He’s got a big character, he makes some fantastic saves and he used to be a world class goal keeper. But Carlio Cudicini is fast becoming the weak link in the Spurs side and surely Heurelho Gomes must now be reinstated between the sticks on a permanent basis.

Against Chelsea, Cudicini was at fault for two of the goals. For their second goal, he should have turned Drogba’s shot around the post but parried it to Lampard who crossed for Ballack to tap in. And although many blamed Corluka for being out muscled to allow Drogba to score Chelsea’s third, it looked like he was only trying to hold Drogba up to give Cudicini time to come out and collect. Cudicini niether came out or stayed on his line and it ended up being an easy tap in for the burly Ivorian.

Against Man Utd, the Giggs free kick, outstanding though it was, would have been saved by a better positioned goal keeper diving with his closest hand to the ball. Slightly more harshly maybe, I’d also say Cudicini should have saved Anderson’s goal which was very close to him.

The list goes on; Carlton Cole’s goal for the Spammers against us was barely a foot away from Cudicini’s standing position, a great goal but one that should never have gone in. Lee Bowyer’s goal for Birmingham was a total cock up on Carlo’s part. Believe it or not, I could go on.

Yes some of these goals were partly other people’s fault but enough is enough. Gomes might be erratic but he’s far more settled now than he was this time last year and was central to the good form that saw us climb the table post Christmas in ‘08-’09. He’s also a top class shot stopper and by far the best keeper currently at The Lane.

Benched for the last two games, Heurelho must be wondering what Cudicini has to do to get dropped.

Could Harry Redknapp possibly disagree?

• VIDEO: Best of Harry Redknapp interviews including loads of Effing and Blinding (2 Comments)
• Redknapp explains Keane and Hutton departures – Both still have Spurs futures (30 Comments)
• Veloso To Spurs? Agent: “We Will See Soon”… (10 Comments)
• Begovic Deal Back On? (4 Comments)
• Frantic Dash To Seal £10m Striker Switch (8 Comments)

• VIDEO: Best of Harry Redknapp interviews including loads of Effing and Blinding (2 Comments)
• Redknapp explains Keane and Hutton departures -- Both still have Spurs futures (30 Comments)
• Veloso To Spurs? Agent: “We Will See Soon”… (10 Comments)
• Begovic Deal Back On? (4 Comments)
• Frantic Dash To Seal £10m Striker Switch (8 Comments)

Manchester City are the latest club to be embroiled in the poaching furore that has resulted in Chelsea (snigger) being banned from signing players until 2011 – you can join the gloating session here by the way.

You can read about the Man City probe here – it’s pretty serious stuff.

When you add this to the similar story involving Manchester United and Le Havre, we’re talking about three of Spurs five main rivals looking at the possibility of being banned from signing players for the foreseeable future.

This throws up two interesting questions. Firstly, are Spurs in danger of getting dragged into this over some youth player that we’ve never heard of? And secondly, how is this going to affect Spurs chances of moving up a level from top 4 hopefuls to title challengers in the coming seasons?

Looking across our squad, we look pretty safe. None of the first team represent any danger in terms of poaching claims. In the reserves, there’s Bostock whose transfer to Spurs riled Crystal Palace – but that dispute was settled by an official tribunal. And our academy is made up of local lads with an Italian and a Belgian thrown in for good measure. Both deals were happy affairs with no complaining from the respective clubs.  So we’re sorted – no transfer bans for us.

Moving onto the second question…

Yes the average age of Chelsea’s squad will be 31 next season. Yes four of their best players will be at the African Nations cup in January. And Yes, Manchester United haven’t replaced Ronaldo and rely heavily on an injury prone Rooney. It’s also true that Man City’s only claim to the the title of ‘challenger’ is cash and that’s not much use if you can’t spend it.

If the transfer bans are imposed, these clubs will suffer on the pitch, no question.

But the key benefit to Spurs should the two Manchester clubs also suffer the transfer ban is that it will open the way for us to sign players that would otherwise go to the banned clubs. Gareth Barry would be a Spurs player now if it wasn’t for City’s millions. Who knows, Tevez might be too. Redknapp voiced admiration for Antonio Valencia at one point this summer so he could have come to Spurs if Man Utd had been banned from signing players. Yuri Zhirkov was another player that Redknapp talked up over the summer and he ended up at Chelsea. This is all without mentioning that they wont be able to sign our players ala Berbatov and Carrick. United have already been sniffing around Luka Modric.

