After years of underarchievement in the White Hart Lane, the Tottenham Hotspur management finally made a decision that would inevitably lead to great success once more. The decision was to hire Otto Koskela as the new manager of the Spurs.
Some might have their doubts over this decision but those who see the bigger picture know Mr Koskela will lift the club to new heights.
As the new manager, the first step was to get rid of overpayed, underarchieving and rapidly ageing players and to bring in some youth and talent. So, accordingly, Kasey Keller, Jamie Redknapp, Christian Ziege, Dean Richards, Milenko Acimovic and Sicknote, a.k.a. Darren Anderton were transferlisted. Due to his impending retirement nobody wanted Anderton, so he continues for one more season for the Spurs on a whopping 30K pounds per week salary, but fortunately other high earners did leave the club. This was crucial for the well-being of the club as the management made clear the wage bill would have to be cut by 90K per week. Also to bring in some much needed cash for new signings the decision was made to sell Ledley King and Gary Doherty.
Players out:
Kasey Keller 900K to Portsmouth
Milenko Acimovic 450K to Blackburn
Jamie Redknapp 500K to Liverpool
Dean Richards 1.3M to Liverpool
Gary Doherty 1M to Rangers
Ledley King 3.5M plus 40% of his next transfer to Aston Villa
Christian Ziege 2.5M to Newcastle
So in total 10.25M pounds was acquired from the sales and this money was used to bring in some huge talent. First buy for the new Spurs was the purchase of Mike Zonneveld from NEC in Holland for 2.5M. He would take the left back position in the lineup and would also add cover to Dalmat for the left midfield position. In the future he may move to the left wing of the midfield as he has some great skills. Since deciding to sell some central defenders, Philippe Mexes was signed from Auxerre for a fee of 3.8M. He would have to be the rock of the defence and the whole Spurs organisation has great confidence in him doing the job. Next in line was the purchase of new number 1 'keeper and after assessing the options, it was decided to bring in Croatian NT number 1 keeper Stipe Pletikosa to White Hart Lane. He was the most expensive purchase, as his 5.5M min. release clause had to be met in order to steal him from Shakhtar Donetsk. Though being only 24 years old, he might be the Spurs numero uno for the next 10 years, so the money paid for him was worth it. The last purchase to the starting lineup was the magnificent capture of highly promising Brazilian midfielder Renato from Santos. Surprisingly only 5M pounds were needed to buy him and for our great surprise he rejected Real Madrid and joined us. He only had 1 cap on the signing moment but he was given a work permit due to his immense talent. Last signing was the capture of young promising midfielder Nathan Doyle from Derby. In total 17M pounds were used to bring in the new faces and although it's a lot, all transfer fees will be payed over 24 months to ease the burden.
The starting lineup would be:
<pre class="ip-ubbcode-code-pre"> Keane Kanoute Dalmat Mabizela Davies RenatoZonneveld Gardner Mexes Carr (C) Pletikosa </pre>
The season has started with some good performances and some bad performances, but our aim is to atleast finish top-10 and hopefully qualify to Europe. Then strenghten the team some more next summer and aim for a Champions League spot. These have been the games played:
Middlesbrough H 1-2
Man Utd A 1-3
Aston Villa H 2-0
Leeds A 2-0
Everton A 3-3
Fulham H 1-1
Derby A 1-1 (League Cup) won on penalties
Blackburn A 5-0
Leicester A 1-1
Southampton H 1-2
Charlton H 0-1 (League Cup)
Newcastle A 2-0
Manchester City H 3-1
Birmingham H 2-2
Arsenal H 0-2
Best games thus far have been the away wins against Blackburn and Newcastle. Wiped the floor with both teams playing some great football. Simon Davies And Renato have been my best players, Davies already scoring 5 goals and Renato scoring some goals and assisting a lot. I have yet to get the best out of my striking duo of Keane and Kanoute but I'm confident I will get them to score more. Though I have scored a lot of goals, 24 in 14 games, which is among the highest in the league. I have also conceded 17 goals and if I can get that number down and keep on scoring, we should have a very good season. I'm currently sitting on 11th place with 20 points from 14 games. At this point the differences are very small and with a good run of results one can lift themselves to a pretty good position.
That's enough from the Spurs manager for now, I'll keep you posted on how the season progresses.
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