Ledley King: Captain charts course for best season after his worst night

Tottenham's thoughtful centre-back might just be the answer to England's holding-player question. Jason Burt talks to an ambitious young leader

Given that King is not 25 until next month, it is another clear sign of the callowness of the Spurs squad that he is regarded as so senior. "But we realise we have a really good team here," King adds. "And we have to keep working hard at our game. We are young. It will come with experience."

Experience is what he and his team-mates will eventually put last Tuesday's loss at Blundell Park to a team 62 places below them in the Leagues down to. For now it just hurts. For now it is, well, frankly embarrassing.

King claims the defeat amounted to the "biggest disappointment so far" in a career which stretches back to a senior debut in 1999. A game "like no other I have experienced", he says. Amid the grasping for "positives" and the need to "move on" there is also a bewilderment. "We approached it as we approach every game," King maintains. "Everyone realises these things can happen. England against Northern Ireland was similar. Milan in the final of the European Cup. I sometimes wonder how they must have felt."

International football and Champions' League. Both are clear ambitions for King but, before they can be discussed, the bones of that cup exit still have to be picked over. There were, clearly, harsh words, angry words, and a borrowing of the fabled Fergie hair-dryer treatment perhaps, from the manager, Martin Jol.

"You need to be told," King says. "The manager is not going to be happy and there were words said between him and the players, and the next day we spoke more. It was helpful stuff, to make sure the team are moving in the right direction and that it doesn't happen again." Did he, too, speak? "Yes, I did," King proffers, adding that the players were shown bits of the game, things that went wrong, mistakes that were made. "I try to look for the positives. We lost the game but we didn't lose six or seven on the trot. I said we didn't do enough as a team to beat them. It was as simple as that. But now we have to move on." That, he hopes, starts with tomorrow's Premiership game at home to Fulham.

Nevertheless the landscape of Spurs' season has changed, a crossroads has been reached, a start of promise has, possibly only temporarily, stalled. Not least because one clear avenue into the European football the club crave, a Uefa Cup place by winning the League Cup, has gone. "There was a possibility of winning it," King acknowledges. "But it's not like it's something we were thinking about. We just wanted to get through to the next round."

It was the magnificently named Jean-Paul Kamudimba Kalala who scored the only goal to prevent that happening. The next day Kalala claimed Spurs' players were "Big-time Charlies". King - hardly a player, with his softly spoken, thoughtful manner, who would seem a candidate for that tag - bridles. "I didn't see that. We all approached it in the right manner and afterwards we were respectful."

This is a big season for Ledley King. A World Cup year beckons. He delayed his start for Spurs, missing the first couple of games, to make sure the groin injury that had bothered him last season cleared up. It also meant he missed out on two England squads - and the World Cup qualifiers against Wales and in Belfast. "No player likes to miss England games," he says, even though they were absences that probably enhanced his reputation. "I watched, and maybe I could be in with a chance of playing [next time]," he says.

The squad for the ties against Austria and Poland is announced next week and King knows that, as a central defender, he faces the stiffest competition. "The country is lucky it has so many talented players in that position," he says of the prospect of adding to his 12 caps, when the names of Rio Ferdinand, Sol Campbell, John Terry, Jamie Carragher and Jonathan Woodgate are mentioned. Not all will go to the World Cup should England qualify. "If someone has to miss out, they have to miss out," King says. "All I can do is play well for my club and if I do get the chance for my country, play well and, hopefully, press on. That's all I want."

It may help that, with Sven Goran Eriksson having experimented with a holding player in midfield, it is a position King has also covered - in the season before last under David Pleat, one of the seven Spurs managers he has played for. "I have played in a few positions," he agrees. "And I think Carragher has as well. It could be helpful when it comes to picking the squads, and hopefully he [Eriksson] might think of that."

There is one distinct advantage his rivals have, one King doesn't need reminding of. All play in the Champions' League, which is regarded as the showcase, the prime test. "Maybe so," King admits. "But I still feel the Premiership is a top league."

