Piece of old tosh. Modric is a great player who has liked playing for Spurs …… but Real are a better deal for his career and his wallet and, like Chelsea last season, are good at turning heads. BUT, having turned Luka’s head very effectively, and then refused to meet Spurs asking price, they are now playing cynical hard ball. Spurs know how to do this too, so Luka is the meat in the sandwich. I’m a Spurs supporter who happens to think this is our best creative midfielder since White (remember him?). (Forget about Hoddle – by comparison he was a prima donna.) If you want to start assigning blame, blame big business getting in the way of football.

Modric the meat in the sandwich? You are implying he is the victim and all the poor little soldier wants is a move away from the ‘imposed labour camp” at Spurs. He’s a great player, you say the best since John White. Then great players come with a great price tag. All the club are saying is that if you want to leave then fine, when someone pays the price you can go. What’s cynical hard ball about that?
Real Madrid, like Chelsea before them, have tapped him up and turned his head. That’s the modern way but why should Spurs roll over and capitulate taking whatever crumbs they are offered just to appease the spoilt little child?
Modric has asked for a move and we are negotiating with the club he would most like to go to. Until that process has run its course he should knuckle down and do what he’s paid a small fortune to do.

Sorry, but as an equally old and committed Spurs fan, I well agree with the sentiments of this article, and I’d argue some of your own comments even support his.

As for the wonderful John White,  yes, I well remember him, and I can’t understand, if you are a Spurs supporter, why you denigrate Hoddle who, in my view, is the most naturally talented English player, though some real Chelsea fans might argue for the great Alan Hudson and Evertonians might well pick Colin Harvey.

Surely your final comment about ‘big business’ is the same as saying money is the lowest common denominator?

Incidentally, I saw John White score direct from a corner – and Greavsie, come to that – and also saw ‘The Ghost’, as we termed Johnny White, take a corner with his right foot and, with the goal-mouth clearance resulting in a corner from the other side of the pitch, run and take that corner with his left foot.

Don’t forget the great Danny Blanchflower in all of this, too.

We now have the same situation that arsenal had with CF. we hav rat boy pleading to b releases from his long term contract, sign under duress of course, and the club he wants to go to pleading for his release as if he’s in the clutches of the fucking Taliban. How long before we see the hand wringing pleas of real Madrid.

Just take another read of what I said, Vic ……. ‘BUT, having turned Luka’s head very effectively, and then refused to meet Spurs asking price, they are now playing cynical hard ball’ ….. This refers to Real. I defend Spurs right to a realistic fee; I defend Modric’s right to go if he wants (but only at a price Spurs accept). What I DON’T accept is that Modric has suddenly become the devil, or that football is any longer about anything more than money.

Dont be a penis – empty seats at Premiership games, hahaha!

I dont think it’s 100% about the money for Modric, Real Madrid are one of the most successful clubs in history, you can’t blame him for wanting to trade up – but the way he’s going about it stinks.

OK, Cliffboy …… you’re no doubt as long in the tooth as I am …… note my name which refers to a player even older than Mr Jones! What I am fed up with is the villification of Modric who is a great player. He wanted to leave last year, and, when we said no, he knuckled down. Many people said that he didn’t have a good season, but there was huge development in his game. I saw him out wide on the left opposite the Lower Shelf take three touches (right foot, right thigh, left foot) to go inside a lunging defender, and then go past him to cross. He has learned at Spurs to use inside and outside of either foot to hit the ball anywhere he wants, to stop on a sixpence and decide instantly the best ball. This is a great player and I for one grant him the right to leave AT THE RIGHT PRICE if he feels he needs to. I shall be mortified by his depature, and still hope he stays, but he is not the villain, and Danny, Dave, Cliff, John and anyone else you care to mention would be sayed by this kind of money and these kinds of opportunities. It is all very sad, and is not the game we knew as youngsters. I will not start calling him names or pretending he is not a wonderful player.

Vic, Tommy Harmer was a player with quite incredible ball control skills that we got from Chelsea, although I never thought he was a really effective team player.

I would just like Spurs or Levy – or if something like it happens at another club, as I’m sure it will -  to come out publically, and say that Modric is going no-where but the subs’ bench and/or the reserves, that Real Madrid and any other effling club who think they can buy anyone can fxxx off, and that the club is prepared to wear the finanacial implications involved.

I’ve seen loads of empty seats at Premiership games, and they don’t make me laugh. In fact, I reckon they should send shivers up the spines, if they had them, of the F.A., EUFA and FIFA.

