THFC Psychological Trauma Unit

The pains of Wednesday night have prompted me to do this thread. I'm not a qualified Psychologist and I'm not really bothered that I'm not. I believe there is a problem with us when it comes to psychology. This isn't an off the hook reaction to Wednesday night either, it's something I've been witnessing for so long that it is ingrained into our DNA, it feels. Wednesday was set up for us to flop, that was a gut feeling I was having, however the fool in me always gives me optimism so, naturally, one waits and observes, but guess what, we failed. Last season the FA Cup semi gave me the same feeling before the game and once again we failed. Season before that a similar stand out match was the Lesta game at Home, guess what? We failed. In that very same season, the week where we faced West Ham to hit the summit, guess what? You guessed it. This is not an over reaction, it's been observed over time. When teams like Wigan beat Man City, they actually achieve what we fail to in our 'sink or swim' scenarios. Wigan have even won the Cup a lot more recently than us. Yeah you might think it's a valid argument to say something along the lines of 'but Wigan are ****, a relegation club etc etc'. The point for me still remains though, they still managed to pull through for their moment of glory. We don't do this...last time was Away to City when we got top 4 for the first time under Redknapp. I'm sure in between we have lost a League cup final to United too. We are not entitled to win everything....but it's about time we stopped being content with giving it a good go.

This is football and it moves on very quickly, before we know it the face of the whole team bar maybe 1 or 2 changes. It's not as though any of them actually come out and commit themselves to the badge..it's always ummm and aaar...then before you know it something prompted a departure and the player leaves to join a 'ready to buy a trophy' outfit, win a trophy then smugly justify their departure. In all this my club suffers. These players can't up their game to deliver for my club at such moments and up their game they do or they are not playing for the Madrids, Barca's, City's etc. Yeah I understand the theory that you play better with better players but I don't think that's a given. Relegation candidates go onto win the Premier League and we blame it on some magic dust that was sprinkled over them. For me it's about time the players stopped patting themselves on the back for knocking it about a bit and having a great campaign and getting away with it. It's about time they upped their game at our Club and did our badge proud a bit more..so I for one will be demanding more from them in our shirt and will use this thread after every game to point out the winners from the losers according to me and let's see if we see patterns.

Eric Dier is already sticking out like a sore thumb to me...Poch has raised my eyebrow again. They better up their game for my club not ****ing United or PSG or wherever they aspire to **** off to next, if incase they do.

 

Tell me about your childhood ...

 

I was interested to see if the psychologist was for the team or for us.

I definitely agree with the bit about being content with giving it a good go. ( too much like the other lot).
I am not content with seeing beautiful football played the right way. Don't get me wrong- I insist on it but I want results and victories and the lifting of trophies. Being Mr nice guy isn't enough.

 

If you want psychological trauma, just show any Dutch fan the depth chart their national team has these days

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I think we are struggling to adjust to our steadily evolving stature from underdogs to favourites. You quite rightly point out our qualification for the CL in 2010 and the remarkable end of season run that saw us get there, but we played with a freedom and confidence that was part a reflection of the manager's arm-round-the-shoulder style, part a reflection of the fact that had we finished 5th, it still would've been a significant improvement on the previous season and not a pundit in the land would've batted an eyelid.

The Leicester campaign shifted the sands too quickly for our players or coaching team to keep up. We went from a respectable 5th place to suddenly and unexpectedly challenging for the title. We had zero previous experience and the fact that it was little old leicester meant that all the pressure was on big bad tottenham and none on them. Hence we bottled 2 chances to move top (West Ham away and Arsenal at home) and they were able to play with a freedom that allowed them to win game after game. Zero pressure. We became the pantomime villains despite the fact that our last league title came over half a century ago simply because our wage bill was a bit higher than theirs.

The psychological damage of that campaign was enormous and in my opinion is still being unravelled by our squad and manager. The way we finished the season last year even though there was nothing to play for showed a big step in the right direction.

Fast forward to this season, we get the group of death and low and behold we play with a freedom and confidence that abandoned us on Wednesday simply because we were favourites to progress. By half time the odds were even further stacked in our direction.

Transitioning mentally from underdog to favourite is possibly the toughest aspect of any sport. To be able to cope with the endless scrutiny and criticism plus the volumes of pressure is what separates the Federers of this world from the rest. It is what made Ferguson such a formidable manager. To win from a position of strength is surprisingly more difficult than winning when no one expects it. Chelsea are a perfect case in point. They have followed the same 2-year cycle for ages now. New manager, new players, win major trophies, crash majorly in season 2, get the sack, wash rinse and repeat. The fact that City have taken this long to build a team that looks like it might repeat the dominance of those great SAF teams is testimony to how difficult it is to pull off. The difference? It pains me to say this but for the first time in their very expensive recent history, they have a manager with an almost flawless winning mentality. And that confidence and belief is filtering down to the pitch, same was as Fergie somehow managed to get the likes of Rafael and Fletcher to win multiple league titles.

The key to me is the manager. There is no question that Poch is learning year on year. But the only way to cultivate a winning mentality - an ability to win despite all the pressure and scrutiny and inquests - is to win.

This is why the FA cup is vitally important. More so than the players, our manager needs to taste silver. Until he does, and regularly, he'll never take the next step up.

