Today, for the umpteenth time in my life, I
found myself walking home at 5pm, seriously questioning my own loyalties
towards Spurs. I didn’t see the game today, but judging from the Twitter
commentary from SpursOfficial, and later on MOTD, they were on course for a reasonably
straightforward home victory.
As is much the Spurs way, our visitors from
Stoke-on-Trent were given a lifeline near the end, and took it with both hands,
the game ending a point apiece. F*ck’s sake, Spurs.
At half-time I was already preparing my
post-game opinion: We always put on promising displays early in the season, and
I doubted it would be much beyond November before we regained our long-term
knack of conceding an early goal, which inevitably turns out to be the winner.
These kind of things are just
part-and-parcel of being a Spurs fan. We accept it.
Sure, it frustrates us every season, but to
quote Dan Louw, creater of the brilliant youtube series ‘Away Day’:
“Every year we get dressed up, throw the
cash around, pull with ease and then blow our wad before she’s even got her
socks off. And do you know what? We sort of enjoy it. Because what is life
other than just a long series of beautiful disappointments? And they don’t come
much more beautiful and disappointing than Tottenham Hotspur Football Club.”
In fact, some of the best nights of my life
came last season at Spurs. My housemate and I would arrive in Tottenham in
plenty of time, have a few beers, stop off for a cheeky whisky and take our
seats at The Lane.
No matter the result, even the more
frustrating games, we had a great time watching the mighty Spurs. And that’s
what football is all about, right?
Would things be any better had Redknapp
remained in charge? Well, the short answer is No. The guy found himself
flirting with the FA and took his eye off the job, resulting in what looked
like a comfortable third place finish and a route back into Europe, turning
into a fourth place finish with our bitter rivals from down the road pipping us
at the post yet again.
Yeah, maybe eventually missing out on
Europe wasn’t entirely down to him, but it was as good as, and his sacking was
deserved.
More to the point, Redknapp has proved that
he can only manage the team that is in front of him. Yeah, maybe he would’ve
kept Van der Vaart, and maybe even Bale the following summer, but following the
sale of star-man Luka Modric, would there be enough left in the team to regain
a top four spot?
It was AVB that propelled Bale’s career by
moving him further forward to fill the void from our lack of forwards, which
wouldn’t have been such an issue had Rafa remained on the books.
Redknapp then moved on to QPR and soon
found himself in the Championship.
Despite AVB’s stubbornness to adapt his
system to the players available, there are still many of us who think Levy may
as well have given him the full season, especially if all he had lined-up was a
horrifically unqualified nobody (in management terms, at least) attempting to
blag it at the top level.
Had we seen a few months more of the redhead
from Portugal, things may be different now; but we’ll never know.
What we do know, however, is that we
currently have a young, promising manager in charge of a young, promising team.
It seemed only typical of Spurs to finally
get their hands on a goal-scorer with a sublime record at his previous club,
and end up selling him on a couple of years later for a huge financial loss.
Maybe it wasn’t entirely his fault that he
couldn’t reproduce the sort of form that we expected, but it was still, in the
end, somewhat unsurprising that we’d signed yet another player that failed to
live up to the hype.
The fact is that nobody supports Spurs for
the glory. Nobody. And if they did, they will have bolted years ago.
Another fact is that many of us may never
again in our lifetime see a Spurs side anywhere near the quality of the one that
reached the Champions League Quarter Final in 2011, or the one that finished
fourth in 2012. Many of us may also never see a Spurs side that finishes above
Arsenal.
And, of course, there’ll be many more days
like today – frustration, heartbreak – questioning why we bother.
But as soon as we’re back in our seats, the
hairs on the back of our necks standing tall to the sound of “Oh when the
Spurs….” We think, maybe it’ll be different this time.
Yet, part of us knows that we wouldn’t have
it any other way.
To quote Ledley King: “This is my club. My
one and only club.”
Here’s to some more beautiful
disappointments…
COYS
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