To be honest I do my best to try and avoid looking at the luck of other teams or refereeing decisions. They'll generally just make you wanna punch RCL in the face. Which I guess isn't all that bad when you think about it.
One of the most convincing arguments against Pochettino that I have heard is related to his idea of the squad. In his early days with us he was very decisive and took hard decisions both ways leaving players out and including youngsters. Players like Kaboul, Yedlin and Capoue were dropped players like Townsend and Chadli were given a run but then transferred. Players like Dier and Vertonghen became established. It looks like he established his squad and built a close affinity with them and between them. Now it becomes different because he told us when we had no players coming in during two windows it was NOT because Levy wouldn't do the business it was because Pochettino couldn't get the players he wanted so as he put it. "I am happy with my squad" It looks now that he has built such a close relationship with this squad that he can't bring himself to make the tough decisions. I don't see any evidence at all that he has lost the dressing room, all still appear to be with him. Yes players like Eriksen and Dele are not performing to their abilities but I think they still try. So if this is any where near the truth what do we do? Pochettino is a bright guy I can't believe that it will not dawn on him that he needs to take some tough decisions. Is this the last days of his loyalty to 'his players'? I still think that because of what he has achieved at Spurs in his 5 years we need to give him time to adapt and rebuild. His achilles heel is perhaps being too much the Mr Nice Guy, a trait which plays well when things are running smoothly but does not work in our current situation. I agree with many posters on here that continuing to play Rose and Eriksen is futile because although they still put the effort in it's not enough at this level, you need your head to be in the right place to produce the required performance. Perhaps he needs a chat with his friend Mr Fergusson. I hope very much Pochettino can work through this crisis and if he does he will be a better manager for it, but we all know that the current mess cannot continue without a clear and obvious new plan because what worked for him before is not working now.
Actually he doesn't need to ring Fergie he's already said it. "You can't ever lose control – not when you are dealing with 30 top professionals who are all millionaires. If they misbehave, we fine them, but we keep it indoors. And if anyone steps out of my control, that's them dead."
If we are not good enough to win the CL or finish in the top 4 then should we consider trying to engineer a third place finish in the CL group stage so that we drop down to the EL. Winning the Europa gives us both a trophy and a CL place. For those of you who think the glory is in trophies that should be a no brainer. For myself I would prefer to stay where we meet the top teams...ie the CL knockout stage.
It's a huge risk that isn't worth the extra 2 fixtures and potentially thousands of miles of travel. Look at Arsenal last season. By the time you reach the QF and SF of the competition you are usually facing pretty solid opposition who will be well up for a giant killing, and then you can crash out at the final hurdle having screwed up your PL season and not have anything shiny to show for it. I had a great chat with a colleague who supports the Chavs the other day. He is one of the few who can successfully complete a coherent sentence. He posed the following question: What would you prefer: your season last year (4th, CL runners up), or ours (3rd, EL winners)? It actually got me thinking for a long while. The difference between 3rd and 4th when both sides finish miles away from 1st is negligible and amounts to bragging rights only. My heart wanted Chelsea's outcome as it would have meant a trophy after so many barren years, but my head argued the sad reality that simply turning up at the CL final bagged us close to £60m more in total prize money than Chelsea got for winning the thing.
In any rational world a CL runners-up medal would be considered far superior to an EL winners medal. But trophies....
We won an International Champions Cup last season, that should satisfy the tRoFEee headbangers...right?
Some of you should take up another hobby Football will always be about trophies I know we are run by a hierarchy that has zero interest in trophies and that has forced many to move their goalposts in terms of defining Football but to act like Trophies are just a meh side show is laughable stuff.
It’s what all ambitious players want. It’s something to look back on in future years. Something to show your kids etc...
For the more shallow ones, maybe yes. For most top players, no, the money isn’t enough, they want to win things too.
I already have other hobbies I think it's sad if your football enjoyment depends on trophies. Well over 90% of football teams do not win trophies. Football is like all sports it's about enjoying the game and if you don't get that then what is the point?
So why aren't they clamouring to sign for clubs like Celtic, FC Copenhagen or Dinamo Zagreb? Clubs whose failure to win a trophy in any season is listed as one of the signs of the apocalypse?
Because those clubs don’t win the trophies that matter to a top player. They want a Prem or la liga winners medal, not some worthless piece of tat like a Sweatie championship medal.
It's well acknowledged CL participation opens up the level of players you can attract, players won't join you and state the reason for joining was because you won the League Cup for instance. But with CL participation delivering your club higher calibre players, that should in turn give you greater chances of winning stuff, both domestically and European. Yet 11 years without a trophy is damn right poor for Spurs, not least because it's a long time in general but this team for many years, especially under Harry and Poch, were/ is good enough to win something. With regards to the finishes of Spurs and Chelsea last season, it's safe to say Chelsea fans would've been happiest. 3rd place and a nice trophy is a better feeling than 4th and runners up in the biggest trophy, finishing runners up in any trophy is heartbreaking whether it's the League Cup or the Champions League. The financial factor only really matters more to the clubs. That's not to say that in theory Spurs arguably had a better season but from a fan perspective, I'd have much rather had their season than ours - especially after that ****ing final! Worst final in history and we were on the losing end of it.
We've had longer trophyless periods in the past. Our record is thirty years. Every other club in England has had similar fallow periods. ENIC wants trophies as much as anyone but there is no way of guaranteeing them.
Here is the most amazing team I ever saw and they didn't win in two world cup finals but no matter, those who were about at the time always remember Holland and Total Football much more than the teams who won the trophy. The real prize was the way they played football. For me that has been the prize of being a Spurs supporter. It's all those games watching all those great players doing amazing things with a ball and teams moving the ball like silk past the opposition. Finals are often disappointing anyway, I have seen far more poor finals than really memorable games. So the poor final this year in the CL was almost par for the course. The games that lead to the final where were the real enjoyment was.
The film and time itself doesn't really do that Dutch side justice. They were just clearly the best side on the planet and football had not been played like that on world stage before although the roots of it were in a Spurs team of the 1950's "The great Hungarian team of 1953 played the same fast, short-passing game that humiliated England and was played by Tottenham Hotspur from 1949 to 1953. During that reign they won the then second division championship, followed by the first division championship, and followed that up by being runners-up to Manchester United and FA Cup semi-finalists. In 1952 they toured North America playing a style of football called “push and run”, a fluid, fast-moving style that entertained capacity crowds wherever they played. That Spurs team was managed by my father, Arthur Rowe, who had won championships while in charge of Chelmsford City, a Southern League club, from 1946 to 1949. After a stellar career as a Tottenham player in the 1930s, my father took a coaching position in Budapest, Hungary, before returning to England in 1939 to join the army. In Budapest were sown the seeds of the “push and run” approach, which for the next 13 years, incubated and ultimately manifested itself in that great Hungarian team. But it was a style that was first played by the glorious Spurs team of 1949-53. In an FT article of July 1 1998, Peter Aspden wrote of “the beautiful version of the game, invented by the Hungarian side of the 1950s”. The Hungarians did not “invent” the beautiful version of the game. If anyone “invented” it, it was my father. On my wall at home there is a photograph of my father with Ferenc Puskas, the peerless member of the Hungarian team of the 1950s, and my thoughts turn to what kind of a game might have been played between those two great teams. What a feast it would have been." Graham A. Rowe, Los Angeles, CA 90049, US
So what's the cutoff point for when a league winner's medal is worthless? Is it £200k a week, perchance?
