Tottenham Hotspur qualified for the Champions League last night thanks to a 1-0 victory over Manchester City.
Here’s five reasons why I am happy it is them rather than their opponents that will get the prize of fourth place and a spot in Europe.
1. The City juggernaught gets held off for another season
In modern-day football there are essentially two things that attract the biggest and best players: money and the opportunity to play at the highest level. City have the former in abundance but missing out on the Champions League for next season means their bargaining power with the very best players will not be as strong as it might have been.
As such, their ability to challenge for the Premier League title has been put off for another year.
2. Tottenham cannot win the league
Although this is not technically true – after all, any team in the Premier League can win the league, even the dregs at the bottom – the reality is that there will only be three teams challenging for the title next season. Tottenham have done well this season, have a strong squad with good depth and will hope to build on this season’s effort. But they won’t win the league.
Indeed, juggling Champions League football with an assault on the Premier League is something that both the man in charge and most of the players involved are new to, and it’s likely to take its toll. That means one less title contender than there would have been had City finished fourth and spent big and it makes Arsenal’s job of winning the title just that little bit easier.
3. The North London Derby will intensify
No Arsenal fan will want Tottenham to overtake us, yet the local-born supporters will be licking their lips at the prospect of the North London Derby being taken up a notch. It’s good for the game and football in general to have such an historic derby leveled up slightly and it makes for some epic contests next season.
Just ask Manchester United.
4. Joe Hart is far more likely to sign with Arsenal
The news earlier in the week was that Arsene Wenger is readying a bid to make Manchester City goalkeeper Joe Hart his No1 goalkeeper for next season. Now that City have missed the Champions League, that possibility must surely have increased.
No matter how much he loves money, Hart will not want to play second fiddle to Shay Given in a team playing Europa Cup football, nor loaned out to Birmingham for another season when he can be the first-choice at a club that will be playing in the Champions League. He is an ambitious young man with aspirations to become England’s first-choice stopper and he can achieve that quicker if he makes the move to Arsenal.
5. Emmanuel Adebayor got what he deserved
A heart-warming example that although nice guys have a tendency to finish last, bad guys don’t always succeed.
Thoughts?
Have your say on Tottenham’s Champions League qualification by leaving a comment.
Nice stuff. Was hoping for a draw but spurs winning sealed the deal on 4th sooner.
This also means that the balance of power between London and up north is shifting with 3 london teams in the top four (or maybe i am trying desperately to make a pointless story like half the tabloids).
Let’s beat fulham and take advantage of man city’s title absence next season before they buy the league like chelsea did after the invincibles won it
good points. but i really think that unless arsenal do some great offseason moves then again it will be between Man united and chelsea with arsenal looming in the near distance but not quite making that surge to first. We were 0-4 against the top 2 this season. Imagine if we were 4-0. once we get back to our old competitive form we will be back in business. the years we won the league this decade we didnt drop so many points to bad teams like blackburn and burnley etc and i dont think we lost both games to united and chelsea
Well Drew,
I can see your point. But I don’t care for Hotspur one pinch of owls dung.
@ Leftcoast – It’s been a long time since anyone has called me Drew, hah. Point taken though.
Well, I’ll congrat spurs for qualifying the CL. I have a mixed feeling on last night’s game which made me prefer for a draw..but spurs performance was quite good and they deserved it. So welcome to the bigboys club..let’s see how you fit in the big4 zone
well id love to get hart in,
but a ferguson has anounced a clearout,
will wenger buy a few?anyone for wes brown?
gees fergy must wet his pants everytime he sees silvestre play….
I agree with you here mate. It felt quite weird wanting spurs to win but then i just reminded myself of point no 5. I really hope we get Hart.
Have you read the latest about Chamakh yet. Im excited that he is even counting down the days to he becomes a gooner. That & he rejected spurs & liverpool.
*Long time since Drew, what about spa… Nah wont say it.
personally i would have preferred the Abu Dhabi lot than Spuds. Now, what was a routine, dead rubber against Fulham will have me chewing my nails cos if we lose and them lot win we finish 4th and that would be very bad! The way our season is finishing it’ snot beyond the realms of possibility – here’s hoping Fulham rest their first team for the Europa League! Agree that it might mean Hart will sign tho’.
@ jsnx – Haha, Spanish Fry. What a legend he was.
Well, they did good and they deserve to be in the champions league. But they developed this much in the past three years and the derby will surely be something interesting. Please lets talk about what arsenal did in the past few years of their development…..I think Arsenal waited for them just where they left it before 4 years!!
You seem to be making the assumption that we have already secured 3rd, we still need to get at least a draw at the Emirates against Fulham, with Spurs away to Burnley.
