Tottenham totem shone under Bill Nicholson’s tough love, inspiring League and Uefa Cup triumphs, but struggled with the stresses of fame
The Martin Chivers route from record signing to Tottenham legend was anything but simple. White Hart Lane needed time to learn to love him and Bill Nicholson, who paid Southampton £125,000 in 1968, never understood either the player or the man until years later. Yet it says everything for the curative power of time that the pair walked out arm-in-arm when it came to Billy Nick’s second testimonial against Fiorentina in 2001.
Chivers arrived at Spurs with a headline-grabbing century-plus goals for Southampton. Initially he appeared weighed-down by the fee and the expectation. This was a time when English football was only slowly coming to terms with a “new football” which was abandoning the archetypal battering-ram centre-forward expected to be toe-to-toe with an equally robust centre-half. Chivers stood 6ft 1in yet a firm touch and game intelligence enhanced a deceptive physical strength and eventually contributed to his “Rolls-Royce” aura.
Continue reading…Tottenham totem shone under Bill Nicholson’s tough love, inspiring League and Uefa Cup triumphs, but struggled with the stresses of fameThe Martin Chivers route from record signing to Tottenham legend was anything but simple. White Hart Lane needed time to learn to love him and Bill Nicholson, who paid Southampton £125,000 in 1968, never understood either the player or the man until years later. Yet it says everything for the curative power of time that the pair walked out arm-in-arm when it came to Billy Nick’s second testimonial against Fiorentina in 2001.Chivers arrived at Spurs with a headline-grabbing century-plus goals for Southampton. Initially he appeared weighed-down by the fee and the expectation. This was a time when English football was only slowly coming to terms with a “new football” which was abandoning the archetypal battering-ram centre-forward expected to be toe-to-toe with an equally robust centre-half. Chivers stood 6ft 1in yet a firm touch and game intelligence enhanced a deceptive physical strength and eventually contributed to his “Rolls-Royce” aura. Continue reading…