If this ‘one of the most successful teams in history’ can’t ever be beaten by any other team on the planet, tell me, what’s the point of the sport?

And I include Spurs as one of those teams.

I bet the great Dave Mackay would have told Real Madrid where to stick their money.

Tommy you are saying modric is better than huddle is nonsense.
Modric is mostly a short passer and quickly releases other players (very similar to Ardiles)
A quick break away team of which avb looks for requires a quicker response than the slow build up by modric.
With huddlestone back he will not be missed.
His correct price is £30m but for that he has to hand in a written transfer request forfeiting his remaining contract, which the greedy shit will not do.

Judging by your article, a contract means nothing and not worth the paper it’s written on. The vendor club has no rights at all and any player can come and go as he pleases if Real came calling (they have the status you know), little old Spurs should bow, be subservient and take it up the rectum like good little chums.
 All Real has to do is click it’s fingers and said player is theirs irrespective of contract length and at the price they want to boot.
Poor Modric, sob sob, I want to join Real because they are a massive club and in the Champions league too. Wasn’t he part of the Spurs team last year that threw away such a huge 12 point advantage which would have made qualification to the CL a cake walk?
You paint Spurs as the villians here and Modric as the hard done by hero. I cant agree with that at all. Daniel Levy is trying to rebuild Spurs to the status they once enjoyed in times long gone bye and he will never achieve that if he continues to sell off the crown jewels as soon as they become polished and for knock down prices just to satisfy others who haven’t got Spurs interest at all. Thank God for Gareth Bale but as the cynics will say, it’s only a matter of time before the vultures come knocking for him as well amongst others.

Bloody hell, this little ‘discussion’ has thrown up some old names. This t’interweb thingy normally attracts lots of giddy young kippers and here are some truly old gits giving it some!
Tommy Harmer, Brown, Baker, Henry, Blanchflower, Norman, Mackay, Dyson, White, Smith, Allen and Jones and, of course, the one and only Sir Jimmy. These are the players I, too, was brought up watching and to see how Modric is behaving make me sad and angry.
I’m not yet ready to hand the game over to the corporates and the greedy and will speak out against some of the less savoury aspects of the modern game. Who knows? The fans may yet have the last word.
Then I am an old romantic … well, old at least.

Vic, I am well with you on this topic and can even remember some of the old ‘push and run’ team, as our early fifties side was often called. I even recall as a kid patting George Robb on the back  as he took a corner for us.

In those days, I’d maintain that the winning of honours and trophies depended far more on a team having a strong support base and the purchase and/or club development of three to four great players and the ability of a manager to marry with those great players above average to even average players into great sides. As with Spurs, our four world class players fused extremely well with players like Brown, Smith, Norman, and Henry, and even made players like Baker, Medwin, Marchi, Allen and Dyson consistently play at levels beyond what their natural talents might suggest. In fact, in our great European Cup Winners Triumph, I’d argue Dyson played the game of his life.

You can’t compare that situation now with clubs like United and City and Chelsea particularly, who will simply buy any players they want. This is not managing in the Nicholson, Busby, Shankly, Greenwoord, Sexton sense. The present crop of ‘successful’ managers are just dealers in commodities, in my view, and the game is only illustrating just what moral decay occurs when money becomes the sole criterion.

Great post Cliffyboy and you are spot on with the Terry Dyson comment in that game he was truely brilliant!

While you chaps are all arguing I’d just like to thank Mr. Calvin for yet another poorly thought out and executed article. D- Must try harder.

Thank you, Tollgate050761, and it is very reassuring, even if we are older, to see many true fans bemoaning the present state of what once was a truly great sport . I’ve noticed that even the superbly talented  Alan Hudson has criticised his once-loved Chelsea for now being the plaything of some Russian Mafia Thug, because the Chelsea team he played in was their best one, in my view, and I loved how they seemed to have the edge over the dreaded Leeds.

I don’t know if you are a member of thebox.bz – I am – and it is a great U.K. site, but some while ago I downloaded Match of the Day Highlights of that fantastic season in the sixties when Greavsie scored one of the goals of the season in our 5-1 defeat of Manchester United at White Hart lane and where they defeated us by the same score at Old Trafford later that same season.

But what struck me was seeing the league table after our highlights game as we and United were something like fifth and sixth respectively while Sheffield United were actually on top.

I don’t know if they won the league that year – they probably didn’t – but I do know that if we have a league system and set-up where such possibilities can never occur again because the same three four teams will always be there, unless their rich owners get bored and buy something else instead, what is the inherent point of it all?