And breathe. We reached the end of the season without further ignominy. At one point I had my doubts that we would but we did with a 4-1 rip-snorting win over relegation-doomed Leeds and not just because they surrendered to the mighty Spurs.
I will have to stop thinking in those sorts of terms. The Mighty Spurs are much humbled by the events of this season. We finished a dubiously creditable 8th. so no European distractions next season which some are spinning as a good outcome.
In all my years of supporting Tottenham Hotspur, man, and boy, I have never watched a Spurs game with such a lack of interest or involvement as I did on Sunday for the final game. I expect I will summon up some enthusiasm for next season if at least some of our manifold problems are addressed.
Now we can concentrate on extra time on the training pitch under our new Manager and our new DOF, if the absence of European Glory, Glory Thursday nights doesn’t put off some of the more ambitious candidates, or the players we aspire to sign.
It’s arguable I know, but the lack of the thrill of European competition may just be a decisive factor in the reset we all look forward to with hope and expectation. In my view, it would be better to be training with an objective in mind than just running around a bit.
(Photo by Stu Forster/Getty Images)
If Leeds had a decent keeper, a few defenders and a couple of alert forwards the result could have been quite different. In the event, HK popped up with a couple of goals to bring his tally to 30 for the season and we won at a canter or ‘hands down’ as they say in racing circles.
Only the Chelsea meltdown prevented us from being the prime laughingstock of the season and thanks to Todd and Frank for that. We may be in the frame for this coveted award next year so let us not laugh too soon at their predicament. At least they have appointed a manager early and one that might just turn their fortunes around.
I’m sure our own powers that be are planning for this withdrawal from the frontline of world football to be a one-season wonder, like Harry Kane if you remember. ‘Planning’ is perhaps too precise a word for the stewardship of Daniel Levy and he will rightly get most of the blame for the current travails.
The sooner he appoints a manager and a DOF and lets them warm to the task of ridding us of several players, not up to the task of returning us to the sunlit uplands and recruiting a whole new generation of proper Spurs players, playing proper Spurs football, the better. But see the health warning at the end of this piece.
A task that might take several windows and probably more than one Manager, but let’s get started before all the likely candidates are snapped up elsewhere or don’t quite fancy the Tottenham gig at the moment. Anyone but Sam as they say.
Anyway, a disastrous season in which we challenged for top four for quite some time playing unacceptable football under the wrong manager with the wrong players for his game plans. So the next appointment is crucial and Spurs fans have no confidence that the right choices will be made.
I survived Mourinho and Nuno and Conte and the collapse in our fortunes since Mauricio Pochettino and the Champions League defeat. As the Anglo-Saxons used to say ‘That passed away and so will this’. I can wait. Spurs fans have become good at that.
If we’re not going to achieve anything tangible, we might as well enjoy ourselves with some entertaining front-foot football while we wait. You never know it might just succeed where other approaches have failed. Alan Saint-Maximin is available I hear.
In the meantime Spurs fans anxiously awaiting news of developments are warned not to hold their breath: it could be very bad for your health.
