By Leigh Sanders
Reading Roy Keane’s autobiography, a common theme he continually hammers home is about ambition. One of his main criticisms of his former Manchester United teammates who secured that famous treble of 1999, and that which drew such scorn from Sir Alex Ferguson, was that he thought certain players rested on their laurels following that famous night in Barcelona where United came from 1-0 down in the 90th minute to score twice against Bayern Munich in stoppage time to lift the European Cup.
Keane felt that some players had decided that this was it, nothing could get better. They thought that they were now untouchable and that anything else they won would not eclipse what they had already achieved.
I share Keane’s thoughts on this subject. In sport you can never dwell on the past. What you achieved was magnificent, but now you have to look forward. If you are not aiming to go one higher then why are you playing? You need that competitive edge to help you continually push on and not to stagnate or, even worse, decline.
Harry Redknapp seems to have the same idea. His Tottenham Hotspur side performed magnificently last season to pip moneybags Manchester City, plucky Everton, Martin O’Neill’s English revolution at Aston Villa and a massively disappointing Liverpool to that fourth Champions League qualification spot and a place among Europe’s elite.
But he’s not just resting on that. He wants more. He wants his team to achieve again, to push on and further their ambitions to match the biggest clubs in the country.
Tottenham have not won the league title in England since their double-winning side of 1961 but this does not faze big-talking Redknapp in the slightest.
“We could contend for the title,” he told The Sun newspaper at the backend of last month. “We’ve got the players. We’ve got to aim for it. We could win it, it’s not impossible.
“Some people might look at what we achieved last season and say it was a flash in the pan. We have to prove them wrong and really go for it. Manchester City will be a massive factor in the title race because of the amount of investment they are making – and will continue to make until they win the title.
“But we have got to aim to try to win the title ourselves. Last year we started by saying we wanted to finish in the top four and got there. If you don’t aim for things, you’ve got no chance and the status quo will remain – with the big-spending teams winning everything.
“Somebody has got to do it at some time. It can’t all just be Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool – why not Tottenham?”
Very good point. Why not Tottenham? They are brilliantly placed in London to attract Europe’s stars and have had a pretty large transfer budget themselves over recent years. Last year they picked up some useful wins against the big clubs including a magnificent double over Manchester City which helped them secure that Champions League spot.
Unfortunately it doesn’t seem that everybody at the club is on the same wavelength. Coach and former Spurs and England star Tim Sherwood was quick to dismiss Redknapp’s claims of title aspirations and this baffles me. Shouldn’t the entire club be pulling in the same direction? Why should a coach publically come out and undermine what the manager has said?
“I’m not sure I’d agree with Harry about a title challenge,” Sherwood told the Tottenham Journal on August 4.
“I think we overachieved massively last season. It was beyond expectation, everyone would say that. For us to emulate that would be a massive success. We know how hard it was last year, it would be even more difficult this year.”
And here we see the difference in aspirations. Some are always the optimists. They want to achieve the highest possible accolades even in the face of massive odds. Others are quick to play down their own hopes in the fear of falling flat on their face and failing to achieve what they set out for. I hope Sherwood was disciplined by Redknapp for this lack of support.
You see it with fans too. I would say 95% of football fans are a fuzzy ball of optimism on day one of the season believing that this year is theirs, but there are always the doom-mongers hovering around (usually on internet messageboards hiding behind aliases) who preach the downfall of the club thanks to “inside sources” they know on the inside.
It’s not just at the top either we see high aspirations. Down in the NPower League 1, the hierarchy at Leyton Orient have offered their players an all-expenses-paid holiday to Las Vegas should they achieve promotion to the Championship this season.
Who’s to say you can’t dream?
Hope and aspiration are all part and parcel of football. If you cannot aim for glory then you shouldn’t be playing in the first place. Even the newly promoted clubs to the Premier League have to believe they have what it takes to go out against the ‘Big 4’ and get a result or they’ll get beaten 4-0 or 5-0 every week.
Just look at some of the results Hull City achieved during their first season of Premier League football – they won at both Arsenal and Tottenham and for the first half of the season at least were well placed until that confidence dried up and they dropped like a stone, only avoiding relegation on the final day.
So I fully back Redknapp’s claims 100%. Who can say how far a team full of confidence can go. Remember Birmingham City’s fantastic run in the middle of last season following their takeover by Asian magnate Carson Yeung?
Do Tottenham realistically have what it takes to win the Premier League title? Maybe not. But they can match any of the top teams on their day so just need to find the consistency to play that way week in week out. They have to aim high or they’ll begin to feel out of depth in the Champions League and fail in their European adventure this season.
Good luck to them. It will be great to see something different in English football this season. To hell with it, Tottenham to win the Champions League too! Tottenham to better Manchester United’s 1999 treble with the quadruple (Premier League, Champions League, F.A. Cup, League Cup). Tottenham to break the 100 points barrier and dominate football for the next decade.
Where does aspiration end and stupidity begin? Is Redknapp correct in his beliefs or is Sherwood the right man with his words? The next 9 months will tell and one thing is for certain, it’s going to be damn good!
You don’t need a dreamer to tell you that.
