Given that Roy Keane and I have both been watching Spurs play for the same number of years, all I can tell those that are struggling with his claim that Spurs have been soft for forty years, that he’s right – well – nearly right. We had something about us in the 1980s. Those were amazing times to be a Tottenham fan. But even then, we weren’t title contenders. The FA Cups went down a treat, but when we won the UEFA Cup, it just about blew everyone’s mind. It shocked few when ‘normal service’ was resumed.
I take a view that we had a great opportunity to become something special under Birkenshaw and Pochettino, but ENIC is no more interested in Spurs being a success on the green stuff than Irving Scholar was. Further, I’d d suggest some fans stop using any other metric other than trophies. As I’ve made the point before; professional sport only works one way. If that weren’t the case, golf courses would have no holes and racecourses wouldn’t have a finish line.
Keane is right. Listen to him, and stop making ‘short’ excuses, like blaming this that or the other. Spurs’ malaise is bigger picture stuff and unless atypical elements such as Birkenshaw or Pochettino are occasionally thrown into the equation, there is no hope of meaningful change.
Redknapp thinks winning is …err, not quite winning. Presumably, Jamie’s mind must also use phrases like almost a genius and, a little bit pregnant.
Yup, Levy pulled the plug on it, while looking at carpet samples…
I’m asking people to think about it as Levy is, regardless of the realties around the job currently.
Yeah, I take your point. Replacing him once the ‘project’ that Poch oversaw ended is especially challenging.
However, I was looking at it from Levy’s own weird perspective, not mine.
For 15m a year Levy will expect similar outcomes, certainly in terms of league placing. Rightly or wrongly this is what he expects, Jose’s added 2m bonus for top 4 proves this…
Yep, Eriksen is not big time player. Lacks the balls…
Well that’s the most conclusively accurate portrayal of our club that I’ve read on here for many a moon. The Maureen/Meredith analogy is a gem.
Rightly said Money brings Money simple
Question is who is gonna spend the Kane money? a football expert man or a business man than I’ll tell you what to expect.
I must’ve meant first London side….
Yes. Fans are very different now. Levys brought the tourists without any of the success?!
My mistake.
Totally agree, it is common sense but when Keane says we are soft he is missing the point. 7 points off third after a disastrous season. 8 points were lost from the 2 Newcastle games, the Fulham away and being 3-0 to West Ham! One good CB and one good right FB were needed and we got Doherty and a lad who isn’t ready. Yes, we could have won a league title (I still don’t think the Leicester season was one we really missed out on. City fell away when challenging Leicester, leaving us to be second. Even if we had beaten WBA and Chelsea, Leicester still would have finished well ahead of us. They just never slipped up) but we were all shouting from the roof tops for top quality replacements. The Ch Lg has been written about extensively. Both teams were knackered but they had better players who got them over the line. We just didn’t have the firepower. Our best player was crocked, no real replacement and we still don’t have one. I blame Levy fall all failings and building the stadium is a long term plan, it has done nothing to help us in a period of history when we could have won the lot. Who would have thought that he would only look to sign a back up to Kane once Kane leaves!
Most of what you say is correct and sound commonsense but if we hadn’t built such an unnecessarily extravagant stadium we could have made additions to Poch’s squad and, yes, taking advantage of other teams in transition, could have won the title and the Champions League, too, where our sorry crew were unable to overcome a Liverpool team whose season had otherwise finished weeks previously to the extent that, short of actual match practice, they had gone off the boil
In the 80s Liverpool were the richest team which is the era I am writing about. Spurs had a top manager and a good team, but we were miles off Liverpool. In 1961 Spurs were the wealthiest club in the world and to be fair we didn’t make the most of it. One League title wasn’t enough was it?
I don’t think Liverpool did have all the money, at least not until some years into their run; they were a big club, yes, but brilliantly well run with everything geared to success. Shankly used to say how every detail had to be right; reputedly, once asked why he couldn’t come to Aston Villa and do the same job there, replied “the floodlights are too dim; the players can’t see the ball!”
In fact, when I started to follow football in the mid sixties the richest clubs were perceived to be Spurs, Man Utd and Liverpool’s neighbours, Everton, bankrolled by the Moores family and Littlewoods (it was sometime later that the Moores became involved in Liverpool)
Somehow, it seems strangely appropriate that a club with a pretty name that wears white shirts is such a soft touch. I mean the nickname, too, the Lilywhites! In actual fact,more like the lily-livered! Yes, I do realize that Real Madrid wear white shirts but Man utd and Liverpool wear red, a rather more frightening appearance and the reason after seeing them in all red that Shankly ditched his club’s traditional white shorts.
