With only one Premier League victory in our last five, Tottenham Hotspur received a much needed boost on Thursday evening as we more than took advantage over OPellets Wolfsberger in our Europa League Round of 32 tie and this Sunday we renew acquaintances with bubble blowers West Ham United.
With Harry Kane rested in midweek, Son Heung-Min also got 45 minutes off and a number of players would’ve received a nice shot of confidence from getting on the scoresheet – but of course, Sunday’s midday kick off will be a different story and the Spammers are in reasonable form of their own, sitting six points ahead of us in the table. Admittedly we have a game in hand on them, but how they have scored more than we have does defy some belief.
We can start putting that situation right though, as there are no doubts whatsoever that if we perform as we know we can, we are more than capable of knocking them off the park.
But as ever, with Spurs this season, it’s down to whether or not we turn up.
BS…..you have taken my remarks a little out of context, I wasn’t suggesting the squad is good enough to win the champions league, just that it should be good enough to be doing a lot better than it currently is in the PL.
We are all entitled to our opinions, and I agree that we are better than 9th. But I also think that at best, we are on the fringes of top 4, with several teams rapidly closing the gap with us.
I think it’s a bit arrogant to expect our squad to belong in the top 4, and I think there is a lot of romanticism from our fans when talking about players like Alli, Bale, etc. We seem to value those players a lot more than a neutral observer would.
Regardless, citing the fact that we were in a CL final does imply that we have top squad, which is a debatable statement in itself.
You see BS this is why I want you to carry on posting. You have a balanced well thought out opinion of our team and the way forward. I find myself agreeing with many of your posts and you articulate your thoughts with more insight than my own. I some times let my passion get away with me, where as you tend to have measured thought through well judged opinions. Keep it up m8.
Where I disagree (only slightly) would be to add Hojberg to your list of good players.
I feel currently we have about 7 or 8 “passangers” at our club if we could replace them with 4 or 5 in certain areas + the return of Sess and Skip we could be in decent shape for next season.
I realise that we are in a season of transition and sometimes it’s hard to take certain losses, but as BS says we are not that far away from top 4 and still in two cups one of which is a final.
It just seems when we’re tight in defence, we lose something up front and when I look at the weekend or the Everton game it’s vice versa.
So we’re told that our team scraped by on several occasions and rode luck to a final in which we were thoroughly beaten.
I watched that final match and didn’t see our team thoroughly beaten. A highly questionable penalty call in the opening moments, and then a match in we looked the equal to Pool and often better than them. But, what’s caught by the eyes can be quite different for one set of eyes and for another. Thoroughly beaten? Not in the match I watched. If we’d ridden our luck we’d have walked off with that one.
.
I failed to credit BS for having said that. My bad. Anyway, BS. I didn’t see us as thoroughly beaten in that match.
A team doesn’t ever make it all the way to a CL final on luck alone. there was some very good , often exciting football, hard team work and a real positive, fighting spirit (often against the odds), that saw us get there.
As for the final? Surely only a scouser in red would consider that Spurs were thoroughly beaten in it. And even then, they may well be feeling a little of their own good luck was on their side that day.
What I remember from posting on here that season, was that I was basically mocked for suggesting that Spurs were a good enough team to reach that CL final, in spite of our poor start to it in the group stage. I was told in no uncertain terms that I was being foolish to even suggest that we could qualify into the knock-outs, let alone go all the way…
I’m not saying “I told you so” here. I write this to make a very sure point about our team under Pochettino, for 5 years, right up to that final. The point being, is that I had a strong faith in him and the players. And even a poor performance and loss in one game, didn’t make me any less confident that we may just play very well in winning the next one. Whether that was versus any other PL team (top to bottom) or Barca or Real…
(And, this was often the case. For almost 5 years under MP , we barely (if ever?), lost more than 2 matches on the trot).
Now, at this time, I just don’t know who we might beat, draw with, or lose to. I have no confidence in the team whatsoever. I don’t even want to watch them play at this time!
Did I mention the sheer damn boredom of it all?!
This is not me having a moan for the sake of a moan. It is how I genuinely, currently feel about the team I love and have been watching for the past 50 odd years! ….. Just as my optimism under Pochettino, was equally as genuine…
And so, come on guys, we really can’t be telling each other how we should be feeling, or be expressing ourselves on here… Positive or negative.
God knows, I put up with endless moaning on here, all the way to that CL final and the top 5,3,2,3,4… But it was mostly exciting stuff… For me, but many other supporters too… Oh and then there’s the Carabao cup final that MP took us to, in his 1st season…. I was told by at least couple of posters on here that was more down to luck too. And that it wasn’t anything to boast or write home about anyway… LOL!
This post has not seen me moaning specifically about our players, chairman or manager. It is just an expression of how I feel about THFC, right here, right now…
This can change of course… We’ll just have to wait and see. But for now, my optimism has all dried out. And negativity rules, OK!
But if you want and really do need some positivity on here, how about this?
Spurs 6-1 Wolves! (I mean Wolfsberger)… Haha!
