I think you're being a tad harsh here, Vim. I'm considered one of the younger posters on our board and I grew up watching and supporting us from the early 90's. If that isn't loyalty, I don't know what is. In fact I often envy the older posters on here who at the very least got to see us achieve genuine glory in their lifetimes. I cannot be certain of that. It's been over 60 years since we last won the league. Who's to say it won't be the same length of time until we next do so, especially with the modern game as financially doped as it is? So it's all well and good patronising (forgive me) younger fans with tales of signing "we'll support you ever more", but you sang that just 4 years after watching us lift two league cups and the UEFA Cup in successive seasons! Will I still be around in 60 years? No idea, but for now suffice it to say that some of my happiest memories of watching Spurs include a diving header from Allan Nielsen at the end of a truly dire game of football, and the ball accidentally hitting Jonathan Woodgate's face before trickling over the line. I also look back on an away draw at Arsenal, 45mins against Ajax and one final unbeaten game at the old WHL with particular fondness, among other moments. What all of them have in common is that they either don't involve or culminate in a trophy, or they do - but said trophy was the most minor one we competed for. I think I speak for the overwhelming majority of fans when I say that it isn't "entitled" to expect at the very least to compete in a serious way for the major trophies and to play good, entertaining football when doing so. Very few genuine fans expect us to actually win trophies every season. Granted, more than once per two decades would be a huge plus, but especially in the modern doped-up era it is unrealistic to expect much more. If we are called upon to pay the highest ticket prices in the realm, this is the very, very least we can expect. Not from a place of entitlement. Common decency is closer to it. To compete and play good football. I ask for nothing more. What has made the past 4 years so painful is that we used to do exactly this under Pochettino, and since his departure we've had to watch other teams of similar financial standing (Liverpool and Arsenal) do the same. To compete and play good football doing so. Is that too much to ask from the 8th wealthiest club in the entire world? Or is it still being entitled?
As I made the initial comment about entitlement that Vim responded to, probably fair to chuck my 2 cents in and clarify a bit. I’m also the youngest Spurs poster on this board I think. For context. I don’t at all think that wanting the club to compete for and win trophies is in any way entitled, not even while playing good football. Myself and countless other posters have been complaining about the lack of direction of the club and that doesn’t cost money, it requires good thinking. Many other clubs in the PL and around the world manage this on lower budgets than us. So what do I mean when I say entitlement? At the board level it feels like the management see the delivery of the new stadium as job done, we’re one of the big boys now. To an extent they’re right as it secures the long term financial future of the club, but so many lessons exist about clubs falling away on the pitch from a secure financial situation. For years the strategy of the club was focused around preparing for, building and financing the stadium (and training ground to a lesser extent) and now it’s all done there doesn’t seem to be a vision. I don’t think Levy is a complete fool so rather than attribute that to idiocy I think it’s more a matter of complacency. Which is completely unwarranted. The board is unwilling or unable to identify and execute a plan for what they want us to be on the pitch. Everything is opportunistic. They seem to think we can just turn up and compete. The players as a group have smacked of entitlement for years. Since the latter days of the Poch era there seems to be a lack of drive. Jose summed it up well and Conte did too. While both managers were flawed and arguably not the right fits for the club, their assessment of the mentality of the squad was spot on. Who is pushing them to succeed? Who is driving excellence? A manager is important in any environment but no matter how talented your employees are, you don’t succeed without creating a culture of excellence and relentless pursuit of performance, and that needs to come from the ground up. A manager can encourage and enable leaders and set standards, but players also need to take ownership. Despite the large number of players at the club who have been and are successful national team and club captains, this mentality within the group has been absent for the best part of half a decade now. Perhaps this comes from the top, perhaps the players simply think they’ve done enough and simply need to turn up. When it comes to the fans we all want the same thing. Good football, make the best possible fist of winning trophies. While, as Power said on another thread, we perhaps all have different opinions on how that is to be accomplished, we all want the same outcome. I don’t think that’s entitlement from the fans. My comment about the fans comes from the point of view of wanting immediate success and neglecting the road to get there. The twitter fanbase is toxic and the crowd at games seems to be increasingly so too. Abusing our own players, booing at half time. What’s going to happen if the road to success under a new manager isn’t a constant upward curve? The treatment of Porro and Sanchez was disgusting and IMO unwarranted. And I worry that a increasingly vocal proportion of fans don’t have the patience for a rebuild that will need to be long and comprehensive if we’re going to take the next step now the infrastructure is done. Again, this comment is not directed at anyone on this board, but more a concern about the general direction of the fans. I used to believe that people just wanted to see direction and a clear vision (“trust the process”, as much as I hate that phrase) but this last weekend and most of this season frankly is making me worry that this won’t be enough for fans. We won’t be able to just arrive at the ground after pre-season with a new manager and strut our stuff and get away with it. It’s going to take longer than that. We might be the 8th wealthiest club in the world but the magnitude of the culture change from top to bottom, not to mention actually getting the investment in players, coaches and DoF-style appointments and everything else behind the scenes right, is going to take time and is going to be painful. Spurs fans pay through the nose to watch their team and the minimum to be expected is commitment on the pitch and a clear and well executed vision off it. That’s not entitlement, but I worry the club will labour under unrealistic expectations of immediate results, and that this will affect the atmosphere and general discourse and vibe around our next manager. And that’s my main point about the fans. Sorry for the rant but I hope this clarifies my position. I obviously can’t speak for Vim.
