Missing the Spurs Hard Men

It’s good to see us back to winning ways in the league, but of course, Poch is right, we need to be more consistent in our play. So, what is it that we’re missing? There’s certainly nothing wrong with our attacking play (5-1!), and the defence and midfield are good. On top of that, we have one of the top three keepers in the league. But we’ll tell you what we’re missing: a bit of steel on the pitch. Someone to put the fear of the footballing gods into the opposition. We’re missing the hard men, and it’s got us feeling all nostalgic.

Now, we do know that Alli is tough as nails and looks like he could mature into a proper midfield enforcer. However, for the sake of this post, we’ll only be looking at former players. It is a nostalgic post after all.

So, let’s go back to the heady days of good old ‘Arry and one Mr Wilson Palacios. The quiet Honduran had a reputation as a nice sort off the pitch, but once he put on a pair of football boots, woe betide anyone who had the temerity to think they could possess the ball in his midfield. The guy loved a tackle and in his short time with us, managed to ‘grab the game by the scruff of the neck’ on more than one occasion.

If we go back just a little bit further, we’re into the era of Gary Mabbutt and Neil Ruddock. Mabbutt is nothing like the quintessential football hard man, but he’s a soldier as far as we’re concerned. Remember that fractured cheekbone and the eye socket that kept him out for a year, or the time he tried to run off a broken leg? And the fact that he had trouble with diabetes the whole time makes him hard as nails in our book. Ruddock, on the other hand, was of a different ilk.

Now you might question the emotional stability of someone with the nickname Razor, but off the football pitch, Ruddock was a placid guy. The guy obviously kept it all bottled up for the pitch. We’re not sure how he managed to keep himself calm, but we’d like to think it was a bit like the way Kevin Hart and Usain Bolt keep cool. Him and Paul Stewart in an ice bath? Now that would be worth watching.

We all know who's better at keeping their cool, don't we @KevinHart4real?#GameOn #ad pic.twitter.com/fvtCqtSgIu

— Usain St. Leo Bolt (@usainbolt) November 15, 2017

Some of the younger fans will feel a bit aggrieved to have never witnessed some of our hardest spurs men playing live, but that’s what YouTube is for, right? Check out Steve Perryman, a player who today would be considered a hard as nails player but having played in an era when hard men were de rigueur he was just another man on the pitch.

Terry Naylor, though, was hard to ignore. Naylor as you probably know had the nicknames ‘Nutty’ and ‘Meathook’ (almost as good as Razor), and as a hard man fullback was a bit of a novelty. Great tackler.

None of these hard men, however, were in the same league as Mike England and Dave Mackay. England was the centre-half who could play as a striker and took great delight in completely bullying opposition players all over the pitch. Mackay, well, he’s a legend. He was the complete player; he had it all. Talent by the bucketload, drive and determination, and an uncompromising style that struck fear into his opponents.

But even the fiery Scotsman can’t quite stack up against our hardest player ever. Yes, you know who we’re talking about. The man, the legend, the walking advertisement for dental reconstructive surgery — Graham Roberts. Any man that stays on the pitch after having two teeth knocked out by his own teammate (yes, it was accidental) deserves nothing but applause. Roberts gave everything on the pitch and left bits of himself on there from time to time. No, there will never be another Roberts, but maybe we can mould Alli in his image?

If we’re to keep up this good form and maintain a level of consistency, we need another hard man. We need that steel in the midfield to completely boss a game. We’re good, but we’re not the finished article. A solid midfield enforcer would certainly go a long way to making it so. Come on Levy, make it happen.