DubaiSpur
Ian Walker
Surprised this thread hasn't come up yet. It's been a tumultuous year - in a sporting sense, this sort of upheaval was something the club hasn't seen since 2008-2009, the famous '2 points, 8 games, 1 hero' season.
In a societal sense, the onset of COVID-19 and the sheer scale of global pandemic are unprecedented, and probably has no equal in the history of football in Europe, outside of the world wars.
Tottenham Hotspur can't really do much about the latter - but we can definitely talk about the former.
So...what was the 'story' of this season? What, in the end, did it mean for this club?
I'm going to suggest that this season is...*was* the end of a cycle. It's not a revolutionary thought, but it's the most accurate way I can describe what I've moodily brooded over. At the start of it, our optimism was limitless - we had just lost the CL final, but Liverpool had done that and gone on to win the thing the following season. There was no reason we couldn't do it - why couldn't it be us?
The reason, as it turned out, was that it was too late for us to even dream about something like that. Liverpool reaching the CL final in 2017-2018 was right in the middle of their evolution under Klopp - and as soon as they lost that final, they went out and brought in Alisson, Fabinho and Keita pretty much straightaway - they built on that success, and their peaks were ahead of them, not behind them.
For us, the peak of our evolution was in 2016-2017 - it was the season we reached our peak, and needed Fabinho/Alisson/Keita-like additions to keep going. The problem was, we then made some dreadful decisions, selling Walker and replacing him with Serge Aurier - and then we fell even further because of the chairman's parsimony and criminal negligence, spending 18 long months between January 2018 and July 2019 signing absolutely no one to reinforce a quickly ageing, tiring team that was losing belief by the week. Our peaks were behind us even in 2018-2019.
Because of that, the CL final was our last gasp - the last feeble attempt at making real the five years of hopes and dreams that this group of players and the best manager we've had in 50 years had given us. When we lost it...the cycle died.
And Poch was a victim of that. We spent two years from 2017 to 2019 outrunning our plummeting xG and climbing xGA figures, but they got us in the end. And we lost the best coach and man we'd had in charge for 50 years because of it.
The best analogue to this season would be 2013/2014 - a season where 'slowly drifting' was the only way to describe what had happened to the club after the Bale sale and the Fab Seven. This was a redux of that season - matched it almost to a tee. And there's ultimately little to be said about this season other than that it was an aimless one that most at the club will want to put behind us, whatever comes next.
Where we go now is an interesting thing to think about. In Mourinho, we have a manager who has won it all, a world-class coach who has a need to burnish his reputation after a couple of bruising spells. And in Levy, we have a chairman who is the worst possible one for an ambitious coach who needs backing to implement his vision. Coming into focus are the futures of Kane and Son, two of our bright stars in an otherwise grim tableau - how long will they stick around now that it's clear that a new cycle needs to begin, and that we need to go through our 2014/2015 and 2015/2016 equivalents *again*? Who will we buy to convince them to stay? How does Mourinho fix our mentality, our legendary spirit of failing at the death? And, looming over it all, the stadium - how soon do we get people back into it, to start paying off that gigantic place?
Lots of questions. And as we head into a hopefully sunny ,hopefully healthier August, I'll leave you with some of the simple moments of happiness this year, that brightened up a lot of otherwise gray days, and made some of the absolutely heartbreaking moments (the night we sacked Poch, for instance) hurt a bit less.
Kane's halfway-line screamer in that pre-season against Juve, making an absolute mug out of Sczezczczczeny.
The Audi Cup victory - the end of our long trophy drought.
Ndombele's thunderous debut goal, in his first game, all the way back when on a sunny August day. How hopeful we all were that we'd gotten a worldie!
Those ludicrous 4 points against City - how we got away with the daylight robberies we managed against City over the past few seasons, I'll never know. They probably had 150 shots to our 15, and yet our record against them's excellent.
Those easy thrashings of Red Star Belgrade - happily on-par moments in a below-par season.
That debut victory for Mourinho against Spam, and the topsy turvy attacking abandon of his first few games.
That hilariously effective ballboy against Olympiakos. Got to have breakfast with the players, which was great.
That Sonny goal (With bonus excitable Korean commentators) - goddamn, what a goal, and what a player.
Jan's last-minute winner against Wolves - au revoir, SuperJan!
Smacking Arsenal down - North London is ours, again. Back in your holes.
Blowing Leicester away in the first half - revenge, and a catharsis for a lot of pent-up anger.
