Rival watch

Top 3, and I really think you will challenge for 1st.
To put you right on my views, I have been saying since before the season started that in my opinion you have the strongest squad in the league (it's out there on many boards) and that hasn't changed.
I am just pointing out why journo's bypass you, like I said it's a little bit of past form (however wrong it may be).
You, Arsenal and Liverpool are known for having very good seasons many times and falling short at the end, this is not a personal view of this season just a possible reason why you don't get the credit for your season so far.

 

I think it depends on how you define 'falling short' - a subjective term that is probably near-impossible for a fan of the wealthiest and most successful team in PL history to grasp. The fact that both you and most Spurs fans now look at a top 3 finish as a realistic target means us finishing above 3 teams who dwarf us in terms of size and capital. In real terms, Spurs should be finishing 5th or 6th every year - as indeed we did in the seasons you have labelled as 'poor'. In truth, we are currently drastically over-achieving relative to our financial clout and fanbase. Securing a top manager coupled with a largely sensible transfer policy that has seen us recruit or develop in-house a young and hungry squad of players, together with the undoubted under-achievements of the powerhouses currently below us in the table, has led to us being able to possibly sustain this over-achievement until the new stadium starts reaping dividends and establishes us firmly as a member of the PL's landed gentry.

 

I need you to explain that bit for me

I think you are reading what you expect/want and not what is written by me.
It's a fact that Spurs, Arsenal and Liverpool have had some great seasons where they could reasonably have been expected to put in a challenge for the league title (Liverpool came very very close), it is also a fact that they have all fallen short/run out of steam (squad depth) many times.
I am in no way disparaging your team, I am perfectly aware of the financial differences between you and others, all I am doing is pointing out why jouno's may be bigging other teams chances up whilst ignoring you.

 

Not me. I'll be sure of that when and if they're mathematically eliminated by us and I've pored over every bylaw of every competition up to and including the Indonesian League to see there isn't some loophole, somewhere, that will rule us out and one of them in.

We may--may--be ready to take a significant step forward this year, but if being a Spurs fan has taught me anything, it's not to count my cockerels before they're hatched.

 

It's amazing what spending £158m on 'talent' will get you in the Premier League. How much will Jose demand to spend in the summer so that his managerial 'genius' can shine through? £0.5billion? Good job he is such an amazing manager otherwise it would dwarf even the Tangoed ones budget for his bigly wall!

 

I heard a United fan on the radio last night. He was praising the progress under Mourinho. He said "We just need some new players to finish the team off." "How many?" says the presenter."

"Five!"

Why not ten?

 

I'm surprised he didn't inscribe them with 'left' and 'right'.

 

I saw these and immediately thought they should be ruby red. They might help in 'Dorothy's' search for courage, heart and a footballing brain.

 

that lad has got potential though.

 

Journalists continue to big up other teams whilst ignoring ourselves because they are still ingrained in the belief that money=success. It's ok if someone like Leicester bucks the trend every now and then with a 'fairytale story', but in general there is an unspoken rule that the status quo should be adhered to, come what may. The fact that the likes of United, City, Liverpool and Arsenal have tried their hardest over the past 3-5 years pissing enough money up a wall to demonstrate that in actual fact the true equation is:
(money + common sense + defined strategy) x dedication = success, is what the media prefer to ignore. The notion that a relatively small club from North London has the audacity to pursue the second equation over a period of decades, slowly inching its way up the table year on year, is an insult to the pillars upon which the PL was first founded: we'll pour money into your purse, you pour trophies into the open-top bus, a global fanbase will pour into your replica shirts, competing broadcasters will pour into our offices and money will pour back into our coffers: rinse, wash, dry, repeat. Ad infinitum.

Ultimately, hacks are paid to sell papers. They do this by pandering to the fans of clubs with the largest fanbases. Every year they pick a big scapegoat to fill the tabloids with sufficient sleaze and scandal (last year it was us; Leicester's pantomime villains, this year it is clearly Arsenal), pick an underdog to favour (Brits love a good underdog story. Last year Leicester did the work for them, this year it looks like Everton), and spend the rest of the column inches unsettling and downplaying what everyone else is doing/achieving. We fit firmly in between the categories of underdog and large fanbase. Too big to be a real underdog, too small for fans in Indonesia to fall for the click bait. Hence we are routinely ignored.

 

“If you’re going to play week in week out, it may have to be a level down, but he [Sturridge] certainly has the quality to play for Tottenham, there’s no doubt about that."
(Jamie Carragher)

What a twat!

So, Spurs are a "level down" from 'Pool, who have been in our shadow for how long, Jamie?

You dickhead!

 

Being 3rd choice striker at Spurs is certainly a "level down" to him being 1st/2nd at the Poool.

 

Carragher didn't really think that one through, did he!

 

Liverpool fined £100k and banned for 2 years from stealing 12 year olds from other clubs. It's about time someone looked into some of these practices at Chelsea. We warned them about one of our lads recently and he ended up at Palace. We should have let them sign him and get the FA in after.

 

And have a 50/50 chance of getting it wrong?

 

Is he a "friend of Dorothy" then?

 

Strange team selection by Pep.
But what do I know? He's the master tactician.

 

Because our best striker is Harry Kane and theirs is... Sturridge?
Those own goals that he scored for us still sting, I see.

 

Navas at right-back against Chelsea, leaving Zabaleta on the bench?
Delph given the responsibility for shutting down Kante and thus Chelsea?
Well, if it does work, then he's certainly earned his money.

 

I was going to say, Carragher aspired to play for Spurs trouble for him was that he was wearing a Liverpool shirt at the time