Right, I've taken the time to compose my thoughts on what just happened, and what it means.
We've guaranteed a finish above Arsenal for the first time in two and a half decades, more or less. In doing so, we have broken the points total we set last week, and have now reached 77 points - within touching distance of 80, *80* goddamn points, a number I never dreamed I would ever see us reaching, back in the strange old days of the late 1990's and 2000's. That was United or Chelsea territory, I thought. Not for clubs like us, toddling along trying to build our own story outside of the spotlight, filled with imperfections and dreams of glory routinely dashed at the final hurdle. Not for Tottenham Hotspur.
And yet, here it is.
I won't say too much about finishing above *that lot* going forward, because I agree that we shouldn't stoop to their despicably clammy little level. Let them envy, let them gurn, let them rage. They do not define us, and *will* not define us as we move to a better, broader, more noble world than the one they have made their rotten abode.
But, before I put it out of my mind..I'd like to thank some people.
Thank you, Martin Jol...for making us believe again. For taking a damaged, hurting club and slowly building us back up...slowly, gently encouraging us to dream again.
Thank you, Juande Ramos. For showing us, for the first time, that it could be done. That the days were not eternal where Arsenal strutted at the top while we stayed, bleeding and defeated, far below. That we could do to them exactly what they had done to us at their pinnacle - that we could destroy them, completely and utterly, on our way to bigger things.
Thank you, Harry Redknapp. For igniting our imaginations. For taking a club wallowing at its lowest ebb after yet another false dawn, and making us go out there and simply *be* what we imagined ourselves to be. For echoing, for the first time, the distant memories of glory days and glory moments under the floodlights of the grand old Lane..for taking us up to a level where we could dream of the golden dawn beyond the brightening horizon. And for making us believe that we could beat that lot in the league... at the Lane...at the Emirates...anywhere.
Thank you, Andre Villas-Boas. For instilling a grit and heart in a young Tottenham side, and taking them along as you broke a hoodoo at Old Trafford, beat *them* yet again, and drove a young Welshman to greatness even as we stretched out and came *so close* to the success that had eluded us for so long..the hoodoo that, yet, could not be broken.
Thank you, Tim Sherwood. For taking another damaged, beaten side and at least making us play again, if nothing else. And for giving a gangly, awkward young Englishman his first chance as a player for Tottenham Hotspur Football Club.
Thank you, Mauricio Pochettino. For completing the job that all your predecessors had started and left unfinished, over the course of a long, tumultuous decade. For making us a side that none even dared to dream about back in the days when the world looked so grossly unfair and Tottenham Hotspur looked lost in the mists of our own self-destruction. For taking every hoodoo that we had, and smashing it to the ground - for gently lifting our heads, and making us believe in ourselves and what we were capable of. For guiding this flawed, stumbling club to the glory that it always strived for - for bringing hope where there was none, pride were there was only fear, and vindication where there was only self-doubt and failure.
And, finally....thank you, Daniel Levy. For everything - the successes, the failures, the memories, the happiness and the sadness. Thank you for learning from it all, and taking it like a man when me and half of White Hart Lane called for your head after yet another false dawn, another stumble in the gloriously *human* history of an uncertain old club trying again to stand on its own two feet.
This has been coming for many, many years. And the efforts and lives of many people have preceded what we have managed to do today.
Thank you.