Entitled Spurs fans is probably a perfect example of an oxymoron. There’s absolutely nothing to look forward to both short and long term. We’re playing awful football under an interim of the b-tech version of the manager we just sacked. Our DoF‘s future is in limbo. The club’s unofficial mouthpiece has basically said Levy’s lost control. Our captain is at the end of his career. Our secondary superstar isn’t getting younger and having a below-par season. Our primary superstar is likely to want out this summer. It’s evident to everyone there’s been no plan for who the next manager is, just as there wasn’t when we sacked Jose and then spent the summer pissing about just to settle on Nuno. There’s also no plan for the footballing philosophy and types of players we want as evidenced by how we waste countless £ms scatter-gunning on utter dross and because of that we then see the same players who’ve consistently let us down for years get umpteen chances and then to top all that off we have to pay the highest ticket prices in all of football. There’s no entitlement amongst Spurs fans, the growing number are just getting increasingly fed up at the ineptitude of this football club over the last five or so years.
Without meaning to sound patronising, the bit I've highlighted is imo probably the best summary of where we're at as a club I've seen anywhere. Re your second point, I understand your concern but I do think by and large the Spurs fanbase is far more forgiving than we give ourselves credit for. We are generally pretty easy-going and good-humoured. I think this season though is 'breaking point' for many fans and it is fuelled by genuine fear - which I think we all partly feel and which is driving an increasingly passionate and (dare I say it) confrontational atmosphere on this board - that our next step as a club might be catastrophically bad if it follows the pattern of the past 4 seasons. 'Catastrophic' here isn't meant in isolation, it is meant as part of the broader context which is per plain facts on the ground: City aren't going anywhere, Arsenal appear to finally have arrived somewhere, United and Chelsea will just spend another half a billion to strengthen, Liverpool will come back stronger and Newcastle will prove an evolved threat. That's 6 teams to be fearful of before we even mention the likelihood that Brighton and certainly Villa - who are a pretty big club with a large following - will probably push on next year and get even tougher. Finishing behind 8 teams is catastrophic and the fear-inducing part of it is: it isn't entirely unrealistic, especially if Kane leaves this summer. That's what's driving this groundswell of toxicity. Not entitlement! Fear. Not fear of the unknown, either. Fear of the known. Known rivals listed above, a known pattern of poor decisions spanning close to 5 years now. And being brutally honest, I'd be ok with finishing mid-table next season, if only I could trust that it is 'Step 1' in a coherent long-term vision that will once again see us outflank the likes of Brighton, Villa, Newcastle and even eventually Arsenal, Liverpool and United - just like we did in the pre-new stadium era of ENIC! It is the post-stadium era that worries me and so many others, for the very reasons you've articulated superbly. And because of those reasons, and the pattern I've watched unfolding for 5 years, I am fearful that if we finish mid-table next season, we'll stay there for years to come. Just like we used to do, before ENIC.
I don’t disagree about the fear. It’s very real. And perhaps a better way of framing it than entitlement. The landscape of the league is entirely different to how it was when Levy last made a successful managerial appointment and unless we get things right more consistently from the top to the bottom of the club then we’re screwed.
How will we know that it’s a ‘rebuild’ that we are partaking in? how will we know that we are not just spluttering along like we have been for the past 5 years and that moment is being confused as a ‘rebuild’ by some?
