Over the last 11 years, we have gone from Champions League wanabees to Champions League finalists, and flirted with winning the Premier League.
Some fans may view that decade or so of progress as redundant because it didn’t deliver a trophy, although I’m not one. While Jose Mourinho now has a major rebuilding job on his hands, it would be tough to argue Tottenham are not significantly better off across the board than we were in 2009.
Except in one key area, highlighted by yesterday’s matchday revisited on the club’s Twitter account; the 9-1 rout of Wigan from November that year.
Jermain Defoe famously bagged five that day after Peter Crouch had opened the scoring. Robbie Keane and Roman Pavlyuchenko were on the bench as Harry Redknapp boasted a depth of firepower not seen in these parts since.
4 strikers back then, what went wrong
— D1V1D3D (@D1V1D3DxFLASH1) May 2, 2020
4 strikers! Not allowed.
— Dan (@ElCapitain82) May 2, 2020
Wow look at that 4 strikers…. shame that new rule means we’re only allowed one now
— Yorkspur (@York5pur) May 2, 2020
An impressive selection of forwards back then.
— Thomas Chadwick (@Thomas_Chadwick) May 2, 2020
Keane AND Super Pav on the bench. How spoiled we were…
— Jon Boyes (@jonboyes) May 2, 2020
@w_luke3 back in the day when we could have the option of four strikers, now we have one and pray he don’t get injured
— lew (@lewiss_piggott) May 2, 2020
We have been spoilt by the individual quality of Harry Kane over the past five seasons, but he has been asked to do the job of four men. The 2009 quartet combined for 49 goals. Kane is very good, but nobody is that good.
Very few things have irked me more about Spurs recently than looking at the team-sheet and seeing the absence of a striker on the bench. Every other club in the league has one in reserve and plenty have several. It is criminal.
You are slightly playing with the maths here. On the face of it 49 goals off one player is the stuff of Messi and Ron. You are right, Kane is not that good, but Spurs do play attacking players along side Kane. Son, Dele (when he has been a 10) and Moura support off Kane. They play a lot higher up than Lennon and Niko did in a 442. The issue is that Harry Appleschnapps had options to rotate. Poch didn’t and so Kane was flogged like an east European donkey.
A radical change of perspective, Joe. When the January window closed you richly congratulated levy on not signing a striker, despite Kane being out for the season.