All the Luck of the Lane

Remember the old taunt ‘Lucky Arsenal’? Well, if you’re wondering what happened to it, the answer’s simple. It got transferred across North London. Now, unmistakably, it’s ‘Lucky Spurs’. With knobs on.

Take Pascal Chimbonda for instance, formerly of Wigan Athletic. He popped up with the equaliser at Craven Cottage – his first goal for the club. Not bad for a man who shouldn’t have been there at all, after he slapped Nicky Butt across the face in the recent Newcastle game and got away with it with just a yellow calling card, courtesy of the benign Steve Bennett, refereeing’s answer to Dame Hilda Brackett.

But that’s very small beer compared to the European scene. Apparently Spurs have now discovered the secret of making progress in European competition without the tiresome business of actually having to play football. It works like this. Feyenoord of Rotterdam, the famous Dutch club and Spurs’ next opponents in the UEFA Cup, have been fined and chucked out of the competition because some of their fans tended to disgrace themselves when their team was losing 3-0 to Nancy last November. So lucky old Spurs have been presented with a bye into the next round.

And if they can persuade a few more teams to misbehave, the team that runs out to music from Star Wars but hasn’t any big stars could even make it to the final. How lucky is that?