Published: 22 August, 2013

IT might be believable when Arsene Wenger tells the supporters how hard it is to sign good players if Tottenham weren’t spending godzillians of pounds at the same time.

Spurs appear to have given up on their admirable organic growth, careful scouting, and considered youth team work.

That famous old underachieving club now have little chance of cultivating a home-grown talent to match the quality of Jack Wilshere.

Instead, those troublesome neighbours are behaving in exactly the same way that their fans criticised Chelsea and Manchester City for.

Spurs are unashamedly trying to buy a fourth place after choking in recent seasons.

All those glory-glory purist fans up the Lane, who harp on about the good days of Hoddle and somebody else good that I can’t think of, used to hate Chelsea spending £100million in a blink of an eye.

Now, their own team is doing exactly that.

But after the pain – oh the embarrasing pain – who can blame them?

Remember those poor Spurs fans who were caught on camera on the last day of the season celebrating the Newcastle ghost equaliser that never was?

That was the most embarrassing TV shot of fans you will ever see.

Well, those dented supporters are demanding some sort of quick compensation for that day and the quickest way is the club chequebook.

Yet however much Spurs have transformed into a Chelsea-lite in the transfer market, Arsenal fans want their own club to be doing the same.

Sadly, the Gunners appear to have deceived their own fans about the difficulty of signing new players.

Roberto Soldado, Paulinho and probably Willian have all signed for a lesser club with less hassle.
RICHARD OSLEY

TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR
SO Real Madrid fans have started wearing shirts bearing Gareth Bale’s name have they?

That’s OK I guess. Us Spurs supporters have been putting the names of Soldado, Paulinho, Capoue and Chadli on ours this season.

Arsenal fans, on the other hand, are wearing, erm, ‘Sanogo’ on the backs of theirs. Who? Oh you know, that “top class” free transfer fella who hails from somewhere in France.

Still not sure?

Don’t worry, you’ll soon be familiar with him because as one grumpy Gooner told me recently, you’ll get plenty of chance to watch him in the Capital One Cup this season.

Thankfully Tottenham’s trophy dreams will not be carried by one man this season.

They will be carried by many men.

Some of them Brazilian.

I just hope we do sell that one man to Real Madrid so we can pay for them all.

But I’m not here to put a dampener on the fact that it feels like the powers-that-be at my club have come over all lottery-winner-on-a-bender the day before the numbers have been picked out.

I’m here to cheer our new faces on and beg them to do two things for us.

First score some goals.

That’s right.

Good start on Sunday but instead of nervy one-nils I’d like you to wallop teams preferably beating them at their place by a humiliating scoreline.

Say 3-1 perhaps?

Then I’d like you to get us up on our feet just like that man Gareth Bale did so many times last season and the one before.

He played the Tottenham way.

Now show us you can too.
CATHERINE ETOE