Villa would have to be considered the most "at risk".

For Everton's chairman has already said the club needs a billionaire owner, while Aston Villa don't have the money to compete at the very top table, or the global brand to force their way in. Randy Lerner, their owner, may be a nice enough guy, but money talks - and his £600million or so won't go far in the crazy system we now exist in.

The next interesting thing will be to see who takes over Newcastle, how much money they have, and whether Sheikh Mohammed, either on his own or with a consortium, buys Liverpool. For it is possible that a new power group will exist, ending the days of a top-four but creating a new, even more divisive era between the haves and the have lots!

Hull City - fun, however long it lasts

Hull City have been a breath of fresh-air this season - and have shown that sometimes teamwork can overcome stronger teams packed with more expensive, if not better, players. Their defeat of troubled Spurs, shortly after dispatching Arsenal, was enjoyable.

However, it's unlikely to alter the pre-season predictions. Despite their decent start (they are third in the table!), I wouldn't personally bet against Hull getting relegated and I certainly wouldn't bet on Spurs going down. But stranger things have happened, which is why football can, at times, still be enjoyable, despite the obscene amounts of cash involved.

As well as enjoying Hull's unlikely league position, it's also great to see a new face in the dug-out enjoying the action. Phil Brown is currently the highest-placed English manager (with Harry Redknapp at Portsmouth the next-nearest) and is quite correctly winning plaudits across the land.

After beating Spurs, Brown said: "Tottenham might have had 23 shots but the best chances fell to Hull City. My hardest job after last week was to keep their feet firmly on the ground and make sure that they weren't over-confident. We're about three points ahead of our points tally because we didn't expect to beat Arsenal at the Emirates. We are ahead of schedule. It is dreamland."

Brown makes a great point. Nobody expected Hull to beat Arsenal but, once they did, the current trials and tribulations of Spurs made another win possible. To keep his players focused on the job in hand, despite being outplayed for long periods, showed a resilience any newly-promoted side needs if they are to bridge the gulf between the Premier League and Championship.

So while I remain convinced Hull City will be relegated, I'm happy to cheer them on as they stick a proverbial finger up at the big money boys in the top-flight - and if they do manage to stay up, especially if at the expense of a club who have spent silly money, it will be because of the "all guns blazing" opening they have made to their first-ever Premier League campaign.

Though even after beating Spurs and Arsenal, there is still someway to go before Hull's greatest-ever moment is beaten:



I'll get my coat...!

Venables slams "poisonous" Berbatov

Football needs characters like Terry Venables - proper people who can be relied on to speak their mind. Of course, they usually end up screwed over by people who don't like the "cut of their gib," or the like, but that's life.

One such character is Terry Venables. He may not have been anywhere near as good an England manager as the myth that has grown in the past 12 years, but he does have a very respectable record as a boss, both at home and in Europe.

Former Spurs boss Venables has made the headlines today (including the back page of The Sun, which is no mean feat!) by labelling Dimitar Berbatov as a "poisonous presence" who should shoulder a lot of the blame for the White Hart Lane club's terrible start to the season following his £30million summer move to Manchester United.

An extract of the article read: "Berbatov kept telling us he had 'a dream'. Well, good for you Dimi. You had a dream with a few extra noughts added to your bank balance. But did Spurs have a dream too? You got your way but your poisonous presence at the start of the season, the brooding and the reluctance to play, has cost the club that believed in you."

Venables also praised Tottenham supremo Daniel Levy, writing how he has "got to know him (Levy) over the years and got to like the way he thinks - and the dreams he had for Tottenham, too".

Three cheers for Venables for speaking out. As he rightly says, it is easy to always blame the men-in-suits but the mercenary players in today's game, who can't be satified with earning more than the average UK wage each week, really have a lot to answer for.

On a positive note, for Spurs fans at least, Berbatov has looked terrible since moving to Old Trafford. Perhaps he can't play without smoking a packet or two of cigarettes every day...?!?

Spurs a crisis club - who next?

Of the 20 clubs in the Premier League, it seemed unlikely not too long ago that Spurs would be the next one to be handed the moniker "crisis club" - but that tag is now appearing in headlines with increasing frequency.

According to an article in today's Mirror, striker Roman Pavlyuchenko is just one of a number of players to have become dissatisfied with Juande Ramos's management at White Hart Lane. The article goes as far as claiming Spurs are "in danger of losing" the player as Ramos's "chaotic reign lurches into crisis".

Pavlyuchenko was quoted as saying: "I talked to our coach about it and I even visited him at his house. I asked him what I had done wrong, why I had been substituted. He said it wasn’t because I hadn’t been playing well enough, it was just a decision to change tactics. He told me not to bother my head with stuff like that."

Spurs are no strangers to managerial mistakes, though. The nine-month spell Christian Gross had in the hot-seat 10-or-so years ago still brings a wry grin to the lips of those who remember its farcical nature. Even so, the situation Spurs are now in is far more serious.

For no team is too good to be relegated. It's hard to imagine Spurs going down - they are one of only a few ever-present Premier League teams - and even harder to imagine Ramos will be allowed to stay beyond Christmas if things don't improve soon.

However, as with Newcastle there is no doubt Spurs have the infrastructure to shoot up the table - let's not forget, it was only a few seasons ago where they went into the last game as the favourites to finish fourth and claim a Champions League place, then literally sh*t themselves.

What is clear, though, is the problems at Spurs need to be looked at closely. For if a team who look so strong can suddenly collapse to the bottom of the table for no real reason, then "weaker" teams with more shaky foundations are in even more danger.

And the longer Spurs spend floundering around the lower reaches, the harder it will be for them to catch up with teams they should be outperforming - such as Portsmouth and Aston Villa. They can also forget trying to reach the level of Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and, sooner or later, Man City, too...