Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur have been fighting for a top-four spot over the last couple of weeks after Manchester United and West Ham United fell by the wayside in the pursuit for the final UEFA Champions League spot.
While the race has been interesting, resulting in the epic 3-0 win over The Gunners to put pressure on their north London rival. However, despite having an exciting finish to the end of the season, one pundit states neither of these two clubs deserves a spot.
Simon Jordan spoke to talkSPORT, where he explained why the two rivals aren’t worth a top-four spot as they haven’t been good enough in his eyes.
“The fourth and fifth spot in the league this year is based upon two sides that aren’t good enough really to be in the top four under a normal regime of what a top four looks like,” Jordan said.
“But because of the composition of the league this year, that’s why it’s been up and down. It wasn’t so long ago we were talking about Tottenham; we know what we’re going to get. Tottenham are gonna win; they’re gonna lose, they’re gonna win, they’re gonna lose.”
Regardless of how Jordan feels, one of Arsenal or Tottenham will be playing Champions League football next season. Spurs have made a 360 turnaround since manager Antonio Conte arrived in November.
Nonetheless, Jordan wants to quickly remind everybody that the season hasn’t been as productive for Spurs as the table suggests.
“All of a sudden, they’ve hit a vein of form because Conte has a substance,” Jordan added.
“But it wasn’t so long ago we were talking about Conte having some hissy fit two or three months ago, being a temperamental Italian because he couldn’t get what he wanted from the team.”
Romero has proved he’s quickly adapted to the league which with central defenders is huge
Sessegnon has played some useful minutes for us finally after what feels like a decade of being on our books
Those are wins
Since he came in we’re third best performers simple as that. Liverpool and City are both arguably top five teams in club football. It’s as close to storming it as you can get really, massive turnaround. Still required Arsenal to capitulate a bit sure.
I know it sounds biased maybe, but a lot of people I know would agree…Arsenal have rode their luck, they’ve had the rub of the green so much of the time. United too, which makes their league position even more damning.
We’ve had mixed fortunes – we played well enough to win at Old Trafford. We’ve rarely been humped in the league – our GD since Conte speaks volumes.
Surely Mr Jordan realises you can only accrue your points in one season, and those points determine your position in the league ..is he becoming a shock jock..somewhat surprised.
TBF Romero was CB of the year in his league before he came to us. I wouldn’t say Sess is a success story just yet.
I would say arse have given it to us rather than we’ve taken it.
It will depend if it fits his agenda I guess :/
I completely agree that Conte’s appointment has worked wonders. It’s a pity that Jordan can’t or won’t acknowledge that. I read that since Conte’s arrival, our league points put us third behind Liverpool and City. If we continue that upward trajectory next season, and in Europe, perhaps Jordan will change his mind?
I think we effectively stormed it once Conte took over
I’d say the opposite – it proves we made the right choice in appointing Conte….that’s priceless.
How many players are ‘better’ now than they were judged last summer? Dier, Davies, Romero, Sessegnon, Skipp. He’s built the core of a good side (that could be great with additions)
Whether I agree with Mr Jordan on not I think he’s one of the better pundits on radio, often giving me something to think about I’d not already considered or knew about. He’s also not saying anything I haven’t heard already, from sources close to home too ….. Ahem!
Of course if one doesn’t like him, one only has to apply simple logic to his statement and he looks stroppily mean spirited, not to say silly.
Well Forest Gump.. the table does not lie. The point of any league should not be a red line where you expect year after year you pencil the 3 possible winners with an odd one fighting for the coveted 4th spot. It simply means the rest of teams are so weak and any improvement to take them up the ladder will not see anyone drop out. What Spurs has done over the years albeit not winning it, put Arsenal and ManU on notice by fighting for that 4th spot. No other team over the past 10 years the exception being Leicester that are remotely threatening for top honors. Again, as bad as we are this shows we are still better than 70% of the league.
I agree about the short memory wallahs re. Poch. Sadly ignorant I think.
He has a fair point.Outside the top three nobody has been consistent enough to guarantee fourth place from well before the end of the season.
The irony is that should things go our way we could actually get top three,albeit means Chavs have to lose their last two matches.If it wasn’t for their strong position before their recent dip in form Chelsea could have missed out on CL next season.Stranger things have happened.
couldn’t have put it better, a second rate chairman with no vision who now somehow thinks he is a pundit with valid opinions, as opposed to just being a smug over-opinionated annoyance!
