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****OMT****Tottenham Hotspur v West Ham 8pm Friday 5th May

Just read they out ran us yet hardly had the ball. That's a hell of a shift to do that without the ball

We should have been able to exploit that somehow you would assume but clearly not

And Anthony Taylor has been ref for 3 of our last 5 away defeats
 
90291Spur said:
Anthony Taylor is the new lasagne.
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Well from what I red he booked Walker for nothing and should have sent off Noble

The 20 mins I saw they clattered Davies and he waved play on when a card should have bene given. He also Shiism have booked Koiutate when went in the carpet after flattening Walker
 
DubaiSpur said:
You can try as hard as you like, you'll never kill the old Spurs curse. It will lurk, and it will strike, when you least expect it.

Showed up expecting to win, played lethargically and like crap, and never got going. I said at half-time that we needed Dembele on, and that we were being proven unable to pick up Lanzini, which was mystifying given that we were essentially playing a back four plus *two* DMs ahead of them. Well, we were punished for not picking up Lanzini, and for our weaknesses on the flanks - Walker was outdone on the right, Davies made a summarily useless header out on the left, then completely bottled the follow-up challenge, and the ball bounced around and was poked in as we looked for the linesman's flag to save our *rses.

That was a classically 'Spurs' goal to concede, but that in itself was entirely forgivable in the context of a magnificent defensive record overall. What was worse was our utter lack of ideas, our lethargy, our inability to get out of first gear throughout the game. At the end, West Ham were making a mockery of our supposedly superior fitness - winning every challenge, winning every header and breaking at speed while we were standing around moping and feeling sorry for ourselves.

Ultimately, this was an entirely self-inflicted defeat, and an entirely avoidable one. West Ham were nothing special - they put eleven men within ten yards of each other and played for a draw, at their own home ground. But we were nothing special as well, and that was the harder thing to take given how brilliant we have been.

I never cared for the title. We were not, are not and will not be ready to win one for quite some time. Games like these are a helpful barometer in that regard - we had a brilliant mentality to come back from 1-0 down against Swansea in injury time and 2-1 down against these c*nts at the Lane, and we won 9 games on the trot heading into this one. We did as well - no, better than any Spurs team in my lifetime, under almost certainly the best Spurs manager in my lifetime.

But it's not enough to win the title. Not by a long shot. That's just the cruel reality of it.

You want to win the title, you win *every* one of these games. You don't have an iffy start, or an iffy middle - you take the form we showed over nine games heading into this one and multiply it by three. A single slip is punishable, every mental lapse is unforgivable. Every missed opportunity is cruelly, almost vindictively cut apart and excoriated. Every man not single-mindedly focused on winning at all costs is cut adrift and sent packing.

There is no *sense of the occasion*. There is no special game, or a derby meriting significance, or anything of the sort. There are 38 hurdles to be vaulted, and at the end, the 38th must be vaulted as coldly and clinically as the 1st was, if that's what is necessary. And if you're trying to catch up after the first weekend, you've as good as lost it already.

We are not ready for that. We are getting there, slowly and in fits and starts. We *will* get there someday - all it will take is a constant desire to build on the previous season, climbing inch by inch until we get there. But we're not there yet. And, again, to get there more quickly requires ruthlessness that maybe we can't afford to have right now.

Vincent Janssen's having a difficult start to life in London? Bin him, and never look back. Harry Winks, a young kid trying to break into the team he loves, is asking for a chance? Tell him to f*ck off and not come back until we've won the title and there are meaningless games we can blood him in. Harry Kane, our talisman, our leader and our beating heart on the field, is struggling? Bench him, and bring in someone who takes his chances. Walker is making a bit of noise about rotation? Send him to the u-21s, keep him there and bin him off the first chance you get come the end of the season. No preferring youth, no sentimentality about 'one of our own', no giving transfers a chance. Results, and performances, are all that matter. *That* is what you have to do if you want to win the title without an infusion of money and in a very short time span.

Are we ready for that level of ruthlessness to accelerate our chances of winning the title? I don't think so. And so I'd much prefer to do it our way - climbing slowly, methodically, going from 64 to 70 to 77+ points and aiming higher with each season. Growing slowly, and keeping our humanity and our ethos as we do so. Giving our youngsters and new signings a fair crack of the whip, going about our business as humans and not title-winning machines devoid of emotion, and building slowly - relentlessly, but slowly. Breaking hoodoos as we go - winning games we feared to win, finishing above our rivals, getting naivety and fragility out of our system - but slowly, and at a pace which enables us to retain our humanity.


Mauricio Pochettino and the lads have done a fantastic job this season. And whatever we get from here on in is a bonus - hell, whatever we got from 72 points onward was a bonus, and yet here we are, with 77 and looking at 80, and having ensured the end of one of our biggest hoodoos in a long time (namely, finishing above our rivals).

