Liverpool V Tottenham, Sunday April 30, 4.30pm
Referee: Paul Tierney. Assistants: Richard West, Matthew Wilkes. Fourth official: John Brooks. VAR: David Coote. Assistant VAR: Wade Smith.
It’s amazing to think we were nine points back from Spurs just a couple of weeks ago. Fast forward and we’re one point behind with a 13-goal swing. It’s just the latest in a series of bad moves for Tottenham, who are retaking their rightful position as a meme team.
So, with that in mind, here is:
How to Piss Off a Fan Base in 12 Easy Steps (with apologies to Bill Simmons) AKA
“Lads, it’s Tottenham” Just under five years ago, in May 2018, Tottenham had clinched their third top three finish in a row, reached the semi-finals of the FA Cup and finished top of a Champions League group featuring Real Madrid. They had a young, talented, hard-working team, the best striker in the country, who’d just re-signed to a long-term contract, a young manager they’d just locked down until summer 2023 and a brand new stadium set to open in time for the new season. And unlike Dortmund or Monaco, they had a chairman with an iron fist who’d prevent the team from being picked clean. Fast forward five years and the fans are calling for the board to be sacked as the team slide towards irrelevance. So, what went wrong?
1. Pochettino was vocal about needing reinforcements to take the next step, and Tottenham responded by buying…no one. They’d identified Jack Grealish as a potential fit, but Daniel Levy tried to negotiate the £6 million price down further, only for Aston Villa to then be taken over at which point their money problems disappeared. Grealish would be sold to Manchester City for £100 million three years later and Tottenham are still looking for an effective creative option who can stay fit. The heartbeat of their midfield, Moussa Dembele, left in the same window, but the failure to sell Danny Rose, Fernando Llorente or Vincent Janssen meant there was nothing in the kitty. And besides,
Brexit. This was the first time in 15 years a Premier League club had signed no one in a summer transfer window.
2. Spurs had ploughed hundreds of millions into their plush new stadium, which was due to host their second home game of the new season. Unfortunately, faulty wiring pushed the opening back six months to March 2019, and when it finally opened it was hugely overbudget: £1.2 billion, or roughly three times the original estimate. By early 2021, Tottenham had the highest outstanding debt of any European club, most of which was from the stadium build. Their fans have the priciest season tickets in Europe too, but at least
they can watch American football nearby. The most recent power cut, incidentally, was three months ago before their game against us.
3. Tottenham somehow wiggled their way through to a Champions League final in 2019 but their slender squad wasn’t equipped to compete on two fronts so they lost seven of their last 12 league games, limping into fourth with a last-day draw at Everton. They conceded early in the final and spent the rest of the game huffing and puffing before we got a second late on.
What a pity, but at least they’d have the means to strengthen. Pochettino handed Levy a shopping list that included Donny van de Beek and Nicolò Zaniolo, but only got Tanguy Ndombele and Ryan Sessegnon plus Giovanni Lo Celso on loan. There was no replacement for Kieran Trippier either, which left Serge Aurier as the club’s sole senior right back. Only David Luiz gave away more penalties in the next season and a half.
4. Amazon Prime had made a documentary show about Manchester City that season and Tottenham were keen to do the next series, giving their worldwide profile a boost while portraying the club as an up-and-coming model of professionalism. Unfortunately, they forgot Man City are run more efficiently than a dictator’s holiday home, while they are Spurs. When the show came out at the end of the next season, it made several of the players look lazy and/or dumb, which was accurate but probably not what the club was expecting.
5. Still, at least Pochettino didn’t have to worry about being in it much. He was out by November, Levy pulling the trigger after a slow start to the season had them in 14th. Pochettino had got Tottenham closer to a title than they’d been in decades, showing an ability to get the best out of cheap signings, develop youth, play proactive and attacking football, and get along with pretty much everyone around him. The natural response was to seek out his polar opposite as a replacement. Levy had already found him in Jose Mourinho, a year out from being sacked from Man United after spending a fortune, failing to win the league and spending most of his last few months blaming the same players he’d signed. Still, Amazon were happy.
6. Spurs decided to furlough their staff during the 2020 lockdown and while it angered their fans, many clubs tried that and changed their minds soon afterwards, so we don’t have to dwell on it. But Christian Eriksen’s contract was up in summer 2020 and after 18 months of being lowballed by Daniel Levy on an extension, he’d decided to run down his contract. Instead, Levy sold him to Inter Milan. His replacement in attacking midfield? Lo Celso, who’d recorded an amazing zero goals and zero assists in his 14 games on loan, and the club paid £27 million to make the move permanent. On top of a £15 million loan fee. He would eventually finish his Tottenham career with one goal and three assists in 55 league games.
