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Glory vs. winning

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Blanchflower said:
My Dad is certain that the quote is taken far more literally than was intended. Of course he wanted to win, he was fiercely ambitious.

It's important to note that the quote is actually from his newspaper column published in 1972, not during his playing career when the scrutiny of saying something like this would be immediate if the principal ever slipped. I would imagine it probably coincided with him having had to watch a team like Hull make no attempt to win a football match like yesterday, rather than a Spurs game........

It of course has sat well with us fans for the last 40 years as we've been able to use it as an romantic explanation for why we've been so inconsistent. We are in no way at a point where we are the polar opposite of the idea though, I'm still fully confident that we maintain our integrity as a team that tries to win games.......it's the fact that 90% of the other teams in the league have abandoned theirs when they visit White Hart Lane that's causing us issues.
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/thread
 
Eskimo said:
How many times since AVB took over can you say "we played really good attacking football today"?

Look how excited people got when we put a couple of moves together against a shit Norwich.

And for the record Hull had plenty of possession yesterday especially in the first half and had us parking the bus at one stage, so please don't rewrite history, especially when its so fresh in everyones minds.
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:paulinhofacepalm:

Us 65.9%
Hull 34.1%

http://www.fourfourtwo.com/statszone/8-2013/matches/694990/summary#tabs-wrapper-anchor

Had us parking the bus?

We had to defend for a couple minutes :lennon::avblol:
 
Erik_Edman said:
In all of the time I've been a Spurs fan, the above quote has encapsulated everything I've understood about supporting Spurs. It dictates that what makes our club different from others is a sense of adventure, daring, the swashbuckling approach to dispatching opponents. The daring mentality, the act of taking risks for the reward of entertainment and glory, was what supporting this club was meant to be about, and it's fundamental importance to the identity of Spurs is reflected in the fact that said quote hangs on a banner at the Lane.

For all the time I've been a Spurs fan, other supporters of the club have clung to this single quotation aggressively as a marker of club identity. This is why it intrigues me that so many people are now starting to posit the view that 'ugly wins are still wins, three points are still three points' now that we've started to win games without threatening consistently over 90 minutes or creating many chances. The "you can't argue with our best start to the season so sit down and shut up" view, in so many obvious respects, runs totally contrary to the pride that we placed in doing things the way Danny Blanchflower argued we should do them.

So I suppose my question with this- are we prepared to allow the 'doings things with a flourish' outlook to slip into irrelevance now that we have a genuine shot at top honours? Or perhaps more pertinently, was it even that important to us as a fanbase in the first place? Was Blanchflower wrong to suggest the game was fundamentally about anything other than winning, when it comes down to it?

Or am I just interpreting everything wrong, and is there really some form of glory in what AVB's doing that I can't perceive, and there is in fact no cognitive dissonance in holding up Blanchflower's view of what the game is about and backing AVB?

This isn't meant to be a leading question, I'm genuinely interested to hear people's views on this.
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There is a very good reason why after 3 pages you only have one "like" for such a good post...

That reason is that people will generally dismiss anything that might be seen as criticising AVB
 
Isn't the sign of a great team one that still wins when not playing well?

Ahem.

3 points off top spot.

6 goals conceded.

Joint best ever start to PL. Best start to league since 1964.

25% of season gone.

Many, many, many more goals scored to come from £100m worth of talent that's only played together for two months (with two international games).

The wise man built his house upon the rocks (AVB has made us hard to beat). The extension to the diamond skyscraper you all crave will come when the foundations are settled. A long with even more points in the PL than last year, a top four finish this year and maybe a cup.

Love the shirt. COYS.

:paulinhofacepalm::avbwtf::vert::soldadowatch::townhmm::levylol::avbpray::llorishuh::avbnaa::paulinhowtf::sandroscream::avbfu:
 
"It is full of beautiful movements. Ballet movements if you like. It was never meant to be played in the air. Lets give the public real football."

Every week someone drags up the Bil Nic "Aim so high that failing is glorious" quote, yet quotes like the one above, from the Danny Blancflower seem to be dismissed in favour of turgid 1-0 penalty wins under the current set up.

Didnt we all used to say we would rather play great football than win the league like arse did in the 80's?

Tottenham Hotspur has lost its identity. We used to be an entertaining, fast attacking cup side, and was famous for our classy style and footballing beauty.


 
My entire complex is about watching good football, and putting those down who play the game in the wrong fashion. I want to coach football full-time, and make a living from doing so - which means that I appreciate the game in a wider fashion than just our football club. This is why I like our teams to play fast-paced, attacking football and try to win the game, no matter who the opposition are. Of course, in certain situations you have to weigh up the risk factors involved, and might have to play a bit more pragmatic in order to get the result you want, but that doesn't mean that you are a pragmatic club. Football has a number of different facets attached to it, and each game has different challenges, opponents, situations, scenarios, momentum, tactics and many other things. We have to strive for positive football that suffocates the opposition, but we must also be ruthless and aggressive enough to suffocate their attacking play in the right circumstances.

If you look back at Ferguson's title-winning teams in the past, some of them have had a rock-solid defence and have squeezed a lot of games out by winning 1 or 2 nil. I don't think that we are trying to win games by that margin, but I think that our attack hasn't clicked and AvB isn't getting enough success in getting them to fire on all cylinders. I just hope that we are still within touching distance by Christmas, as we are riding our luck a bit at the moment with the amount of goals that we are scoring.
 
sammyspurs said:
" It was never meant to be played in the air. Lets give the public real football."
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Are we in any way playing long ball football? All our passes are on the ground. Many of our players try nice little flicks and little through balls, ballet movements if you will.

Just because they aren't quite coming off doesn't mean we have suddenly turned into Stoke City.
 
sammyspurs said:
"It is full of beautiful movements. Ballet movements if you like. It was never meant to be played in the air. Lets give the public real football."

Every week someone drags up the Bil Nic "Aim so high that failing is glorious" quote, yet quotes like the one above, from the Danny Blancflower seem to be dismissed in favour of turgid 1-0 penalty wins under the current set up.

Didnt we all used to say we would rather play great football than win the league like arse did in the 80's?

Tottenham Hotspur has lost its identity. We used to be an entertaining, fast attacking cup side, and was famous for our classy style and footballing beauty.
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`

:crouch: "real football"
 
I am a little more than half way through "The Glory Game" right now, and as far as I can tell, Bill Nicholson was a pretty stiff guy. The descriptions of him yelling from the sidelines makes me think he wanted to win, win, win, more than anything else.

He wasn't big on positive reinforcement either.

I guess what I'm saying is he may have given us that quote on Glory but that's probably a lot different than how he actually approached each game.
 
Off the point a little but anyways...

It seems attacking style football or nothing now a days, everyone wants to be a free flowing unit making entertaining football while still being able to win games

I totally agree with the statement above and while it's hard to explain why here's the example I usually give:

Most people remember Barcelona's and Bayern Munich's UCL wins, mostly due to their domination and style of football,

However, Chelsea and Inter won the UCL as underdogs and shouldn't they be remembered better? People would say otherwise, they had their bus throughout the tournament

Of course we want to win and win well, but at the end of the day, a win is a win I guess
 
Tucker said:
Are we in any way playing long ball football? All our passes are on the ground. Many of our players try nice little flicks and little through balls, ballet movements if you will.

Just because they aren't quite coming off doesn't mean we have suddenly turned into Stoke City.
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We are not a long ball team, and that wasnt the point, and you know it.

We are hardly playing like ballet dancers either, with beautiful moves.....

A legend talked about giving the public real football..something synoomous with the club.

AVB talks about the public being responsible for the team playing shit..
 
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