 

Very true this CK...it is down to Poch to be a bit braver, this thing about needing some luck is flawed because it always deserts us at a critical stage of our development. Therefore it has to be something else..for me it is Poch who needs to change something about his own approach.

 

Once again there are expectations which do not take into account the real world. United, City, Arsenal, Chelsea. These are the only teams who have won trophies in recent years. We have only just joined this elite group, in fact since Pochettino became our manager. Just the last 3 years.
Look at clubs other than the moneyed 4. Liverpool the top of the rest in money terms 6 years since their last trophy win. Spurs 10, Everton the club nearest to us in the last 20 years have not won a trophy for 22 years. Outside the elite the times grow West Ham 36 years, Southampton 41 years.
We are just getting ourselves into a position to compete on a regular basis with the elite PL clubs and the media start a campaign 'until he/we win a trophy we have not done anything. That is just bullshit and you shouldn't buy in to it and raise your expectations and then complain about your disappointment or the imagined failings of the club and management.

We have joined the elite on a far lower budget and without buying ready made superstars. On top of that we have built a world class training facility and are completing a world class stadium. We have also contributed more to the English game of football than the rest of the moneyed teams put together. If we win a trophy it will be a welcome bonus but if you expect or think it can somehow be organised if the manager does this or that, then IMO you are in for a disappointment at a time when you should be enjoying the best Spurs team for years and years. .

 

It's interesting that Pochettino sort of addresses this in his press conference today.
He mentioned the way that Juventus acted off the pitch being an education.
My old favourite Graham Poll did an article for the Fail in 2011 about football's dark arts and it included some similar sentiments.
One part of it specifically mentioned The Old Lady:

"One referee was officiating in Turin and sent two Juventus players off. Not just any players but Edgar Davids and Zinedine Zidane!"
"As he went up the tunnel the club president approached him and told him that not only would he never referee his club again but that he would never referee in Italy again."

He also brought up the tactic of surrounding the ref on big decisions, which we saw on the Vertonghen penalty incident.
It's become far more rare in England, but it seems to still be an accepted practice on the continent.
Pochettino mentioned the half-time pressure that Juve applied to the ref and Poll also brought it up in his article:

"UEFA has worked hard to try and eradicate this with deployment of their delegates in the tunnel area but the Premier League has not."
"All too often a manager will make a strong but often polite point to you to plant a seed of doubt — and it works."
"Claiming the opposing centre forward is backing in to their players all the time when you have given free-kicks for pushes results in a free-kick early in the second half for backing in. Simple but effective."

I doubt that we'll hear about it, but I suspect that Pochettino and Levy will be changing a few things behind the scenes soon.
It's not something that fans really like to think about, but you have to wonder how effective this stuff is.

 

They were still at the ref as they came out for the 2nd half.

 

Of the many, many things wrong with the "This team hasn't won anything so they're not good" Narrative (a Narrative that for some reason never gets applied to Liverpool by any of the ex-Liverpool players now serving as pundits...) is how many examples demonstrate the Narrative holds as much water as a sieve. Case in point, does anyone say our 1998/9 squad was arguably the best we've had during the Premier League era? No? But obviously a team that included Justin Edinburgh and Ramon Vega were great, they won something!

Or there's the examples I usually trot out to prove what utter bollocks that Narrative is, namely the 1974 Dutch team, the 1982 Brazil team, or the 1954 Hungary team - all of which are hailed as great teams, yet how many World Cups did they win between them? Here's a hint: it's the same number as the Faroe Islands.

For actual psychological abuse as a Spurs fan, need I remind people of the seasons where we faced the very real prospect of relegation on more than one occasion as someone best known as little more than a glorified talent show judge spent a decade in a contest with Doug Ellis at Villa to see who could put their hand in their pocket the least yet expected us to be grateful for it, even though by 1998 it was obvious his methods of running the club were more akin to a second-tier chairman looking to make a late push for the play-offs.

And then there's the numerous blots on Levy's copybook from his first decade in charge: trying to curry favour with the fans by hiring Hoddle as a manager that was always destined to fail; getting cold feet when Arnesen suggested bringing in Martin Jol by deciding to hire a Big Name in the horrifically unsuited Jacques Santini; not reining in Damien Comolli that saw Jol marginalised and eventually sacked, and later led to ridiculous amounts of money being pissed away on players we didn't even need while not actually signing players that Jol wanted (and we repeated that mistake five years later with the Baldini Splurge destabilising the team to ridiculous levels); Juande Ramos demonstrate that he had as much to do with Sevilla's success as an F1 driver is responsible for their car going very, very fast in a straight line who was more likely to motivate the players to sneak ketchup in their kit bag than win matches.

...what do you mean that I've depressed you now?

 

After our meltdown and resulting exit from Europe we travel to Bournemouth.

Liverpool dropped points and Chelsea closed the gap to 2 points. Therefore we have a chance to finally overtake Pool this season plus we need to restore the 5 point gap against the Chavs.

Bournemouth are ok but should not be a patch on a team talking about the top end of the table. We should be well up for this to show that we have the mental strength to bounce back plus we need to improve our abilities of taking advantage of rivals slipping up.

Starts today and makes this game a must win.

 

@Spurlock good to see your old avatar back.