The real "Harry Hotspur" brought this piece to my attention:-
· http://harryhotspur.blogspot.com/2007/02/tottenham-hotspur-rubbish-media-spurs.html
The article was critical of my headline for yesterday's Youth match at Spurs Lodge. I have sent "Harry Hotspur Number Two" this reply:-
Dear “Harry”,
I note that you have disabled your Blog to prevent further responses to my critical headline over yesterday’s Youth game. I would be grateful if you could publish this response on my behalf:-
1. It’s Spurs Odyssey. This is an independent Spurs web site that has been established for 8 years, and currently gets over 1,200,000 page views per month.
2. You have chosen the name of “Harry Hotspur” The Harry Hotspur I know runs a highly respected website that has also run for several years, and is a tribute to the great Bill Nicholson. It‘s called The Bill Nicholson Way and can be found here - http://www.billnicholson.co.uk/ - I thoroughly recommend it to you and your readers, and would urge you to come up with an original sobriquet.
3. It may surprise you to see that I do respect your point, and generally I do not seek to sensationalise the Spurs Odyssey Youth reports in a negative way. However, I was at Spurs Lodge yesterday. I did see Pekhart miss two sitters, and I did see him collapse in a heap under a strong challenge, and I did hear the opposing defender tell him to “Get up you pussy”. Of course Pekhart is a young developing player, with plenty of time on his hands to make the grade at Reserve then perhaps higher level. I am not suggesting he cannot do that. After all, he has been scoring goals for fun at under-18 level this season. I just think he was disappointing yesterday. Some Spurs fans may think that Pekhart is ready for the first team, but unlike Dorian Dervite, who made such a great impression against Port Vale in the Carling Cup, I believe that Tomas has more progress to make before knocking on the first team door.
4. Whether it is my sensational headline, or your sensational criticism, I don’t know, but the match report is currently one of the top ten Newsnow stories.
5. Spurs Odyssey has reported exclusively on 12 of this season’s Youth games, and regularly beats the Official Site, who usually only make passing reference to the under-18s. Parents of young players often contact us to thank us for our coverage, and thanks us for putting their son’s name in lights, so to speak.
6. One of your respondents describes Spurs Odyssey as boring. Over 180,000 different users in January think otherwise!
