Defoe-nitely Maybe

Article by Paul Glanfield

For all his Tottenham goals you can’t help but feel Jermain Defoe has never reached his full potential.

Having watched and thoroughly enjoyed the ‘Jermain Defoe – Sports Stories’ documentary last night, one thing that stood out was the players reflection on his ill-fated transfer request at West Ham and the subsequent reaction of the fans towards him when he did eventually move on to Tottenham some months later.

It does appear that it was a lesson learnt for Defoe as he found his way into the hearts of Tottenham fans and to this date remains a real favourite amongst the White Hart Lane faithful. It is true that his loyalty was never tested by a big money offer from a Manchester United or Real Madrid down the years, and that in itself is testament to a career which has never quite reached the heights it perhaps should’ve done. For all the affection undoubtedly bestowed upon Defoe by Spurs supporters, throughout his career there has always been debate amongst them over his true value to the side.

Defoe has always been in and out of the Spurs team, and arguably his best contributions have always been either from the bench or returning to the side following a period of absence. The opportunity to make an explosive impact, the initial buzz of returning to the field, all too often seems to be followed by long spells without goals flowing consistently.

After joining Spurs mid-way through the troubled 03/04 season, Defoe quickly demonstrated his ability to score goals out of nothing. The deal looked like an amazing piece of business from Tottenham and David Pleat was positively gushing at the time, claiming Defoe would have a long and successful future at Tottenham.

Into the following season and the eventual Spurs manager Martin Jol suggested Defoe had the potential to be as good as Thierry Henry following his spectacular strike in the infamous 5-4 defeat to Arsenal at the Lane. Those comparisons seemed to have foundations with Defoe enjoying a good degree of success in his early days in a Spurs shirt during the 04/05 season. It was under Jol however, where Defoe first found himself relegated to first choice substitute in a striking context, with the big Dutchman preferring Mido and Robbie Keane for much of the 05/06 campaign. The season ended desperately for Spurs and Defoe with Lasagne-gate spelling the end of their unlikely Champions League hopes, and then the ridiculous and utterly unfounded decision of Sven Goran-Eriksson to take Theo Walcott to the World Cup ahead of the Spurs marksman.

Spurs started slowly in 06/07 with Defoe finding himself once more on the bench predominantly, this time behind Keane and Dimitar Berbatov. By 07/08 Darren Bent had been added to the mix as well and, behind the superb partnership of Keane and Berbatov, Defoe was struggling for game time.

In the January of 2008 Defoe was able to leave Spurs for Portsmouth with Tottenham fans reluctantly accepting the move given the striking wealth at the club at the time. Defoe enjoyed relative goalscoring success at Portsmouth, although had the misfortune of missing both their glorious FA Cup Final victory that season and his former clubs triumph in the League Cup.

When the two sides met early into the 08/09 season Spurs were in desperate shape, with the prior sale of Defoe having now afforded ‘lost the plot’ status unto Daniel Levy, who had gone on to sell both Keane and Berbatov the following summer. With Bent and Pavlyuchenko toiling, the Spurs fans chanted ‘You’re Spurs and you know you are’ as Defoe stepped up to sink home the penalty that would throw the North London side into further disarray.

The mutual respect felt between player and fans never diminished, and Defoe highlighted in the documentary receiving a phone call from an acquaintance to play him the sound of Spurs fans chanting his name at White Hart Lane whilst he was still at Portsmouth as a major draw in him returning to Spurs in the January of 2009.

Defoe hit the ground running immediately, but following an injury it wasn’t until 2009/10 that he was back playing football regularly. For the first time since his arrival, Defoe finally seemed to overcome the Robbie Keane shaped obstacle to a regular starting berth, and in doing so had almost unquestionably the best season of his career to date alongside Peter Crouch. With 18 goals in the league Defoe helped fire Tottenham into the Champions League for the only time in their history under the astute guidance of Harry Redknapp. Following the 5 goal haul in the 9-1 demolition of Wigan, rumours of Barcelona considering a bid for the player emerged. In truth, perhaps the great shame of his career is that since joining Tottenham, his identification from the wider footballing world as a truly world class striker was only really considered as a possibility during the first few months of that 09/10 season. Even by the end of that campaign, acknowledging spells side-lined with injury, Defoe seemed to have lost the X factor that seems to come and go with him, sometimes over the course of a couple of months, other times over the course of just one or two games.

