No Gray Areas - Tottenham to miss Defoe
It's been a pretty mixed two weeks in the world of Jermain Defoe. It all started in the best possible fashion with a superb hat-trick against Bulgaria at Wembley that was a good example of just what he can do when given the right sort of service.
He followed that up with a decent first half away to Switzerland but picked up a bad injury during the second half which will rule him out for three months and means he will miss the whole of the Champions League group stages, not to mention England's next two ties, against Montenegro and France.
It's a bitter pill to swallow for a player who was so integral in getting Spurs to the Champions League and who finally looked to have secured a regular place in the national team after years of being little more than a fringe player.
When these things happen there's always a chance that whoever deputises for him in an England shirt will come in, play well, score goals and before Defoe knows it he's the one trying to get back in the team rather than being the player trying to keep others out of it.
The thing about the former West Ham man is that he's a player who you judge purely based on the amount of goals he scores. We all know he's not the Emile Heskey type who works tirelessly to create space for others nor is he a Dimitar Berbatov who is as concerned about creating goals for his team-mates as he is about scoring them.
You know what you get with Defoe: he's a proper out-and-out goalscorer with a selfish streak in his play and I'm in the camp of those who don't mind that. He'll have his critics who accuse him of not getting too involved in the build-up or shooting for goal whenever he gets a chance but different players bring different qualities to the table and we can't expect every striker to be worker, creator and scorer in equal measures.
In answer to a question posed to me on Twitter a couple of weeks ago about why Darren Bent doesn't get a game for England, I said he wasn't the cleanest striker of a football and not always pretty on the eye and Defoe can at times be a little like that as well but I'll say it again; it's how many you score, not how you score them.
Interestingly, those two are for my money the strongest candidates to partner Wayne Rooney and there's not much between them; I guess it will just depend on who's in the best goalscoring form for their club at the time. One thing is for sure though: England and Spurs in particular will miss the little man and it's a huge blow to Spurs' chances of making it out of the group stages (a [1.87] prospect) in their first Champions League campaign.
Andy Gray is now on Twitter so follow him for his exclusive tips and his take on the biggest stories in football each week.
Published: 13 Sep 2010
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