Regular readers of Spurs’ fan forums will have seen a recurring question being asked ‘…just what is going on at Tottenham?’ as people outside the club that went from being a rising star, try to diagnose what inside the club has seen us slump so badly.
Kieran Trippier signed for Spurs on the back of a solid 4 season career at Burnley, in which time he scored 6 goals and provided 37 assists. This blog hailed ‘Tripps’ as an upgrade on fellow Englishman Kyle Walker. Walker was and still is prone to the most horrendous lapses in concentration.
Tripper eventually inherited the right back mantel thanks to Walker swerving the opportunity of a lifetime to play in a world-class stadium, in order to secure a pay rise and a Premier League winners’ medal at Manchester City.
The only problem was that Pochettino wanted Kieran to re-enact the wing-back routine that Walker and Rose had employed to – in part – make Spurs so exciting to watch and so tough to beat.
It didn’t work, because Trippier is fundamentally not a natural wing back. After Spurs games, the abuse Tripps accrued was frequently unthinking but mostly plain old nasty.
Last summer Trippier joined Atletico Madrid for £22million. This was the first time we heard the phrase, “behind the scenes”.
The 28-year-old told Sky Sports: “I think it was time for me to change and move on. I don’t necessarily mean that I needed to move on, but things happened behind the scenes at Tottenham, which I don’t really want to go into, but I needed to move on from that.”
In today’s Guardian Trippier is interviewed again, and the discontent about his closing stages at Spurs get another big mention.
Opinion: Clearly the boy wasn’t in a happy place at Tottenham, and Tripps’ continued dwelling on this specific aspect of his past raises more questions than it answers.
For a club on the cusp of a brave new world with an incessant message of “world-class” development, there are far too many negative indicators. Senior players quitting, or refusing to sign contract extensions simply does not fit the “brave new world” narrative. For a club with so much alleged positivity about it, why are Spurs listless, and sinking in the Premier League?
The question, ‘…just what is going on at Tottenham?’ doesn’t look as if it won’t be answered anytime soon, nor will the questioning subside, unless the football improves dramatically.
