
Now we all must sit back and hope that a bunch of Germans (and an ugly Frenchman and bald Dutchman) help Tottenham into the Champions League.
But after ten-man Chelsea beat Barcelona and now with half of the London team suspended or injured, surely Bayern Munich will lose to those plucky chavs in one of those Cinderella stories.
Mind you, the football gods had a bit of a laugh on the weekend when Alex Ferguson almost chewed his cheek off when he thought ManU had actually won it all until Man City scored two in injury time to rob the old bastard in particularly ManU-like fashion. So nothing for ManU, nothing for Arsenal and Chelsea potentially not even in Europe at all next year.
What could be better than that?
A lot it if the reaction of the crowd at White Hart Lane on Sunday was anything to go by. Tottenham had just cohesively beaten a cross town rival and secured fourth spot. The last time Spurs finished fourth there was dancing in the streets and Redknapp got doused in gator aid. This time, White Hart Lane resounded to the peels of polite applause.
Everyone in that stadium knew fourth wasn’t good enough. Sure, as Redknapp is now parroting if you said at the beginning of the season Spurs would finish fourth then you would have been happy. But that was before Spurs were12 points clear in third and keeping pace with the two Manchesters for more than half the season.
Spurs should have wrapped up third a month ago. Even a win against the worst team in the league – Aston Villa – a week ago would have been enough to win third. Now Tottenham fans must rely on a Chelsea loss to get their team into the Champions League and maintain any real chance of attracting major players and keeping the talent Spurs already have.
Finishing fourth is a big deal in such a competitive league and Redknapp should be recognized for getting the team into that position during the first half of the season. He built a good team, a good set up and invested in a couple of needed players. But when the rubber hit the road (the cliché Tuesday night in Bolton in February), when the injuries came and other teams learned how to play against Spurs that is when the team was found out and the lack of a plan B painfully evident. The winter transfer window was a balls up.
I can’t remember any players having brutally bad games or not trying their damnedest. Even during the slump they worked hard. While they may have been given much encouragement, Redknapp didn’t give much direction and no tactical change ups to help find a way past stubborn teams.
Spurs are a team of immensely talented players and that squad is always going to do very well. But as the fan reaction at WHL showed, fourth is not such a great prize when Spurs could and should have been in the mix for the top.
So come on Ribery and Robben et al. And maybe, just maybe, things will be forgotten, and we can all look forward to a happy summer.









Apparently I missed a meeting so now have a bunch of questions
Now, as anyone knows I am all for urban redevelopment. I want to see more people downtown. Want to see another hotel in the city. And would like to see a water park somewhere. I guess they are fun, and if one was built I am sure I’d take the kids.
But here are some questions about the city’s peculiar plan of putting it at the Forks.
Does it have to go next to the human rights museum?
The new Human Rights Museum is supposed to be an architectural gem akin to the Geary Guggenheim Bilbao thing. So what would set it off…landscaped park land or a minor league motel with a half arsed water park…..mmmm, let me think on that one. Am I missing something? Did I miss a meeting? Why is this even being considered?
Why is it that all water parks have to have some form of city government subsidy?
It isn’t a freaking stadium or airport. It’s a swimming pool with a slide. Why do I have to pay for that? Why can’t I pay for it if I choose to patronize the business? Is city council so beholden to developers now that anyone can show up with a slick brochure with the ubiquitous picture of the developer on the edge of their desk with a water colour of a water slide thingy and beg for money and like a bunch of Pavlovian dogs council all throw up their hands?
Is there any plan for the Forks at all?
It seems like anyone can show up and just build something without any thought or reference to the area at all….there is no rhyme or reason to any of it. I like the Inn at the Forks but was just thrown up there with no thought to the greenspace. The parking lot beside it too. The ugly kids theatre, the ridiculous cube beside the children’s museum. There was attempt, which might well still be on the books, to build a schwack of condos, and there was the famous wind turbine plan.
Is there a pressing need for this to go into the Forks?
There are lots of much better spots open downtown and rather than blighting the Forks they would work much better. If this hotel chain is so eager to park itself next to the baseball stadium and the museum, perhaps they should be paying the city seven mil instead of asking for it.
I don’t know this hotel chain and good for them to decide to locate in Winnipeg and I wish them well. I’d love to see a great water park open too, but this proposal is all wrong and I can’t for the life of me see what the upside is.