Where are we as a club? | Vital Football

Where are we as a club?

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Departed

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We are having an existential crisis as supporters. Seriously.

Are we still the bush league mid-table club with little hope for trophies?

Are we a pretender to the top 4?

Or, as I think, are we an elite club in waiting?

I was absolutely vibrating with excitement as our first full year in our stadium started. A full year's revenues, both football and ancillary events, I think Levy was as well. Pochettino tanked, but that was coming. He's can't handle the pressure of success. He can't handle players with egos.

Then the Mourinho move. Don't kid yourself, Mourinho is here because the club looked poised to reap the rewards of Levy's 20 year project. HE would have become the best of the best if he managed to take Tottenham to new heights which included winning a major trophy, not a cup.

Now I see calls for managers who are far from the top tier. I see calls for a simple season without any European football so we can reset.

How about a little patience.....for Covid to subside. Then let's start to move forward.

I don't for a second believe we will finish outside the top 6, or the top 4 for that matter.

It's time to see the situation for what it really is. A club on a decent trajectory that has taken a massive Covid body blow but will recover. Maybe with different personnel at all levels, maybe with just a few replacements. That will evolve as we move forward. What's for certain, what got us through the stadium build period is NOT what will get us to the top.

We are no longer a second level club. We are one of the elite. We just haven't shown it yet.
 
We are having an existential crisis as supporters. Seriously.

Are we still the bush league mid-table club with little hope for trophies?

Are we a pretender to the top 4?

Or, as I think, are we an elite club in waiting?

I was absolutely vibrating with excitement as our first full year in our stadium started. A full year's revenues, both football and ancillary events, I think Levy was as well. Pochettino tanked, but that was coming. He's can't handle the pressure of success. He can't handle players with egos.

Then the Mourinho move. Don't kid yourself, Mourinho is here because the club looked poised to reap the rewards of Levy's 20 year project. HE would have become the best of the best if he managed to take Tottenham to new heights which included winning a major trophy, not a cup.

Now I see calls for managers who are far from the top tier. I see calls for a simple season without any European football so we can reset.

How about a little patience.....for Covid to subside. Then let's start to move forward.

I don't for a second believe we will finish outside the top 6, or the top 4 for that matter.

It's time to see the situation for what it really is. A club on a decent trajectory that has taken a massive Covid body blow but will recover. Maybe with different personnel at all levels, maybe with just a few replacements. That will evolve as we move forward. What's for certain, what got us through the stadium build period is NOT what will get us to the top.

We are no longer a second level club. We are one of the elite. We just haven't shown it yet.
Inclined to agree there, we are an elite club in the waiting, but all things have to be put together in the correct order first, thus in the waiting.
 
I think we are tottering ( not a word play but quite apt ) on the edge of decline.
Some decisions need to be made whether it's for survival or success.
Although ok, our keepers are not elite anymore.
Our RB position is weak.
Our CBs are not settled or high calibre.
Our DM position is ok but the options questionable.
CM ok but unsettled
AM/ Wingers ok but contract wise maybe unsettled.
Strikers again unsettled, Son although not a striker has not signed a new contract, Kane is possibly torn, Vinnie is not the answer.

Jose is in the twilight of his career and not the future, maybe not even the immediate one.
Finance wise we have taken a knock and austerity might be inevitable and suppress any resurgence.
I honestly dont see many positives and that's not like me with Spurs. I would gladly be corrected.
 
OK, a good debate and here goes!

IMO, no one in the world expected the lockdowns and empty stadia to go on for this long, not even our shrewd Daniel could've anticipated it. IMO, everything was done to produce the goods in the assumption that raucous crowds await the teams.

One may argue, well, it affects all the teams and it is a level playing field? I would disagree!

IMO, the performance of certain teams HAS suffered, especially where crowds truly play the 12th man. United (took a long time to adapt but still shaky), Pool, Us, LeArse as examples.

I seriously believe 60K+ would've driven the team and our away support has always been good. I am not suggesting we have a bunch of prima donna's or glory hunters, but visualise Bale making his debut and I reckon he'd have put in an extra 20% effort, ditto numerous others. By the same argument, Jose would've felt the pressure and may have been more proactive.

I always used to worry facing United and Pool at their respective stadia. An intimidating environment. We were heading the same way as opposition would be in awe of the atmosphere at the Lane.

The teams with smaller fan base and lower revenues have benefited from C19 restrictions.

This season has rapidly become a write off for me. The benefits expected from our signings and a settled squad + coaches needed that 12th man to make it happen.
 
I have little doubt that Levy's primary goal has always been to establish Spurs as one of Europe's elite. Two years ago, having established ourselves as regular CL participants, even reaching a CL final, and with the new stadium open, we'd pretty much achieved that goal. All that was needed was to consolidate. Unfortunately due to a combination of COVID, no real succession having been put in place for key players, and a managerial appointment that may have been genius but has proven to be disastrous, we have not consolidated, we have nosedived alarmingly.
I don't think that there is any chance whatsoever that we will finish top four, simply because there are certainly at least four better teams than us in terms of overall player quality, motivation, team work and performance on the pitch. Then there is a whole division of teams better managed than us, with only one or two exceptions.
Going in to next season we will be back where we were at the start of Pochettino's 'five year project' minus Harry Kane. Consequently we will need to structure accordingly, hence much of the commentary along those lines on this site.
As somebody who has been around long enough to have seen Spurs as the best team in England and one of the best in Europe, my Spurs dream over the past couple of decades has been pretty much the same as I envisage Levy's to be, to see Spurs back where we belong as one of Europe's best.
I fear that we are a long way away from that again.
 
