SUIYHA
Scott Parker
A lot's been made of Wembley, injuries and Moussa Sissoko, but I think we need to take a step back and consider just how long our poor European performances have been going on for now.
When we qualified for European competition for the first time in ages in 2006, Jol's team set a British record if eight consecutive wins in the competition, a run that was only ended when the eventual winners, Sevilla, were given a ridiculous penalty when we were leading at their place. The following season we lost to Getafe in Jol's last game, that was only our second European defeat at the Lane in our entire history up to that point (the other being against Real Madrid in 1985). We had plenty of memorable European nights over the next couple of years, with those wins over the two Milan clubs in the Champions League being the pinnacle.
But since that Champions League campaign six seasons ago, something has been badly wrong. Even putting aside the facts that English teams are generally not as dominant in Europe as they were a few years ago, or that we've rested players in the Europa League, we've been unusually poor in European games.
Over those six campaigns, I'd ask you to think of how many really impressive Spurs performances there have been. We've stuck a few past a few part timers from Eastern Europe at the Lane a couple of times, but how many times have we come up against credible opposition and risen properly to the challenge?
Beating Inter 3-0 was great, but that Inter team was terrible and finished 9th in Serie A and they still spanked us 4-1 in the return leg. It was also good to see us win against Fiorentina and Monaco last season. But other than those games? I can't think of anything. Meanwhile, we are usually being well beaten by every half-decent team we face, whether it's Dortmund, Fiorentina (2015), Besiktas, Benfica or Basel...even Dnipro gave us a real scare and we lost to Anderlecht in the group stages last season. Let's not even talk about the time we finished behind Rubin Kazan and PAOK Salonika and failed to get out of the Europa League group stages.
Yet in that time, we have had fantastic results against all of the big teams in England, we outperform many teams domestically who outperform us in Europe and we've seen plenty of our players excel for their countries. We look to be far stronger on paper than we're demonstrating in European competition. This seems to be a far deeper issue than Pochettino or any of the players. Why do you think we're struggling so badly?
When we qualified for European competition for the first time in ages in 2006, Jol's team set a British record if eight consecutive wins in the competition, a run that was only ended when the eventual winners, Sevilla, were given a ridiculous penalty when we were leading at their place. The following season we lost to Getafe in Jol's last game, that was only our second European defeat at the Lane in our entire history up to that point (the other being against Real Madrid in 1985). We had plenty of memorable European nights over the next couple of years, with those wins over the two Milan clubs in the Champions League being the pinnacle.
But since that Champions League campaign six seasons ago, something has been badly wrong. Even putting aside the facts that English teams are generally not as dominant in Europe as they were a few years ago, or that we've rested players in the Europa League, we've been unusually poor in European games.
Over those six campaigns, I'd ask you to think of how many really impressive Spurs performances there have been. We've stuck a few past a few part timers from Eastern Europe at the Lane a couple of times, but how many times have we come up against credible opposition and risen properly to the challenge?
Beating Inter 3-0 was great, but that Inter team was terrible and finished 9th in Serie A and they still spanked us 4-1 in the return leg. It was also good to see us win against Fiorentina and Monaco last season. But other than those games? I can't think of anything. Meanwhile, we are usually being well beaten by every half-decent team we face, whether it's Dortmund, Fiorentina (2015), Besiktas, Benfica or Basel...even Dnipro gave us a real scare and we lost to Anderlecht in the group stages last season. Let's not even talk about the time we finished behind Rubin Kazan and PAOK Salonika and failed to get out of the Europa League group stages.
Yet in that time, we have had fantastic results against all of the big teams in England, we outperform many teams domestically who outperform us in Europe and we've seen plenty of our players excel for their countries. We look to be far stronger on paper than we're demonstrating in European competition. This seems to be a far deeper issue than Pochettino or any of the players. Why do you think we're struggling so badly?