As Spurs started their Champions League adventure and ultimately disappointing league campaign in 10/11, Defoe’s place in the side once more became an uncertainty, with Rafael Van Der Vaart becoming a more potent choice for Redknapp to partner Crouch in attack. Defoe only managed 4 league goals in the entire season in the end, and as throughout much of his Spurs career was heavily being linked with a move away from White Hart Lane.

Into the 11/12 season and Defoe again found himself behind a formidable strike partnership, with Emmanuel Adebayor and Van Der Vaart leading the line in what up until around the February was probably Spurs most impressive Premier League side of all-time. Again Defoe, a regular England international squad member, was deemed surplus to the starting eleven despite contributing 11 goals throughout the campaign.

With turmoil at the Lane over the summer of 2012 with the club suffering yet more Champions League heartache and numerous comings and goings following the appointment of Andre Villas-Boas, Defoe started the 12/13 campaign as number one striker once more. Throughout the season his stock rose and fell somewhat with 11 goals again being the final tally, despite a fantastic start to the season in the opening weeks.

Fast forward to present day and Defoe once more finds himself out of the side, even though there is only one striker ahead of him. Roberto Soldado is still finding his feet in the Premier League but looks set to keep Defoe out of the starting line-up whilst AVB continues to employ his 4-5-1 formation week in week out. Again, Defoe is the first choice substitute, and a player that whilst Spurs supporters are reluctant to see allowed to leave, are also far from convinced possesses the qualities for a sustained assault on the top four.

It becomes hard to pinpoint quite why a player who possesses such explosive attacking energy has never quite fulfilled his early promise. There is no doubt he has enjoyed a wonderful career and has been a fantastic player for Tottenham, but you just can’t help feeling he could’ve made the next level as an individual, be it at Tottenham or elsewhere. At his sharpest Defoe produces the kind of goals to bring the broadest smile to the face of a football fan – the diminutive twist, the electrifying shot – the jink, the dummy, the curl into the far corner – the counter attack hammer that threatened to explode as it hit the net – the delightful delicate dink over the on-rushing keeper.

The flipside is a player whom it can be argued goes missing in the biggest games, whom disrupts the flow of a fine passing move, whom finds himself offside with no good reason a little too often. A player who for all his perceived goal scoring prowess has only scored over 20 goals in all competitions over the course of a season twice in his career, and only manufactured more than 13 league goals on that sole occasion in 2009/10.

In the light of it all, there can be no questioning Defoe’s positive contribution to the history of Tottenham Hotspur, even though you feel as a player perhaps he could have delivered more overall and reached higher heights both with club and country. Defoe has continually threatened to become that 20 league-goal-a-season-player Spurs have needed, but so often those hopes have seemed to dissipate for no particular reason. With faith on his side Defoe has proven a very unique tool in Tottenham’s armoury, and likewise he has never been shy to deliver from the bench either, but for whatever reason the inconsistencies true of his club are also very true of him, with every threat to scale the heights quickly followed by a lull in fortunes.

Approaching the twilight of his career, it is hard to see Defoe wrenching a starting eleven place back at Spurs any time soon, but the leading European goalscorer of all-time for his grand old club should certainly be afforded the respect of all Spurs fans for as long as he shall live, regardless of where his final years take him. A story book ending would perhaps see Defoe lifting a trophy with a goalscoring display in an upcoming final, and it would be hard to begrudge that from a player whom, despite not quite fulfilling his own tremendous potential, has delivered the kind of goals year in year out to put a smile on even the most fickle of fans faces. For all the debate over Defoe’s credentials for the current team, his career is the embodiment of his clubs recent history into one player – a pure footballing roller coaster of fragrant promise into glorious underachievement.

COYS

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