this two bob excuse for a threat..."Is that all you got, is it?!") has left us with us with a couple of cliffhangers equal to Liverpool's '30 year wait'.
Close pals Jose Mourinho and Pep Guardiola are at the heart of both.
Portuguese Spur Mourinho has long been an outspoken critic of big club underfunding, and has reliably brought it to the public's attention since 2004, particularly if the big club he is managing are losing because of him. He has exposed austerity-championing clubs such as Chelsea, Real Madrid and Manchester United for the pro-academy bums they are, and while his current tight squeeze Tottenham Hotspur has yet to feel the full force of Mourinho's lens-fixed wrath, this is because they are skint after paying him his salary demands and paying off a more popular manager.
So rather than engage in another feud with the board via the media for more money, Mourinho had, to the surprise of some, shown a measure of flexibility in trying to combat the injury problem with strikers that had plagued the club (do say plagued, Jose told the press.) With Champions League elimination just round the corner, Mourinho used the just finished FA Cup Fifth Round home defeat to bottom-of-the-table Norwich City on penalties to stage an impromptu benefit concert with all proceeds going to the injured Tottenham strikers charity, raising necessary funds to get new ones in for next season and stave off the threat of home grown players infecting the squad. But more importantly, raise awareness of the impossible problems facing Jose.
Almost as soon as the penalty shoot out was finished, Eric Dier was sent in to the stand, like an even less popular version of Bono wading through the crowd at Live Aid in '85 before belting out a 60's classic by The Hollies. Others liken Dier's moment to the show-stealing flamboyance of Freddie Mercury that day at Wembley 35 years ago, when he turned a previously underwhelming event into a memorable spectacle.
Mourinho neglected to hot-foot it to the BBC iplayer studio and demand the public hand over their "fucking money" but forever the plotter, arranged for his players to follow in Bono's footsteps again the next day and shoot an advert bearing the message "Every time I click my fingers, a Tottenham striker gets injured".
We may now never get to hear the pop single phase of the crisis.
As for Pep Guardiola, the story is shorter. Just before the suspension of Premier League and European football, PG insisted that there was no point playing football behind closed doors, as was being suggested at the time. Now that this probably won't happen, he won't get to see just how much of a difference to the attendance at "Emptihad" it really would have made.
So rather than engage in another feud with the board via the media for more money, Mourinho had, to the surprise of some, shown a measure of flexibility in trying to combat the injury problem with strikers that had plagued the club (do say plagued, Jose told the press.) With Champions League elimination just round the corner, Mourinho used the just finished FA Cup Fifth Round home defeat to bottom-of-the-table Norwich City on penalties to stage an impromptu benefit concert with all proceeds going to the injured Tottenham strikers charity, raising necessary funds to get new ones in for next season and stave off the threat of home grown players infecting the squad. But more importantly, raise awareness of the impossible problems facing Jose.
Almost as soon as the penalty shoot out was finished, Eric Dier was sent in to the stand, like an even less popular version of Bono wading through the crowd at Live Aid in '85 before belting out a 60's classic by The Hollies. Others liken Dier's moment to the show-stealing flamboyance of Freddie Mercury that day at Wembley 35 years ago, when he turned a previously underwhelming event into a memorable spectacle.
Mourinho neglected to hot-foot it to the BBC iplayer studio and demand the public hand over their "fucking money" but forever the plotter, arranged for his players to follow in Bono's footsteps again the next day and shoot an advert bearing the message "Every time I click my fingers, a Tottenham striker gets injured".
We may now never get to hear the pop single phase of the crisis.
As for Pep Guardiola, the story is shorter. Just before the suspension of Premier League and European football, PG insisted that there was no point playing football behind closed doors, as was being suggested at the time. Now that this probably won't happen, he won't get to see just how much of a difference to the attendance at "Emptihad" it really would have made.
