The humiliation will be televised
“…disturbs me”
“…destroys me a little bit inside”
The words of Jose Mourinho to the ether of the public domain.
Fine, Jose, fine. But say this privately, behind closed doors please. Say it in the dressing room or on the training ground, yeah? Say it to your captain. Tell it to your players. We don’t need to hear this, we can see it for ourselves, but we don’t need you telling everyone else about it. We only want to see the positive reaction from the team. So why subtly play the blame game? Have you not, after-all, re-branded your image? Easy when someone is helping you, so get on with helping Spurs re-brand their own image, thank you very much.
It’s not like we’re going to be privy to any of this if you shared your insight behind those closed doors, personally and without the media listening. It’s not like we’re deep rooted into a reality TV show or sold our soul to a steaming service. God forbid we did, I’d have to grab a back pack and do a belated gap year in the Amazon to get away from the embarrassment and memes. I would need to drink an Ayahuasca brew to dissolve my ego whilst the Peruvian shaman guide me through a purging so that I can pose the ultimate question to infinity: y u do this tottingham?
Mourinho will end us. All of Nothing will end Mourinho.
Obviously I want to be proven wrong and would gladly lick the egg off my face.
Regardless of this, it hasn’t taken me long to come full circle. I’ve got so much disdain for the fans that disparage Spurs constantly, all of the time, no matter what…it reminds me of them lot down the road, the broken children. i can stand against the club and how it goes about its football business but I can’t be standing next to the ones eternally holding onto pitchforks and torches of fire.
They wanted Poch gone, wanted Jose in, now they won’t state the appointment was a mistake, but instead go back to ye old Daniel Levy as the seasoned scapegoat to abuse. A month back, none of the remaining games mattered and nobody cared about the football and now, it’s end of days again. It’s almost like Spurs never bounce back. It’s almost like Spurs never repeat that wonderful cycle of hope. Such is football, fragile and fantastical, that we all forget how quickly things can change. For the worst and then the better.
So many times fans have spat ‘we’ve fallen behind’ only for Spurs to shut shop on their petulance. Of course, the actual itch we can’t scratch is that the silly bastards (the millionaire ‘ballers) could do with rewarding our loyalty with a nice little cup with ribbons on it. We do try though. That can’t be disputed. Cup final defeats, semi-final defeats, home supporters actually talking about the possibility of winning the league and Champions League. That happened. If you want to bin that as a weak mentality, then are you actually Spurs?
Tottenham have been struggling for a while. This is no secret. We’ve been on a decline thanks to the inevitable burn out and the schoolboy errors, where player acquisition did not facilitate the need for evolution. It started with the fading of Mousa Dembele. The sale of Kyle Walker. The loss of Victor Wanyama (to injury). It was heavily assisted by not having a certifiable alternative to Harry Kane. The growth, the journey to maturity and self-belief produced the best football we have seen for a lifetime. I don’t care about the perverse obsession to trophy winning that has consumed supporters and their every waking second. I don’t.
We all want a trophy. We wall want to be successful. But to constantly begrudge all the other details that work towards this objective, and then dismiss them all as failures is a bit strange. Altogether a different type of special. If you win something, are these details only then warranted as relevant? This is a philosophical muse about identity and style what football means to me (to everyone) and what you want to experience from your club. Many want to sacrifice it all just to be able to state ‘my club won a cup’.
That’s great. But it’s always going to be about how your club won a cup. Lifting it is the reward. As much as I enjoyed the League Cup win under the tutorship of George Graham, my word was his tenure forgettable and dare I say blasphemous.
Away from this and back to the actual science…
We already agree that the scapegoat (Mr Levy) shares responsibility with Mauricio Pochettino. Although it isn’t as cut throat obvious as some would like to preach. Someone shared the opinion that the club wasted untold millions on ‘dross’. That Poch * is * responsible. You can draw up similar lists for any given club. Players work out, others don’t, some are galvanised.
Also, it is easy after the fact to break down a tenure in this manner, excluding reality that in spite of all this, and maybe because of it, he took us to a new level.
This is important. In the first two seasons of Poch I can remember the team being written off with most of our lot suggesting a Top 4 finish was not a possibility. Again, it comes back to the board accepting accidental progression rather than ruthlessly encouraging the obsessive type, planning ahead and aiming to consolidate momentum to avoid stagnation and combat others around us improving.
