Everything we love about Spurs
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The Athletic.

Hello everybody, welcome back to The View from the Lane. It's the Tottenham Hotspur podcast from The Athletic that is multi-award winning. Look, let's be truthful. The way things have been going the last few weeks, some of these pods have been pretty downbeat. Realistic, but downbeat. So we thought we'd have a complete change of mood today. We're recording this day before Valentine's Day, so we're kind of having a love theme.

Danny Kelly

Some of you, some of us, I've been, you know, for better or worse, watching this team for decades. Jay has no doubt seen them when he left primary school a few years ago and is now covering them very briefly. So let's start with the players. And I'm going to start with James. You're the longest suffering Spurs fan other than me. Who have been your favourite players over the years at Spurs? Who have you loved seeing or reporting on?

Well, I mean, as a young boy, that famous five team with Sheringham, Klinsman, Anderton, who else have we got there? Dimitrescu, Bambi. So that was kind of the first team I watched on TV, at least, in my very young, well, not that young, but young days. So that, I guess, is a pretty good grounding or should have been a pretty good grounding in teams that score a lot of goals and cannot defend.

So those guys, particularly Anderson, actually, he was my hero. He was the one I had on the back of shirts at school. Defoe, Berbatov, Steve Marbronk. I love Steve Marbronk. I know he's, was it Gordon Brown? Was it Gordon Brown who had him as a favourite player or Tony Blair? Tony Blair. Along with, it was Tony, along with Ayaan Tazayu, I think. Up there with his, up there with his best decisions.

Yeah, so just that type of female bronc like turning in one direction. I used to have this little remote control car when I was a kid that could only turn in one direction. And you had to turn it like 350 degrees to turn 10 degrees the other way. And that is what Steve Melbron did every single time. Incidentally, Scott Parker did that too. Deli, Kane, Bale, Cooke.

Timu Taino in the League Cup final in 2008 when he just checking if you've missed anybody guided guided Didier Drogba on the big screen by pointing to the scoreline great stuff

Jack, you've been watching football for some time now and reporting on Spurs for quite a long time now. Tell us about your favourite Spurs players. It has to be Harry Kane. Maybe that's too obvious, but I don't think I could have more admiration than I do for Kane, just because this is somebody who I remember watching, I think, for the first time. Harry Radnap, sort of ragtag, Europa League team player.

And then on loan at Millwall and Norwich. And he was clearly talented, but nobody would have expected then that he would make himself into one of, you know, probably the best player in Tottenham's modern history. One of the best English players, the best English player of his generation. Just that amazing combination he had of talent, application, intelligence. And really by the end...

you kind of like watching Kane, particularly in his last few years at Spurs, you really felt like you were in the presence of mastery, you know, of expertise. Like you would, it's one of those footballers who you feel like you learn more about football by watching him play. And he did it all with incredible,

like his willingness to sort of shoulder the difficult aspects of the club and never you know, I know people, people might not like what he did in the summer of 2021 for a bit, but in the main, I thought he handled himself with incredible professionalism and maturity.

over the course of, you know, best, about nine years in the Tottenham first team. So yeah, for me, I think Kane was my favourite. I think that thing you say about it not being expected is kind of overlooked now. Like people kind of bundling him in with kind of Wayne Roonies and whoever, who we kind of knew at like 16, 17,

probably even younger. It was going to be an elite player with Kane. Like he was this guy, as you say, he had kind of mixed fortune on loan. Like I don't think

I remember specifically thinking he was going to be like Tottenham's Shola Ramiobi. He was going to be like the squad player, cult hero, was going to score some goals but not be like the first choice striker for a decade and push for Premier League record goal scorer and break the club scoring record and whatever else. I mean, it was funny at first. It was so unlikely that it was this kind of almost comical thing.