It's a good question. There are definitely signs that seem tried and tested across the footballing world, many of which we ourselves witnessed, especially under Harry and Poch during whose tenures (unlike BMJ) task one of the remit was to first bring us back up to a 'par' that had been lost under their predecessor, so something of a 'rebuild' was necessary. I keep both eyes open for: 1) Give the manager time. Not hitting the big red button at the first sign of panic. We haven't resisted the urge to panic since Kane's last minute winner against Villa in 2014 gave Poch a reprieve for a few more months and the rest is history. 2) A coherent and sensible transfer policy. Prioritise signing promising youngsters (we were improving enormously under Paratici in this regard). Cease expensive vanity signings that leave most fans scratching their heads. Back the manager by strengthening areas of the team that clearly need strengthening, instead of muddling along on a wing and a prayer until the next window opens. 3) Stop rewarding mediocrity. Players should under no circumstances be awarded a new contract unless they have played an entire season at a significantly higher level than they played the previous one. A purple patch should not lead to us dusting off the fountain pen and bandying about 5 year contracts like they're going out of fashion. And yes, this will in all likelihood put an end to contracts signed mid season. Absurd concept. Like paying a builder in full before the roof and insulation are done. 4) Establish a clear style of play that permeates every level of the club. This also creates a much clearer path from academy to the first team. 5) The last and most obvious one: Progress on the pitch. Players not driven by money do still get excited about joining a project and being part of making history. I like to believe this is what led the likes of Toby, Wanyama, Dele and Son to join us over other big clubs. They could see that we meant business and were eager to contribute to that progress. Ironically, "progress" under Poch was initially very limited. We only finished one place higher than the previous debacle of a season, and with 5 fewer points. But players, like fans, have an ear for certain cues that show a club is moving in the right direction. Off the pitch, it is points 1-4. On the pitch, you'd be looking for a handful of stand-out performances that indicate: when points 1-4 click, this will be some team - and I'd like to be part of that process. That season, it was probably the 5-3 against Chelsea, the 2-1 against Arsenal and the league cup run that did it. Not much else outstanding happened that year, but you don't need 38 outstanding games to indicate progress. Get these points in place, stick to them, back them and success will follow.
4 years ago today we beat Man City in one of the most dramatic UCL quarter finals in history. If you'd told me then that in four years, we'd be led by Antonio Conte's assistant to a 3-2 home defeat by Bournemouth, I'd have laughed myself to a hernia.
The trouble with being the 9th (I think) richest club in the world is that 4 of the 8 above us are playing in the PL and that will soon be 5 if Newcastle retain their current owners. That will mean that anything above 6th place in the PL will be an over achievement. We have of course over achieved a number of times with ENIC so it is possible. The priority has to be returning to entertaining football and that's a mindset and is not reliant on money. In the 60's when Spurs were even higher up the wealth league (in England anyway) Tottenham Hotspur were the team of the 1960s, winning five major trophies – Spurs won three FA Cups, one First Division title and the European Cup Winners' Cup. So if anyone should feel entitled you would think it would be the older posters like me who saw that period. Some of us have been hoping those days would return and not just the football days, but the world is very different now and as Britain continues to decline in world terms so ironically the wealth in English football goes up and up. There are parallels with the decline of ancient Rome here but that's another story. Right now it's very unlikely Spurs will enjoy 60's type success anytime soon but we can return to the 50's and become the team to watch because of the quality of the football. Pochettino produced some great football and we were becoming the team to watch. There are other aspirations than yearning for the almost impossible to achieve. Look at that period when Bielsa produced such exciting football at Leeds or even Brighton now. Looking to win a cup occasionally should not be beyond Spurs but to become a cup side again we have even more need to return to adventurous football. You do not win cups by playing safe defensive football (as Conte may have proved) you need a spirit of adventure and going for it. I hope we can get back to that.
This kind of losers mentality is part of this clubs problem, some of us can remember the days when won European trophies and FA Cups, signed some of the best players and broke the transfer record to get them, in those days the club had sporting ambition. Fans are being charged the highest ticket prices in world football, so have every right to demand better.
So back then we had enough money to break the transfer record and still won the League only once. Our sporting ambition and wealth left us underperforming in the League for 40 seasons until ENIC came along.
ENIC have reached their pinnacle…their part of the journey is done…just because they got us here doesn’t mean they can now start to ruin the football club. Don’t feel too down for them ..they’ve made absolute millions from this club….paid 20 mill…valued at 4 bill? what is required going forth is beyond ENIC and has been for the last 4/5 years…they have reached their point of incompetency. Some can see it, others are inflicted and suffer from Stockholm syndrome Im afraid time to go
It's perfectly reasonable to believe that we would be better off if ENIC left and it's perfectly reasonable to believe the opposite. I think the facts support the second view on balance. There is no reason to think that either of us is suffering from any sort of syndrome because we disagree.
I haven't posted since the match on Saturday, nor have I watched any football. I wanted some time to collect my thoughts and calm down a bit, frankly. I'm not sure that it's helped. I left the stadium disgusted, disappointed and angry. Not at the performance, the result, the players or the coaching. I was appalled by the behaviour of some of our fans. Booing and heckling one of our own players before he's even set foot on the pitch? What are we, Arsenal? That's not the casual fans or the tourists, either. It's the regulars. I've heard some crass, unnecessary comments in the past, but this was new. I dislike plenty of things about the modern game, but this is on another level.
Absolutely bang on. It isn't Sanchez's fault that he isn't as good as we expected and I've never faulted his commitment. He is effectively our fifth choice centre back and he is good enough for that. To boo him is indefensible.
To be fair cheering Sanchez does nothing either, so I wouldn’t be too fussed about it, he gives goals away regardless.
Booing our own player is disgraceful. Not on the same level as cheering a murderous dictator, though. Still, at least he isn't running you in a reasonable, realistic manner, eh? Ashley is a Chelsea fan, so I guess it evens out.