Poch was by no means perfect. He was practically fledgling. The right players at the right time but perhaps not quite the right level of experience for it. So not really the right players, but for two seasons, it felt like they might be. We definitely did not have the required level of leadership in terms of binding a club ethos with the team philosophy. This is because the club ethos is lost amongst buzz words like ‘project’ and PR friendly Blanchflower/Nicholson quotes banded across the stadium.
I sometimes wonder how things might have played out had Sadio Mane chosen us over Liverpool, had we matched his worth in wage. Little big things like this can be a catalyst. It’s nothing more than theoretical fantasy at this point. The fact is, you’re all angry now not because Poch ‘failed’ but because he made you believe. Stating daft things like ‘Jose would have won the league with the Spurs team of 2015-2017’ is full on linguistic noncery. Jose would have won the league for Spurs had Roman stopped short of flying his helicopter over the Kings Road and laundered his dirty money through N17 instead.
The squad of 15-17 was birthed by Pochettino. Are the amateur football pundits of social media now suggesting that another coach can inherit a side at its very best, built by the actual coach of that side, and in imaginationland, win trophies with it? Jose would have probably scapegoated a key player. We went unbeaten at home all season ffs. Have some respect. I’ve been guilty of this too, so I know from experience it’s sheer desperation to find equilibrium from the dizzying dance Spurs tap to.
I’d rather the football of Poch at his peak than the methodical 1-0 ultra defensive Mourinho, playing a Villas-Boas template of much ado about nothing. Each to their own. But colour me not so shocked if some Tottenham fans are happy to bin the Nicholson quotes for it. Anything to win a trophy hey? At least Poch didn’t just point at the words posted across White Hart Lane. He felt them. He lived them.
I spoke to many Spurs fans, offline and face to face, that said that Pochettino had given them - us - a sense of true pride and togetherness that so many alluded to and didn’t deliver. Something only comparable to perhaps the early 90s, 87 and the early to mid-80s teams. We did have some fun under Jol and Redknapp though - and these sides should not be discounted. But Poch gave us a sense of purpose, a daring to do that was tenfold.
This is the benchmark in modern times. It took the best part of two decades to get there. In that time, football has completely changed. Bit like a Dark Souls boss you defeat only to realise it’s got a second phase. The game today is a third phase boss battle. Be prepared to die, several times. We’re playing at a far higher level than any of the previous decent to great Spurs teams. Hard to swallow that, because of all those team cited, this was the one that should have won something.
Looking ahead, do what Poch did post-Poch BUT win trophies and we’re onto something I can commit too.
The crux of all of this has nothing to do with Poch and everything to do with Jose owning his responsibility in the very present.
He’s paid to fix it all up. He remarked (as part of the hype train) that next season, Spurs could challenge for the title. We know these are just words said in the early days of him arriving at Hotspur Way. But if you make statements like this, if you self-promote the ideology that we have the core to take us forward then logically, it means between day zero and next season - you can make the steps.
Alas, there have been no steps.
Perhaps Mr Mourinho was blagging it a bit, like most coaches do when wanting to make a grand first impression? Serial winner though, is the response from his army of acolytes.
So the clean up we need to combat, its going to take a while to sweep under the carpet. If so, then whatever words you plan to share with us and the media - make them tangible in the realm of hope. Don’t distance yourself from a mess you accepted to take on and have so far added to.
Levy bought into the past, the manager that’s won it all. The present suggests he’s now a ghost casting no shadow. The man in the mirror isn’t the man staring into it. It’s a vampire that’s sucked the blood out of all its lovers and is now sucking the blood out of his own veins. He’ll do anything to get a taste.
For all his experience with handling top tier talent at every club he’s been successful at, there is no cheat mode to spend hundreds of millions at Spurs. You almost need someone that can get the best out of the players that are there, energise them and excite the fans in doing so. Instead, JM is using tired muscle memory and his flexing is disjointed.
We can’t be trying to win something with this team for the sake of winning something and that’s it. No wait, this will get me abuse from the anti-blogging mob on Twitter. Let me try again.