I don't know at what point that stopped being funny, but it clearly went from this guy being this unlikely hero to just ludicrous elite sportsman and player. Because of the period at the start where he was just a gawky kid who came through the academy and was a bit...

didn't always look like the most natural player sometimes. And also, I think the fact that he went in goal that time almost... And messed up. It kind of added to this sense that he was... This is going to sound demeaning, but this is what people... I think this was the narrative at the time, right? He was happy to be there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Living his dream of playing for Spurs. And it just wouldn't have occurred to people at that point that he would...

that he would have the career he did and score the mountains of goals that he did. He felt like an outsider, didn't he? He didn't feel like he was cut from the same cloth as all these other players that you were seeing come into big Premier League clubs from academies. But that was part of the joy. There was a sort of...

18-month period after he finally displaced Adebayo from the team. And, you know, he got the goal here and a goal there. Then he got the mass goal. And you could see it happening in front of your eyes. That was part of the joy for me. Jay, it's no secret you're the youngest and possibly the most glamorous of us. So your Spurs experience is...

First of all, you're definitely in the never-seen-them-win-a-trophy school, and much else besides. Obviously, you're now deep, and we'll get on to how Spurs have affected our lives when we do this thing that we love talking about them and writing about them. Tell us about your Spurs players that you love.

I think James mentioned Dele Alli and Dele was definitely someone I liked, but the one who stands up above everybody else is Gareth Bale. So I just had a flick through his time at Spurs just to sort of familiarise myself with how old I was at the time. So his final season at Spurs was my final year at sixth form college, whatever you want to call it. So I was like 17, 18 years old. So at that point in my life, I was...

the shared experience of watching football had probably gone from I'm watching it at home with my mum and my dad to potentially watching it at a mate's house with a couple of drinks, et cetera. And that probably meant that the experience around watching some of his goals was slightly heightened because I just seem to remember that every goal he scored that season was ridiculously good. And it would be something that we talk about in the classroom the next day. And there's a couple that stand out in particular, but the,

I can see you, James. Come on. Come on. What, because of my age? This is disgusting. I'm sorry. Imagine how Danny feels listening to this. He's Dixie Dean to Danny. I've gone through that veil, James, where it no longer bothers me. I have to be honest. I'm sorry. But I think, yeah, there's a couple of goals that season that stand out. But the one against West Ham, I think it's like a last-minute winner. But I think he gets pushed over and fouled.

referee waves play on then he gets back up and just goes do you know what F this and just smacks it in the top corner just that sort of

That innate confidence to just grab the game by the scruff of the neck, which it felt like he did so many times that season. He obviously won so many different awards, got that move to Real Madrid. The volley at Stoke. The volley at Stoke. Shoulder-high volley. I think he scored a couple of ridiculous solo goals against Norwich as well. There were just times where it felt like his spurs needed a goal. He just popped up out of nowhere and did it. And that is the sign of an elite player. So I really enjoyed watching him.

Contrary to Jay's experience, of course, I've got an enormous amount of Spurs players to choose from. But for years and years and years and years, my favourite Spurs footballer of all time was Pat Jennings, their great and legendary goalkeeper from the late 60s through to the mid-70s. And his genius...

from being the greatest shot stopper I think I've ever seen, wasn't even washed away when Spurs accidentally let him go to Arsenal, where he had another equally brilliant career for years afterwards. And so it was a great, great surprise to me about two years ago when I started to realise...

The Harry Kane overtaking him as my favourite ever Spurs player, partially because you want to live in the present and partially because it was true. His rise to fame, his brilliance, his not captaining the Spurs team in his own special way,

Just an amazing man. But now here's something from further down the life's line than all of you chaps are. Of course, the doors slide all the time. Things move. Now he's gone to Bayern Munich. Pat Jennings has returned to, oddly enough, has returned to being my favourite ever Spurs player. Nothing against Harry going to Bayern. We understand the circumstances and all the rest of it. But somehow he has just slipped down the greasy pole.

And so I'd have to say, um, of all my years of watching Spurs. And it was so nice on a previous podcast where I think it was Jack who interrupted my, one of my reveries to say, tell us about him as a goalkeeper, you know, he,

It's nice to pass those things on. What about managers? I was going to say there are less of them to choose from, but in recent years, that's not really true, is it? You've watched them operate and you've all worked with them. In your case, Jay, with one of them, which, to be fair, is pretty good going in recent times at Spurs. Why don't we start with Jack? Who are the Spurs' managers that you've loved? Because this is the love edition.

