My fellow lilywhites! Our long, (inter)national (break) nightmare is almost over. Real football is almost back. Just a few short days to go until we see Spurs take the pitch against Norwich.
In the meantime, Tottenham's Portuguese Sex Symbol and Head Coach, Andre Villas Boas, held court with the media today. Naturally a lot of focus was on our 20 bazillion new players.
"What we did in the transfer market is in the expectancy of these players becoming world stars. I think what happened with Christian is a bit like what happened with Van der Vaart and Sneijder when they were at Ajax.
"They reached a moment in their careers where they became extremely important for the team, and the club that goes there and gets them makes a great transfer move, and we expect great things of Christian Eriksen. We would like to develop him into becoming that type of important player for us as well.
"Will he be in the line-up this weekend? There is a big possibility but it's not a certainty yet."
Lofty praise indeed for the Ajax alum. While I hope that Eriksen can have the kind of impact for Spurs that Sneijder and Van der Vaart went on to have in Europe, it would be nice if he could go on to even bigger and better things than those two. Like playing 90 full minutes after age 25. However, sadly for Christian, it would appear he is set to follow in their footsteps in the hair department. One can only hope this does not compromise his place at Tottenham Hairspur.
AVB didn't stop with the Dane though, as he moved on to one of our more follicly fortunate footballers: Erik Lamela.
"I think the qualities that he brings to our team are his creativeness, his ability to find a pass and the last pass that leads to a goal.
"He is a natural talent. He is not a pure winger, he is creative and likes to come inside and find different spaces. He's a player with tremendous potential that we have to work on.
"He is going to suffer problems of adaptation, bearing in mind the fact that he doesn't speak a word of English. He has to adapt to a completely different culture and mentality.
"Also the Premier League is very specific in its intensity. It's nothing like the Argentinean league or Serie A, so that will require some kind of adaptation, but for somebody so gifted it shouldn't be a problem. He is a wonderful, gifted footballer.
"The fact that he's yet to train with the team puts him in a very difficult position to start the game, but it's not impossible."
I, for one, think Lamela will excel at White Hart Lane. Not only is he better at 21 than Bale was, but he already has a majestically gelled coif that even more experienced Premier Leaguers would be jealous of. I'm not worried about the English either. If Ronaldo can learn it, so can Lamela, even if he will probably learn the word "Yiddo" far sooner than the FA would like.
Andre also mentioned that we will not see Uncle Menno favorite Vlad Chiriches because his work permit hasn't been finalized yet. I think we should all rest easy, content in the knowledge that all this will do is give Chelsea the time they need to sign him away from us.
Another player who will not be on the pitch this week is Emmanuel Adebayor, who has been given until Monday to return to the club, undoubtedly related to the death of his brother. Ade is currently training with the developmental team, because he has been on bereavement leave all summer and needs to up his fitness, or, as most Spurs fans on twitter seem to believe, because he is a malcontent bent on destroying Spurs. Same difference.
Finally, AVB added that Siggurdson has a dead leg after international duty. I would assume that means either he will miss this weekend's game or someone very negative took a trip to Europe this week. Or both.
Not a member? Join Cartilage Free Captain and start commenting | Follow @CartilageFree on Twitter | Like Cartilage Free Captain on Facebook | Subscribe to our RSS feed