Alex Fynn is a football author and consultant whose informative book The Great Divide, about Spurs and Arsenal, has recently come out in paperback.

He knows directors at both clubs and has his hobbyhorses. When I heard Alex riding his hobbyhorses over lunch on Tuesday I started riding MY hobbyhorses.That much was inevitable.

THE CONTEXT : Arsenal have three big games in eight days .

Spurs at the Lane on Saturday, Deportivo in La Coruna on Wednesday night, and Manchester United at Highbury on Sunday.

Bergkamp has said this derby isn’t as big for us as it is for Spurs because they’re not in the Champions League. It’s true, but maybe he should not have said it.

Arsenal fans have three games to enjoy. Spurs fans have one.

ALEX : One thing has struck me. It’s that this derby represents Arsenal, for the first time in their lives, playing like the good Tottenham teams of the Seventies and Eighties, the latter years of Bill Nicholson and Keith Burkinshaw’s time.

That is, a team that would flatter to deceive quite often, score more goals sometimes than it conceded. It would be sprinkled with exciting attacking players but have a very porous defence.

This is Arsenal at the moment and this is the best of the Tottenham sides, apart from the great double and the great push-and-run sides of yesteryear.

Arsene Wenger arrived and added a degree of flair to Arsenal’s consistency and resilience, particularly from contintental players. So Arsenal were very successfiul under Wenger, more succesful than Tottenham had ever been over a period of time.

But now his team, as we approach this derby, resembles the best of the Tottenham sides. And it’s a level below what Arsenal were two years ago.

MYLES: Are you comparing Arsenal now to the Spurs sides that had just past their peak?

No, this was what the great Tottenham sides would do. They would win 4-3 quite often and then they would lose games that they shouldn’t lose. They would be sprinkled with exciting attacking players but have a weak defence. That, really, was a characteristic of the latter Bill Nicholson teams and the Keith Burkinshaw years.

The good Tottenham sides, the one that won the UEFA Cup, the League Cup, the FA Cup, had exciting forwards, an inventive midfield and a porous defence. And this is what Arsenal are like at the moment.

Tottenham, on the other hand, have taken some of the lessons that Wenger has learned. That you start with a system and try and add a bit of flair to it. They have a team which goes some way towards meeting the aspirations of the fans who say, Give us our Tottenham back.

There are indications that they’re getting there. They’ve got a good system, they have some talented players right through the team, going from the midfield, which is always what Hoddle concentrated on. They have Poyet and Anderton, and if you like you could include Sheringham.But it’s a short-term fix. They’ve got their Tottenham back playing a system that is allowing these talented players to express themselves.But i’s only for the short term. What’s gonna happen in two years time?

Spurs have a system which is based on scoring goals from crosses, surely?

Well, Hoddle said in 1998 that 4-4-2 puts us in chains.

Nevertheless, as a man and as a manager he has learned some more tactical skills and some more man-management skills since then, so he has more flexibility. It is based on crossing and on fluidity at the back and in midfield.But on occasions he’ll play 4-4-2.

Do you think Spurs miss Sol Campbell?

Oh yes. Sol Campbell at his best is exactly what the best Tottenham teams had. The push-and-run side had a guy called Harry Clarke, the double side had Maurice Norman, a no-nonsense stopper, and in the Bill Nicholson later years they had Mike England. They always had a very strong centre half they could depend on, and that’s what Sol Campbell provided.

The irony is that George Graham made him a lesser player by trying to make him into a Tony Adams.The two players who used to frustrate Graham more than anybody else were Ginola, obviously, and Campbell.Because neither were playing in a way that he expected them to play.

I haven’t seen Dean Richards yet. He seems to have become an important player very quickly.

Well,that points up the whole Sol Campbell issue.Sol was an indispensable player for Tottenham and he’s gone.And Hoddle likes players who perform for him, so he went for Richards.

But should be have paid what he had to pay for him?£8 million is almost twice his market value, Southampton stinging Tottenham out of a personal vendetta.

Should Hoddle have been allowed to do that? No. The problem is that he’s a very good coach, but he surrounds himself with people who are friends first and foremost, people who won’t challenge him.

Unlike Arsene Wenger, who is older, wiser, more experienced and therefore feels he can delegate to Pat Rice, who he says epitimoses the culture of Arsenal, and Bora Primorac, who is a cosmopolitan man who understands the continental way of doing things.And Wenger leans on these people.

So if Hoddle fancies someone, the club indulge him. And that’s a problem, because he doesn’t have a monopoly of the truth and he needs someone to challenge him.

