After 127 years this grand old club has managed to earn two league titles despite spending the majority of this time in the top flight, just two. Season after season there is fresh hope of what lies just around the corner, the brave new world, season after season the disappointment still stings.
Following on from the departure of Cristiano Ronaldo from the champions and the fact they have replaced him with nobody of any particular note, an aging Chelsea side, a strikerless Arsenal and a two man Liverpool side, the door should have been open, ajar at least, for THFC to seize the opportunity.
Liverpool at the Lane first up and a chance to test against one of the establishment, the benchmark looked excellent following a completely dominant performance, this would finally be the year.
Mid December and we find ourselves just outside of the promised land in fifth place, hot on the heels of three of the modern day powerhouses and in front of Liverpool. If you had fallen into a coma just before the season started and had just come around you would automatically assume that Harry was doing all the right things and we were just about where we would like to be, I think it is safe to assume you’d be wrong.
On the 22nd November Spurs hand out an almighty whipping to Wigan, a ruthless destruction of a top flight team and sit comfortably in the top four of the league. Upcoming fixtures away at Aston Villa, Manchester United and Everton would cement our standing as the new chosen ones in the league and move us towards another Wembley final, oh dear.
A bad first half performance at Villa Park is followed by a display in the second that emphasises just how average a side Aston Villa are, they barely take the ball from us yet we still cannot force the win, just a blip. Tuesday night in Manchester follows and a chance to put a bunch of reserves to the sword, oh dear, very very tame. Move on and it’s the north west yet again for our annual win at Goodison, all going swimmingly and then it’s time to fall apart.
Come the 12th December and we are thankful to be back at the Lane against a team flat on its back in the relegation zone with a DOA tag hovering around its toe, just what we needed. Except we all know that Spurs can disappoint like no other.
Now looking at results of the teams we have faced recently it could be said that to automatically assume that we should roll these teams over is wrong. Chelsea could not get the better of Everton and on the same day Villa go to Manchester and win. Unfortunately that is no comfort to me and I doubt it is to most Spurs fans, it just seems to me that we are wasting a perfectly good opportunity.
Good things are in place at THFC at the moment, the training facilities seem top notch, the long term ambition of moving to a new ground and most importantly the playing staff are genuinely with ability, yet we are not moving forward, which brings me back to the question, what is the point of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club?
I have long thought that there is something wrong with the club as a whole and now I am certain of it. We bring in a new manager every few years, throw him a bucket load of cash and we wait for this new man to take us to the promised land. Every single one of these managers goes and spends the money and achieves virtually the same with the team they have assembled as their predecessor, a league place of between 8th and 10th. Each one wonders how it ends this way when they have put together such a fantastic squad.
The problem is that there isn’t a single manager who has ever addressed the fact that the club does not have a winning mentality, it doesn’t even come close to having one. At best we are a flat track bully, capable of handing out a thrashing to a smaller team such as Wigan but just as capable of cowering should the smaller team retaliate, and very capable of rolling over to a bigger boy!
We have a decent squad make no mistake about it, there is some rubbish in there and some over rated players but it has the ability to be better than it is currently showing, for this I blame Redknapp.
I blame Redknapp because he is in the hot seat at the moment and because he shows all the failings we should expect from a manager of Spurs. He has a good squad, with an excellent first team and finds himself competing in a league that is in all honesty wide open this year. He is the wisest of all men after an event, how wise to ban alcohol from the players bar, after Ledley King was pictured in the gutter, this ban obviously had a big effect as both Bentley and Crouch have demonstrated their willingness to stay away from the demon drink. How wise he was to ban the players from driving motorcycles days after his reserve goalkeeper had broken his pelvis and wrists in a motorcycle accident. What’s the next story Dos Santos breaks his neck whilst drink driving on a Harley Davidson, what would Harry ban then, being Mexican?
There is of course something to be said for treating the players like adults, shouldn’t they be able to make their own decisions as professionals? Well the answer to this is no they can’t be trusted, when they hit 30 maybe they can be left to their own devices but until then treat them like the idiots they constantly remind you they are.
What is Harry doing about making Tottenham a winning club? Do we look like we have any steel about us, any resillience, is there a ruthless streak beginning to run through the club? No.
It’s not ok to let winning positions fall away as we did at Everton and it is not ok to pass up the opportunity to win the game by taking a very week penalty like Defoe did. It is not ok to swan around Old Trafford against a bunch of reserves, safe in the knowledge that a defeat to Manchester United is expected. It is not ok to lose to Stoke and Wolves at home.
Look at the league table and you will see that we should be second, just two points behind Chelsea, not a big ask considering the teams we dropped points to. We aren’t going to win the league and we never were but that fact seems to allow the players to coast, they don’t even think we should be in the shake up, I think we should. The league is at its weakest for some time despite the press talking it up, and we don’t seem interested.
I for one would thank Harry for getting us out of the mess of two points from eight games and pay Jose Mouriniho whatever salary he wanted for the next ten years. He turned a decent team that Ranieri had put together into a winning machine, he added the ruthless streak that they needed, he had the better of Ferguson and Wenger and not many have done that. His football was criticised but when he played with Robben and Duff they were not as mechanical as we may remember.
Andy Gray constantly revels at the uncertainty of the Premier League but come the end of the season the table always looks remarkably similar. We genuinely have the opportunity to do something about that but until we eliminate the stupid mistakes and become winners the point of Tottenham Hotspur will be that there is no point at all.
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By Scott Francis
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