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BY the time you get to my age it is difficult to go to any football match and not be confronted by reminders or familiar faces.
It’ll be the same tomorrow when Tottenham come to visit my new club Queens Park Rangers.
I can’t lie and say my four years at White Hart Lane meant nothing, I don’t think anyone would believe me anyway.
It was a special time for me and for the club. But now I’ve gone I’m not the sort to bear a grudge — I pity people that do, in fact.
Where is that going to get me? Nowhere, fast.
My only focus now is on QPR and getting us out of desperate trouble at the bottom of the Premier League.
The Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy made a decision last season that he wanted a change of manager and so be it. It’s life, you get on with it. A lot of managers leave clubs these days under a hail of abuse from their own fans. Sometimes you even drive out of the club car park for the last time and they are shouting and throwing things at your motor.
But I am lucky that didn’t happen to me. I had — and still have — a fantastic relationship with the Spurs fans and a great deal of respect for them.
We went on some amazing adventures together, after all.
From the bottom of the league the club went into the Champions League for the first time. We played both the Milan giants and Real Madrid in a memorable season in the most prestigious tournament any club can play in.
Last season we finished in a Champions League place again, finishing fourth. It was only Chelsea winning the European Cup a couple of weeks later that meant
Spurs are not in it again this year.
It was an amazing chapter of my life but one that is closed now.
There will be little emotion. We hear a lot about players who don’t celebrate when they score against their old clubs and that is a load of nonsense. I don’t understand that.
While I’m not one to jump about a lot on the touchline when a goal goes in, I’ll be happy if we score against Tottenham because I am desperate for us to win, determined for us to get three points.
I left behind a fabulous group of players at Spurs.
The manager now, Andre Villas-Boas has added a couple of names to that and look at them go. I firmly believe that he has a squad capable of winning the Premier League within a season or two.
And we have just done them a massive favour by beating Chelsea last week too. Let’s not forget that!
If I bump into the Spurs players before or after the game it’ll be great to see them but I’m not going out of my way for a tearful reunion. It’s business.
Last season my grandchildren wore Spurs kits. This season it’s QPR.
I won’t walk into the away dressing room at Loftus Road to catch up with old friends. That’s not me.
You have to be professional. I’ll just stay in our changing room give the team talk and concentrate solely on winning a game which we desperately need to win.
The oddest thing of it all will be that this will be the first time that I’ll be trying to STOP Gareth Bale doing all the things I used to encourage him to do.
He is a fantastic player, a great, grounded lad from a decent family and a terrific footballer. In the season in which we terrorised Milan in the Champions League he was incredible and was up there with the best in the world.
Lionel Messi is on another planet to everyone else in terms of talent, but maybe one day Gareth will be honoured with the Ballon D’Or.
Mind you, Messi would need to miss the whole season with injury first!
But you get my drift about Gareth. He is phenomenal.
It will be tough trying to stop him and the rest of the Tottenham team. It’s hard to find a weak link in their squad. Great centre-halfs, superb full-backs, excellent midfielders and sharp strikers.
They could easily field two teams capable of holding its own in the Premier League, such is the strength-in-depth.
Once the Tottenham game is out of the way, the following week we play West Ham — another club that will always be special to me.
I went there as a 14-year-old, played for them and managed them to their highest finish in the Premier League — fifth place in 1998-9 — and employed some special players to.
I was desperate to bring Joe Cole to QPR recently but once the Hammers were in for him there was no contest, he was heading there and good luck to him.
I hope he does really well back at Upton Park.
Win, lose or draw I’ve not had a truly bad experience at any of my clubs.
Southampton was an impossible task, but I still loved the challenge.
To put things in perspective, as soon as our match against Spurs finishes, I’m on a plane to France to watch a game on Saturday night and another on Sunday.
Such is life for a manager during the transfer window.
I’m more emotional about the fact that, at present, I can’t do what I like best of all... which is to drive home after a match on Saturday night and go out with my wife Sandra for a nice Italian meal.
link: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage...#ixzz2HclcWAZA
It’ll be the same tomorrow when Tottenham come to visit my new club Queens Park Rangers.
