Are we on the road to greater things now?

Here, there and everywhere.

My feelings over this season about Spurs have been all over the place. We start off well, then nosedived and then gave the impression we would struggle to get into the top four, then we seem to improve (all of a sudden). The last two games showed what a squad and teamwork can do though. Pochottino had made some good decisions of late, where before we – the supporters – have been very critical.

We have faced both City and Liverpool at Wembley and in both matches, you couldn’t really argue with the result. The result you could argue with was the Watford game, which we should have won. As for our Champions League quest, we let ourselves down. First Inter Milan, which we should have won, but ended up blowing it. Barcelona did deserve their win, but we showed moments of brilliance. PSV, again we should have won by five, and ended up throwing it away (we drew). Our next game will be against them, and if we should lose, then it is goodnight from us, and hallo Europa league football. But until the Fat Lady starts to sing it isn’t over yet. But we’ll leave that for another time (Champions League football chat).

Usually, I go to away matches by coach, this time around I was in Wolverhampton a day earlier (preparations)… Finally getting back to London on Monday. But I am paid to jump when the boss says jump.

As I said, at the beginning of the week we lost to City, but came back with a different team (only Sanchez was playing) to beat the ‘Nowhere men’ 3-1. Back to the league and a real test against the new boys, Wolverhampton Wanderers. They’ve had an impressive start to the season. The first half we were all over them. Two goals from Lamela and Moura and we went into the half-time break 2-0 up. In fact, we could have got more. The second half Kane scored to make it three. We started to wilt, but I still felt that we were in control. Then disaster struck, in the name of Foyth (Ok, that is a bit unfair). Foyth had a good game and will be a great asset to the team. And he was starting his full league game because of his excellent performance against the nowhere lads from nowhere land (East Ham lads to Stratford lads in a blink of an eye, thanks to the genius of Brady, Sullivan and pure Gold). But that isn’t our concern (our concern will be when we move into our purpose built North London home, which is built on our previous north London home; i.e. we stay where our roots are… unlike the Ironheads who are here, there and everywhere, but not home). Sorry, I got side-tracked talking about the Nowhere lads, back to Foyth and future prospects.

Foyth made a few disastrous tackles in the penalty box for the referee to blow his whistle and award the Wolves their lucky break. One in and ten minutes later another one. Lloris dived but didn’t dive in a way that could have blocked the goals. So, 2-3 and they went for it. We held our breath, and finally, the whistle was blown. Tickle my old Myfanwy… a Welsh Leek must have been nearby to give us luck.

Pochettino, even though furious with the two penalties, wasn’t going to blame Foyth, and when interviewed added his own memories of being in a similar situation in his playing days. So there you have it, the kid has a future with us (mistake or no mistake). If he didn’t then that would have been an excuse to push him down the pecking order and eventually out of the door. Let us not shoot the defender when it can happen to the best of us… and we won and won we did.

So that is that. As I said, we seem to be improving, and with Liverpool and Arsenal playing the circus clowns, they couldn’t get further than a draw, so we leapfrogged the Gunners. So now we are in fourth place (who should we thank for that? Arsenal or Liverpool or both? Let us go for Arsenal, as they won’t appreciate our thanks… no matter how warm it was intended).

As for Liverpool, well their inability to see off the Europa league players put us only three points behind them. So, thank you red on red. But Sunday didn’t go well in football terms. City thrashed Southampton 6-1, while Chelsea had a similar win (they won 3-1) against Palace (who we play next).

So, now we are fifth, had a good away run (only losing once away to Watford, and two at home, in the league, to Liverpool and City) we are in a healthy position. If we can grow in our overcoats, then the others will hopefully overshoot their expectations, then we could be in with a shout.

We have won 24 points from our 11 Premier League games this season, only in 2011-12 (25) have we picked up more at this stage of a single campaign in the competition. On top of that, we’ve only lost two of our last 17 away games in the Premier League, winning each of the last four in a row. Oh, it gets better: we are unbeaten in our last 39 Premier League games against promoted sides (W36 D3).

Harry Kane has scored 27 goals in his last 27 away Premier League games. He has also has scored against 27 of the 28 teams that he has faced in the Premier League, with the only exception being Cardiff City. So, I probably grumbled to early on in my previous articles, but a grumble keeps one on his toes, and as we stand at the moment anything is possible… even a pick-me-up in the Champions League. Optimistic? Why not. Without optimism, we’d just be another Arsenal, Chelsea or nowhere boy’s run-around’.

It has been a pleasure, see you all on Tuesday; take care and drive safely, but not at the same time as drinking… that is a no, no. Can we beat PSV Eindhoven… you better believe it.

Don Scully