Are we on the road to greater things now?

Watford 2 Spurs 1 (what next?)

In my last article, I said, “you take our first three games, and so far, only games, we came, we saw, and we conquered. Unfortunately, they (Watford) also came, saw and conquered their opponents. So… identical points. The only thing separating us is goal difference. Not too painful, especially at this stage of the league season.”

It ended up; they came, they saw and they conquered us. In fact, they pissed all over us. We lost while Watford, yes, Watford, at our expense, along with Chelsea and Liverpool, got maximum points. They now have 12pts, while we are in 5^th place with 9ts. We can beat teams like United, Dortmund, Liverpool, Real Madrid and then fall short when playing WBA or Watford or Leicester City.

Last season we were beaten by Leicester City (away) and WBA (away). We drew against Burnley (h), Swansea (h), WBA (h), Watford (a), West Ham (h), Southampton (a), Liverpool (a) and Brighton (a). Taking out Liverpool (because they are a top-four team) we dropped 18 good pts. Add that to the total we got and we would have finished second on 95pts. Again, it was against the lower teams that let us down. If we had won the double over United and Arsenal (Arsenal who finished in 6^th position), we would have won the league, even with City doing the double over us.

We raise ourselves against top quality, but when we face the donkey’s (ok, maybe donkey’s is a bit unfair) we collapse. There is a psychological blockage somewhere in their minds. Pochettino needs to sort this out quickly.

The other problem was his substitutions. Well placed changes can turn a game around. Sometimes Pochettino makes a masterstroke with replacements, others, it seems he hasn’t got a clue. Davies is/ was no good or wasn’t any good playing as a winger/ defender and Rose should have been brought on earlier. Dembele was making many mistakes and was very slow in places. Kane missed many chances, one a sitter. Should he have been taken off? Full credit to Trippier and Moura who played, as always, full steam ahead. Alli hasn’t been up to the mark for the last couple of seasons (with a few exceptions).

From what I’ve seen from the Watford game I am starting to get worried for the rest of the season. But on a positive note, this is our first defeat and we can/ should quickly learn/ adapt and Pochettino needs to rethink how he substitutes players and who should play or not play. A win against Liverpool will put us back on track, must put us back on track.

This season is a make or break one for us, if we go through another season with nothing to show for it (trophy wise) then I can see players leaving and even the manager questioning his position. It is all well and good saying we’ve got a stadium to pay off, but trophies and league position will give us that extra money to help pay off the stadium, and on top of that success will bring a full stadium, do a West Ham or Arsenal and you will see a half-empty stadium. We need to get the ingredients right or end up with egg on our faces, and we don’t want that, I don’t want that. As a lifelong Spurs supporter, who has seen the Glories of the past it is about time we started living up to our name. I do accept that we are on the right path (stadium, top four spot etc.) but we now need to go that extra mile and actually win some silverware. Otherwise, the record Ghost Town by the Specials could be our new anthem (“Do you remember the good old days before the ghost town? We danced and sang as the music played in any boomtown”), we don’t want that on our tombstone.

Don Scully