Match Day Thread Tottenham Hotspur v Manchester City

excellent post, agree with every single bit.

 

i do see where you’re coming from. - and perhaps if there was another club that’d built a new stadium, training ground, and we’re on a similar playing field to us, I could potentially get behind the “underdog” story. And to be honest, as a fan of football in general, I probably should do.

But there’s no doubt that we’d still have to put up with the “What’s tottenhams excuse?” narrative. Which after years of not winning anything is mentally draining to think about, let alone actually deal with.

Which brings me back to Arsenal. The similarities between the clubs in recent years plus the added fact that they are our rivals makes them the one club that I can’t deal with winning it for reasons already mentioned.

In addition, Arsenal finishing second on potentially 89 points is enough of an indicator of “if they can do it, so can we”, IMO. Just because they don’t get the trophy, doesn’t mean it’s not possible. But at least they wouldn’t have the bragging rights!

 

Not at all. I and others applaud him for it.

IMHO where the anger has been since then is in the games :

1. against the lesser teams, who were going to play
busparquet + not venturing into the "pivot trap" , and
for weeks there had been obviously no work in training
to provide the simple remedy.

2. against Fulham and the Toon, where fronting up to
get pts by whatever means was all that mattered, and
the team put in utterly gutless performances.

 

Funny there was no sanctimony about having a "small club mentality" for this one...
https://www.football.london/arsenal-fc/news/arsenals-nightmare-scenario-europa-league-16341520

 

Absolutely. Why wouldn't the media point out the failure to get Kane who would have been IMHO far more destructive. Mind you, I think the season after Kane not going to City he developed his amazing passing ability. Had he gone to City and done that, Fraudiola would have been given the credit for developing Kane as a player. Any excuse to heap credit on the money cheats.

 

You know as well as we all do that there’s a world of difference between answering a hypothetical question on the internet and an actual game of football with direct practical relevance to what will happen with the title.

You could give me a million hypothetical scenarios and I’ll pick the ones where Arsenal lose most of the time. But the EL/CL final one was pure noise and pot stirring. Not even the same competition FFS. One game had no impact on the other outside of that question being asked, in the real world.

 

The closest equivalent I can get is in 2006 :

Spurs qualify for the CL while them lot win the final,
or not qualify for the CL and them lot lose the final.

 

One thing occurred to me today as I was contemplating the tactics and personnel used.
Kulusevski's struggled in the system as it doesn't play to his strengths.
It's too congested in the middle and he has no wide option outside him to help out.
We went with more width yesterday and both fullbacks were wider.
Kulusevski got benched and Johnson was pretty anonymous.

I don't think that the tactics helped Johnson, to be fair to him.
Getting to the byline or beating his man to put the ball in wasn't going to work.
There was nobody there to feed the ball to.

 

Yeah it felt like this is one of the few times we actually held width and tried to cause some problems that way. If we played like that and with the same speed and intensity, and with a box presence, in other games, we’d be higher than 5th

 

Harsh...

 

which member of the playing staff are you?

 

The one that does not tolerate Portu-ball.

 

This is doing the rounds and I'm not sure how accurate it is.
I sit virtually level with it though and my initial thought was that he was off.
Football.London is claiming that it wasn't checked by VAR, but that can't be true, can it?
Did they show a check on the TV coverage? It did seem very quick.

 

I didn’t see a check on TV (US coverage). It looked very tight. They must have checked it though.

 

Sky made no mention of a check on either the goal or the penalty, I assume that both were checked but they were both very quickly dealt with so not much of a check compared to some we have seen.

 

Would have took 10 mins to check it if it happened at the other end.

 

I'll be completely honest with you, Huddlefro. I think a lot of Arsenal fans in real life did have a similar view to those presented on social media. Maybe not absolutely everyone, as clearly a large fanbase will always have diverse views and opinions, but the general consensus was that we could not cope with Spurs winning a Champions League before us.

People were presenting that dilemma to me and asking me what I'd do - win the Europa League and Spurs win the Champions League or lose the Europa League and Spurs also lose the Champions League.

