March 30 – Glenda Gets His Spurs | On This Football Day

March 30 – Glenda Gets His Spurs

WE’VE all been there. If you’ll excuse us for going a little Ian Holloway on you, but today’s story is like when you’ve got a new girlfriend whose ex comes on back on the scene, leaving you high and dry. In this case the girl is Glenda Hoddle, the ex is Tottenham Hotspur, and poor old Southampton are the ones crying into their pillow, as today in 2001 the former England boss ditched the Saints for his first love.

Now we don’t know what Southampton had done in a previous life to deserve such treatment, but after they had welcomed Hoddle back into football management following that infamous interview with The Times they were dropped quicker than a Newcastle number 10 when Spurs were on the prowl for a new manager following George Graham’s departure two weeks earlier.

Despite winning Spurs’ first trophy in nine years Graham was given the boot for failing to improve on their mid-table league position that stalked Spurs for whole of the 90′s (and most of the 2000′s to boot). Down on the south coast Hoddle was resurrecting his managerial career as he beat the drop with Southampton in the 2000/01 season, meaning it didn’t take long for the rumour mill to start up when the position at his former stomping ground came up.

The Saints didn’t want to let their man go easily and an acrimonious split and lengthy compensation battle ensued. Eventually chairman Rupert Lowe emerged with a million quid in his back pocket in exchange for Hoddle and his number 2 John Gorman, leaving Hoddle time to come up with a fan-pleasing statement for the White Hart Lane faithful: “Chairmen come and go but as a supporter you will always have a club in your heart. I know what the fans like and dislike. I want to take it back to the days when I was playing here and trophies were coming in,” he fawned. “I want class football; Spurs always had that style in formation and individuals. But you’ve got to have that balance with success.”

It didn’t start too badly for Glenda, as he brought in the likes of Gus Poyet, Christian Ziege and Teddy Sheringham, and even managed to get the best out of sick-notes such as Darren Anderton and Ledley King. Within a year Hoddle had got Spurs into the final of the Worthington Cup, where they would go down 2-1 to Blackburn Rovers. Obviously, this got Spurs fans thinking that their former playmaker was about to transfer their fortunes like Arsene Wenger had across the way at Arsenal, but like a Britney Spears comeback single, they just couldn’t make a lasting impression on the top ten.

A ninth-place finish in his first season, tenth in his second and a poor start to the ’03/04 campaign was enough to convince the Spurs top brass of David Buchler and Daniel Levy that, despite their earlier claims, Glenda was not the man to take Spurs to the next level. Tottenham were lying in the drop zone in September 2003, with a return of just four points from their first five games when a 3-1 loss at home sealed his fate. Who was this against you ask? Yes, you guessed it, Southampton, now under the tutorage of Wee Gordon Strachan, proving that maybe Hoddle’s theories on karma had some truth to them after all.

We’ll leave you with Glenda make a wally out of himself on Top of the Pops and we’ll be back with more tales from north London for you tomorrow.