Twelve months ago, Brazilian goalkeeper Heurelho Gomes was a figure of fun for football fans across the country, as a number of high-profile mistakes contributed to Spurs’ dismal start to the 2008/09 season.   Twelve months later, Gomes was the hero as Spurs maintained their unlikely challenge for a top-four Premier League spot with a 2-0 win over in-form Sunderland.   It has also been a good twelve months financially for the club, which announced record pre-tax profits last week, for the financial year to 30 June 2009, while noting that transfer spending under manager Harry Redknapp is already top-four material.

However, one player who doesn’t wish to join in the fun is Russian international striker Roman Pavlyuchenko, whose desire to leave White Hart Lane has been edged into the news by both the player and his agent at every conceivable opportunity.

Gomes made a string of important saves to give lacklustre Spurs the three points at the Lane on Saturday.

Seven days earlier, Tottenham’s pre-Arsenal match bravado was predictably exposed by the Gunners’ embarrassingly easy 3-0 victory

 

However, the Lilywhites returned to winning ways with goals from Robbie Keane and Tom Huddlestone and Gomes’ stirring display.   Gomes’ most popular save, if not his best, was from former Spurs’ striker Darren Bent’s second-half penalty.   Bent was also made to regret pre-match statements complaining about his treatment by Redknapp, who had favourably compared his own wife’s striking abilities with those of Bent.   Bent was sold to Sunderland in the close season. And his fee was part of the £56.5m profit Spurs made on player trading during the last financial year, the major reason for Spurs’ pre-tax profit figure of £33.4m.

Spurs’ accounts also revealed that they spent a whopping £148.7m in the transfer market over the last 16 months, outspending the “big four” while only being outspent by Manchester City over the period.

Chairman Daniel Levy, though, preferred to focus on Spurs’ “long-term vision” which includes moves to a new stadium and new training ground.

Levy admitted that Spurs three priorities were “oft-repeated” but he repeated then anyway: “investment in the first team, a new training centre and an increased capacity state-of-the-art new stadium.

It seems Roman Pavlyuchenko will be gracing neither training ground nor stadium. The Russian has been fourth-choice striker at the club behind Keane, Jermaine Defoe and Peter Crouch, and has spent most of the season on the bench.

And he told the Russian Sport’s Express newspaper: “I want to leave the club. I’ve lost my place in the national team (because) I’ve been on the bench.

“Our manager now states that three strikers are enough and I am the fourth. So it is obvious I should go.”

Spurs second-choice keeper Carlo Cudicini suffered broken wrists and a suspected broken pelvis when his BMW motorbike collided with a Ford Fiesta in Walthamstow, East London on Thursday morning.

The full extent of the injuries wasn’t known at the time of writing, but the London ambulance service described them as “possibly life-changing.”