I don't see anything but more of a decline. Our 2 best players will be targeted in the summer and if the money is good enough they will be sold to balance the books.

With Jose in charge of a declining squad I can't see many positives. It's clear there is s divide with certain players.

I'm sure after a few seasons with a full crowd again will help but by then the damage will be done.

I think the best bet now is to appoint a younger manager who will play the youth players, signing the best up and coming British players with the Kane money, whilst having a positive philosophy.

The project has changed since Jose took over. We have to adapt.
 
It's a tricky question to answer. Before Covid I would have said we were still a sleeping giant with self-esteem issues. Poch had almost achieved glory, and definitely over-achieved at times. It is fair to say we had developed into a top 4 PL team and we are still expected to be there, which indicates we are still in that bracket.

A year into Covid I think our issues have been highlighted and they are issues that could see us slide further backwards if Levy isn't careful.
 
What people forget is that you have to factor in other clubs' cycles. When Harry first got us into the CL in 2010 you can map the decline of other top 6 clubs like Liverpool at the time and notice that Mancini's City are not quite there yet. The old top 4 was broken.

It then took Liverpool 4 years to come 2nd in 2014 before they slumped for another 2 years before hitting top 4 again. After that, Arsenal had their final 2 seasons as a top 4 club before 5 years of being out of the top 4.

Chelsea also had their yo-yo years. Everything from winning the league to finishing 10th. They've now had back-to-back years in the top 4 and currently sit in the top 4. Tuchel can probably keep them there. Utd were similar but without the league trophy.

Add to that Leicester, who we absolutely need to move back down to below 6th in the coming years. We also don't need any other teams doing a Leicester and breaking in.

So why is all this important? Well clearly because when we did get 4 years of consecutive CL football, other top 6 clubs were having their own crisis. Yes, we punched above our weight but other teams gave us the initiative. We gained an advantage because of their misfortune. So to look forward, you have to start guessing what the other teams will do in these next 3 years.

To me, it really looks like City, Utd and Chelsea are well set whilst Liverpool are having a blip but have too strong foundations to waver too much. For Arsenal and Spurs, we just need to accept that it is going to be really tough with our financial model. If we didn't get top 4 for 5 years, it wouldn't surprise me.
 
Although it's a daunting task, I have more confidence in Levy fixing the financial issue than Jose the on pitch issues.

I suppose it depends how you define "fixing the financial issue". Is getting the P&L to balance "fixing" or are we talking about getting back to the levels we were before. That didn't win us anything. Levy can't win as he won't have the spending power of Utd or City.
 
I suppose it depends how you define "fixing the financial issue". Is getting the P&L to balance "fixing" or are we talking about getting back to the levels we were before. That didn't win us anything. Levy can't win as he won't have the spending power of Utd or City.


We would have had some seriously competitive financial clout if Covid hadn't hit.
 
We would have had some seriously competitive financial clout if Covid hadn't hit.

As they were growing, we actually never knew the allocation of our revenues between football and stadium though. Levy clearly said that they were separate but never told us what was in each bucket. So WSL, AJ fights, NFL, Stadium hospitality etc didn't mean that we would see that as football financial clout. I'm not sure people understand that.

We do need that stadium open again.
 
What people forget is that you have to factor in other clubs' cycles. When Harry first got us into the CL in 2010 you can map the decline of other top 6 clubs like Liverpool at the time and notice that Mancini's City are not quite there yet. The old top 4 was broken.

It then took Liverpool 4 years to come 2nd in 2014 before they slumped for another 2 years before hitting top 4 again. After that, Arsenal had their final 2 seasons as a top 4 club before 5 years of being out of the top 4.

Chelsea also had their yo-yo years. Everything from winning the league to finishing 10th. They've now had back-to-back years in the top 4 and currently sit in the top 4. Tuchel can probably keep them there. Utd were similar but without the league trophy.

Add to that Leicester, who we absolutely need to move back down to below 6th in the coming years. We also don't need any other teams doing a Leicester and breaking in.

So why is all this important? Well clearly because when we did get 4 years of consecutive CL football, other top 6 clubs were having their own crisis. Yes, we punched above our weight but other teams gave us the initiative. We gained an advantage because of their misfortune. So to look forward, you have to start guessing what the other teams will do in these next 3 years.

To me, it really looks like City, Utd and Chelsea are well set whilst Liverpool are having a blip but have too strong foundations to waver too much. For Arsenal and Spurs, we just need to accept that it is going to be really tough with our financial model. If we didn't get top 4 for 5 years, it wouldn't surprise me.

Cold hard truth.
 
Football clubs do go through cycles. But if your club is going through a golden summer period you have to win trophies.

I saw a picture of the top 6 sides over the last 20 years. The amount of trophies Chelsea and the others have won in comparison is light years apart.

Us with one poxy league cup.