Hey, big spenders, why don’t you try and beat us?

Published: 6 January, 2011

ARSENAL
IMAGINE spending an ocean liner-size amount of money on football players and then sending them out with the sole ambition of trying to draw a match. Not to win it. To draw. Like that there Manchester City against Arsenal in midweek, boring the world with a 0-0 draw.

What has become of the Premier League when a team can spend £19zillion on a team – and yet they don’t go for a win in the big matches? 

It’s like buying the world’s biggest swimming pool and never filling it with water or buying the world’s fastest car and taking the wheels off so you can’t drive it. Or like buying the world’s biggest TV screen and watching Glee on it.

Here’s a team that hasn’t won the league since 1968 (OK, it’s not as long ago as Stratford Hotspur’s last league championship – but it was ages ago). You’d think they would be desperate to go for the big prize having been touched by obscene amounts of money. Yet, while West Brom, Newcastle and others came to the Ashburton Grove with a thunderclap attack and beat the Gunners, City had no ambition at all. They deserve nothing. 

Like London’s third team, Chelsea. All that money and they can’t even... you know the rest.
RICHARD OSLEY 


TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR
YOU can usually gauge how bad a Premier League game was when it’s shown last on Match of the Day. Therefore Spurs’ home match with Fulham deserved its billing. We looked tired and devoid of ideas, and Fulham keeper Mark Schwarzer didn’t have a shot aimed in his direction for the first 25 minutes. 

Fulham looked ordinary and others in the league would have trounced them. 

And, as Spurs have the worst goal difference in the top four, we could have done with more than the one that Gareth Bale scored to give us all three points. 

Tottenham’s New Year revelation is to bring David Beckham to the Lane and I’m wondering why? A fit, long-term Beckham would be an asset to any team, but is he fit? He hasn’t played for months, and his season starts in March, so how long would we have him for? 

Yes he’s a great ambassador for English football, and yes his professionalism would rub off on the younger players in the squad. But is it just a motivational advertising ploy? 

If Harry manages to make this work in favour of my beloved Lilywhites, and it doesn’t turn into a media festival, then he’s a genius.
TONY DALLAS