Today was our failure. It was our trademark self-inflicted bit of Spursiness. But it doesn't mean much, in the end - it only means something to the fans of the other clubs who, for the second year running, couldn't do their jobs and compete for the title despite spending hundreds of millions of pounds on expensive failures. It only means something to Sky, who in desperation latched on to us to manufacture excitement for a title race that was over in December. It only means something to West Ham fans, who will maybe rightly) celebrate their tinpot achievement of beating us once a year and finishing in lower mid-table, looking forward to watching Robert Snodgrass, James Collins and other such footballing worthies grace their empty uranium-laced Giganto-Bowl of a ground.

It shouldn't mean much to us. And we are the people who ultimately matter in terms of our own story - the Spurs family. That's all that counts. Not Sky's manufactured title race, not other fans, not pundits, not 'neutrals'. Us.

So let's take it easy with the title talk, and simply bask in what has been a great season from a bunch of hard-working, committed lads. They're allowed slips. And the best thing is, they've proven that they learn from them.

Get back up, and let's end our WHL journey with a high next weekend. Otherwise, onward we go. ;)
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Our second League defeat since mid-December and you say it's the Spurs curse?

The only curse is in your head my friend.
 
Spur of the moment said:
Our second League defeat since mid-December and you say it's the Spurs curse?

The only curse is in your head my friend.
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50 years of history say differently, mate. If you want me to admit that we've killed off sexy *forever*, not just sent it packing for a convenient amount of time, we're gonna have to change our very nature, and to win titles and Champions League in a very un-sexy fashion time and time again.

To dismiss 50 years of history because of one good-but-ultimately-trophyless season is as short-sighted as arguing that we're no different to what we were through all these years - we've definitely grown stronger and more resilient, so the latter isn't true either.

But it will always lurk, I think. Simple fact of the matter. Until we get our own Sir Alex Ferguson, it will always lurk, unbidden and waiting. No sense denying that, because it's in the back of our heads, whether or not we'd like to admit it.
 
DubaiSpur said:
When he's done learning, we assuredly won't have him anymore, so maybe we should take the rough with the smooth in that regard. ;)
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That is also my fear as we console ourselves that we have a young side still learning and developing. As players such as Walker, Rose, Alde, have completed their learning, our wage structure and MO will mean they are no longer available to us and we have to start a rebuild or find some new younger versions. In effect, never seeing the finished team.

Against that I hope we say, we have a new stadium, CL football, we can pay rates better than most and we have an attractive "project", so we will get the 2-3 special players, like Bruma and O. Dembele, to really build resilience, so a couple of injuries don't scupper us and we have enough dribblers/game changers from the bench, when the going gets tense.
 
DubaiSpur said:
50 years of history say differently, mate. If you want me to admit that we've killed off sexy *forever*, not just sent it packing for a convenient amount of time, we're gonna have to change our very nature, and to win titles and Champions League in a very un-sexy fashion time and time again.

To dismiss 50 years of history because of one good-but-ultimately-trophyless season is as short-sighted as arguing that we're no different to what we were through all these years - we've definitely grown stronger and more resilient, so the latter isn't true either.

But it will always lurk, I think. Simple fact of the matter. Until we get our own Sir Alex Ferguson, it will always lurk, unbidden and waiting. No sense denying that, because it's in the back of our heads, whether or not we'd like to admit it.
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No curse mate just a rare tactical error from Poch in today's game. But the title was not lost today. It was lost because we drew too many matches this season - draws against teams we really should have beaten. We've been fighting the odds the past few weeks and they finally caught up with us today. Shame it is against WhAm though. Btw Poch is as close as we will get to a Ferguson type manager.
 
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Until we get our own Sir Alex Ferguson, it will always lurk, unbidden and waiting. No sense denying that, because it's in the back of our heads, whether or not we'd like to admit it.

You do talk nonsense at times. Poch is our own Ferguson - if anyone can get success it is him....and the players have the optimism of youth.
 
Robspur12 said:
No curse mate just a rare tactical error from Poch in today's game. But the title was not lost today. It was lost because we drew too many matches this season - draws against teams we really should have beaten. We've been fighting the odds the past few weeks and they finally caught up with us today. Shame it is against WhAm though. Btw Poch is as close as we will get to a Ferguson type manager.
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I agree entirely with the title bit - we were never really in it, and I personally never really cared about whether we were or were not. By its merits, this season has been absolutely great, cups aside - looking at through the prism of being a title contender is a bit too soon, I think, and is exactly what Sky and all the rest want you to do, because then they can push the 'Spurs meltdown' narrative again.