I’m not, of course, advocating a change in our colours – tradition is tradition!
Fabulously wealthy new owners would seem to be required for a transformation considering our debts.
How are we in a magnificent position?! A tired, washed up team, with our best player seriously considering pastures new plus massive debts. Can’t wait to see how we spend the Kane money! Will it be an improvement on the Bale money?
Yes, remember the not so Magnificent Seven: five failures, one player who seems to have spent at least as much time on the treatment table as on the pitch and the one QUALIFIED success, Ericksen, a kind of footballing equivalent of a cricketing flat track bully, a footballing Graeme Hick, ie mostly posted missing on the big occasions when some backbone was required.
THIRD double winners, actually, but first in the 2oth century.
Agreed. West Ham have proven that 5 players in can make a huge difference. We though are not going to have Kane and Son for too much longer to build around. Kane stayed and how many top drawer players did Levy bring in? Kane should have packed his bags 2 seasons ago. He was duped more than the fans.
“Looking a lot like 1997”. Yes, full circle under Levy, some promising years squandered and back to where we were when he took over. And, yet, some people seem to think Levy’s a genius!
Man City were a joke club before the serious owners, serious investment, serious players and serious managers.
No one is laughing at them now.
Spurs are defined by ‘softness’ now but a transformation is possible – but it might involve throwing all existing ‘identity’ in the bin.
Right now it feels like we wouldn’t be losing too much doing that.
Yes, the future looks pretty bleak with us in debt for decades to come, and hampered in the transfer market, unless some incredibly wealthy new backers come in (we all know that Lewis and Levy aren’t going to let the club go for a song). It is a truly depressing time to be a Spurs fan with no relief on the horizon, 60 years without the league title (without favourable circumstances and who knows what the future structure of the Premiership is going to be and that of Europe’s) is likely to become 70.
How many of those 4000 locals and NHS staff are going to be arsed to faff about getting those tests done?The NHS people possibly because they have the facilities at hand,but for non fans amongst the locals i can’t see it.
In the meantime of course thay have all been mingling in supermarkets and the like.Even if the criteria has been met they will come out with more restrictions,it won’t stop.
I think perhaps it was!
And we’re not likely to nearly win the Champions League again – or even qualify for the competition – in the foreseeable future unless we release the purse strings, a hazardous situation considering our mountain of debt. I would suggest that it’s a more expensive rebuild now, too, than it would have been as a result of putting it off and certainly much more extensive a rebuild now than it would have been if we’d been continuing to tweak the squad regularly in windows.
More trophies than anyone other than Liverpool in a whole quarter of a century between 1959-60 and 1983-84 (nearly twice as many as anyone else)
Poch did due to us punching above our weight & one or more of the others going into meltdown…what happened in the last 2 years of Poch…? the others that were in freefall re-adjusted, and we didnt invest in the sqaud… every so often a team outside of the four I mentioned will break the mould, but in order for that to be consistent over say 5 years or more money needs spent & the sqaud recycled & your banking on one of the others slipping up. West Ham or Leicester could make top 4 this season but rest assured the big 1-2 that dont will invest in their sqaud to insure they have a better chance the following season.
Roy Keane us 100% spot on. Softness = Spursy which we all know about. Lady luck taking the club to a CL final being a great example, an off form Liverpool winning.
To win anything, it needs top dollar, not shillings and potatoes.
Good article, you gets what you pay for and we won’t pay. Reverting to the mean, we are exactly where we deserve to be.
I’ve always agreed with you, Eastie, that Poch did an amazing job with many obstacles in his way: not sufficiently backed in the transfer market and having to play at the soulless Wembley for nigh on two seasons. He had to go in the end because he was cheesed off; destroyed by his own chairman. However, I do believe the job is now tougher for an incoming manager than when Poch arrived with a totally washed up bunch of players that has been falling off a cliff since January 2019 ( a somewhat fortuitous Champions League run masked our decline)
I do really. I told Dillenberg earlier this season that if we avoided an embarrassment at Stoke and made the last four, I fancied us to go all the way. Combination of the law of averages (14 finishes in the first four of the league and last four in cup competitions without a single trophy) and a fairly meaningless consolation cup after all the near misses in bigger competitions.
You’ve hit the nail on the head most eloquently
Too true, while some of the current mindset of the players may be attributable to ENIC not portraying any genuine ambition, thus providing the backcloth of a winning atmosphere. They’re quite satisfied with the subsequent roll in of Champions League money for finishing fourth; they’re not really bothered about pushing on from there. And, of course, our coffers are seriously depleted after building surely one of the biggest white elephants (our stadium) of all time; I remember how in the past clubs that built new stadiums ie Wolves and Sheffield Utd would get relegated afterwards! The Wolves had an extraordinary crash and ended up in Division Four!