I despise the likes of Talksh1te with it’s agenda of fabricating the facts to make it’s so gullible listeners ring in to say “Great show”, and devise scenarios that could happen under certain circumstances, mainly from people who are happy to go along with their scripted drivel as long as they get paid.
Simon Jordan is not good enough to be the owner of a Premier League team, which is why he has re-invented himself as a talk radio rent-a-mouth!
It’s not about us winning it next season, it’s more about us progressing without embarrassment whilst at the same time mounting a challenge for top 4 and winning a trophy along the way. At the moment we are woefully short of doing that. We’ve struggled on just one front and only (hopefully) made it really due to the brilliance of Conte in the big matches, along with Son and Kane.
The reason both us and arse were able to try and scrape top 4 is because we had no midweek football this season (for us for the most part) to hinder us.
I’m confident that given investment though we can achieve great things under Conte.
But Jordan is talking about this season, not next, he is right on that count. We (hopefully) will get top 4 because of other clubs results rather than our own this time around.
Excluding at most 8 teams across Europe, who are good enough as you put it to be in the champions league ? Spurs have been in turmoil since the CL final , it certainly did not help the cause by having Maureen and Nuno as managers, now Conte has taken over spurs are now showing some signs of recovery starting with self belief that Conte has installed in the team , something that has been missing since Poch , also Levy is still playing catch up since his non spend and bargain hunting flops that he has sanctioned rather than spend the obscene amount of money it takes to compete with the likes of Man city, Liverpool , Real , Barca and PSG, (even Man UTD who are not in the competition) outside those clubs there are possibly 3 or 4 teams that would have a chance making a major impact on the CL.
If you only want teams to enter the CL that could have a chance of winning it , the completion would be very small.
We don’t stand a ‘good chance of going far’ in the Champions League. But let’s be glad we got there right (assuming we do)? By getting there we might keep Kane, keep Conte, get some more quality players (because Levy will creak open the purse more and quality players will be more interested in coming).
It feels like too many people are suggesting the Top Four is not a good result for us because we can’t really win the Champions League. Well.. we don’t expect to, and most teams in it generally don’t win it 😉
But it is a step forward. It indicates we are at the ‘top table’ again… maybe a ‘minor’ at that table… but still there.
It’s up to Levy now whether hover around 4th for a few seasons… or whether we take things even further… COYS
Talksport should be renamed Talkshit. Everyone on there talks such bollocks or looks lost(looking at Darren “my missis could of scored that” Bent). Yes whoever finishes 4th(hopefully we don’t fuck up) wouldn’t have set the world on fire but the final table determines who ultimately deserves to be in Europe or not.
Who would Jordan have prefer take the 4th spot? Man Utd, West Ham? Both have been even more dross than us and the Arse. How about Brentford or Brighton for their nice football? Maybe to Newcastle based on recent results?
He has a fair point. We didn’t exactly storm into the top 4 did we? The current squad as it stands now is nowhere near good enough for the Champions league. Reference the Conference league shambles earlier this season.
You don’t play a second string 11 in the CL though. That means playing virtually your first team twice a week. At the moment that means playing Kane and Son in every single game – that’s a hell of a lot more minutes next season, it’s almost certain that one or both will get injured at some stage, they’re not youngsters anymore. Take one or both of those two out of our team and we’re not a top 4 team anymore.
We have virtually no competent players for rotation as our skeleton bench shows. Moura for Kulu and an average WB for an average WB, and Sanchez for Romero, that’s about it in all honesty.
Make no mistake this squad is not fit for purpose as is, so Jordan is not trolling Spurs fans but telling it like it is.
We need a big spending spree this summer to put things right, perhaps then next season we can prove our true worth and be a real top 4 side like we use to be.
2020-2021 Premier League table:
1 Manchester City 86 points
2 Manchester United 74 points
3 Liverpool 69 points
4 Chelsea 67 points
Tottenham are already above Chelsea’s total for last year, and will be above the points total for 3rd place last year if we win our last game.
Talkspot pundits are so bad they make statements that anyone who remembers a year ago knows to be utter nonsense. What is the value of Simon Jordan as a pundit?
Are both Tottenham and Arsenal inconsistent? Yes, but for good reason, and also Liverpool and Chelsea last year were really inconsistent. Did Liverpool deserve to be in the Champions League this year? Talksport needs to go off the air it is so shit.
The old adage is spot on
“The (final) table never lies”
What a load of tripe from Jordan, the man with vast experience of winning trophies.
“the season hasn’t been as productive for Spurs as the table suggests“.
What does that mean? Don’t the pundits usually say at the end of a season that the table doesn’t lie?