by Alan Hudson

I  take a break from my new book as do the players from both the MSL and Premier League, and once again I fear that the last road to Rio was a complete disaster this one could be a Chris Rea song, ‘The Road to Hell’.  With just under a dozen matches to play, which means we will soon see another season behind us, if I were to be totally honest I have seen nothing in the English League that gives us any new hope for the European Championships. Oh hang on, there’s Harry Kane, the players at White Hart Lane they also sing about as ‘One of Us’, yeah, Harry is one of the crowd in north London. I don’t think so! I would go more the way of ‘There’s Something About Harry’ and I don’t mean Redknapp, who left this job in ridiculous fashion trying to play up this fantastic football club with England that was his downfall and he ended up giving the wooden spoon with QPR for all of his antics. When Redknapp took on the job he said it was the ‘Job of my dreams’ before trying to run the place like Arthur Daley’s car showroom.

Tottenham Hotspur are an institution, and one where I learned my trade watching the likes of Mackay, White, Gilzean, Blanchflower, Jennings and my all-time favourite goal-scorer Jimmy Greaves.  There was also the father of the record breaking Clive Allen, Les, who I watched throughout his famous League Cup success at QPR when they were in the Third Division. I was at every match until they beat WBA at Wembley in that 1967 final after being 2-0 behind, and that was only because I was playing for Chelsea Youth Team. Anyhow, the reason for this walk down memory Lane is I think that they were all English born, and their fans still talk about it in the White Horse just off Shepherd’s Bush Green. Okay, there was no Stan Bowles, who became the greatest ever player ever to grace Loftus Road, but Les Allen was a brilliant footballer.

Isn’t it refreshing to talk about an English player in such terms, and in the days when the money was a little more than the ‘fiver’ I was getting paid in that morning at the Welsh Harp, Hendon. That training ground was a stone’s throw from Wembley Stadium and that is where Hodgson will be hoping that Harry Kane can help get him in a new contract, Another thing strange is that both player and manager are on trial in an international, although it is not all going to be on the outcome of tomorrow.