Haha! HT your back, very good long post there at 5.55am this morning, welcome read mate.
TK, for so long you have criticized/slagged off JM, fair enough, you have your reasons and you feel justified in them…
(1) many agree with you.
(2) some do not.
(3) some just plainly sit on the fence.
Thus (2) n (3) also have their reasons, which they are entitled to.
This brings me to why I am writing this….
What gives you the right to criticize other Spurs fanatics who don’t agree with you? or even go as far as questioning their entitled opinions!
That’s the impression I got from your posts yesterday, you likened some to Trolls, are you really trying to make enemies. Cheers mate. COYS
PY….That’s a bit heavy mate, I guess you don’t always get TK’s sense of humour! :- )
HT….your score prediction shouldn’t be that fanciful if the players were given the freedom to attack the opposition. There are a number of reports surfacing from sources close to the dressing room that many of the players are unhappy that training sessions are mostly focused on the opposition and defending against them with little attention given to attacking other than pumping balls up to Harry and Sonny.
HT – I understand the optimism about most of MP’s time in charge, but I also think it’s fair to point out that despite the good times, it still amounted to nothing in terms of titles.
Even under MP, he struggled to shake the “Spursy” tag and our team often went missing on the biggest stages.
I can accept that things are far from perfect under JM, but I reject the notion that they were categorically better, on all fronts, under MP. Now, we’ll all have preferences in style, and that’s fine. But it’s worth pointing out that things are never perfect under any manager.
For the record, I am not telling anyone what they are entitled to feel or express. I am merely expressing my own opinion, which I recognise is hugely personal.
TK- As you said, we’ll all see it differently. I personally don’t think there is any question about the penalty – stonewall for me. Hand up like that in the box – you’d have been hugely disappointed if the roles had been reversed and it wasn’t given.
It was daft/unlucky from Sissoko (point of view), but I don’t think there can be much discussion about whether it’s a penalty or not.
After that, we pushed, but we never really made it very difficult for Alisson. I’m not saying we were outplayed, but they took their chances and we did not. I don’t think we were ever very close to winning the game.
But what I remember most about the campaign is being very lucky to even emerge from the group stages, having to rely on other results going our way. We left our fate in the hands of others, despite having a relatively easy group that we should have finished a comfortable 2nd in. Then, relying on VAR to save us against City, when over the 2 legs, they were objectively the better team, and having to rely on the very last kick of the game in Amsterdam to salvage victory from the jaws of defeat, having lost the first leg in London.
Now, attributing all of this to luck only would be doing a disservice to the team. They showed fight, spirit and desire. But any time you have to rely on the fine margins going your way, not once, but on 3 or 4 different occasions in a single campaign, it becomes very hard to contest that we probably over performed, on the whole. That was the point.
And the proof of that is that with largely the same team the following year, Liverpool went on to win the PL, while we sank in the table, fired MP, sold several big players and went backwards.
Belgian, I agree with you that a whole lot of the luck ran in our direction in the matches that got us into the CL final. But luck tends to even out over the eons. There was nothing in getting to the final to embarrass us, and our performance in the final–even though we lost–showed nothing to embarrass us.
Ah I was able to find the place where I used the word “troll.” I couldn’t figure out what I had said about other posters being trolls, as it didn’t sound right. But I went back and found it. Forgive me for quoting it here in my response:
“Doncaster says we’re loyal committed fans on here. Gosh, I thought I was the sole loyal committed fan on here and the rest of you were knobheaded trolls who really support something evil, like Arse n hole, or chelskum.”
When I re-read it I’m puzzled why it came across as anything other than joshing. The self-proclaimed knobhead saying that only he is not knobheaded and everyone else is an evil troll? Did you really think that I was claiming that all other comments on the site are gooner trolls, or trolls from vital skum? LOL. come on, mate, how could I have said something like that in seriousness? If Doncaster had said that all the posters on here are always sweet, I would have said, “yes, but I’m the only one whose shiit don’t stink.”
If I ever get around to insulting people, and I doubt I will, I certainly would insult anyone by suggesting they’re trolls from Vital Arse or Vital Skum.
Anyway, mate, I had no intention to insult you or make of you an enemy. I do tend to the absurd to make points at time. The knobhead calling all other knobheads. 🙄
But there is one person I’d seriously like to call a total knobhead:
José Mourinho.
Vai embora, burro !!!
And, by the way, I have a serious suspicion that JM’s working undercover at N17 as a paid troll on the payroll for Chelskum. Brilliant move by the Russian gangster at Skum to place JM at Spurs as a troll manager who will drag us down while being paid by ENIC and by Abramovic simultaneously. Damned troll infiltrator!
I’m the only one who loves Spurs sufficiently to be named as next manager. And I guarantee that as manager, I’ll alienate all of our players. I’ve been practicing alienation on VS. Just wait until I bring it onto the practice pitch. I’ll be infinitely more troll-like than JM. I’ve been studying him and I can do it worse.
Or maybe not.