I make you dead right. Clubs finish in the end pretty much in line with what they are prepared to pay in transfer fees and salaries. You can punch above your weight if you have a conveyor belt of academy talent or an excellent scouting system neither of which we have.
In the Levy era there have been two opportunities for the club to break through into the big time both of which were missed by the caution of the chairman.
COVID or not City,United Chelsea and Liverpool will continue to invest in recruitment
Spot on. After 41 years, I’m drafting my Dear John letter to the club I love….. “It’s not me, its you”
I fully expect a win. It’ll mean practically nothing sadly.
Unfortunately, Keane is bang on the money.
I would say it’s the OWNERS have to change. Having supported Spurs for the past 47 years, in that time we’ve always had a soft streak and failed when doing anything else but win seems improbable.
And, in all of these eras, whether it be Scholar, Sugar or Enic, we keep changing players and coaches – but the results have always been the same.
Flowery football with the strength of a dandelion in a hurricane.
One flaw in all that is that those that are coming to the build now are generally people you wouldn’t want to sit next to.
Correct
Are you really asking that question – pulling my leg?
True
As its comparatively a non event with just about no one watching, I wouldn’t put it past us to actually win…perhaps even on penalties!
If Spurs want success we need to compete with the big spenders and buy quality players. As pointed out, in the 80s it was difficult to break the Liverpool hold on things because they had all the money. Same with Utd in the 90s and Chelsea/Utd/Arsenal in 00s. Since 2010 it has been City’s turn. The cups were important in the 80s, but then along came the PL and with it CH Lg. Even the FA Cup is a shadow of what it was, but what is the point of pining back to the good old days? Blackburn Rovers had Jack Walker’s £500m to help boost them to the top. Today, an owner needs Abromovich’s money and the ability to spend it, which Joe Lewis simply wont do.
Spurs have had a softness, but not because of a culture, because the winners in this world cost top dollar and we can only afford ‘fiddy cent’. Same with Everton and even West Ham this season, already pundits are talking about Calvert-Lewin, Soucek and Rice going to bigger clubs. Whenever teams like this produce a world beater the big teams snap them up (Carrick, Berbatov, Modric, Bale…..Kane).
Look at the cost of Utd’s team in comparison to ours from Sunday and they are still short of 3-4 players of being anywhere near City. How in the world are we expected to compete on a level playing field? Roy Keane was an amazing footballer and I love him as a pundit, and he would have been brilliant for whoever he played for. But he played for Utd for a reason, having turned his back on an agreed Blackburn deal. Both those teams offered British record fees whilst we were signing the likes of Kevin Scott! We were duped into thinking Spurs needed one marquee signing every now and again when Liverpool, Utd, Arsenal, Chelsea and now City had a team full of them. Seriously, we don’t stand a chance. City have a second XI that would finish in the top 4, and we have to be ‘wowed’ that they can win the quadruple. It’s embarrassing they haven’t already done it in my opinion.
To level the playing field FFP needs to be scrapped. All it did was keep the big teams at the top without fear of competition. Teams have always gone under (Accrington Stanley, Bradford Park Avenue) so doing a Leeds was never new. Even with FFP Bury couldn’t manage and teams like Sheff Wed have flown too close to the sun in hiding financial irregularities. City also dodged a firing squad and they were guilty! Scholar nearly sold us down the river and at a time where we needed to be part of that old big 5, more than ever. He dreamed big but the Premier League money wasn’t there to save him.
Redknapp needs to wind his neck in, but success is relative. Fans of Barnsley, Shrewsbury, Wrexham, Darlington do not support their professional teams for trophies. Which is why a certain number of Spurs fans despise Mourinho’s tactics, it has little to do with why ‘some’ Spurs fans support Spurs. If we are to win trophies I’d prefer doing it like Klopp or Guardiola. To be dismissed as delusional because we didn’t like Mourinho’s ways was absurd. We had our noses rubbed in it, with all the trophies he’d won for other clubs, instead of waiting while he won us trophy after trophy. I think on the whole, the naysayers have been proved right, because most of us knew the Baldy midget wasn’t going to let Jose win anything of note.
A team can have expectations and dreams, but in the end a team finishes where their financial standing is. We have had the 6th highest wage bill and spend in the Prem for years (I bet our spend is lower now). We punched above our weight as other teams struggled or were in transition. All we are seeing is another readjustment. We fell away because it is very difficult to keep punching against heavyweights when you only have 14st to hit them with. We’ve dodged, ducked, bobbed, weaved and now we’ve finally been hit with a haymaker. And having Burgess Meredith in our corner calling the players ‘bums’ isn’t going to help.
