1. The pundits who had been pointing out how tough Stoke are to break down away from home well and truly cursed the Potters. 2. A Paul Scholes header last week, two Ryan Giggs penalties this week. Sunderland will be on their guard against a Gary Neville hat-trick next week. 3. That's United's hopes of nicking [.

Spurs snow sniggers Faced with an abundance of snow and the need to find a suitable birthday prank for team-mate Alan Hutton, Tottenham midfielder Jermaine Jenas made use of the elements to build a snowman on the driver's seat of Hutton's gas guzzler. Jenas very kindly snapped the chilly chap behind the while and posted [.

The January transfer window is finally opened and for West Ham, it is pretty good timing! With our threadbare squad decimated by injuries, there is a serious need for reinforcements. Perhaps Zola's desire to work with a smaller squad is backfiring on him and unfortunately, the young 'uns are not ready to pick up the slack.

Team selection was never really an issue when we were banging them in left, right and centre and the side picked itself, but times are a-changing. While annus horribilis is probably a bit strong, our form since the turn of the year has been worrying, reflected not only by poor results and sloppy performances but now scrutiny of the line-up.

from The Guardian:Manchester City want to sign Marton Fulop from Sunderland to take over from the injured Shay Given on an emergency loan deal until the end of the season.Fulop, the Hungary goalkeeper, has fallen out of favour at the Stadium of Light and heads a list of targets drawn up by City to fill the void left by Given dislocating a shoulder in Saturday's 0‑0 draw at Arsenal.

Something for your withdrawal symptoms if, like yours truly, you have such a Tottenham-shaped hole in your life that you now spend the first half hour of your working day actually working, rather than trawling the interweb for morsels of Spurs news. Before season 2009/10 becomes but a sepia-tinged memory sending good vibrations through your very core, it is only right and proper that the second AANP End of Season Awards are dished out.

After another week of second-rate defending it's really no surprise to see that only three defenders made this week's Team of the Week. It should also not be a surprise to see certain strikers on the list following their contributions. What may be a surprise is that this is the first time some of these top-class players have featured in this JBM segment.

From sublime to ridiculous in two shakes of a lamb's tail. How Inter Milan must have shaken their heads in bewilderment. On Saturday our heroes appeared to be running a competition amongst themselves as to who could make the most mistakes, with bonus points for any particular ineptitude that led to a Bolton goal.

Day One in the books, and I'm as happy as Sylvie in the photo above. 46 points from Begovic, Van Der Vaart and Gyan. Day Two looks to me much more interesting, with the Manchester derby very much at the forefront. But first a look back at yesterday. Stoke City v. Birmingham City Stoke bossed the first half Pennant is the master of the high, looping cross All of said crosses were aimed at

Blessed relief. With the 4-4-2 formation, flowing pass-and-move stuff and hatful of chances throughout this was vaguely akin to the glory glory days of way back in season 2009-10. Seeing Paul Robinson look on forlornly as the ball crashed repeatedly into the net really did give the afternoon a retro feel, but after our recent run of form the priority was three points in any manner possible, and they have accordingly been lapped up most gleefully around these parts.

A penny for ‘Arry's thoughts, ahead of the Third Round of the Cup. Not the predictable dross with which he closes his little team-news spiel on the club's official website – "Hopefully we'll turn in another terrific performance" – but rather his sentiments regarding a successful Cup run and, say, a Quarter-Final replay, or Semi-Final date in April, adding a spot of fixture congestion at a time when we, presumably, will be making a final push for the top four.

(Apologies for the tardiness – deadline week on the book Spurs' Cult Heroes)
The FA Cup? Why not? The only team that ever seems to beat us in knock-out competitions has itself been knocked out, and for our part we look capable of despatching anyone on our day. This is not a reaction to our win on Saturday, far from it, but rather a reaction to the exit of Man Utd.

Pav stayed. Hutton went. Bentley stayed. Naughton went. Walker came back. Kaboul also came back (shudder). And, perhaps most surprisingly of all, Keano went - his second coming at the Lane not proving to be so successful. Interestingly enough, all significant deals in and out of Spurs but one this January transfer window were loans.

Scottish international wants to stay at Sunderland.

Win the Club Shirt Of Your Choice Simply by Speaking Your Mind!

Tottenham full back Alan Hutton has made it abundantly clear that he would not like to return to north London and has set his sights on remaining at Sunderland after his loan deal comes to an end.

White Hart Lane pair set for summer exit.

Win the Club Shirt Of Your Choice Simply by Speaking Your Mind!

Sunderland boss Steve Bruce will make an £8million summer move for Republic of Ireland striker Robbie Keane.

Bruce pondered a January move for the 29-year-old Spurs hitman before he chose to join boyhood favourites Celtic on loan.

Of all the players to score against us, it had to have been Henry. The scourge of our defences throughout most of the last decade, his ageing legs found within them enough energy to put his new side in front. But this time he wasn't to end on the winning side and, perhaps symbolically for this new Tottenham era, we ran out winners.

Another player has fallen out of favor with his club. This time the club is Tottenham. Spurs boss, Harry Redknapp, has plenty of defenders to work with, which means that Alan Hutton basically has nothing to do but sit on the bench. talkSPORT believes that Birmingham City are ready to snap up the 25-year-old defender.

