Host Ricky Sacks was joined by Jason McGovern and former Spurs defender Dean Austin as we interviewed another former Spurs player from that crazy 90’s period.

It is fair to say that Dean Austin isn’t a household name but the former defender was an important member of Tottenham Hotspur’s defence in the mid-nineties. After leaving Spurs in 1998 due to the emergence of Stephen Carr, Austin spent four seasons at Crystal Palace before finishing his career in 2003 with non-league side Woking.

Upon retiring from playing, Austin went straight into coaching and spent a year with the youngsters at Watford’s academy before joining Farnborough Town as the club’s director of football. He was in the job for a matter of weeks before he was asked to take over the team as manager just two weeks before the start of the season.

Unfortunately during Austin’s time at the club they endured a number of off-the-field problems and he left in February 2005. However, he wasn’t out of work for long and joined his former side Southend United in July 2005 as a coach and the club’s head of recruitment.

He enjoyed three successful years at Roots Hall, helping the side to two successive promotions before leaving to join Brendan Rodgers as his assistant manager at Watford. Austin was on his travels once again in 2009 when Rodgers left Watford to join Reading but this appointment was short-lived and the entire management team left six months later.

He then spent a year back at former side Crystal Palace as first team coach and under 21 manager and then a year at Bolton Wanderers as a regional scout before a very brief spell at Notts County as Chris Kiwomya‘s assistant manager. In January 2015 Austin re-joined Watford as head coach Slavisa Jokanovic’s assistant coach where he played an important role in getting them promoted to the Premier League.

He stayed on at the club when Jokanovic left and spent the 2015-16 season working with Quique Sanchez Flores. He left in May 2016 upon the appointment of Italian manager Walter Mazzarri who brought in his own Italian backroom staff to assist him.

Austin made a return to football in September 2017 when he joined Northampton Town as Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink‘s assistant manager and ended up taking over first-team affairs on a caretaker basis when the Dutchman was sacked. Although unable to save The Cobblers from relegation, the Northampton board appointed Austin as permanent manager for the 2018/19 season but his tenure was short-lived and he was sacked at the end of September after winning just one game.

A year later he made a return to Watford for the fourth time when he linked up once again with Quique Sanchez Flores as his assistant manager. Unfortunately his time at Vicarage Road came to and end in December 2019 when Flores and his backroom staff were sacked.

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Host Ricky Sacks was joined by Jamie from the Daily Hotspur as the Last Word On Spurs had the pleasure of welcoming former Spurs defender Pascal Chimbonda onto the Last Word On Spurs.

Described by one reputable news outlet in 2007 as ‘a Tottenham Hotspur player’, Pascal Chimbonda left his stamp all over the ​Premier League during the noughties. The fast and industrious right-back was bought by a number of managers between 2005 and 2011, and if you followed Premier League football during that period (particularly full backs) you are bound to know his name.

In 2005, Paul Jewell brought Chimbonda to Wigan from Bastia, for a fee worth £500k. In today’s volatile transfer market, with clubs paying extortionate prices even for defenders, that number would probably be in the region of £600k.

In his first season in England, his performances for Wigan earned him a place in Raymond Domenech’s World Cup squad. At the tournament, his contribution involved sitting still on the bench as his French teammates went all the way to the final. If you pause it at the right moment, you can see the top corner of Chimbonda’s head on the screen as a disgraced Zinedine Zidane trudges off following that red card against Italy.

By the end of the 2005/06 season, ‘Powerful Pascal’ had also attracted attention from some of England’s top clubs, including ​Tottenham. In wonderfully tactless style, he decided to play all 90 minutes of his last match for Wigan with a written transfer request stuffed down his sock, which he presented to Jewell in the dressing room immediately after the game. Chimbonda has a feeling this might be why the former Wigan boss has not made much of an effort to remain in contact.

But he got his way, and after the World Cup completed his £4.5m switch to Spurs. He hit the ground running in North London, earning praise from his manager Martin Jol, and maintaining a spot in the starting eleven despite competition from a player called Stephen Kelly.

Spells at Sunderland, Blackburn and QPR followed for this Premier League classic, and it says a lot for Chimbonda’s undoubted ability that so many clubs continued to add him to their ranks.

#THFC #COYS #TOTTENHAM #HOTSPUR #TOTTENHAMHOTSPUR #SPURS #LWOS

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Host Ricky Sacks was joined by John from Lilywhite Rose as we welcomed former Tottenham Hotspur defender Ramon Vega onto the Last Word On Spurs to talk about his career.

Born to Spanish immigrants in the small town of Olten, around 66km west of Zurich in June 1971, Vega studied at degree level in banking and finance at the Zürich Business School after spending his formative years at school in Trimbach.

Still, despite clearly being an academic, it was his athletic ability that would take precedence during his early life. Making his way through the youth ranks with Grasshopper Club Zürich, Vega became a first-team regular, as well as a frequent member of the Swiss international side under Roy Hodgson by the age 22.

Beginning his professional club career back in 1989, it was in his second season with Grasshoppers that he became a lynchpin in their backline. Winning three titles with the club, he played 67 league games in the 1994-95 and 1995-96 campaigns as GC made it consecutive title wins.

After impressing enough to earn a move to Caligari in 1997, Vega spent just seven months in Sardinia before Tottenham brought him over to London.

Signed by Gerry Francis off the back of an impressive outing for Switzerland against England at Euro 1996, the former White Hart Lane chief went as far as to suggest he ‘could be our Tony Adams’ upon his arrival on Hotspur Way. Despite helping the club to a League Cup win in 1999, he failed to truly recover from a stress fracture in his ankle that season, although he did make a last-ditch tackle to prevent Emile Heskey from scoring in Wembley’s showpiece against Leicester City.

Vega was loaned to Celtic in 2000 for the latter half of the first campaign of the millennium, where he’d help Martin O’Neill’s side win the treble, making 26 appearances for the Bhoys.

After a short spell in Glasgow, fondly remembered for two goals against Aberdeen on his debut in a 6-0 drubbing of the Dons, he became Gianluca Vialli’s big signing in the ultimately doomed Watford revolution, before a short spell in France with minnows US Créteil, where he retired aged 33.

#THFC #COYS #TOTTENHAM #HOTSPUR #TOTTENHAMHOTPSUR #SPURS #LWOS

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