The Spurs Blog

Promising full-back Benoit Assou-Ekotto has slammed his former club Lens for the way they treated him during his time at the club.

He said: “I am fine. There are players that speak French so that is a help. I like the English league,”

“I keep in contact with some Lens players. But when you are educated at a club, contrary to England, people take more care of the players from the outside rather than the ones who came from their own education centre.

“So at a certain time, you have to leave. The players that joined the club after me could better negotiate than me.

“Look at a player like Steven Gerrard in England. He was demanded by Chelsea but Liverpool managed to keep him.

“It is not in the French clubs’ culture to keep the players they have educated.

“Did I feel Lens didn’t do its best to keep me? Of course. If I asked for something, they told me it was not possible.

“As they could not manage a strong character, they prefer to part with him.

“At Lens, they love sheep, but I am not one. Maybe that is what we missed last year, players with strong character.”

French winger Steed Malbranque could make his debut for Tottenham Hotspur in their match against Port Vale this week.

Malbranque, who moved from Fulham earlier this year, has yet to feature for his new club due to a hernia injury but is now back in full training and will be happy to get some first team football in the Cup.

Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho says he is not interested in signing Aaron Lennon.

Mourinho said: “No, completely not interested. The boy is good, but we have no interest in buying or changing anything.

“Our interest is to keep Shaun Wright-Phillips - who was supposedly involved in any deal. No way. It’s not true.”

SWP is a great player but you can keep him. We need to hold on to our stars and land a left sided midfielder.

Jermaine Jenas has urged Aaron Lennon to reject any offers and stay on at White Hart Lane.

Jenas said: “The fans love him and we don’t want to lose him as a player.

“He was the best of the wingers on the pitch on Sunday and gave Chelsea all kinds of problems.

“We knew he would, especially as he had his new yellow boots on and we gave him plenty of stick before the game, but we didn’t say a word afterwards!”

On the goal by Lennon, which gave Spurs the victory over the champions, Jenas added: “He’s been threatening to score for a few games but he saved it for the biggest occasion.

“He did it by beating Ashley Cole and he’s the best left-back in the world. It was a great finish.

“Chelsea have been linked with Aaron but results like this prove he doesn’t have to go there to fulfil his ambitions and win things.”

Wolverhampton are hoping to tie former Spurs winger Rohan Ricketts to a longer deal after reports suggested Sheffield United were interested in the player.

Wolves boss Mick McCarthy said: “Initially I wasn’t aware of the extra option because I wasn’t here when Rohan signed his contract, but I have spoken to him and said I would like him to re-sign for at least another season,”

Inspirational skipper Ledley King says the long standing record against Chelsea was not a factor in the hard fought 2-1 victory over London rivals Chelsea.

“With not having beaten them for so long it is nice to get it out of the way, but it was not really about that for a lot of the players we have got at the club,” said King.

“A lot of them were not familiar with the record and we saw it as another game against probably the best team in the league at the moment.

“It was always going to be difficult, you could see that we were up for it and it was a great all-round performance.

“For us it was another game, we take one game at a time and we happened to be playing Chelsea.

“We wanted the points as much as we will in our next league game. There was extra spice because they are champions and a lot of the players have not even played Chelsea before for Tottenham.

“We are aware of their qualities and we just wanted to put ourselves up against them.”

Martin Jol hailed the performance of his stars following the impressive come from behind 2-1 win over Chelsea at White Hart Lane yesterday.

“After 1-0 you saw some guys like Robbie Keane standing up,” said Jol.
 
“He played two games before, this was his third game. It was probably the first time I played the same strikers three times in a week.

“In my midfield Hossam Ghaly was new to The Premiership had an outstanding performance.

“After the goal they scored, maybe we were a still bit lost after Thursday and then we started playing and then I thought we had the upper hand to the first half.”

He continued: “We were complaining a bit about Lennon because when he was on the left he had seven or eight chances in two matches,”

“I said if you go to the right again you have to give service and assist the other players, and he kept his head cool.

“I’ve not seen him doing this before. He plays the ball into the left corner and that is exactly what you want so he’s top quality talent.”

Jol added: “We wanted to go places in the league because we needed the points,”

“If you are in the bottom half of the table you know, although we do well in the cup and we do well in Europe, it still gives you that feeling.

“Now we are in the top half of the table and nobody can take it away from us - we had a win against the champions, they are very strong and they showed that in Barcelona and we were stronger than them today so it was a great game.

“The fans are always great, they have waited for this. We haven’t won a top game against Man United or Arsenal, we had good results but we never had a win and today we had our first win so that’s great.”

Martin Jol thinks 17-year old signing Dag Alexander Olsen has a big future at the club.

He said: “He came over, we invited him,”

“We knew he was a prospect and that other clubs were looking as well.

“Our advantage was that I invited him to train with us, with the first team - the younger kids always like that.

“We made a bit of an impression on him and, of course, Spurs has got a bit of charisma in Scandinavia as well. He decided to come to Spurs, so that’s the story.

“He’s a good-looking player, the first thing that came to my mind was Elvis Presley.

“He’s speedy, good quality, can score goals, is ambitious. He has all the ingredients to be a very good player.”

Jol concluded: “We hope he will play his first match on Monday with the reserves and he will probably be involved the week after that.”

Uefa Cup hero Dimitar Berbatov says Champions Chelsea are just another team.

He said: “I do not worry also because in the game on Sunday we will play against 11 men no matter who they are,”

“It doesn’t matter that they are Chelsea - they have not got three legs.

“We will go, we will play and hopefully we will win.

“I am trying to show the Tottenham fans why the club bought me, to score goals.

“Hopefully in the future I can do the same.

“It will be a very different game against Chelsea but if we play as we did against Brugge, if we play like a team, then we have a good chance to win.

“We showed great spirit after they took the lead. Brugge are a very good team but we showed that we are better.

“We scored two magnificent goals and now we are thinking about Chelsea.

“It will be a difficult game but I am optimistic.”

Bulgarian striker Dimitar Berbatov stared for Tottenham Hotspur as we came from a goal behind to defeat Club Brugge 3-1 in the UEFA Cup.

Berbatov scored two goals and set up a third for team-mate Robbie Keane as we made two from two in the group stages of the competition.