Keane is right, but he, nor Jose could fix this. We have had some great teams, but when did we have a truly great squad? We signed Lineker and sold Waddle, but we had Gazza. But we also had Justin Edinburgh! We were never going to win the league, but a Cup was had. The last player in the world class bracket that we signed, and I have stated this before was Klinsmann. Compare that to any top team.
I remember my father teasing me that Spurs couldn’t play without their wives and girl friends watching! But, of course, another season we’d be excellent away and abysmal at home. Remember 84-85 when we won at Liverpool for the first time in about 70 years, leading me to believe this might be the year Spurs went on to be champions. They subsequently had a home run where I think they lost something like five out of six matches, including a 5-1 tanking from Watford! Yes, that’s 1-5 at home to Watford in a season in which we finished third. Shades of 2016, we managed to finish third (pipped for second by Liverpool) in a TWO HORSE race!
They will be using transport unless they are in walking distance which won’t be many. When I used to travel around Haringay I had to use buses, taxis and tubes even within that borough. Brent is fairly big so walking won’t always be an option.
Anybody denying that this is the issue, can’t be sane…
Have to agree with Keane and Harry. I would say we’ve been at least a little bit soft since 1964, when the double team broke up, as we have rarely had the toughness and resilience to challenge for the league title since. Indeed, my first season as a proper football fan in 64-65, we were so tough we managed just one win and six points on our travels. Even fourth division Torquay managed to score twice in the last three minutes to force a 3-3 draw in the Cup, both goals being scored by Robin Stubbs, an ex Birmingham player who was once married to Anthea Redfern, I believe (from Robin Stubbs to Bruce Forsyth!!).
I had the dubious pleasure of watching them three times in the West Midlands that season, losing three times and scoring just the one goal. Two of the sides they lost to went on to be relegated! I remember moaning much of the way home from Wolverhampton and my father telling me that you can’t win all the time; I wonder just how I would have reacted if I’d been told that Spurs would not only not win the league that season but wouldn’t do so for at least the next 56 years!
I think (hope) the original comment was laced in sarcasm
According to all major news sources the remaining 4000 tickets are going to NHS staff and Brent residents, not corporate clients – I don’t agree with it at all but at least you won’t have “randoms mooching about on public transport” if they are all local.
Also easier to track if they reside in one borough. As long, of course as the tickets aren’t sold on for profit.
The best stadium is pretty pointless when the team is on a dramatic downward spiral isn’t it? Last time I checked stadia and training grounds don’t win you trophies nor get you into the top 4.
A top stadium with a useless team that wins nothing season on season will in time slowly empty.
We were there under Poch, we’d made it and just a couple more stellar signings and some decent back ups in a few positions and we’d have trophies in the cabinet right now. But Levy bottled it which proves beyond doubt that he is not a Spurs fan. What he supports is Sterling, not the player but the currency, that’s all.
Enic are time wasters. Some of us have been saying this for years and now we’re not in a small minority are we?
Pochettino achieved top 4 without significant investment. So he did an excellent job, if Jose can’t and Levy is expecting the same from on the same spending levels and he can’t do it then Jose is doomed surely?
I think they’ve both got valid points.
What we’ve lacked in recent times with the better sides we’ve had has been the same, Levy’s unwillingness to push on and get the whole thing over the line. We got Zaha and Nelson for example when we needed players that would actually improve us. The same thing happened with Pochettino.
Not sure this entirely absolves Jose of all responsibility in the present, the performances should be better than this. However should Jose get us onto the cusp of something (which I doubt now) you wouldn’t expect Levy to step it up. It’s just not what he does.
Keane is right but the culture of failing at the final hurdle has been a particular feature of both Sugar’s and ENIC’s ownership. It comes from the top, if you’re just going to treat it like show ‘business’ rather than sport business where winning stuff is all part of the brand building, this is what happens.
ENIC OUT.
Yep, nice stadium. Pity there will be nobody in it when Kane,Son, Alli, Ndombele and co all leave in the next year or so and we become a mid- to lower table bunch of losers again. As a fan for 64 years – since I was 3, all I can say is I’ve never been as disappointed and sad as I am now about this Spurs team – and the club. What an awful season this has been. And even if we fluke the Jiffy Pot Scourer Cup it isn’t going to change anything. Next season will be far, far worse and, worst of all, apart from the fans, nobody is going to care.
my heart [ I’m 65 ] will always be at White Hart Lane , but totally accept this fabulous stadium and what it will bring . I’ve always believed [ in the main ] that not every body can win the league , the FA Cup or CL . But what you can do , a la Leicester City is put your heart and soul into the attempts .