Well, I mean, I probably won't surprise anyone here to say that my favourite Tottenham manager who I've covered is Mauricio Pochettino. I think that's because, you know, I spend a lot of time thinking, what does it take to manage Tottenham? What do you need to be able to do to manage Tottenham successfully? And I think what it comes down to is you've got all these, in this job, you've got all these competing players.

impulses, right? You've got the financial restrictions inherent in the ownership model of the club, but you've also got the sort of history and the expectations of a certain type of football, which the fans want to play. You've got no real recent tradition of success to build upon. You know, you've got to build that identity up for yourself.

You have to compete with teams who are financed differently from Tottenham. You know, teams that have more money, particularly for salaries.

And it's just difficult to kind of, it's difficult to know how to pull these things all together. And Pochino really is the one, the only man who's managed to make any sense of it. He's the only man who's managed to ride all those different impulses at the same time and to, yeah, and to bring it. And frankly, he's the only one who's able to bring everyone together for any extended period of time. I mean, I know that, you know, if I think back, there were,

Certainly times under Harry Redknapp where everything, and times under Martignolle a bit before my career, and then briefly under Conte and briefly under Postacoglu. But really, Pochettino had years of unity. And I think that's the hardest thing for any Tottenham manager to create, and he did it.

obviously, Poch is the most important one. I mean, Keith Berkenshaw had a brilliant team at Spurs when I was a younger man. I liked a lot of what Harry Redknapp did, even when he started to bring in loads of ex-Chelsea and Arsenal players, you're kind of biting your lip. But it was, you know, he was okay. Even after, I've got to be honest, I said something about him on national radio and he rang the station to complain about me. The only defence I had was it was true.

Um, and, uh, you know, he didn't want the thing saying, um, but I guess on a personal level, a day I spent at the ground at the training ground, the old training ground in, in, uh, in Turkey street in Enfield. Um,

Was it Chesson? Chesson. With Martin Yole, stays in my memory. He just started at Spurs. He'd been there a few weeks, and they said, come up then and spend some time with him. And he was amazingly affable and incredibly down-to-earth and funny and

And I remember the players had all left except for Robbie Keane, who was bashing ball after ball after ball after ball into a net. You know what practice makes perfect and all that. And we were in a room looking at him doing this. And Martin was clearly very agitated.

And eventually he shouted, Robbie, that's enough. Go home. So Robbie Keane trooped off. And I said, what? And he took out a packet of cigarettes in the days when you could smoke indoors and took the deepest inhale of a cigarette I've ever seen. He said, I can't be smoking in front of the players, but I can't wait for the last one to go so I can get this going. And for those of you who do the job that you do at The Athletic, it was also absolutely well known that one of the reasons Martin was so well liked by the press

and why he could get such great quotes from him is because after games, he would take people privately into a cupboard so he could smoke away from the public. But you'd get, so you'd get the full length of the cigarette smoking for your quotes. Um, but he was a really, really decent man. And, and, um,

And that's why I felt the way his time at Spurs ended, whatever about the footballing arguments was a disgrace, you know, an absolute disgrace to the club that a bloke should be treated like they were everybody. And I was talking about it in the stands. Oh, he's been sacked and he's down there at the Lincoln touchline. So I'm going for, Potts is the best manager we've had in my time, but I'm going from no trophies. Yes, I said it. And I'll go for Martinho's being the best laugh. What about you, Jay? How are you getting on with it with the current incumbent?