I can’t lie and say my four years at White Hart Lane meant nothing, I don’t think anyone would believe me anyway.
It was a special time for me and for the club. But now I’ve gone I’m not the sort to bear a grudge — I pity people that do, in fact.
Where is that going to get me? Nowhere, fast.
My only focus now is on QPR and getting us out of desperate trouble at the bottom of the Premier League.
The Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy made a decision last season that he wanted a change of manager and so be it. It’s life, you get on with it. A lot of managers leave clubs these days under a hail of abuse from their own fans. Sometimes you even drive out of the club car park for the last time and they are shouting and throwing things at your motor.
But I am lucky that didn’t happen to me. I had — and still have — a fantastic relationship with the Spurs fans and a great deal of respect for them.
We went on some amazing adventures together, after all.
From the bottom of the league the club went into the Champions League for the first time. We played both the Milan giants and Real Madrid in a memorable season in the most prestigious tournament any club can play in.
Last season we finished in a Champions League place again, finishing fourth. It was only Chelsea winning the European Cup a couple of weeks later that meant
Spurs are not in it again this year.
It was an amazing chapter of my life but one that is closed now.
There will be little emotion. We hear a lot about players who don’t celebrate when they score against their old clubs and that is a load of nonsense. I don’t understand that.
While I’m not one to jump about a lot on the touchline when a goal goes in, I’ll be happy if we score against Tottenham because I am desperate for us to win, determined for us to get three points.
I left behind a fabulous group of players at Spurs.
The manager now, Andre Villas-Boas has added a couple of names to that and look at them go. I firmly believe that he has a squad capable of winning the Premier League within a season or two.
And we have just done them a massive favour by beating Chelsea last week too. Let’s not forget that!
If I bump into the Spurs players before or after the game it’ll be great to see them but I’m not going out of my way for a tearful reunion. It’s business.
Last season my grandchildren wore Spurs kits. This season it’s QPR.
I won’t walk into the away dressing room at Loftus Road to catch up with old friends. That’s not me.
You have to be professional. I’ll just stay in our changing room give the team talk and concentrate solely on winning a game which we desperately need to win.
The oddest thing of it all will be that this will be the first time that I’ll be trying to STOP Gareth Bale doing all the things I used to encourage him to do.
He is a fantastic player, a great, grounded lad from a decent family and a terrific footballer. In the season in which we terrorised Milan in the Champions League he was incredible and was up there with the best in the world.
Lionel Messi is on another planet to everyone else in terms of talent, but maybe one day Gareth will be honoured with the Ballon D’Or.
Mind you, Messi would need to miss the whole season with injury first!
But you get my drift about Gareth. He is phenomenal.
It will be tough trying to stop him and the rest of the Tottenham team. It’s hard to find a weak link in their squad. Great centre-halfs, superb full-backs, excellent midfielders and sharp strikers.
They could easily field two teams capable of holding its own in the Premier League, such is the strength-in-depth.
Once the Tottenham game is out of the way, the following week we play West Ham — another club that will always be special to me.
I went there as a 14-year-old, played for them and managed them to their highest finish in the Premier League — fifth place in 1998-9 — and employed some special players to.
I was desperate to bring Joe Cole to QPR recently but once the Hammers were in for him there was no contest, he was heading there and good luck to him.
I hope he does really well back at Upton Park.
Win, lose or draw I’ve not had a truly bad experience at any of my clubs.
Southampton was an impossible task, but I still loved the challenge.
To put things in perspective, as soon as our match against Spurs finishes, I’m on a plane to France to watch a game on Saturday night and another on Sunday.
Such is life for a manager during the transfer window.
I’m more emotional about the fact that, at present, I can’t do what I like best of all... which is to drive home after a match on Saturday night and go out with my wife Sandra for a nice Italian meal.
link: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage...#ixzz2HclcWAZA
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