Our tradition of playing attractive, entertaining football...

[Baleforce]

I think we're setting our sights a little bit higher than staying in the Premier League. Bolton and West Ham are yo yo clubs. The quality of player we have means our passing game, when played with confidence is good enough to beat most teams at home for starters.

sorry I must have misunderstood your earlier post, I'm not for one minute advocating direct football for us, but for some teams it has brought success, in wimbledons case to a spectacular degree

 

[milo]

Eh? United's history contains as many gritty players as there are witty players; as much brawn as there is skill; as much bullying as there is brilliance. They are a typical, quintessentially British club made deservedly world famous by their tremendous success.

I would venture to suggest that most top-flight clubs have been like that; they are defined by their successes and their quirks, not by their philosophy. Spurs are an exception. Spurs are one of the very few clubs that remain instantly recognizable by their style of football as opposed to their trophy cabinet. From our push-and-run side, through to Bill Nick's brilliant boys and on to Villa, Ardiles, Hoddle, Waddle, Gascoigne, Lineker, Klinsmann, Ginola, Berbatov, Van Der Vaart, Modric......in the modern era, we have always been branded as a 'flair' side, a side that prioritised entertainment over results, style over solidity.

Sure, that has fudged us over many, many times. One boggles at what we could have won with a few world-class 'destroyers' and reducers in the sides of the 70's and 80's. Our philosophy has led many on here to posit that our shaky defenses and lack of mental strength stem from the attacking brand of football we've been associated with. We have been branded 'soft touches' and 'southern softies' far more than I care to remember, and right up to the present day (well, until Harry, anyway), sides still thought they could rough us up and claim the win.

But, in the end, and no matter how much I grumble about it in times of adversity, our style, our tradition...gives us something. Intangible, but it does. We stand out from the rest, simply by refusing to become like the rest. It's hurt us, sure. But it's helped us, too. Spurs have a history of attacking football. It's in our DNA. It's how we will be remembered, and, when we finally do win the big one again, we will have done it in a way that we will be remembered for. We are just one club among many, after all. And no one club can truly claim to be 'more important' than the others. Every club is important to someone. But Spurs have endeavoured, at least,to be 'different'. And in a world of identikit clubs, by and large, a club with a philosophy of entertainment, style, and endeavor...do we really want to throw that away for a few trophies?

Chelsea tried to claim the 'entertainers' mantle in the late 90's and early 2000's. Arsenal have been trying to claim it since Wenger took over. West Ham have been trying to claim it since they apparently won the World Cup.

None of them come close to what we've adhered to over the last sixty years, because that has become our identity, our raison d'etre; for them, it's just a fad.

An excellent post

 

[billyiddo]

Niether

 

[Howard Webb]

Spurs DNA is glory football.

Reality sadly means the players are not able to play for whatever reason. I don't think systems or plans can work unless you've got capable players for that system you set; if by design you can get the right players then often it works but most often life means you've got different people from different regimes.

I'm happy getting our players to even try playing glory football, the alternative is not worth contemplating. The ball is round, it rolls along the ground.