It’s an unlikely scenario, but will you still be as pleased if we get overhauled by Spurs for direct qualification?
Personally i would have preferred Man City to have won with all their ex Arsenal players!
As much as I hate Spurs, I am happy they will finish in Top Four this year. The simple reason being that I don’t regard them as a serious club. They’ve had one good season, but am sure it’s just a flash in the pan. Blow me if they succeed in qualifying for the group stage, although I’d like them to simply because the burden of additional games will see them fizzle out in the league. Hell even if they sign a bigger squad, it won’t make much sense without a track record of finishing in top four unlike Arsenal.
Not Arsenal-related but you could also mention that Barry got what he deserved! Bailed on Villa after claiming that he would only leave the club to play in the CL, only to leave them for €ity and a big paycheck.
He really got what he deserved. Shame though it isn’t Villa who finished 4.
@ steviej – Nope, didn’t disregard that possibility. We won’t lose to Fulham though.
I feel sick this morning, as a life long Gooner living in North London, the thought of those spud fans suddenly representing the UK across Europe is frightening. Lets hope they get turned over early so as not to embarrass us with their racist, homophobic chanting.
Anyway it will be interesting to see how well they do when ‘arry gets locked up!
‘arry made a deal with the devil lol
http://www.studs-up.com/2010/05/a-deal-is-a-deal/
Well i was disappointed that the Totts won by just being a natural Arsenal fan.But looking at it deeply i think it is a good thing-the prospect of getting Hart and the chance of watching the tott’s coach and players probably embarrass themselves in the champion’s league.
Call me being bitter but the Totts don’t have the experience of champions league both coach and players, but who knows they might decide to spend big as usual.
Considering how much the totts have spent over this years just to get to this position, it makes me respect Arsene Wenger more; he qualifies with far less money and with ease.
Well i agree with you about Manu and Toure they should have thought about football first then money will definitely follow.I have no doubt that Adebayor is talented but his priority was misplaced .Toure was just too angry, he should have stayed at Arsenal he would have had his chance(Gallas injury) and we could have done better this season, i am very sure that thought will go through both of their heads yesterday(they would have regretted).
It is possible that Man city might not play Champion’s league for 2 seasons and that’s 3 seasons since they have being bought.(Waste of money)
I suspect Tevez might leave Man City, so less headache for us next season in the top four.oh Mancini will get the sack.
Well i am rest assured that Sol Cambell will let other players know the importance of not allow the Totts to finish above us,that is our only hope because those players dont seem to care anymore.
I can’t believe all this positivity over the result, I think we’ll win the league if and when we are good enough, doesn’t matter who the rest buy. If we play our game and play it well we will be champions. I don’t care about city, another club stealing big players from the other big clubs, driving up prices and sending Man U and Liverpool broke 🙂
I HATE TOTTENHAM, and the last thing I want is them having real success. It was funny watching them celebrate the carling cup “what a small club they are, even pompey can win the FA Cup”. But now they are playing in the big competition, they are actually achieving.
Ha ha! What’s up with Gunnerrealist there???
You gotta hand it to the Spuds that they deserved it and I am enjoying the sweet sensation of knowing Ade, and to a lesser extent Kolo, are now realising that if they’d stayed loyal they’d be playing in The Champs League next season – but they didn’t and they ain’t.
– however I don’t share your confidence in our ability to get the neccersary against Fulham at the weekend and I D0 NOT wan to see us come fourth – behind the Spuds eeek!
If I may waffle on – one of our problems in recent years is we don’t have enough battlers in the team. Players who will fight tooth and nail to get the result. I would say only:
Van Persie, Fabregas, Vermaelan and Sol fit that catergory.
Oh…you deleted Gunnerrealist… 😀
I was at the Blackburn game on Saturday, took my girlfriend to her first game on a bit of a whim after hearing on Saturday that tickets were available on the day of the game. I won’t prattle on about the game itself as that’s been done to death by now, but I will say a couple of things about the fans.
The last time I went to see a match at Blackburn was last season, when I went with a couple of Geordie mates to watch Blackburn versus Newcastle. Now as most of us are no doubt aware, Newcastle fans are renowned for being amongst the most passionate, turning out in droves no matter what tripe the team puts out on the pitch week in week out.
Yet at this game, upon finding themselves three nil down and worrying close to the relegation zone, the Toon Army went a little ballistic. I won’t list the chants, but “We’re shit, and we’re sick of it” was the chant that best sums it up.
How is that support? I myself am a fairly average footballer, and I’ve found that I’m a real confidence player: if I have a poor first five minutes, misplace a couple of passes or lose possession through a poor touch I’ll generally go on to have a sub-par game.