Arsene invites people to challenge him within the Arsenal family. He is the most important man at the club but he would never, as he said, spend £20 million on van

Nistelrooy, or £40 million on a midfield player like Zidane, because he would feel that, having won the Champions League and left Arsenal £50 million in debt, he would not have fulfilled his brief.

He would have abdicated his responsibility. So he’s a man you can give power to, without responsibility, and he’ll take that responsibility on his shoulders.

For ENIC to make it, Hoddle has to make it. So THFC has to show a considerable improvement in their fortunes within two years. Otherwise, it’s like The Who said, Meet the new boss,same as the old boss !

Yes, but the new boss does have his heart in the right place, does understand Tottenham’s traditions. The reason Graham was fired was that they felt he should never have been appointed in the first pace. That was a very brave decision because they would have stood a better chance of winning the semi-final if he had been retained.

So Graham was anathema to them.So they have taken on somebody who is sympatico. The problem is that he is a very wilful, obstinate man, Glenn, and they need somebody as a liason man between him and the board.

Can’t David Pleat do that?

No. David Pleat is very knowledgeable but of a different generation. He’s from the Graham generation without the autocratic attitude, the I-know-best-because-I did-it attitude.He’s not like that, but his time has gone.

He’s done a very good job of bringing the youth on. But what you need is somebody who is gonna say, “No, Glenn. Have you thought about it it this way?” And there’s only one person who could do that and it’s Gary Mabbutt, and they turned him down.

He is sixteen years a Tottenham player, eleven years a Tottenham captain, an England player, a man who is much stronger than you would believe. He was the PFA rep. He was constantly at loggerheads with the previous regime. he knows what Tottenham is about and he would be able to say to Glenn, “No, have you thought of doing it this way.” As it is, Glenn is master of all he surveys. And no man has a monopoly of the truth.

TO BE CONTINUED TOMORROW, including Wenger’s falling out with Klinsmann at Monaco. I should have figured this out years ago : those two are so similar !

Do you think Sugar is trying, behind the scenes, to get Glenn Hoddle?

“I know that they made a bid for Glenn Hoddle when he was at Swindon and going to Chelsea. But they were too late. Hoddle was their first choice.Then they went for Ardiles.Sugar felt that he listened to people then and was persuaded that Ardiles was their natural manager. But he

didn’t give Ardiles enough time. If he’d been a football man he’d have understood that they needed to bring somebody like Don Howe in to replace Steve Perryman because obviously it wasn’t working, in terms of organisation. So Sugar CAN change his attitude. Whether he will or not…I think he might. The problem is the manager.”

Surely a foreign coach would turn Tottenham into Chelsea in N17?

“That would have been tolerable, but not now.If they had been pace-setters and pioneers that would have been acceptable.”

If any Tottenham manager had won what Vialli won in the last few years he would be a hero.

“Of course. Vialli only went because of Ken Bates’s ambition. They couldn’t afford a fallow year in business terms.”

Because Bates’s business foundations are nowhere near as solid as Sugar’s?

“Exactly.I think things can be done, but it requires a change of attitude.Can Sugar change his attitiude? Yes. Can the manager change his attitude? Probably no, so that means a new manager. David Pleat is yearning to be a manager again, but his time may have gone. But Pleat might work well with somebody like Glenn Hoddle.”

If Sugar was a football man he wouldn’t need a David Pleat.

“Correct. If Sugar was a football man he wouldn’t have hired Christian Gross. And he would have understood the downside of picking George Graham, and he probably wouldn’t have picked him. Sugar hasn’t been around in the good times, so he doesn’t understand how bad it is now.That’s the problem. He’ll say :How can it be bad? We’re playing to 95% capacity.”

Has Sugar deliberately devised a strategy of mediocrity aimed at just surviving in the Premiership?

“No. I think that’s what his strategy was originally. He admired Wimbledon.What he wanted to do was to get Tottenham soundfinancially and then follow the Wimbledon way,and be a middle-of-the-road Premiership club, and the money would roll in.He now realises that is too risky because there has been a quantum leap in television money and money from European football. And he doesn’t like the abuse.

“You can’t have Tottenham as a middle-of the road club. If you look at their record, they are mid-table. Then you analyse it and see that they’re absolutely abysmal away form home, and are never gonna be a challenger. They’re just one step above Coventry, never winning away, always winning at home, and therefore more likely to flirt with relegation than flirt with a Champions League place.”

When Spurs went to Highbury last season they had become an anonymous club.If they had not been managed by George Graham, which gave the game a bit of spice, it would have been just another fixture.