But today was a self-inflicted defeat. Tactical mistakes aside, we were lethargic, and conceded a very Spurs-esque goal - I think it's fair to say we had a bit of a wobble in a classically 'Spurs' way. That's not in any way reflective on the rest of the season - just in this game. But the old Spurs-esque nature still lurks, and it pops up in (thankfully increasingly rare) moments like these.

lurker of old said:
Until we get our own Sir Alex Ferguson, it will always lurk, unbidden and waiting. No sense denying that, because it's in the back of our heads, whether or not we'd like to admit it.

You do talk nonsense at times. Poch is our own Ferguson - if anyone can get success it is him....and the players have the optimism of youth.
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This is the other nonsensical extreme to thinking Poch isn't good enough. Not yet, is all I will say - not yet by a long shot. He is the real deal, but to be our Ferguson requires a) winning things, and b) winning a *lot* of things. That isn't a comparison anyone can make lightly, and I mean what I say when I state that only a Ferguson (in every sense) can rid us of Spurs-i-ness forever.
 
These kind results happen in this league, it's why it's the hardest league to win.
All the pundits where positive about us tonight, saying we deserve credit for this season and that this result doesn't define our season.
As for the bint with the bottlers line, pity your club can't bottle 2nd in the league, oh wait you're to busy chasing tin pot cups contested by small clybs and second strings hoping it gets you a back door entry to play with the big clubs.
 
glasgowspur said:
These kind results happen in this league, it's why it's the hardest league to win.
All the pundits where positive about us tonight, saying we deserve credit for this season and that this result doesn't define our season.
As for the bint with the bottlers line, pity your club can't bottle 2nd in the league, oh wait you're to busy chasing tin pot cups contested by small clybs and second strings hoping it gets you a back door entry to play with the big clubs.
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fudge the pundits. Whether we win or lose, that's one rule that makes this football lark much easier. fudge the pundits - except for Jenas and Hoddle, whenever they get on.

Banter between rival fans is fine, and adds life to the experience of following your club - it's part of the ups and downs we all go through as supporters, whichever club we choose. But pundits and their narratives...you can't even reply to them, just watch them smarm and gurn. So fudge 'em, whatever they have to say.
 
DubaiSpur said:
50 years of history say differently, mate. If you want me to admit that we've killed off sexy *forever*, not just sent it packing for a convenient amount of time, we're gonna have to change our very nature, and to win titles and Champions League in a very un-sexy fashion time and time again.

To dismiss 50 years of history because of one good-but-ultimately-trophyless season is as short-sighted as arguing that we're no different to what we were through all these years - we've definitely grown stronger and more resilient, so the latter isn't true either.

But it will always lurk, I think. Simple fact of the matter. Until we get our own Sir Alex Ferguson, it will always lurk, unbidden and waiting. No sense denying that, because it's in the back of our heads, whether or not we'd like to admit it.
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You're so wrong it is laughable/pitiable.
 
DubaiSpur said:
fudge the pundits. Whether we win or lose, that's one rule that makes this football lark much easier. fudge the pundits - except for Jenas and Hoddle, whenever they get on.

Banter between rival fans is fine, and adds life to the experience of following your club - it's part of the ups and downs we all go through as supporters, whichever club we choose. But pundits and their narratives...you can't even reply to them, just watch them smarm and gurn. So fudge 'em, whatever they have to say.
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Usually I agree, but I think the fact that they aren't reverting to the standard bottlers narrative confirms what we all know, this an impressive team with a big future.
 
People keep going on about the future but players don't tend to stay at one club forever. Football now days is about instant success hence why the likes of chelsea don't blood any youngsters. They need/want success now.

There is only so long you can go without trophies whilst keeping ambitions players at the club.

I personally think this season was a great chance to win silverware and we failed.
 
I think we were a 70 point team, and this season has seen us improve to an 80 point team. To win the league, we need to be a 90 point team.

I think if we can get a bit of luck and actually get to the top of the table in the early part of the season, you'd see Poch prioritise the league and we'd be very good front-runners imo, we have showed that we can go on long winning runs.
 
Spursman said:
People keep going on about the future but players don't tend to stay at one club forever. Football now days is about instant success hence why the likes of chelsea don't blood any youngsters. They need/want success now.

There is only so long you can go without trophies whilst keeping ambitions players at the club.

I personally think this season was a great chance to win silverware and we failed.
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We failed to win silverware, yes. I don't think we've 'failed' in terms of improving our points total. I don't think we've failed (yet) in improving our league position. I don't think we've failed in (so far) being unbeaten at home. I don't think we've failed in playing (what many experts and other fans say is) the best football in the league.

More importantly I don't think we've failed in laying the foundations for a club that can thrive if players leave for greener (in terms of silver and cash) pastures. We are not the Goons who lost players because they could see Whinger was losing his sheen.

If what we have achieved this season is failure then it is, as the saying goes, a Glorious failure and we WILL WIN TROPHIES SOON.
 
Yes you are right but having lost good players in the past the only thing keeping players at Spurs is the project poch, stadium etc) might not be enough for some.
 
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