While the footballers we all love to watch are professionals, I think they too are affected by the fans in a similar way. Jimmy Bullard for Hull recently is a case in point. He’s by far their best player (not hard when the team is assembled by Phil Brown) and yet he was having an absolute nightmare, culminating in missing a crucial penalty and getting subbed off at half time.
When it became clear he was having a bad day, the fans went to town on the poor man, hitting his confidence and no doubt making the situation worse. This is exactly what I heard in the stands on Monday from a minority of the fans at Ewood Park. A couple of blokes in particular spent the best part of the last half hour spouting vitriol. How does that help the team? You have a right to express an opinion, but surely not when the team need your support and the match is still playing?
A couple of moments in particular stand out. One was the injury to Sagna: let’s set the scene. Sagna leapt to challenge for a ball in a manner that from where I stood was total commitment to the cause. He hurled himself into it, his only thought was of winning the ball and regaining possession.
He didn’t go in a little more softly and negate the risk of injury with the World Cup looming: in that moment he was putting everything into the Arsenal cause. So when he landed badly and I saw the ref gesture immediately for the stretcher (exactly as I saw he did from the stands when Ramsey went down at the Britannia) I was instantly concerned for Bacary’s wellbeing.
Not so the imbecile two rows behind me, who was yelling “get up you fucking softarse, we’re losing, getting up and fucking play on!”. Disgraceful behaviour given from what we could see, Sagna could well have got a serious injury – his landing could’ve dislocated his shoulder, and given the ref’s reaction that’s exactly what I thought had happened.
Later on, the loudmouth and a friend started up a nice song of “only one George Graham”. I don’t need to talk about this too much, whether it’s the fact he’s criticising Wenger’s team when it had TWO first eleven players out playing a team who’d only lost three times at home, or championing a man who is equal to Harry Redknapp when it comes to having a predisposition for brown envelopes.
The final whistle went and as we filtered out of the stand, the resident loudmouth started up again “you’ve lost it Wenger, retire you fucking idiot, you’re shit and your team is shit you stupid French bastard” and there we had it.
It has been coming, and there we had it: racism rearing it’s ugly head. Let’s make no mention of the faithful service this “stupid French bastard” has given our club or the current injury blight, nope, the team is shit and it’s because Wenger’s French.
I detest racism in all it’s forms, and have on more than one occasion have narrowly avoided a confrontation on a boozy night out when some uneducated moron spouts off at someone of a different race and I felt I had to say something.
But this man (and I use the word in it’s loosest possible way) was a fairly typical bloke, probably mid forties with a wife and kids. How would they react if they saw or heard his behaviour? There were kids all around us, families enjoying the game: should we really teach kids to look up to their elders when morons such as that are around?
Credit to the Blackburn fans though, on the walk back to the train station I got not one bit of grief that went beyond friendly banter, and even managed to pick up a cracking Chinese at a very reasonable price.
On the train home, we had the usual catastrophist talking nonsense to his mate about how we should buy X Y and Z. As ever the arguments were hilarious, and I eventually had to chip in and take the poor boy to the cleaners.
“Why didn’t Arshavin start eh?”
“Because he wasn’t fit to start! If he’d started and got injured you’d have complained about that too”
“Yeah but we lost without him.”
“We lost as Blackburn are a solid side at home, know how to push (no pun intended) the rules around and we had a squad decimated by injury.”
“That’s the modern game though. We need a squad. We should sell Eboue, Rosicky, Theo, Nasri, Denilson and Diaby. Buy Benzema, Hart and Cahill”
“Pal, you’re talking nonsense. Real Madrid tried that and it didn’t work so well. It might on Football Manager 2010, though. Should we have three excellent left backs so that when they all get injured we have a ready-made replacement? Looking at the players you want to sell, you’re actually making the squad smaller too.”
“But Denilson’s crap. I watch him every week and he’s always shit”
“Absolute rubbish. What about Barcelona, when he came on and turned the game in our favour?”
“Nah Denilson’s shit, look at Chelsea, they have Ballack on the bench.. He’s world class.”
“Ballack’s been dreadful this season”
“Yeah, he’s been shit, but he’s still world class, [he actually said that, no word of a lie] wouldn’t you rather have Ballack in the squad than Denilson and Diaby?”
“Nope, he’s dreadful.”
*The rest of the carriage of Gooners and Blackburn fans agree with me, and I give him a prawn cracker to keep his mouth from talking more nonsense.*
It’s just an exercise in futility. He’d make some unfounded statement, I’d counter it with evidence and he’d either repeat what he just said or say something else. The above is a fairly accurate transcript of our conversation. God help Wenger if these are the fans he has to please.