We don’t just compete with these sides on the pitch, we compete in the transfer market too and until now, we’ve had to sign players that they don’t want. That could all be about to change.

Fans of clubs outside the top 4 have long yearned for something to come along and throw the league wide open again. The transfer market is what has prevented that in the past. The biggest clubs sign the best players because they’ve got the money and the Champions League pull. With the transfer market transformed into a level playing field, we might finally have an unpredictable league. And Spurs are ideally placed to capitalise.

• VIDEO: Best of Harry Redknapp interviews including loads of Effing and Blinding (2 Comments)
• Redknapp explains Keane and Hutton departures – Both still have Spurs futures (30 Comments)
• Veloso To Spurs? Agent: “We Will See Soon”… (10 Comments)
• Begovic Deal Back On? (4 Comments)
• Frantic Dash To Seal £10m Striker Switch (8 Comments)

Gareth Southgate has today admitted that David Wheater could leave Middlesboro if the right offer comes in. With injuries to Woody and Dawson, and Ledley’s situation, there has been speculation that Spurs could make a bid if the Chavez trial doesn’t work out.  You can see that interview below.

The Jenas to Villa rumours keep on coming. This time he’s off if we can prize Scott Parker from West Ham. Parker was top drawer against us on Sunday and seems to have shaken off his injury worries. He’s also exactly the type of player the squad needs because we lack a true ball winner to cover for Wilson Palacios.  The prices being quoted are between £5mil and £7mil. We hope this comes off but doubt West Ham would sell. We can but hope.

Joe Cole to Spurs is another persistent rumour. The rumour mongers are telling us it’s World Cup year, he needs to playing, bla bla and so on. We think this is just nonsense, the bloke’s injured! Of course he hasn’t been in the team. The fact is, Chelsea don’t have an embarrassment of riches on the right side of midfield (a position Cole can play in) and don’t have another player like him  who can slot in across attacking midfield. Cole will get games, loves Chelsea and this wont happen.

The Modric swap for Carrick and £10mil rumours are just that, but irritating nonetheless. However, if  Man Utd are willing to let Carrick go, lets give them a fat wad of cash and take him in a straight deal. I kid you not, if we could sign Carrick back, I’d go and put serious money on us for the top 4. I know a lot of you don’t want him, likening his move to the Berba one, but he left with dignity and gave us the choice. We could have held on to him but chose to take the money. Him and Palacios with Modric and Lennon would be a top, top midfield, the midfield with absolutely everything.

One thing is pretty clear, there will be at least some movement between now and the end of the window. We’re hoping for a player who can competition for Jenas and Thudd and back up to Palacios as the ball winner.

COYS

The bad news is that a lot of our other targets have slipped away in recent days. Chelsea moved swiftly to quash any talk of a Spurs move for Joe Cole, Klaas Jan-Huntelaar looks set for a move to AC Milan, Vieira’s “gone all quiet”, Fabian Delph has moved to Villa, Van-Bommell never got off the ground and Moussa Sissoko would seem to have been priced out of our reach.

‘Arry spent the first half of last season banging on about balance and the lack thereof in the Spurs squad. Moving Modric out to the left and bringing Palacios in sorted the balance issue in our 1^st eleven right away. With Crouch a more natural accomplice than Bent to the usual attacking suspects of Defoe/Keane, Modric and Lennon, we should be happy with our first choice team. But as the image below shows, our second eleven still needs work in terms of balance.

We have no back up left wing options other than moving Lennon across and no back up ball winner at all now that Zokora has gone.

Klaas Jan-Huntelaar is such a good player that if there was a chance of us signing him, we had to try. But don’t expect us to keep looking for a striker now that he’s slipped away. Pavlyuchenko deserves a chance to prove himself and I think he will this season.

Look out for a new wave of left wing and defensive midfield targets from now until the end of the window. I reckon they’ll be people we’ve not been linked with so far. Watch this space.

COYS

Looking at Chelski’s squad though, there is very little in the way of options for the right wing. Kalou can play there but is more of a central attacking player and all their other midfielders are central players too. They will be short of wide creative options if they let Cole go and I think he’ll be looking at the current squad, the injury records of the aging Ballack and Deco and thinking he can get games this year. I’d play Cole ahead of Ballack, Deco and Malouda anyway.

Rumours are though that Chelsea are about to spend some serious wedge and if someone like Ashley Young (who like Cole is right footed but often plays from the left side) is amongst the incoming, Cole could reassess quickly and a Spurs move could materialise.

Lets hope so!