If the rumours coming from diverse sources inside and outside White Hart Lane this week are true, if Glenn Hoddle’s days at Tottenham are numbered, we will have to look no further than north London for confirmation that romance in football counts for very little any more.
As Spurs gradually morph into Middlesbrough and their prospects of playing in Europe in the foreseeable future fade by the day, Hoddle, greeted on his return as a saviour, looks an increasingly isolated figure. He denies it vehemently, but there are signs that he is losing the players — and that is death for any manager.
The clearest hint that this is a troubled team came in a column
written by Tony Cascarino in The Times last week. Cascarino’s long friendship with Teddy Sheringham, and his association with Hoddle in a stormy period at Chelsea, make him well-placed to offer an informed if slightly angry view. Hoddle, he says, is struggling to motivate the players. And he doubts others will want to come to a club that looks so unsettled.
‘Players talk,†Cascarino writes, ‘and you can be sure that they would have got wind of the situation at Tottenham.â€
Significantly, he adds: ‘What, too, must the players think if Teddy Sheringham, their captain, is effectively on trial for the final seven matches of the season to see if he gets a new contract?â€
For his part, Sheringham made all the right noises before Saturday’s home game against Birmingham City. Victory at least gave Hoddle breathing space.
Although the club ignored his ultimatum when he left to join Manchester United because Spurs would not invest in good defenders, Sheringham has more clout now. The directors know the striker, who said recently he wants to manage the club when he finishes playing, could still attract quality players to Spurs, perhaps continuing to play in a part-time role, much as Alan Gilzean did in his final year.
Into this maelstrom looms another familiar figure. If Terry Venables wanted to make a point and go back to the club that was the scene of his power struggle with Alan Sugar, he might be the ideal man to ease Sheringham into management as his assistant. And few managers have an easier rapport with players than the wisecracking Venables.
For Hoddle there are few laughs. It got worse for him last week when the tabloids alleged he’d had a bust-up at the training ground with some of the senior players.
That most loyal of lieutenants, John Gorman, was assigned to issue the denials, labelling the stories ‘a pack of liesâ€.
While Gorman is standing by Hoddle, others at the club — from players to the coaching staff to directors — are not so sure any more. Some say he won’t let a blade of grass be cut without his say-so. A shy man, Hoddle was never the greatest communicator (he has not taken up a standing invitation from The Observer and, no doubt, several other newspapers, to put his side of the story); and now he fumes silently. None of this was supposed to happen …
The kid from Harlow who grew up to play for and manage his beloved Spurs desperately wants to make them great again. He is not at Tottenham just for the money. Of all the gifted footballers of the past couple of decades, Hoddle was the one who made you forget about the game’s grubbiness. He was an artist. But inconsistency, injuries and the growing disenchantment that is central to the impatience pervading the modern game have wrecked what might have been a heartwarming story.
This is business. Professional sport. It’s about contracts. Deals. And, sometimes, football.
It was football Hoddle fell in love with the day his father bought him a big yellow ball to kick around in the back garden of their home in Harlow. It was his footballing magic that made Spurs fans love Hoddle, from the day he first stepped on to a pitch for the club, against Norwich on August 30 1975, to the day he left in 1987 to finish his playing days with Monaco.
When he turned to management, Tottenham supporters hoped one day he would come back to the lane. When he did, replacing the unloved George Graham in April 2001, the sun shone more brightly. What Hoddle inherited, however, was not the club of his youth and his pomp. He knew as well as anyone that Spurs had not been a major force in British football since the late 1980s and would struggle to reassert themselves. Most gallingly, they would do it in the shadow of Arsenal.
This is the hardest truth for Spurs fans to face. When they went down in 1977, it was a shock but not a huge one. The gap between top and bottom was not so obvious then. Derby County and Nottingham Forest came from nowhere to win the title in those days. You would not bet on that happening again soon.
The Premiership is now in the grip of United and Arsenal, with Newcastle rising and Chelsea hoping their debt does not sink them. Denis Law was confident enough to say recently that he could see United being at or near the top of English football for another 50 years. When United and Arsenal replace players, they bring in the very best; Spurs go after Michael Ricketts. And fail.
Their last very good team was probably the 1987 side. The 1991 team were not bad, either, but there has been little to enthuse about since — spluttering revivals interrupted by extended runs of mediocrity.
For Spurs, the past 10 years have seen them falter on the big stage. Four times they were losing semifinalists in the FA Cup, which once was theirs for the taking. There was a League Cup win in 1999, but that brief excitement was doused last year when they lost in the final to Blackburn Rovers and Hoddle’s hopes of breaking into Europe lay in pieces.
This season, after a promising start (Spurs topped the Premiership for 17 days in August), the defeats have been miserable. Fulham, trailing 2-0 at half-time, beat them 3-2 in injury time; Burnley put them out of the League Cup, after trailing 1-0; Arsenal blew them away in November; they played well against Southampton
until eight minutes from the end, losing 1-0; three days later, the Saints thrashed them 4-0 in the Cup; Newcastle beat them with the final kick of the match in January; then finally, losing to the stragglers, West Ham and Bolton (in injury time), in March really brought matters to a head.
They dream still of glory at White Hart Lane. But not with any conviction. Or, perhaps, Glenn Hoddle. —