The Downward Spiral know as Spurs

My reaction to seeing the score from the QPR vs Spurs match really sums up the season for Tottenham. I was not annoyed, I just let out a sigh and switched my phone off to continue drinking at the engagement party I was at.

The last 2 months have really made me frustrated being a Spurs fan, not because of the whole Harry Redknapp

to England fiasco, but because the players are letting everyone down after all the hard work that has been put in.

Rewind to when Harry took over, bottom of the table with some of the best players in the league. Fast forward to November 2011 and those players are challenging for the title in the same Spurs shirt that saw them rooted to the bottom of the table. Harry didn’t make wholesale changes to the squad, just added a little experience.

Harry Redknapp got them playing a way that the league had not seen. It was 100 mph for 90 mins and no one could handle it. The last two months however, something has changed and no one seems to know what it is.

After last weeks defeat in the FA Cup Semi Final, I amazingly read on twitter some spurs fans saying Harry Redknapp should get the sack. What else could Harry have done? He has played that team, that system, that way all season long and it seemed to work. It’s the players that are to blame.

I have a feeling Spurs have hit the peak and are back on the way down. The players have tasted the highs of the Premier League and a sense of arrogance is coming in. Dare I say it, but now people expect this high tempo from Spurs, the pressure hits and the egos come out.

Whats more worrying is that this whole situation leaves no reason for Harry to turn down the England job. Do you want to represent your country and attempt the impossible job, or do you fancy playing in Poland on a Thursday night for the sake of ITV 4? If we had Champions League, it might be a different story but I cannot see that happening now.

Some of Spurs best players will be on their way, Van Der Vaart I predicted at the start of the season would be on his way at the end of this season and I still think that will happen. Adeybayor will probably find a pay day else where. Modric will have his pick of sides to go win the league with and suddenly Spurs lose the spine of the team. This in turn will see Gareth Bale tempted to go else where.

This will then trigger a panic in the Spurs Board Room. They will go out and get the biggest name manager money can buy, they will change the way spurs play and suddenly we are in the same position we found ourselves in before Harry came to save the day.

Sorry Spurs fans, but we have hit the peak, its time for another midtable battle with Aston Villa and Sunderland until someone like Bredan Rogers comes along and picks the team up again. Hey, it was fun while it lasted.

A cautiously happy Spurs fan

We are at the halfway point of the Premier League and look who is 3rd in the league!!!  Its a very strange but excellent season so far for all Tottenham fans. Its going our way and even the bad results have come at the best times.

Perhaps what has helped Tottenham the most is the distraction of the two Manchester clubs. I was saying around the first few games of the season, once we got the two Manchester games out the way, we went on a bit of a quiet run. You probably didn’t notice, but we kept winning games 1-0 and 2-1, nothng special but the performances were enough to result in 3 points. While these results were coming in, Arsenal were getting thrashed at any given moment, Man City were scoring an average of 37835 goals a game and Chelsea just didn’t know what they wanted to do.

Then comes the clever journalists who noticed Tottenham quietly came into 3rd place and set up camp. ‘Oh look’ they said ‘Tottenham are on a record breaking winning streak’. Leave us alone, we are getting on with this in our own time! So we went on to lose at Stoke which I pinpointed as maybe the most important result of our season. Suddenly, we are back winning matches in boring fashion and no one other than the spurs fans care.

This Season vs Last Season

The two key components that mean this season is a million times better than last is really simple.

The players: All the players know each other well. The three players that have come in (Friedel, Adeybayor and Parker) all have had many years in the Premier League and will know the current Spurs players. In terms of premier league experience, our least experienced players are Sandro (1 year) and Van der Vaart (18 months) and they seem to be doing alright.

The other major component to being better than last season is we are now beating the lower teams. Last season we would go on to outclass Chelsea then lose to Blackpool. This year we are beating the lower teams, sometimes grinding out a draw, but its always a positive result.

Can we win the league. 2 weeks ago I would have said no. After other results seem to be going in our favour… now I would say maybe. All I can hope is that we don’t go and spend £40 million on some random European player. We don’t need any new players, we just need to focus and grind out the tricky results and do what we done so far this season again and lets see what happens.

Needless to say, I now know why Man Utd fans get so touchy when they lose a match. Its quite pressured up here isn’t it.