Stylish Tottenham display

A story has just hit football's internal grapevine which says that Spurs have identified their next manager should Gerry Francis…

A story has just hit football's internal grapevine which says that Spurs have identified their next manager should Gerry Francis fail to improve the team's performances sufficiently by Christmas.

The move would be designed to silence the boos which have signed off recent Tottenham games against Leicester and Carlisle. In fact, it could increase their volume appreciably. For the targeted manager's name, says a source not to be dismissed lightly, is George Graham.

Just how Tottenham fans would react to the appointment of the most successful Arsenal manager since the war is dependent on whether they, and presumably the spurs hierarchy, think he still has the ability to win the title despite an ebbing record at Highbury followed by a year out of the game and a dismal return with Leeds.

Perhaps the supporters in the ground on Saturday got wind of this alarming storyline, hence their eagerness to show sudden solidarity with the much-maligned Francis by cheering his side off the pitch after a 0-0 home draw.

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In fact the chorus of approval was sparked by a passionate and cavalier display from the team which, in the best Tottenham traditions, won hearts but not points.

The inclusion in the same side for the first time this season of three players born to run with the ball - David Ginola, Jose Dominguez and Ruel Fox - had at first looked like an over-ambitious recipe for losing possession and getting caught on the break.

But Blackburn so lacked any sense of adventure, that Tottenham's three D'Artagnans cut and thrust with dazzling impunity - except, that is, for a series of fouls perpetrated on them by ever panicked Rovers players. Two on Dominguez earned Patrik Valery a red card.

Ginola especially was a revelation, working hard and displaying a hunger for the ball, the previous lack of which too often left his sublime skills of peripheral interest.

As for Blackburn, they came into this game as the Premiership's top scorers, but they left it having shown the attacking ambition of a couch potato, happy instead to sit back and soak up all that crossed their vision. It is difficult to recall Ian Walker in the Spurs goal being troubled once.