This is the part that the management /board do NOT GET . Yes we are Spurs , Yes , we can be SPURS-SY , this should be entirely due to the style in which you play and if you’ve been a life-long Spurs fan , its something you accept as an occurrence , blips along the way .
But hey , they built that Stadium for a reason , they raised expectation levels , THEY created the monster and we now demand that you never play at being a contender , you build and build [ just like that fabulous ground] until all those around see that you are not only contenders but Champions waiting to happen.
Tottenham Hotspur , I will support you till I die , whilst we are cradled amongst the Elite in the World , please take this monumental moment in our time , create/gamble / nurture a team of which we will all be able to say , they gave their hearts in return for our passion and devotion , if you can in that emphatically Tottenham style , its what we love its what we believe in , a way of life .
Build it , they will come a popular refrain these days . Well it has been built , they have come , they will keep coming because of their love .
Surely we have never had a moment like this in our History to achieve even momentary success , The Greatest Stadium the World has seen with an ALL Time Great leading the line . Invest , Invest and invest again , this is our time , it only takes courage to cross that line and achieve that crowning moment …….C O Y S !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Unless there is significant investment in the sqaud then irrespective of who the manager is we wont be top four in the forseeable future unless one of citeh, Liverpool, chavs & utd go into meltdown…which lets face it based on what their players earn, and overall spend is unlikely & I havent included Everton & Leceister who will likely heavily invest in their sqauds for the forseeable. Once you reach the top four you need significant investment to remain there, we didnt & hence our demise.
They’ve managed to put a big fat cherry on the sh#t cake and made this years Carabao cup final the most pointless, pitiful non competition in history. 2000 City fans, 2000 Spurs fans and 4000 “corporate and locals”…..
Total lunacy, and it doesn’t even make sense from a safety viewpoint, as H mentioned the other day, you can much easier track the 2 sets of fans without a load of randoms mooching about on public transport coming from all over. So even by their nonsense narrative it’s mental. That and a meaningless “test” before and 5 days after makes for a real carnival if fun. It’s further marginalizing of real fans and nothing more. I was watching the old build ups to the 87 and 91 finals, the road to Wembley and all the fans and players…..the sport is dead. It’s so far from those days as to be unrecognizable. They’ve got us where they want us. Compliance is all that’s needed.
Unfortunately Roy is right. We’ve always exposed ourselves as being weak when the time counts. FA Cup semi finals, title challenges, champs lge final. There is devil in the detail though.
Under ENICs reign we have always been on the cusp of winning something and literally requires a few final puzzle pieces to address the gaps preventing us from going all the way.
The transfer window under Redknapp tenure, the summer following Ramos league cup win, the multiple windows during Pochs time.
It has always been the negligence of ENIC and their unwillingness to step in at these moments and provide what any board worth its salt would do which is to work with the manager, supplement the team and recognise the opportunity.
It’s as plain as the nose on our faces that ENIC have a ‘minimum viable outcome’ for spurs and it sits somewhere below being champs or genuine contenders. My guess is its 4th spot. Enough to make a bucket of cash and not too high to then set ongoing expectations. They just want a steady above average flow of income that will allow them to keep pumping cash in without having to pump any out.
That’s what we have with the English National Investment Company. The name is in the pudding.
Yes, the 80’s…..and the 60’s, Spurs have been a club synonymous with silverware and football played in an entertaining manner. Anyone peddling the ENIC progress myth now is just a budgerigar, enamoured with shiney meaningless objects. First double winners….first british side to win in Europe, the 80’s saw 81, 82 F.A. Cup wins, 84 UEFA cup win…81/82 finished 4th, won cup, 82/83 finished 4th, 84/85 finished 3rd, 86/87 finished 3rd lost a cup final, 89/90 finished 3rd, 90/91 won F.A. Cup….
There is NO comparison, all Levy has to go on was taking over in the most advantageous time possible, where a few seasons of financial trouble and awful injury luck saw us struggle…. even then we won the League cup again. Levy would have us believe Tottenham never had the pleasure of high finishes up to the time he came in(even though it was Redknapp after being begged to save him who actually did it) ….that is bollox. Poch gave us 3 years of consistently against all odds without backing , but it was NOWHERE this club had not been before, not that you’d know it from the fawning cultists that permeates the fanbase nowadays.
There’s nowhere left to hide now for Levy, hopelessly exposed and the future is looking….well, alot like 1997.
Come on now we nearly won the champions league, we have the best stadium and the best training facilities what more could we need or want for.