According to the Daily Mail in England Arsene Wenger is set to make unknown £10million defender Pape Malickou Diakhate the first new signing of his Arsenal revolution. The experienced Dinamo Kiev centre-back is the Senegalese vice-captain and a player the Arsenal manager has followed for more than two years.
Read More Here….http://arsenaldebate.weebly.com/april–may-20101.html
Arsenal Debate Team – Susan Alexander
I want city to win because i hate spurs but i also hate city so i don’t care about whoever comes in fourth.Lets hope for early exit for spurs.But we have to do our part well we really have to beat fulham.It is one of the biggest game of our season.so come on gunners…
1. Despite what the board says it is obvious that our spending power is severely limited. Would our rivals in the top five have done as well in the last five years under the restrictions that AW has worked under? I don’t think they would. For all that has been said about Alex Ferguson’s success, would that have been possible if he didn’t have £30m to spend on individual players? I have my doubts. If he does end up being restricted during the summer as is muted he may well find himself looking up at their closest neighbours next season and his retirement may well come sooner than he thinks. AW has worked miracles to keep us in the top four over this period and we have been competitive but come up just short on several occasions. If we finish third we will have surpassed last season’s finish and we will also not be 18 points behind the champions as we were last term.
2. I know that our squad depth is down to AW but the injuries we have suffered this year are the worst I have ever known, so bad that half of the regular first teamers have been missing in recent weeks. But the biggest blow has been to lose our two most influential players for large chunks of the season. Only Chelsea have a squad that can take that kind of hit. If Man U lost Rooney for the amount of time that we lost RVP would they be challenging for the title? Most teams have two or three world class players that lift them to the level where they can challenge for the two major honours. At our club RVP and Cesc are those two players and without them we cannot expect to compete with our two main rivals.
Despite what you may be thinking, I am not blindly supporting the manager, his tendency to completely back his players and ignore our obvious shortcomings can be infuriating but I still believe he is the best man for the job. I have always said that you should never replace a manager or a player unless you have a better man to do it with. Off the top of my head no person springs to mind who could make us better or take us.
I’d also like to reply with regard to people on here saying half of the squad not being good enough. I think we have some players who are definitely not good enough but not half the squad. I think the following players should be sold, Almunia, Fabianski, Silvestre, Eduardo, Vela, Traore and probably controversially Diaby. I also think that Man U and Chelsea will feel the same about their squads and we are not alone with regards to deadwood in our squad.
do not feel wholesale changes are required. This is what I believe is required for us to not only challenge but actually win something next season:
In the goalkeeping position we obviously need a top keeper as we are the only club in the top 10 without one. Buffon would be ideal with Szczesny and Mannone as back up. In defence we need a big ball winning centre back like Hangeland to play with TV and we also need to secure Gallas and Sol for next season. With Djourou returning that should cover us in that area. In midfield we have too many of the same type of player and we only really have Alex Song who wins the ball and breaks up play. If we could get either Yaya Toure or Flamini I think we would have enough numbers in midfield with Ramsey and Wilshere returning to bolster the ranks.
Up front we have been woefully short this year and I think AW’s reluctance to sign a striker was coloured by the knowledge that Chamakh would be coming on a free in the summer. But I feel another striker will be required if we want to challenge on all fronts. I make that four players not the two or three that Arsene as mentioned. But I think that would close the gap to the top two and bring the much desired success.
For those of us of the 40+ persuasion, a gap of five years is not a long time without a trophy. We have experienced long periods without trophies, semi finals or European football in the past so we will have more patience than most. I do understand that those who have been spoilt in the Wenger years are far less used to going more than a couple of seasons trophy free but I think that their wait will end next season if we spend a little cash and show a little faith in the manager. Here’s hoping.
Keep The Faith.
Apart from Arshavin,Cesc,Song,Walcott and Nasri the rest of our middlefielders are shit.First of all they’re injury prone,that’s right any body can be.Whether or not they’re in the team,we’re most likely to get the same results,they show-up in one match n get to play the rest of the season.I don’t see at any one point the likes of Diaby,Vela,Denilson conquering the PL in their positions.Song found them at Arsenal but look at his game reading tactics now=Outstanding.I agree with Mick,sell them n bring in 2 strong passers n tacklers.
i think walcott is crap as well we need passion in our team which is missing.
I am hoping that the thought of Spurs finishing above us will inspire the team to have a really good game on Sunday and beat Fulham.Let`s finish the season on a high!
not all midfielder are terrible, i think they’re not experience enough.
c’mon Joe Hart, you can do it!
I’m glad the lot down the road got 4th spot and champions league spot. It’s far better to laugh at them when they go out than man city