Yeah, I get on well fine with Ange. Look, I don't think I'm ever going to... Does he know your name yet? He's not said my name yet, but that doesn't mean he doesn't know my name. Look, I realised early on that I'm never going to hold the same place in his heart as Charlie does. I think he had a special relationship with Charlie. I don't think Ange has many favourites, but the fact that

I think even after Charlie left, there was a press conference at the beginning of the season where I think he name-dropped Charlie. I thought, wow, he's clearly cut through Andrew's post-Docoglio's conscious. But yeah, I get on fine with him. I think he probably likes me more than some of the other journalists in the room. I'm sure people can work out who he probably doesn't favour by some of the questions and clips from press conferences that go viral. But yeah, I get on well enough with him. It's different to... I have a different...

with him than I did with Thomas Frank at Brentford. There were times at Brentford I'd be like the only Brentford reporter going to away games. Wow. I'd basically do the press conference by myself. So I had a lot more direct interaction with him, whereas there's obviously loads more people who cover Spurs. If, as some of the papers keep suggesting, Thomas Frank is Spurs' chosen person for the next manager, will he kiss you when you come to the ground? No, he wouldn't. Why would he do that? Because you're so close. Yeah.

No, he'd obviously have like a little handshake or whatever. No, that is very manly, very British of you. As you said, no friends in this game. Get on well with him, but strictly business, strictly professional. What about you, James? Which of the Spurs managers have changed your life? Who do you love? I've never kissed a football manager, to my knowledge. You know, I don't think, I've never met a sitting Tottenham manager. Oh no, that's untrue. Sorry, it is untrue. Sorry. I met AVB very, very briefly.

I mean, that is a very narrow window, isn't it? While he was in charge. He was literally sitting on the side of the pitch, yeah? Yeah, yeah. This is at Ledley King's testimonial dinner. I think I might have told this story before. No, please do. It's quite embarrassing. So it's quite topical. The good people at Football Manager invited me to Ledley King's testimonial dinner. So I was on a table, sat with your good mate, Paul Hawksbury, actually, Danny. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

And yeah, I just got very, very drunk on Football Manager's Dollar and bowled over to Andre Villas-Boas, who at the time I was a very, very big fan of, a big advocate of that ADV. Yes.

and told him what a great job he was doing. Like a professional journalist should. And honestly, I was, honestly, this was a bit topical as well, I was literally about two yards away from Daniel Levy. I could have said anything to him. Yeah. But just for clarity, you didn't kiss AVB in that moment. I didn't kiss AVB. I'm also thinking about poor old AVB toying with the last of the Salmonon Crute and suddenly a drunken...

Because you are a very large man, James. I'm not throwing stone inside a greenhouse. You're just a very huge human. I mean, I think you've got two moons, haven't you? You've got your own gravitational pull. The thought of you looming drunk over me, unintroduced, is pretty frightening. I mean, I know you really well, and I'm frightened when you come near me. So what, he must have thought. I think we talked about this on the live show last year, but I'm sure I said something like,

you've got a good manager here or something like that to leave you that was my like one shot one shot to talk to Daniel Levy and that's why I said you've got a good manager here about Andre Villas-Barr yeah fantastic that's why I'm sat in an office and these two are out asking the questions I guess

No, no, I'm now living with that image of poor old Bavius Boas with whatever the, what is the dessert at these events? Some kind of creme brulee, isn't it? Yeah, I don't think I got that far. Yeah. And suddenly you think the sun has been darkened out because here is James in full effect.

So the three people on The Athletic who work, but you're about to witness and enjoy podcast history now. And I mean that, and I'm going to trail this podcast with this. The three people you work on, who work on The Athletic and on this podcast with Spurs, are Jack and James and Jay. They are the three Js. And so with the help of artificial intelligence, producer Tom,

with a little bit of help from me. I'm the Andrew Ridgely of this operation. I spent yesterday putting together some stuff for you. Imagine if the Three Jays actually were a band.

And imagine if they wanted to write a song about their experiences of covering Spurs. And imagine if that song locked into Jack Pitbrook's incredible phrase, which we've now adopted, that everything to do with Spurs and Spurs fans and their journalists is a vibes rollercoaster.

We spent some time on this. Enjoy it. The lads have not heard it yet. This is the Three Jays and the slow jam version, more to come later on, of Vibes Rollercoaster. We are Three Jays And this is our song About reporting On Tottenham We're going up Bit by bit The next game A crushing dip

So give me one more ride on this five's roller coaster. And I'll scream. Give me one more ride on this five's roller coaster. It's my dream. It's my dream.