7. Mourinho managed to pull Spurs back up to sixth, riding a wave of post-lockdown form to pip Wolves on goal difference. His first ’real’ window saw him banish pretty much every one of the club’s young prospects out on loan while signing washed up Joe Hart on a free transfer and spending £50 million on Matt Doherty, Sergio Reguilón and Joe Rodon. Number still playing for Spurs? Zero. Transfer fees received? Zero. He also signed Pierre-Emile Højbjerg, who did okay, but after a bright start the team stalled, and Mourinho’s relentlessly defensive tactics, disconnect with the squad and lack of an attacking plan or fitness standards led to him being sacked in April, when the team was seventh. Still in with a shot of European qualification, Tottenham decided the caretaker manager would be Ryan Mason, a 29-year old whose managerial experience extended to coaching their under-19s. They finished seventh.
8. The day after the Mourinho sacking, Tottenham announced they would be one of 12 clubs to join a new European Super League. The club’s Supporters Trust immediately put out a statement accusing the board of betraying the club. Spurs backed down shortly afterwards, once it had become clear the bigger English clubs were backing out anyway.
9. After firing the famously mercurial Mourinho, Tottenham decided it was time to copy what everyone else was doing and appoint a director of football. They chose Fabio Paratici, who had overseen the decline of Juventus from seven-in-a-row Serie A winners and Champions League contenders to a fourth-place finish and a £200 million annual loss. Paratici would later have to resign after being banned from football for two and a half years by FIFA (by FIFA!) because of conspiring with other clubs to artificially inflate player fees, something Spurs couldn’t have possibly known about unless they’d actually looked at Juve’s transfer dealings in the preceding two years.
10. Paratici’s first job was to find a new manager. After being rejected by Champions League winner Hansi Flick, the club interviewed Mauricio Pochettino, Antonio Conte (more on him later), Gennaro Gattuso and Paulo Fonseca (rejected by Paratici for being too attacking) before settling on the cheapest option, Nuno Espirito Santo, who’d just taken Wolves to a 13th place finish. Transfers that summer: £22 million winger Bryan Gil, who was shipped off on loan 18 months later after two Premier League starts, and £26 million right back Emerson Royal. At least he started a few games, even if Spurs fans’ abiding memories will be a brainless red card in a North London derby and his dad claiming he needs to join a bigger club after the Newcastle shellacking last week.
11. Espirito Santo lasted four months, enough time for Daniel Levy to remember he actually wanted a fluid, attacking coach. Still, at least that two-year contract didn’t cost much to pay off. The ‘fluid attacking coach’ turned out to be Antonio Conte. In one sense, hiring a proven winner like Conte was a coup. In retrospect, it confirmed Tottenham as the next rung down for sacked Chelsea managers (with Graham Potter probably the next example). Conte initially did well, lifting Spurs into a fourth place finish with help from new signings Kulusevski and Bentancur. That was the same window when Dele Alli, who the club said in 2016 they wouldn’t sell for £100 million, was passed off to Everton on a free. But a £155 million summer outlay yielded flop after flop. By March, after months of moaning, Conte – ‘the manager Tottenham
thought they were getting when they hired Mourinho’ – lost patience, throwing the players, the chairman and the club itself under the bus in
one of the funniest press conferences in football history.
12. Unfortunately, Conte was never going to be able to go on after that rant, a CM Punk-level employment suicide note. Hilariously, despite exiting the Champions League and FA Cup in the preceding weeks, Tottenham weren’t battling relegation or languishing in midtable. They were fourth and in line for the Champions League. Instead of clearing the bad air, Spurs gave the caretaker job to Conte’s assistant, Christian Stellini, who lasted four matches. After somehow losing to relegation candidates Bournemouth in injury time and 6-1 to Newcastle in “the worst game he’d ever seen,” Stellini was toast. His replacement? Who else but Ryan Mason? And who else but Tottenham?
So, here we are. Tottenham just drew their last game against Man United while we’ve won our last three in the league and are unbeaten in five. This game is at home too, where we’ve generally been very strong. We’re trying out a new system but so are Spurs apparently, a 4-3-3 with Perisic in midfield and three proper attackers. I don’t care. We have the chance to leapfrog them into fifth. After that, let the chips fall where they may. Come on you Redmen!