What I mean is, we have to avoid being in the same exact position again. Isn’t that the problem? The inability to compete, win something, and then keep competing and winning? But still, those that constantly disparage will have you believe that one cup win in isolation will keep the rival fans at bay for a year or two. They are in bed with the bride of hypocrisy, they want a cup even if means we repeat the same mistakes of the past again. There is no plan here much like the rhetoric they aim at Levy and co.
Unless…unless Jose proves us all wrong. Binds a winning mentality with a cup win to birth a new era of renewed hope and competitiveness.
/tumbleweed
As for ENIC?
I have no idea when they might consider their investment project is done. I believe Levy believes he’s doing his utmost to make us successful on the pitch. There is no doubt he’s a shrewd SOB, but his brand of business acumen doesn’t translate to the football side with complete impunity.
I can’t see them selling anytime soon. Spurs were never really in a position to be bought by a billionaire (forget the Roman story) like a Chelsea or City. Although seeing our fans rationalise financial doping would have been fun (ugly). If ENIC sell up, ready yourself for the outcome to the projected freedom. It might be a lot worse. It will probably be a US consortium/conglomerate. Not a ‘fan’ or someone that will prioritise the sheer want and desire to win everything in sight.
It’s quite funny that not so long ago, Liverpool fans wanted their owners gone because of lack of affinity to their culture. They got lucky? Well, yes. If you want to call appointing the right man luck. But he’s only the right man because the responsibility of taking the job on matched the fans and teams ambition to push on. Luck does come onto play, but you shorten the odds to success by making sure you maximise the potential for your squad to mature and improve.
Poch wasn’t as experienced as Klopp. Perhaps the fledgling aspect of our Argentine was the factor that held him back in the end. He might need another five to ten years to get there. To understand how to be less stubborn or more centric to certain aspects of his coaching and squad management.
This is the state of the game now: We could go another 20 years with 2 cups and this club could still remain one of the richest in the world. It’s no longer our game, it’s theirs. The real trophy is £ and $. I’m waiting to be proved wrong. I guess we need a board that will break the bank every time, swiftly. Are we in a position to do so? Have we ever been? Are we still over-achieving? Or with our stature, under-achieving? The debate rolls on.
As for the present day. I find myself back in it. Back fighting for Tottenham, for the players, for redemption. If we need a rebuild, then do it, unequivocally do it. That peak team of 15-17 is gone. If there’s to be a phoenix from the flames that is white and blue rather than Mersey red, there must be full commitment to a sharpened approach. Fight with a blade not a spoon.
Stop trying to catch up, start grafting to get ahead.
Whether Jose is the right man, whether he can reinvent himself into being the right man…that’s something we’ll find out soon enough. For now, right now, forget Champions League and cups and ENICOUT moans and groans. What we need to, when we’re allowed back in the stadium, is to get behind this team once more. Go back to the basics to why we love football in the first place. Feel good about ourselves and our mates and other like minded people around us. Have a drink, a snort or whatever it is you do. Probably craft beer and dodgy burger. Once we’re present, in the moment, then it’s their turn. They need to meet us half way.
The players need to be accountable, they need to play for the shirt. Otherwise, they’re done. The manager has to decide what he is; a parody of his former self or someone willing to embrace what it means to be Spurs in terms of that much maligned identity. If he can work that out, and instil a sprinkle of the less sexy pragmatism to harden our resolve, then okay. It’s a middle ground that might be workable.
There’s no evidence of any of this right now. Which is why I lost my sh*t, very uncharacteristically, after the Sheffield United result. It might be that we have to accept that this league re-start isn’t a good platform to showcase the future, to tease it or even preview it. I don’t know how easy it is to experiment or gamble and take a risk. Play Ndombele from the start. Be more expansive. Let the players express a little to prove they have the right mental strength. Then work towards something, anything that I could point to and say ‘yeah, that’s a Mourinho team, not a traditional one, but a Spurs one’. Because any of this is better than holding up my face with the palm of my hands and whispering ‘this is dull and crap and the gaffer hasn’t got a clue’.
Immediate to long term? Buy some f**king players, create a culture of competitiveness, hate to lose, love to win, play some football we can attach ourselves too.
COYS
P.S. Do not lose to Everton