Tim Spears on guitar. It's incredible. Hang on. Sorry. James and James actually rhyme. That should have been there. You're not right in this like road news. That's our ground. So give me

Give me one more ride on this fast roller coaster and I'll scream. Give me one more

on this spiced roller coaster and I'll scream give me one more ride on this spiced roller coaster

Genius. I can't wait to hear people singing that on Sunday. Was that made by AI? Yes. Bring on the AI revolution. Wait till you hear the funk remix in about 20 minutes' time. Music's dead now. Forget about that. We're all about the AI. And the answer to your question, James, is...

Of course, Jack for Rhymes, etc. But I needed to get to Bill Nick Way. That's why Jay is named third. It's not simple, this songwriting business. I rang Bernie Taupin and he talked me through it. Listen, I hope you all enjoyed that. It will, of course, be available on Splatter Vinyl very, very soon. And we'll get back to it. But I'm warning you now.

that while we were making this yesterday, and by we, I mean Tom, the news got out on the internet and it was so highly of that version that before the end of the next section, Pharrell Williams rang us and said, could he remix it? And you'll hear the Pharrell Williams remix of Vibes Rollercoaster a little later in the show. ♪

Thank you.

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Yeah, welcome back to The View from the Lane. Full crew today, me, Danny Kelly, Jack Pitbrook, James Moore and Jay Harris, the latter three now subject to one of the greatest musical achievements of the, I was going to say, 21st century. Let's just say ever have done with it. Back off, Mozart. Here comes the three Js and Vibes Rollercoaster. If I was back on my old job on Radio 1, I'd be trying to make that into a hit now. We asked for you, some of you, to give us, you know, in words, what you think of the

things that were you love about Spurs because this is our love edition to precede Valentine's Day. I'm looking to say that everyone's been to the garage for the flowers. They're all nodding furiously.

This was a very uplifting one from Rory Brace, who said, Perfect, he says.

It is. I mean, I, when we talked about this a couple of years ago, the walk to walk to the ground was always my favorite thing about going to every game. Um, the thing about who you're sitting next to is more controversial, I think, because these days it's always the same people as you have to be lucky with who you've got there. Um,

when I was in the old stadium, I was very lucky. I sat next to a person who I never spoke to. He didn't want, you know, you catch, make eye contact. He didn't want to be spoken to. He was just watching the football on his own. And at halftime, he would always take out the share bag of wine gums and

pass it open it hand it to me at my left i would take two sweets out of it and that was our human communication done except for punching the air we never hugged um it was just the the shared punching of the air when spur scored and the shared wine gums is there something that stands out for you in terms of going to the matches whether as a fan or reporter that you love i mean i talked about this in the past um jay about that walk down the seven sisters road where

Actually, because all human life is there, isn't it? You see people in clearly two grand leather jackets and ponytails, film directors on the way to the Spurs. It's a very culturally and economically mixed part of the world. It's just a brilliant, brilliant thing. Also, I know too, because there's a lot of music fans on this podcast, as you walk the length of Tottenham High Road, whether it's coming out of pubs,

record shops, clubs, all sorts of things. The amount of different kinds of music that will sail your ears in the sort of, what is it, a mile walk from Seven Sisters to the ground is always fantastic. What have you come to love about the Spurs experience, Jay? Now that, of course, you're in the entirely... Did you ever go to the old Spurs ground? You must have done, yeah? I didn't. Ah, okay.

So, your entirely new stadium. Yeah. I could obviously make a joke about the food you get served in the press room. No, I think... Is it good or bad at Spurs? It's exceptional. It's the best. It is very good. Oh. I think, firstly, and I felt this more on Europa League nights, but when you go to the ground and you can see on the side of the stadium the little...

digital board or advertising board and it will flash up and it will have like Spurs' badge and Roma's badge or something like that. I remember thinking that's quite cool when you can see that from a distance and you're walking to it from a wider way. But I think the main, the thing that excites me the most about reporting Spurs is just going to games where it feels like everybody in the country is watching them. Like no disrespect to Brentford, we all know I enjoyed my time covering them. Yeah.