“Yes. To Arsenal it is another fixture. The only reason that Arsenal fans sing, Stand up if you hate Tottenham! is just to shove it to them in terms of the chasm that has developed between the two clubs. ToTottenham it’s a focal point of their season.

“Tottenham were playing Brentford in the Worthington Cup while Arsenal were playing Lazio in the Champions League the same week. What that means is that Arsenal now measure themselves against the bigger clubs in Europe and Tottenham are running very hard stay in the same place.”

Bergkamp wanted a three-year contract. Wenger’s offered him a two-year contract and he has accepted that. But he hasn’t signed it because he wants to be in the side. Do you think Wenger needs to start Bergkamp at White Hart Lane to show that he still values him and still trusts him?

“It’s a strange situation. Last year I asked Arsene Wenger pointedly about this. I said: People say that you play Bergkamp when you shouldn’t, you give him too much latitude. Is that fair criticism? And he said, “Yes, I think it is fair criticism. And then I go and watch the tapes and I realise that even when he’s not playing well, most of the good things come from him.” So what you had last year what you had was a situation whereby Wenger was continuing to indulge his star, even though his star was becoming more wayward, simply because he knew that at crucial times he wa sthe difference between a good or a bad result.

“This year the situation has changed. Other players have overtaken him.It’s strange for someone so gifted, but he’s a confidence player. He needs to be cherished. Wenger has realised this but it’s almost as it’s one bridge too far. He can’t take him on the long European trips, which de-stabilises the planning. Therefore he becomes more of squad player .

“Coming on and changing the course of a game has never been his strength. He has always been a focal point, the fulcrum of the team, and let tactics develop around him – and then maybe changed the tactics when you have to. He has never been one to come on an inject a change of pace.

“This year they have raised the tempo by putting in Silvinho, and Lauren,behind Thierry Henry.And if they’ve raised the tempo it lessens the possibility of using Bergkamp. That’s the problem. He is now a marginal figure.

“Wenger’s change of strategy, and the need to play at a higher tempo,and the need to play the way they are doing, means there is less room for Bergkamp. He has really made a rod for his own back by refusing to fly.They can’t count on him.

“Last year one could contrast the way Wenger indulged Bergkamp with the way Graham marginalised Ginola. Wenger doing it for the right reasons and maybe erring on the side of good judgement, and Graham doing it for the wrong reasons and maybe erring on the side of spitefulness.And this year you have the situation where Graham has sold Ginola for all the wrong reasons, and Wenger has been forced to accept that Bergkamp is not the fulcrum of the team any more.And it’s a difficult situation for both player and manager. The only way to resolve it, I think, is to give him the opportuinity to run the game. But you can’t take that risk.”

I disagree. I still believe that Wenger thinks Dennis has one more purple patch left in him, and could give him the inspiration for a 12-match unbeaten run, like the purple match that he had in autumn 1997.If he didn’t feel that I don’t think he would offer him a new two-year contract.

“I do think he feels that. But when does he press the button? When does he allow him to do that? Maybe the chance to do that was in November when they hit their rocky patch. When are they gonna do it?”

I think he will do it in January if he doesn’t do it on Monday night.

“Yes, Bergkamp has tended to play well against Totttenham. Even when they’ve lost. Last year they lost at White Hart Lane but he ran the game for the first half hour.The delicious irony in this (but only if you’re not concerned with either side) is that Bergkamp obviously wanted to play for Tottenham, being a Tottenham fan, but went to Arsenal. And now, because the club and, particularly,the manager are in tune with what is required, year in, year out, which means accepting changes,he is becoming marginalised.

“While Tottenham have gone back to a time when what counts is organisation and playing from the back. You could say : There is Wenger giving an added lease of life to workmanlike British technicians,bringing out the best in them and adding years to their careers, and thereis Graham making Campbell a less effective player.The players who

drove Graham mad, more than anybody else,were Ginola and Campbell.”

Do you think Sol would sign for Arsenal if Man United don’t want him?

“Yes, absolutely. There’s every chance. And Tottenham fans wouldn’t feel that badly. They’ve been through this situation before Sheringham loved the club but went because the club lacked ambition. Sugar said at the AGM, it’s like a tape that runs out and you say : OK, what d’you want us to do now? Never say never. We’ve got on our side that it’s London and family. But is that gonna happen? Arsenal fans have always respected Campbell. Tottenham fans would feel it’s a shame that he has to go to Arsenal to further his ambition, but they would understand.”

14th December 2000.