Fazio & Vertonghen fighting at Spurs

The battle for the captaincy next season is well underway with the three candidates all appearing regularly in the media, whereas the club captain, Younes Kaboul and vice-captain Emmanuel Adebayor are rarely heard.

Fazio & Vertonghen fighting at Spurs


Your captain is a mouthpiece for the club so the fact Kaboul is not on the Spurs website, that Federico Fazio, Jan Vertonghen and Hugo Lloris are is significant. Of the three Fazio is the most vocal it seems, he is asked for his opinion after almost every game as if he was being lined up for the role next season.

A keeper is not an ideal captain, although at the moment Hugo Lloris is captaining virtually every game now, so I don't expect he'll be captain next season but will be named as a vice-captain. Some of you will be shouting the French international captain may be leaving in the summer without UEFA Champions League football, but everything I hear tells me he extremely happy at Tottenham with his kindred spirit, Mauricio Pochettino. Personally I don't think he is going anywhere, he sees something is being built and he is a part of that.

That leaves the battle down to Jan Vertonghen, who may well have wanted to see progress from Spurs before committing himself to a new contract, a contract extension that I'm sure will be discussed this summer. We have made improvement of that there is no doubt and Vertonghen has already expressed that he likes the way Pochettino works so he will be hoping to be offered the captaincy as part of that contract.

"It is very exciting times. It’s a shame we are out of the FA Cup as we wanted to keep active in four competitions but we're still in the Europa League. We have big games coming up in February and obviously the League Cup final on the 1st of March but we have a lot of games to win before we go there.  
"Just beforehand, I said to Danny Rose, 'If Eriksen scores this again, it's unbelievable'. And he did it again, He deserves it. He practices those every day and you can see that it has paid off. Harry is another one that deserves it. He keeps working hard in training, he keeps showing the right mentality, and you saw that again."

The media in Belgium suggested that Vertonghen, who also captains his country, was offered the Tottenham captaincy last summer as part of his contract negotiations, but that it was then taken away when the new head coach, instead of rubber stamping the appointment asked the players who they wanted.

In hindsight that was a mistake. It would have been difficult to give it to him the way he downed tools under Tim Sherwood but he has had a season of recuperation and fans can have short memories. Clearly he wants the captaincy and if that keeps him at the club then it may well be worth offering it again. You do want your captain to stay at the club and not be gone in a couple of years so it isn't something to just dish out to anyone.

His centre-back partner, Federico Fazio, was once again commenting on the WBA win and it's importance ahead of the London Derby. Fazio is regularly talking about needing the right attitude which slowly does seem to be creeping into the players,

“It was a good win at West Brom and we are in a good position in the league. It was a very important three points because the next game is the derby and we wanted to go into that off the back of a win. It was an important result for our confidence and for the team. 
“A clean sheet is a positive. Hugo is very important for us - he’s a great keeper and produced an outstanding performance. It was another great goal by Christian and Harry is continuing his fine form. We started aggressively which was important in getting the three points. We need to keep this attitude and this strong mentality. Now we’ll recover and prepare for a massive game against Arsenal.”

Having captained Sevilla to UEFA Europa League glory he knows what it takes to win a major competition and it seems he is continually asked for his views by the official site, just as if he were the club captain. Is he being lined up for next season? We'll have to wait and see and if he is how that goes down with Jan Vertonghen, it is a concern.