A lot of the time, they're not the biggest story in the footballing world. There were times where they would say beat Arsenal, beat Manchester United, and lots of people were talking about them, but they happen quite rarely. Whereas I remember going to that game when it was Spurs or Trafford earlier this season, I just felt like it was going to be a really fun game. Just knew that loads of people were watching it. And just that sense of...

But possibility, even though they lost at Anfield the other night, the fact that it is a Carabao Cup second leg semi-final and there's the possibility of Wembley and a trophy further down the line. And it might be a surprise for people to hear me say this considering the results this season, but there have been a lot of games where I've got into that with that optimism being like, this is going to be a cool game. Something exciting is going to happen today. I might have been proven wrong on a lot of occasions, but there's always been that sort of,

childlike glee before games thinking I could watch 11 very, very good players produce a really exciting and excellent performance today. What about you, Jack? What do you still love about being... I don't want to call you the Spurs correspondent. You're so much more. But about your day-to-day involvement with Spurs. I love a lot of it. I love the community of Spurs fans and being...

being part of that uh i love meeting people who who listen to this show i met francis and ben on tuesday evening shout out if you're listening um but i also love i mean i love going to the games um

Just the sense that, I mean, as Jay says, sometimes you go to games and you really feel like it's the center of the universe. Maybe not so much right now because the team is not very good, but certainly there have been lots of points in recent years where it has felt that way. And even if the team is bad, it's still the center of the universe for the 60,000 plus people in the ground and then...

you know, far more people than that dotted all over the world who are tuning in to watch. And so you do get a... It does have that kind of... That quality of, like, meaning and importance to people. And I just think it's a great story. Like, Tottenham is... Even in the bad moments, Tottenham are a great story. I think they're probably the most interesting...

interesting club in the premier league right because they are um you know depending on how you look at it you might say they're the least successful or maybe least ambitious financially of the big six or you could say they are the richest and biggest and best established of the teams who don't win anything you know they you could say they're they are the most modern team in the sense of having the most modern stadium and like modern revenue model which is based on

you know, non football events at the stadium, or you could say they're the last big English team with what you might call, you know, 20th century ownership, like local ownership, you know, the chairman's been the chairman for 24 years, he is a Tottenham fan, you know, other teams aren't like that. So they are and with all of that, they have this sense of we've used this word before this sense of quest, right? Because they haven't won anything for so long. And that means that if and when they do win something, it will mean so much more, I think. So I think

Yeah, I think they are a fascinating story, but I don't want to make them sound like they're a kind of, you know, like they're a body that I'm dissecting at medical school. You know, it's actually like a thing which is important to people as well as being interesting to examine and learn about. Look, regular listeners and certainly those who went to the live event now a while ago, isn't it, will know that I, at the time, you haven't heard this, Jay, but...

There was a similar time under one of the previous useless managers where we were in a really, really dark place. And I decided to puff my chest out and I wrote a poem about

um, a hundred things I love about Spurs. And, um, it is now, it's now a national treasure and I will be replicating at the end of the show. But before that, let's return to, as I say, to when the news got out yesterday on the internet, that Tom was working on the three J's version of vibes rollercoaster, uh, among the people who, who rang me were, well, several Adele did. I said, look, it's not really your thing. I know your Spurs fan, everything, but,

Back off for now because Pharrell Williams got there first. So now, to end this section, let's hear Pharrell Williams' funk remix of A Vibe's Rollercoaster. I've got three J's And this is a song On top of a crushing dip Don't give me more That's what I'm talking about And I'm screaming And all this fun's all a dream

The King was at the Spurs Stadium. I take it you weren't invited, Jay? Not while I'm meeting the King when my mum gets her MBE next month, so don't worry about that. But it could... Yeah, yeah. Thank you, Jay. But you could have got a chance to build up a rapport with him like you got with Thomas Frank.