And finally...this picture of this group of boys at the end of this long season, and longer decade. They're not the greatest team in the world, they ended up having sexy mentalities...but goddamn, did they give us a great ride in the glory years of the 2010s.
In a societal sense, the onset of COVID-19 and the sheer scale of global pandemic are unprecedented, and probably has no equal in the history of football in Europe, outside of the world wars.
Tottenham Hotspur can't really do much about the latter - but we can definitely talk about the former.
So...what was the 'story' of this season? What, in the end, did it mean for this club?
I'm going to suggest that this season is...*was* the end of a cycle. It's not a revolutionary thought, but it's the most accurate way I can describe what I've moodily brooded over. At the start of it, our optimism was limitless - we had just lost the CL final, but Liverpool had done that and gone on to win the thing the following season. There was no reason we couldn't do it - why couldn't it be us?
The reason, as it turned out, was that it was too late for us to even dream about something like that. Liverpool reaching the CL final in 2017-2018 was right in the middle of their evolution under Klopp - and as soon as they lost that final, they went out and brought in Alisson, Fabinho and Keita pretty much straightaway - they built on that success, and their peaks were ahead of them, not behind them.
For us, the peak of our evolution was in 2016-2017 - it was the season we reached our peak, and needed Fabinho/Alisson/Keita-like additions to keep going. The problem was, we then made some dreadful decisions, selling Walker and replacing him with Serge Aurier - and then we fell even further because of the chairman's parsimony and criminal negligence, spending 18 long months between January 2018 and July 2019 signing absolutely no one to reinforce a quickly ageing, tiring team that was losing belief by the week. Our peaks were behind us even in 2018-2019.
Because of that, the CL final was our last gasp - the last feeble attempt at making real the five years of hopes and dreams that this group of players and the best manager we've had in 50 years had given us. When we lost it...the cycle died.
And Poch was a victim of that. We spent two years from 2017 to 2019 outrunning our plummeting xG and climbing xGA figures, but they got us in the end. And we lost the best coach and man we'd had in charge for 50 years because of it.
The best analogue to this season would be 2013/2014 - a season where 'slowly drifting' was the only way to describe what had happened to the club after the Bale sale and the Fab Seven. This was a redux of that season - matched it almost to a tee. And there's ultimately little to be said about this season other than that it was an aimless one that most at the club will want to put behind us, whatever comes next.
Where we go now is an interesting thing to think about. In Mourinho, we have a manager who has won it all, a world-class coach who has a need to burnish his reputation after a couple of bruising spells. And in Levy, we have a chairman who is the worst possible one for an ambitious coach who needs backing to implement his vision. Coming into focus are the futures of Kane and Son, two of our bright stars in an otherwise grim tableau - how long will they stick around now that it's clear that a new cycle needs to begin, and that we need to go through our 2014/2015 and 2015/2016 equivalents *again*? Who will we buy to convince them to stay? How does Mourinho fix our mentality, our legendary spirit of failing at the death? And, looming over it all, the stadium - how soon do we get people back into it, to start paying off that gigantic place?
Lots of questions. And as we head into a hopefully sunny ,hopefully healthier August, I'll leave you with some of the simple moments of happiness this year, that brightened up a lot of otherwise gray days, and made some of the absolutely heartbreaking moments (the night we sacked Poch, for instance) hurt a bit less.
Kane's halfway-line screamer in that pre-season against Juve, making an absolute mug out of Sczezczczczeny.
The Audi Cup victory - the end of our long trophy drought.
Ndombele's thunderous debut goal, in his first game, all the way back when on a sunny August day. How hopeful we all were that we'd gotten a worldie!
Those ludicrous 4 points against City - how we got away with the daylight robberies we managed against City over the past few seasons, I'll never know. They probably had 150 shots to our 15, and yet our record against them's excellent.
Those easy thrashings of Red Star Belgrade - happily on-par moments in a below-par season.
That debut victory for Mourinho against Spam, and the topsy turvy attacking abandon of his first few games.
That hilariously effective ballboy against Olympiakos. Got to have breakfast with the players, which was great.
That Sonny goal (With bonus excitable Korean commentators) - goddamn, what a goal, and what a player.
Jan's last-minute winner against Wolves - au revoir, SuperJan!
Smacking Arsenal down - North London is ours, again. Back in your holes.
Blowing Leicester away in the first half - revenge, and a catharsis for a lot of pent-up anger.
And finally...this picture of this group of boys at the end of this long season, and longer decade. They're not the greatest team in the world, they ended up having sexy mentalities...but goddamn, did they give us a great ride in the glory years of the 2010s.
