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By Tony Attwood
I was thinking of the headline “Same old Spurs given reality check of epic proportions” – a headline that really did leave me feeling I didn’t need to go on and read any more. After all the Arsenal match, way back last friday (although it now seems much further back than that) I felt things were really quite satisfactory, and then that Telegraph headline made me think: yes this is going as I expected.
Indeed the opening line following that “Same old Spurs” headline told me that the thoughts I had had during the pre-season (which are of course always subject to bias) were right. “The players and the transfer fees might be different, but this was same old Tottenham Hotspur…” as the Telegraph put it behind its tiresome paywall.
But although the headline was expected it still needs a spot of thought. How can it be that a club that has ended up 17th in the league two seasons running, which regularly gets one of the biggest PL crowds for its home matches, and which seems to have a huge amount of money behind it to spend on transfers (which somehow don’t work), get itself in that sort of position?
Of course I am not a director of a football club, and never have been, but if we read the media talk, all the journos there can see what’s wrong, and yet the executives at Tottenham H. simply can’t put it right. (Of course I’m very happy with that, but even so it puzzles me).
In case you missed it the Tots lost 3-0 to Brentford – a club that came ninth last season winning 14 games and losing 13 in the League. A club with a much smaller ground than Tottenham, and a club which has just had five consecutive seasons in the Premier League having been in League Two as recently as 2008/9.
Thus my question has a second edge to it? How can Tottenham be that bad, while thinking that they are that good?
My thought is that the second part of the question influences the first – in that a big part of Tottenham’s problem is that they do think that they are “that good” but are just having a blip. There seems to be (and of course I only see this from a distance, I don’t go and watch them play) a sense of entitlement around the club, although quite why that is, I really don’t know. After all as far as I do know, they have only won the league twice.
But on the other hand it was only eight to ten years ago they had a run of three seasons where they came 2nd and 3rd (twice) in the league, and in the last two of those seasons got into the semi-finals of the Cup. So how could they throw all that away?
I would guess from the outside that they had an absolute reliance on one good goalscorer for a while, and that made them think they were better than they were. Take him out and there are problems. Another is that because of their local rivalry with Arsenal, their supporters are more dedicated to the club than they might be if they were based in Bromsgrove.
Now that of course can be a good thing – it is much better to have positive strong support than not have it, but my impression is that this positive strong support is only there when they talk to Arsenal or West Ham fans. The rest of the time they are being rather critical of their club
Which of course they might well be given that the run of second and third place finishes ten years ago has been replaced by two 17th place finishes.
In essence I think Tottenham’s psychological problem is that the team and management lost the crowd just as they moved to their new ground. The old White
Hart Lane ground had a capacity at its close of 36,284 as an all seater stadium. The new ground has a capacity of 62,850. If my maths is right that means over 26,000 people attend each game who were not regulars at the old ground.
Now those people have expectations, because of the way the move to the new ground was advertised, and two consecutive 17trh place finishes are not meeting those expectations. So if the club is not delivering on its positions in the league, the crowd is not delivering its side of the support bargain. They are, by and large, pretty well pissed off with those 17th place finishes – not to mention the price of admission.
Arsenal I think got it right. Although we had a very long run of third and fourth place finishes when we moved to the new ground, that was still a lot better than 17th. We still had Champions League football, and because of the regular FA Cup successes by and large most of us accepted the situation. And yes we had two 8th place finishes, but during that time we could all see the building of the new team.
Tottenham now boast that they have the largest football stadium in London, and maybe they do. But with 17th place finishes it is not dong them much good if the fans stop believing that things can get better..
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