Yeah, true. Next time. Does anyone know, sorry, remind me because I didn't watch the British news. What was he doing at the stadium? He met Son and Bethany England with, David Lammy was also there, the Foreign Secretary and MP for Tottenham. And they just had a bit of a, you can, they looked around the stadium and he had a chit chat with the players. And it got me thinking, when was, when would have been the last time that a reigning monarch had been

been to the stadium. I'm not sure, would Queen Elizabeth II ever have been to the old White Hart Lane? Or even in the borough of Haringey, let's be honest. Yeah, so Charles, I was thinking about when Tottenham, so Charles, when he was Prince of Wales, handed Gary Mabb at the FA Cup in 1991. Yeah.

I think in 1981, I think it was the Queen Mother. I was trying to figure this out on Google earlier. But I would be curious to know if anybody can think of previous royal visits to White Hart Lane or which was it ever a reigning monarch or just another member of the royal family. Royal visits? Do you want to do an Emerson Royal, Jake? Oh, James. You never led me king, eh? Yeah. Yeah.

Look, we can't avoid it any longer. Another match is coming. But, Jay, a match where we haven't had just three days interval between one and the other. They've actually had some time to prepare. Spurs against Manchester United. Two bald men arguing about the hotel room hairdryer. What can we expect to see at the weekend? Yeah, well, firstly...

I'm sure Jack agrees, but having a week, not just for the players, but for the reporters, I suppose it's nice to get a breather. You're not having that, are you?

No, no, no. I was going to say, but I think I know your pain, but I can hear the sound of tiny violins. There's a whole symphony going on behind me. I've got to be honest. He's up on those prawn sandwiches, right? A bit more variation in your diet. And the marvellous food at Spurs, yeah. You guys don't have to traipse to that training ground twice a week. It's like going to Mordor and back. No, I think, firstly, we need...

need to see a reaction from the Aston Villa and Liverpool games on Sunday and hopefully the fact that players are going to get a couple of days off this week or they were given a couple of extra days rest will help out I think I said that people like Dejan Kuliseski in particular really really need to sit down on a maybe not a beach but spend 48 hours in a spa and come back fully pumped up

I know there's a group of six players, which includes Odebeer, Odoghi, Vacario, Werner, Johnson and Maddison, who are sort of close to returning. And I'd expect three or four of them might be available for this weekend. That will make a massive difference. Would any of them start, Jay, do you think?

I mean, it's an impossible question to answer. It's an open question. Let me fire back at you. Could they start? Probably. Should they start? That's a different question entirely. Even having someone like Madison come off the bench for 20, 30 minutes would make a massive difference. Roy Kane doesn't think so, but that's a separate issue. On another podcast, they've already started to pre-criticise Spurs' team when the injuries are over. Okay, well... And it was Madison he was picking on in particular. Yeah.

Well, that's just Roy Keane for you. Yes, Sunday, big game. I think the break will help, but there'll still be no Richarlison up front, still won't be Solanke, so it's up to sort of tell Son and Kulisescu or Mikey Moore to try and get the job done, and that's going to be tricky. But facing a team that's probably as dysfunctional as Spurs right now, United have just lost DeSandro Martinez to an ACL as well. So this is sort of...

A battle between two teams who both have loads of problems and who can mask those problems best on Sunday. What do you expect to happen, James? Are you hoping that any of these players... I'd be pretty confident, actually. I think just having those players on the bench will make such a big difference. Like, even if none of them start, other than maybe Vicario, I guess, if he's fit enough. But to have...

like a few of those players have like an attacking option on the bench. They would have changed something to have senior players available, even if they don't play that much of the game. I think it makes such a big difference because you've seen, I mean, there haven't been many games that Spurs have, well, I was going to say there haven't been many games that Spurs have lost late, but actually if you look at ones like that Wolves draw, which admittedly is not a defeat, but... The Leicester draw. The Leicester defeat as well. If they could have made changes in those games, I think they probably would have had...

like a better kind of finishing power, better staying power in those matches than would have been able to get better results. And as Jay says, you know, losing Sancho Martinez last week, the timing of that, like just their first game afterwards, I think that's right, or first league game afterwards, I should say. Yeah, how they adapt to that. I know there's quite a big fuss about them not signing a striker in

