Spurs Blogsville

Tottenham Are Still “Spursy” But No Longer “Soft” – It’s Not All Doom & Gloom

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With ongoing Premier League title hopes for some in the fanbase, whilst the media continued to write us off, a bad week seeing successive losses to Burnley and Chelsea saw the media pivot and state categorically we had now blown the chance to take top spot in 2018/19.

Quite how some quarters can switch from believing we were never in the battle for top spot, to have then blown the battle we were in for top spot is probably a confusion I’ll never understand.

It was a thought shared by fans though and the old ‘Spursy’ connotations have been given a fresh airing this week as I’ve looked around.

With build up continuing to the huge clash with Arsenal, manager Mauricio Pochettino stated earlier today that we’d seen significant improvement in our record against them, and for him that proved we were losing our ‘soft’ tag in key matches.

Speaking to Sky Sports he explained.

“The history of the results against Arsenal was not great before I arrived. To change the perception, the mentality or reality is a tough thing to do and of course the team is doing a fantastic job of that in the last four or five years. And I think the team is changing the perception that Tottenham was a little bit soft. But the most important thing is that we are fighting in every single game.”

Pochettino does have a point. Our form and performances haven’t exactly been free flowing this season but we’ve learnt to win (more often than not) ugly which is a trait all top teams have and when you look past the nostalgia, it was a huge reason behind Manchester United’s early Premier League success….added to referees, penalties and an inordinate amount of stoppage-time when it helped.

Soft – no. Not just against Arsenal with 3 defeats in the last 11 games, but also in the top flight campaign.

Spursy – maybe, but not in the accepted sense. 20 wins, 8 losses and 0 draws. High to low, and low to high – all or nothing but still batting above our average by every other marker possible.

Whether even the optimists will feel that way come the next fulltime whistle, is however, absolutely anyone’s guess.

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