Always a trier was Ralph Coates.I remember sitting in the plane coming back from a Middlesboro game and telling Coates I thought he had had a great game.Ran his butt off for the cause. If our players this week had seen him they would have been embarrassed!
Did not see the game, so in a sentence ... WTF happened on thursday ?? NOT the week for Spurs to be catching a dose of Gooneritus.
I've tried hard to blot him from my memory but without success. I'm pretty sure that in his debut game at WHL he received the ball in space about 5 yards in field, controlled it well and then ran straight off the pitch.
He was a very good player. But we paid £190,000 for him which in those days was 5% off the UK record. So in today's terms he would have needed to be a £80m player and he was well short of that. In fact given we paid the then record of £200k for Martin Peters a season earlier we were actually the moneybags club back then and should have done a lot better in the 70s than we did.
I think part of the fee was Jimmy Greaves in part exchange for "Ten Years". Something like 70,000....I think! Peters was a good buy while Jim had a good start for West Ham but gradually went down hill.In fact Jim and Bobby Moore got into trouble at Blackpool for sneaking out drinking.....
Just a note that there's a few extra tickets been released, maybe 100 or so, at the front behind the goals for anyone who fancies it. I'm in Area 133 Row 5 with my daughter for anyone nearby. COYS.
May as well stick with this thread for the 2nd leg. Not a lot's changed. The game's at Wembley on Thursday and it's an 8.05pm kick-off. Gent drew away to Standard Liege on Sunday and stayed in 8th place. Thoughts on lineups, formations and systems?
It's the whole ground, I believe. The upper tier was opened up last month, shortly after tickets went on general sale.
Cannot put that one down to "casual" Spurs or "tourist" supporters etc. Nor the match itself (unlikely to be a goal fest) . So hopefully the crowd is full of enough supporters to make the noise akin to WHL that will lift the players.
I'm not surprised Wembley's sold out. When you're offering affordable pricing then it attracts the working class man and woman. The atmosphere at Wembley will probably still be pretty basic (mainly because there's no "Park lane" section and the stadium itself is dreadful for atmosphere) but there should be a much better vibe. Not that I'm saying the atmosphere at The Lane is terrible but if Spurs adopted this sort of pricing policy for all games then I guarantee WHL would be rocking every match, just look at previous seasons in Europa/ Cups with the "1882" movement where tickets were more affordable than league games, non-stop singing and having a laugh, that's what football should be about.
You know a basic financial model is P = X * Y. So here X = number of seats, Y = ticket cost. Once you have your bottom line P, you can modify Y based on potential X. And that is what Levy has done. I don't doubt that the value of P is much more than he could get at current WHL at usual ticket prices for the UEFA games. And as I have said, the PR/goodwill he has earned from the supporter base (the chance for non ST supporters etc to attend CL games that is not possible at WHL) is huge.
Me and my son will be there, just want us to win so that we can get to another game (we have tickets for Everton too). Like Sunday I think that its as much about attitude as players, start the match well and impose our style on the match early doors and we will win I have got a feeling we will need to score 3 to get through.