Tottenham round-up: Harry's ban threat, Rafa VdV, Bale, Diara and Modric
1 November 2010
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A digest of some of the stories making Spurs headlines today
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Harry Redknapp says if he's charged by the FA tomorrow for his remarks about the weekend fiasco at Old Trafford, then he won't ever do a TV interview again. "If I can't come on TV when I do get asked a question, and answer it in a truthful manner... Am I supposed to come out after and say 'it was a jolly good decision, I thought he handled it very well'?" said Redknapp as quoted by ESPN. "We shouldn't be being dragged out onto TV three or four minutes after a game. I'm getting pulled out there by Simon the press officer; I don't want to go on TV. I'd much rather stay in the dressing room with the players. When I'm asked a question, I give a truthful answer. He [Clattenburg] made a right mess of it all. That would be my answer, and I stand by it 100 percent.
"If they [the FA] want to make an issue of what I've said, then I'll make some issues as well, don't worry. Don't expect me to come out on TV after a game anymore, ever. I won't do it. If you want me to come on and talk rubbish and say 'it was a good decision and I'm quite happy with it', then don't bother getting me to come out after a game."
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Rafael van der Vaart says of the Champions League game with Inter Milan this week that "we must perform to show our entitlement to be there" in the competition.
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Gareth Bale also tells the official website that Spurs will "give it a real go" tomorrow against Inter, a team he put three past recently. "We'll go into it with a lot of confidence from the game in Milan, hopefully having 11 men throughout and hopefully not starting as poorly as we did [then]."
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Spurs fans should stopping moaning about the second goal on Saturday. As Sam Wallace in The Independent today explains (full column here, scroll down), the ref at Old Trafford made the right decision according to the rules. He writes: "Mark Clattenburg saw Nani's handball and played the advantage because Heurelho Gomes had the ball in his hands and Spurs were 1-0 down. Gomes knew he had made a mistake putting the ball down. You could see that by his reaction as Nani approached. And the only reason linesman Simon Beck flagged later on was to indicate that he needed to speak to Clattenburg, not, as was suggested on Match of the Day, because he panicked. Simple, when you know the rules. "
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Real Madrid's Lassana Diara is wanted, apparently, by Tottenham as well as Manchester United although this tale is a month old and changing by the day, while umpteen sites gobble each other's gossip to report that Luka Modric is wanted by Barcelona in January.
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