Forget What He Said - That WAS A Shearer Performance!

Martins is certainly justifying the £10million fee Toon paid Inter Milan 14 months ago, and he looked every bit like Alan Shearer on Monday.

Ex-Chelsea defender Frank Labouf left Stamford Bridge to return to the French league and said though famous words: "The Premiership is the toughest league in the world.

"In France a defender is expected to give the striker a tough time. In England you have strikers like Alan Shearer who kick and punch you for 90 minutes!"

And on Monday evening Martins knocked 'seven bells' out of the Spurs defence and they simply couldn't live with him!

It was a Shearer-like performance in every way. He drove at the defence like an express train, with strength, cunning and speed ... a performance as close to the GOALden Boy as you will ever see.

He took on the No.9 shirt when Shearer, scorer of a club record 206 goals in 404 games for Newcastle, retired and reckons he is not letting the famous shirt down.

Martins: "I don't set myself targets of say 20 or 30 or even 40 goals in a season, I just try hard to score as many as I can.

"They say the mark of a world-class striker is a goal every other game and I'm quite close to that at Newcastle.

"That is something I'm happy about. My record has been like that through my career but there is no way I can compare myself to Alan Shearer.

"He just tells me to keep scoring the goals! I know I can't let him down.

"He was a great, great player. When I wear the No.9 shirt I'm just trying my best to do as well as he did, but he played hundreds of games and did the business. I'd like to do that.

"People have said two small strikers cannot play together but of course we can. Michael and I are both good players and that's the most important thing."