I picked the latter.

The reason being that I simply could not contemplate living in a world where my nearest rivals have won arguably the most precious and prized possession in the sport before us. Not after 2006. Not after you reaching your first ever Champions League final and doing it so soon. It was hard enough to see Chelsea winning it in 2012 (and again in 2021), becoming the only London club to achieve this feat. But Spurs also doing it before us? It would have been utterly unbearable and unfathomable. The conversations about "who is the bigger club" and "European heritage" would have been a hell on earth that I have no desire to be a part of.

It's also why I wasn't scathing toward Spurs fans who preferred City to win yesterday even if it meant Spurs lose their chance of getting into the CL. Because even if you guys got CL football, as important as that would be for you as a club, no-one (outside of Spurs fans) would remember much of it. But Arsenal winning their first title in 20 years? It would overshadow everything. People would talk about it for ages. There would be bedlam. And the thought of the shoe being on the other foot doesn't even bear thinking about. I wouldn't think twice about rolling over for City if I were faced with the tangible prospect of Spurs winning the league.

This is the nature of tribal and fierce rivalries. You obviously want the best for your team, but if your team aren't at the level you want, while your closest rivals are riding on the crest of a wave, then you may need to make sacrifices as a small price to pay for salvation.

 

I totally get everything you say. And perhaps it was wrong to characterise it as a more online discussion. I’d be delighted if I never had to see anyone in an Arsenal shirt celebrate anything ever again, obviously.

But my point is that the outcome of that EL final made absolutely no material difference to the outcome of the CL final. It’s easy to say “We’ll happily take the loss if it means Spurs don’t win the CL” because you as a club had absolutely no way of influencing the result of the other game. It’s not like you had to go to that game and think about cheering a Chelsea goal, or would be tempted to stand behind the manager and bench and yell at them to throw the game. It was an entirely hypothetical dilemma for the club and fans. We all have fun with those questions sometimes, it’s part of the football culture. But there was no skin in the game in the real world in terms of the trade off. It’s like me saying I’ll never drink again if Arsenal never win the league again. It’s a bit of fun to say down the pub but it’s a world away from turning up at a stadium praying we lose and shouting about it at the manager.

 

Yeah this does give me at least a glimmer of hope. Despite City's dominance through openly cheating, we're not seeing the sort of nonsense the Bundesliga, Ligue 1, Eredivise, and the SPL had for many years with one team winning it every time without breaking a sweat.

Apart from the 20/21 title, which was a freak season anyway due to Covid, City didn't run away with their other two and obviously won't with this one either. Liverpool and then Arsenal have taken them to or close to the wire on all three occasions, and with margins of error that fine, there is a glimmer of hope that an 'underdog' (i.e. team that doesn't cheat) can do it.

I will also say that as annoying and narcissistic as he is, Pep is one hell of a manager. It is extremely rare that he doesn't significantly improve players and his track record in the market is very impressive. He is very good at spotting the profile of player he needs to complete certain jigsaws. Perhaps his greatest asset, and he has imprinted this on City, is his relentless hunger to win. The man is a machine obsessed with success which means he never rests on his laurels.

Rumour has it he will leave City in the next year or two and I do think that could see them suffer a bit of a dip as I don't see any other managers who could match what he has accomplished.

They'll still be a force to be reckoned with and will still of course have the financial backing of a dozen made-up shell companies, but it comes back to your point: if the gap come the end of the season could be bridged by just a couple of defeats, a change of manager could see that happen.

That said, I'm pencilling in 2026/27 for Spurs to win the league. Harry Kane returns in the summer to break the PL record, captain Micky Van de Ven lifts the PL trophy after a victory at Stamford Bridge, Poch joins the Spurs celebrations and sticks his middle finger up at the Chelsea fans, and Tanguy Ndombele returns from his eleventh loan spell, this time at Asteras Tripolis where he made a total of 3 appearances from the bench.

**Eyes mist over**