The end of the campaign being the bit where he leaves for England and we struggle to get new players in because his old farts are clogging up the wage bill. We then dip a few places only for him to point and say "See, I told you - I raised their level sooooooo high".
He has raised our level high. He took over when we were bottom of the league and we finished 9th. I absolutely agree that it wasn't tough to do because the sqaud we had was clearly too good to be fighting relegation and therefore I never really bought into the hoopla about what a great job he did.
However!
That pre-season we buy Bassong, Crouch, and the Kyle brothers. A centre back with potential, a decent but sometimes laughing stock target man with a poor goalscoring record, and two players that wouldn't play for us that season. And what happened? We fudging finish 4th.
We finished 9th before that pre season. Behind Fulham, Everton, Villa. Next to West Ham. Just above Emirates Marketing Project. Emirates Marketing Project then went and spent hundreds of millions on the likes of Robinho, Tevez, Adebayor, Barry, Lescott, Toure, Zabaleta, Bridge, De Jong etc etc. Offering obscene wages in the process. Did they finish above us? Did they fudge!
Do people realise how massive of an acheivement that was? Do people realise our resources were actually not that much greater than Villa's, or even West Ham who were offering more wages than us. Certainly not more than Liverpool. And absolutely not more than Emirates Marketing Project, who blew us out of the water. Harry is well and truly a victim of his own success. The performances he extracted out of the likes of Assou-Ekotto, Bassong, Kaboul, Huddlestone, Modric, Bale and Pavyluchenko was the best of their career. None of those players had performed in the Premier League to that level until Harry came along. He not only got them performing, he got them beating Emirates Marketing Project in their own stadium in order to finish ahead of them and their oil money.
He is absolutely, 100% right when he says we have never had it so good. We are only up there because of good management. The other teams have a far bigger budget than us. We have good players in the squad largely because Harry improved them to perform to that level, or because Harry has signed them. We are punching well above our weight and the only reason people think that isn't the case is because we have spent the last 2 years playing some of the best football and having some of the best times as Spurs fans we have seen for decades.
Yes, Jol got us two 5th place finishes, but that was a different Premier League. It was a time where there was no Emirates Marketing Project money, it was a time where Liverpool were winning the Champions League under Benitez, and it was a time where Saudi Sportswashing Machine were a laughing stock. We were clearly best of the rest then. Now, there are 5, if not 6 teams that should really be finishing above us based on finances and clout with wages. We should be in and around the upper mid-table with Sunderland, Villa and Everton. But we've pulled away.
Jumping from 9th to 4th with the type of signings we made was such a huge acheivement that has spoilt a lot of fans. Harry is absolutely right. I like what he is saying, because it should take the pressure off the players. I disagreed with him saying we could win the league because it puts the pressure on, when we would have to have serious luck to go injury free and have a shot at donig so. The players are snatching at shots right now, and their passing isn't as crisp. They need to know that they can fail in order to loosen up again. Harry's comments aren't going to stop them trying, but it's good to be reminded that we are actually playing well above where we realistically should be, rather than be seen as failures that have fudged up a title challenge.
