History

What a past few seasons we have had, from early 21 century mid-table wonderers... into a team fighting for honors at the right end of the premiership, if AVB can keep this squad together then our first title since 1961 will be a lot nearer than under previous bosses!

Last nights win over Lyon showed character, and although we left it till the last kick of the game to take a 2-1 advantage over to France, the fact is we are in poll position to push on to the next round, where we could end up facing Inter, the first time since Gareth Bale destroyed them in the CL Group stage a few seasons back! There are still some top-drawer teams in the Europa league, but on our day we can beat anybody! so could we dare dream of our first European trophy since 84?

The Glory days have taken a lot longer to return to The Lane than most would of liked, but we are on the cusp of achieving greatness, and for once i feel we will push on and stop being the underachievers, the oh-so nearly men!

Looking back through our history we have always had great individuals, from Greaves to Sheringham, Ginola to King, these individuals have brought us moments of pure magic, but for what ever reason we never hit them heights that we should of been hitting, Sir Bill sent the bench mark in 61, and ever since then we have never been able to regain that magic!

"It's better to fail aiming high than to succeed aiming low"

Our last major trophy came in 2008, which may only seem a few years ago but in them 5 years we have become stronger, added better players to our ranks and have almost got rid of that monkey off our backs when it comes to beating the big spending elite in their own back yards... The only ground we haven't won at since the premiership started is Stamford bridge... how AVB would love to put that right!

So as we head deeper into 2013 are we about to enter another period of them Glory days? COYS

Is Levy the problem

Daniel Levy, some fans love him some fans hate him, but lets look into the facts over the last 24 months.

Flash back to when we had just beaten Arsenal at the Emirates. We we're going well in the Champions League, Bale and VDV we're pulling the strings and things we're looking good. A few weeks later the transfer window opened. Yet we didn't take advantage of it, had we signed for example a Scotty Parker or an Aguero, the latter not as far fetched as you may have thought! We more than likely would of made decent progress from the season before. Instead we carried on with what we had and we ended up finishing 5th and got to the quarter finals of the Champions league, which in fairness wasn't too bad of a season, compared to recent times.

That summer there was alot of unrest, 'Arry and Levy's relationship started to breakdown over the Modric situation, add to that the sales of target man Crouch, *who played a big part in getting us to the CL! 'Captain Keane' and our number one right back at the time in Hutton and you could see that it was going to be a long season. The arrival of Parker and Ade lifted the fans and we went on up to the new year with a shout of winning the title! That January again we we're all hoping to kick on from our strong position. We were all hoping for a Kaka, or a Tevez but what happened, 'Arry wasn't backed and we sold our no 3 striker in Pav, and replaced him with a free signing in Saha, add to the mix an aging centre back to cover the injured Dawson and that combined with off the field issues ment we missed out on the champions league by one point!

The summer saw 'Arry getting the chop, with the unconvincing AVB given the job at the Lane, throw in former Cult hero Steffen Freund as part of the back room staff *Can just imaging out of all the people AVB wanted as his no two.... Freund was his first choice! Now AVB has seen 2 of his big game players sold during the summer, and it was totally out of his hands, he can't be blamed for taking a job where the Chairman doesn't really want to spend the dosh if he can help it. So is it a case of AVB being sold a dud, or has Levy got it wrong with sacking the man that gave us wins against the might of the premiership and the giants of Europe?

Now we're heading into the final few weeks of 2012 and we are now looking more like a mid-table Spurs team from the mid 90's than a Champions league team of 2010!