So it feels like they have issues up front, even though they've spent about £120 million on strikers in the last two summers. I mean, their results have been pretty terrible since Hamerham has been there. Clearly he's going to change the system and it hasn't quite taken yet. I mean, there's a lot of similarities between the two teams, aren't there? Sure, there are.

they're both kind of a way off. But I'd sort of say, if you were to ask me which of those two teams, as it stands, has more of the kind of tools, pieces in place to be like competitive right at the top of the Premier League, then I would say it's Spurs. Oh yeah, definitely. Also, Spurs have played, Spurs I think have got

I suppose this first XI, I think, is good. You know, I suppose first XI, with everyone fit, is a good first XI. And they've proven, not a lot of times, but like half a dozen times this season, that they can play really good football. Twice against Manchester United. Exactly. They can execute the manager's plans in a way, which, when it's good, is really, really good. With Man United, I don't think they've got a good first XI. I think they've got...

They've barely got a good first level at all, I think. They've got like two or three good players. And there's no... They've got no... I mean, I know they beat Manchester City, which is good, but in the main, they've got no consistent... They've got no track record of performing in a way which shows they can do what the manager wants. Now, obviously, Andrew's been there a year and a half. Amrim's only been there a few months. It's not a level playing field, but I just think Spurs are clearly...

Yeah, like Spurs have clearly got more going for them, I think, at the moment than Manchester United. Yeah. The thing Manchester United have got is two players, the only two outfield players in the Premier League that have played more minutes than Pedro Aiparo this season. Oh, wow. Dalot and Bruno Fernandes, the only two outfield players in all competitions.

Nice. They've played more minutes than Pedro Porro. I was going to say, because I think, I thought I read somewhere that Porro has played more Premier League minutes than anybody else outfield. Yeah, very possibly, but in all competitions, those two have played more. Yeah. They're outfield for Spurs. It's Porro most in the league, but there are obviously other clubs, a couple of players, outfield players who played every single minute. I looked at this the other day. Listen, thank you all for taking the time to be with us today and thank you for listening. But first though, and because when...

We asked for people's reasons why they still love Spurs. One or two, and it was one or two, which I count as a torrent on social media. So why don't you just do your poem again, Danny? Well, I've updated my 100 things I love about Spurs poem. Thank you all for listening. White Hart Lane, the only non-league team to win the FA Cup.

Davija Nola's hair, Chrissie Waddle's flair, glory, glory, hallelujah, Ledley King's knees, Robbie Keane's trick, the great Bill Nick, Alan Gilzean's flick, Navy Blue, Dave Mackay and Billy Bremner, Jürgen Klinsmann's dive, 49 goals for Clive, Luka Modric's turn, Gareth Bale, pace to burn, the Paxton Road, Ugo lifting the World Cup,

Jan and Toby, Arthur Rose push and run, McNamara's band, Adele and Peter Cook, the Park Lane end, that big golden cockerel, Steve Perryman's thousand appearances, Luca Mora's Amsterdam, the most England caps, the most England goals, Gaza's 91 Cup run, the glory days on telly, Moussa and Dele, the shelf, Christian Romero World Cup winner,

Chick King for dinner, taxi for Micon, Glenn Hoddle's chips, Norman Stanley Fletcher supports Spurs, Danny Rose's debut goal, Eric Dier in the crowd, Argentinian ticker tape, the Battle of the Bridge, Pat Jennings' massive hands, the new stadium, Song Hun Min, the first modern double, that glorious white shirt, Ozzy and Ricky,

The rainbow on the last day at White Hart Lane. That radiant all-white European kit. Jimmy Greaser's one million goals. The first British team to win a European trophy. The first British team to win two European trophies. Eric Dier putting Sergio Ramos in the stand.

All those names at Marine. Martin Joll's big head. Pochettino's big balls. Crouchy's goal at City. Ricky's run, so pretty. Hoddle dominating Cruyff. A glorious passion for life. The view from the lane. Kulusevsky's brain. Harry Kane, all-time great. And the next trophy, however bloody late. MUSIC PLAYS

The Athletic.

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