Obviously when Chelsea try to turn the head of a Spurs player I’m not going to be too amused and the fact that it just happens to hit the papers the day before we play them at White Hart Lane in the Premiership shouldn’t be seen as anyhting other than pure coincidence (should it?) but I have to say that Chelsea and Jose Mourinho really have taken the whole concept of mind games to a new level.

We all know exactly what Alex Ferguson did to Kevin Keegan back in those old days when the Premiership was new and you could claw back a thirteen point deficit between Christmas and May by simply winding the opposing manager up to breaking point but despite frequent spats with both Arsene Wenger and Jose Mourinho since then Ferguson has failed to ever really match those heights (or lows depending on which side of the fence you’re sitting) in the mind games stakes.

Chelsea however just keep pushing that bar lower and lower. Not content to ruin the career of referee Anders Frisk they continually bemoan their bad luck with referees, unashamedly decry other clubs’ players of being diving cheats while teaching their own to roll around pitches from Bolton to Birmingham to Barcelona and with large chequebook in hand do their very best to unsettle other clubs’ players when they begin to show a little promise.

Aaron Lennon won’t be the last recipient of Roman Abramovich’s roaming eyes when it comes to poaching talent in the British transfer market but he should proceed with caution if he does get caught up in the moment of being eyed up by the flashiest wide boys on the block. The newspaper rumours are all mentioning a potential swap deal of Shaun Wright Phillips plus cash for Lennon and that in itself sums up the Chelsea situation with transfers.

A couple of seasons ago SWP was in the same place Lennon is now. A promising young player with some England experience who was widely tipped to set the Premiership alight as one of the true pacey widemen actually born in England. Now SWP is a forlorn figure with the imprint of the Chelsea bench on his rearend and no England place as it’s been taken by the latest hot young product whose club actually play him when he’s fit. Namely one Aaron Lennon of Tottenham Hotspur.

We all know footballers are mercenaries and loyalty is dead but surely playing a full season at Spurs is better than half a dozen games off the bench at Chelsea and a jig around the pitch like David May used to do at Manchester United when the other lads had done the hard work in winning the Premiership. Maybe I just expect a little professional pride to make it’s way into the scenario and maybe I’ll be disappointed all over again when it doesn’t.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 5th, 2006 at 10:05 am and is filed under Tottenham Hotspur. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.