Tottenham's Alan Hutton is desperate for first-team football and since it has been hard to come by in the last two years since he joined from Rangers, he is hoping to seal a move away from White Hart Lane if the situation does not improve.

The most significant obstacle in his bid to pursue other opportunities has been the North Londoners' reluctance to offload the 25-year old in a cut-price deal having acquired him for £9 million from Gers during the January transfer window in 2008.

Tottenham 3 Wolves 1
Now that's more like it. For 77 minutes of yesterday's contest, it looked as if history was cruelly repeating itself, only this time in slow motion just to really rub in the pain. A raft of missed chances, a goal down since the stroke of half time and an increasingly desperate performance ensued as we laboured our way towards an equaliser.

It was a strange game on Saturday in many ways. Wolves came to White Hart Lane as we expected and put 10 men behind the ball until they scored when they increased that to 11 but we came out just as many of us wanted them to and fought for every 50/50 ball and passed with precision and pace.

As if a flight across time-zones was not discombobulating enough, I found myself stepping off the plane to be greeted by the news that Alan Hutton had scored for us, while Jermaine Jenas had put in a decent performance and Robbie Keane had started -all of which left me wondering whether I had flown into a new space-time continuum rather than simply across continents.

A good bourbon. Terminator 2 with surround sound. Scantily clad nubile young women prancing around AANP Towers. Just a selection of some of the finer things in life, which get the juices flowing here at AANP Towers, and to this exalted list can be added an evening kick-off at home to l'Arse.

The Soccerlens Fantasy Football Game is now five weeks old, so it's time to take a look at some of the best performing footballers. Because Soccerlens Fantasy Football is a week to week game, we're going to take a look at top 10 fantasy football players based on average points scored per game played, rather than total points scored in the five weeks of play.

When picking your team for week six of the Soccerlens Fantasy Football Game, then anyone planning to win the weekly prize money (available to the top three teams in each 11 team mini-league) should have only one question: Who's hot? If you have a second question, it should be: Who's not?

Week six of the Soccerlens Fantasy Football Game is over, with my Soccerlens All-Stars team finishing sixth in our 11 team league, just two points and three places short of a top three finish and the prize money that comes with it. I was playing at the Silver level this week, which was $4.99 to enter, with $40 of prize money available.

Due to the horrors of the real world (new flat! new flat!), a near-lethal bout of man-flu and, most pertinently, a mightily ropey wi-fi connection, many of the AANP ramblings of recent weeks have been trapped, like the three evil types inside the glass prison in Superman 2, on a usb stick, unable to make it to the interweb.

Due to the horrors of the real world (new flat! new flat!), a near-lethal bout of man-flu and, most pertinently, a mightily ropey wi-fi connection, the AANP ramblings of recent weeks have been trapped, like the three evil types inside the glass prison in Superman 2, on a usb stick, unable to make it to the interweb.

Sages the breadth of Christendom have been popping up all over the media this season to opine knowingly that our heroes would struggle to cope with the rigours of Champions League and the Premiership each week. As such I was jolly well hoping that we would emphatically destroy Everton with a loud roar of triumph (or at the very least fashion another 2-1 win) to prove the blighters wrong – but in truth we looked every inch a team jaded from the madcap doings of Wednesday night.

Tottenham defender Alan Hutton is hoping that the lack of fixtures this midweek will give his teammates the chance to rest up ahead of this weekend's daunting Premier League fixture against Manchester United at Old Trafford.

Last week, the Spurs played three matches in the span of a week as a Champions League tie away to Inter was sandwiched between Premier League fixtures away to Fulham and home to Everton.

I suppose that after Saturday's relentless barrage of thwacks at the Self-Destruct button by the esteemed members of our back-four, we good members of the N17 public ought to have expected one more seismic defensive catastrophe on Tuesday night. Unfortunately, the Kaboul-Gallas Chuckle Brothers audition was so wince-inducingly, jaw-droppingly awful it is probably destined to join Rob Green's summer howler by being immortalised in Lego.

Seasoned visitors to these parts will now that on three occasions each year we simply cannot prophesy doom quickly enough. Away games at l'Arse, Chelski and Man Utd – absolutely positively guaranteed to find the famous "AANP Cheery Optimism Counter" stuck at zero for the duration of the weekend.

Spurs snow sniggers Faced with an abundance of snow and the need to find a suitable birthday prank for team-mate Alan Hutton, Tottenham midfielder Jermaine Jenas made use of the elements to build a snowman on the driver's seat of Hutton's gas guzzler. Jenas very kindly snapped the chilly chap behind the while and posted [.

Tottenham 3 Wolves 1
Now that's more like it. For 77 minutes of yesterday's contest, it looked as if history was cruelly repeating itself, only this time in slow motion just to really rub in the pain. A raft of missed chances, a goal down since the stroke of half time and an increasingly desperate performance ensued as we laboured our way towards an equaliser.

Curses. There has been some debate across various corners of the interweb, but here at AANP Towers we had rather been enjoying the exalted status of title dark-horses, and accordingly mark this down as two points lost. No catastrophe, but if we can win at the Emirates we should be able to win just about anywhere, especially after giving the opposition a one-goal first-half thrashing, if such a thing there be.