NORMAN GILLER'S SPURS ODYSSEY BLOG No 512
Submitted by Norman Giller
If you listen to the gloom merchants, Tottenham need not bother to go to Frankfurt on Thursday following their disintegration against Wolves at Molineux yesterday. But the match against Entracht is a one-off and, frankly, the Spurs season will be measured by it.
My Spurs Odyssey team-mate Declan Mulcahy takes care of the Wolves facts and figures HERE, but I prefer to write that game off and give full concentration to the Europa League quarter-final second leg in Frankfurt.
I think it is probably too late to save Ange Postecoglou's job after 17 Premier League defeats. But it would be ironically fitting to see him go out in a blaze of glory and shut up the moaners and groaners who have hardly stopped knocking his team all season, ignoring the spate of injuries and often appalling luck.
Do they not realise they are helping to spread the poison of pessimism that hangs like a dark cloud over Ange and the team? Many who continually put the boot in are making their crippling criticisms anonymously. I just want to ask them if they put the same effort in at their place of work as they demand of Ange and the players?
Broken record time: I have always felt that supporters should, uh, support and get behind the team, not in its way.
But if you could read some of the threads online, you would think they were infiltrated by Tottenham's greatest enemies rather than fans who should be helping to pick the team up going into the most vital game of the season.
Tottenham and Eintracht are standing at 1-1 from the first leg, and if the football gods had been kinder Spurs would be going to Germany with at least a one-goal cushion. I have been to Frankfurt on football reporting duty and my warning is that Spurs should prepare to face a wall of noise. The Eintracht fans are vociferous to the extreme ... and it's not just negative sounds, like those that have been constantly coming from Spurs supporters recently.
It's going to be extremely tough to win this one, but don't write Spurs off just yet. Let's adopt the Rory McIlroy spirit. Never say die.
COYS!
Week 32 of our eleventh season of the Spurs Odyssey Quiz League, and the question is:
Who won 28 Scottish caps, missed just one game in the Double season and in which country did he end his playing career?
Please email your answer to me at soqleague@gmail.com and make the subject heading Quiz Week 32. Deadline: midnight this Friday. I will do my best to respond to all who take part. There are around 60 out there within shooting distance of the SOQL title. You will soon hate me. What fun!
The rules are the same as in the previous ten seasons. I ask a two-pronged question with three points at stake - two for identifying the player and one for the supplementary question. In the closing weeks of the competition I break the logjam of all-knowing Spurs-history experts with a real stinker of a tie-breaking poser that is based on opinion rather than fact.
This year's main prize will be a framed certificate announcing the winner as SOQL champion 2025, plus three signed books to be revealed at a later date.
Last week's question: Who followed his father as a professional, has won 35 caps, scored against Belgium in 2022, and on which ground did he net his first goal for Spurs in 2023?
Answer: Brennan Johnson/Molineux
See you back here on Monday. COYS!