Unsurprisingly, there has been speculation that he may leave the club he joined as a trainee. That came after he left the famous Senrab club in east London, where he played, aged 15, in the same team as Terry and another England international, one who may be about to receive a recall, Paul Konchesky.

King, who has under two years left on his contract, gives any notions that he wants to quit Spurs short shrift. "I've always said if the club are moving in the right direction, and I feel they are, then I would have no problem. And people are saying good things about the club. There are a lot of good, young, talented players and it's a nice place to be. So you have to look at that."

And what if he is not in the same wage-bracket as Terry or Ferdinand (but then who else is)? "You look at the other players and they are at sides who are topping the table season in, season out," King, whose career has also been affected by illness and injury, says. "So that matters as well. I'm not really thinking about the money. I'm just concentrating on the football." His agent, Jonathan Barnett, one he shares with Ashley Cole, and Tottenham will "sort it out".

King is also realistic about his club. "There are a lot of good players who should be playing at the level [of the Champions' League]. But if we don't get there then maybe we don't deserve it. It's up to us as players and a team to go out there and get it." As Everton did last season, he adds. "It's going to be tough. But if we show that consistency then it would be a bonus." As would winning something, anything. King clearly took great pleasure in holding aloft the trophy won in the pre-season Peace Cup tournament in South Korea.

It would help if Tottenham could score more goals. Clean sheets, King claims, win matches. But you also need to score. Killing teams off is vital if a top-six finish is to be achieved, and just one goal in five games is a shocking return. "We have top-quality strikers," the captain says. "It's not a problem necessarily of partnerships, I just think we need to do better as a team. It takes time. There are a lot of new faces." Indeed there were nine arrivals and five departures in another feverish summer at White Hart Lane. "Sometimes it takes time to click. Maybe it will take us a while to click. But although we haven't scored too many of late, we haven't been conceding either."

It was, it shouldn't be forgotten, the visit of Spurs - then under Jol's predecessor, Jacques Santini - to Chelsea last season that prompted Jose Mourinho to coin his phrase of teams "parking the bus" in front of the Stamford Bridge goals.

As a defender first and foremost, King frowns at the debate over football's dwindling entertainment value. "We like to play attacking football but we also keep a decent amount of clean sheets. That's important to me. I'm always going to say that. I'd like to see four defensive midfielders in there because it makes my job easier. But we do have attacking players and they will score us goals."

To be fair to Jol, his intent is always clear. Not that every manager in the Premiership could - truthfully - say the same. Again, however, King has sympathy. "No team want to lose," he says. "What do we do? Do we make new rules to make the game more exciting?"

There is, he says, an evolutionary process too. "You have to change with the times. Football's not the same as it was 10 years ago, and maybe a team who were good 10 years ago might struggle now," King argues. "I don't think it's declining. I think it's maybe changing. There are a lot of foreign managers, foreign influences. I think the League is getting tougher and tougher. Each season is harder. There are times when you have to adopt a different style, otherwise you play into people's hands."

It is not the kind of free-flowing philosophy that Spurs' fans probably want to hear. But it is a pragmatic and, above all, honestly held opinion. It may also be one that cansteady the ship that bit further right now.

BIOGRAPHY

Ledley Brenton King

Born: 10 December 1980 in London.

Height: 6ft 2in. Weight: 13st 6lb.

Club career: joined Tottenham as a trainee on 1 August 1998. Has made 148 League appearances and 180 in total. Has scored eight goals and been booked five times, an average of once every 36 matches.

International career: capped 11 times by England (one goal). Debut v Italy in a 2-1 friendly defeat at Elland Road (sub, 27 March 2002). Also represented England at U-18 and U-21 level.

Also: scored his first goal for Spurs in a 3-3 draw with Bradford in 2002. It came after nine seconds, the fastest on Premiership record.