Chronic Ingrained Underachieving – It’s the Spurs Way
The Spurs Way. Attacking football on the front foot. Played with style and a flourish, not sitting back waiting for the others to die of boredom. It’s a familiar precept for Spurs fans that invests meaning and purpose in our passion.
We all need something like this, if only because watching 22 players kick a ball around is essentially hollow and futile without it. It’s been important for Spurs fans in my lifetime, initially because it characterised our approach to the game and latterly as an ambition to cherish during long periods of mediocrity.
It’s live – Tuesday night, first half, centre circle, Bissouma in space, opts to pass back. Hardly the most serious error in a season filled with catastrophe but the South Stand roared in anger. Thomas Frank, all season, doesn’t get it, can’t handle it, out of his depth to the point where even our board can see it. Out the door 6 weeks too late.
I believe in the Spurs Way but realise it has another function in masking the reality of a parallel truth, that Tottenham in modern times are a club with a history of failure, embedded in poor organisation and owners bereft of the capacity to efficiently and effectively run the club. Sum up the last forty years in a couple of pithy phrases: missed opportunities and unfilled potential. There are three fundamental elements to running a successful football club at any level: the coach or manager, recruitment and finance. Those in charge have never consistently shown the will, ambition, structure or capacity that enables this triumvirate to function smoothly together, united in direction and resolve. In short, this is who we are, and this is why we have ended up in the damned mess we are in, near the bottom of the table and staring at the abyss below.
This dates back to the early 1980s, when the club under chairman Irving Scholar put themselves in the vanguard of a new commercialism. The drive to maximise income, in Spurs’ case through floating on the Stock Exchange, non-football manufacturing, the new West Stand with executive boxes, merchandising and television advertising, was intended to generate funds for transfers and wages. In fact, it had two related consequences, in that the expenditure incurred led to mounting debts, so increasing income became an end in itself for club survival.
Keith Burkinshaw’s wonderful team sustained and entertained us into the middle of the decade. Scholar’s predecessors, the Wale family, were perceived as amongst the fusty blazers holding back the development of the game in England, out of touch and highly protective of their own status. Yet their old-school approach led to Burkinshaw’s promotion within the club and allowed him several years following relegation to rebuild, with money spent firstly on the midfield with Ossie and Ricky, then later up front with Crooks and Archibald. Burkinshaw’s famous passing shot ‘there used to be a football club over there’ was probably written by a journalist but it accurately expressed his views, seen here in this post-match interview from 1982 where this normally taciturn man, complete with de rigueur managerial sheepskin, calmly articulates the problems of the contemporary English game, truly ahead of his time.
The warning signs slowly became apparent. Off the pitch, executive boxes displaced the mighty Shelf, while on the field, the skilful teams built by Pleat then Venables began to take shape only for stars to be sold and replaced with frankly inferior footballers. We build again only for the cycle to be repeated. Stars like Sheringham and Klinsmann were never supported by a squad of sufficient talent, or as Colin Calderwood famously put it, “we’ve got the Famous Five [attackers], what about the shit six?”
Sugar, then Levy and ENIC, but the same pattern. The choice of manager unsuited to the club and in many cases to the task as well. Managers never adequately supported in the transfer market. Promises made to fans as the prices went up that were never kept. Pochettino is the outlier in terms of his suitability but the board’s failure to fully support him in the market remains an era-defining error.
And here we are again. New board, new supposedly vaunted backroom staff, same old problems. The search for a manager last summer produced a man unsuited to the club in so many ways, leaving the bloke out of his depth and no intention of throwing him a lifebelt. He’s gone now, but not for the first time, I’m left to ask the question, what were those in charge of the club seeing when Spurs played? Apparently not the shapeless, tactically deficient football we all saw. What in Frank’s approach did they see that gave them cause to believe he could turn things around when we fans saw nothing of the sort? Why wait this long – do they have access to another Premier League table in a parallel universe, because their inaction is that absurd.
Lange in charge of recruitment knows his up and coming players but we needed some experience too. He says they didn’t want a quick fix. Except we need a quick fix. And if we can’t get our top targets, where is the list of players next in line, and where is the sense that we recruit to fill gaps and create a coherent team rather than be opportunistic?
Ventkatesham schmoozes the fans at a meeting and writes some corporate rubbish in the programme. He says the culture needs to change, right, but he needs to start that, because that’s his job. And where has the £150m funding injection from the board gone? Not on players, because we sold our top goalscorer in order to fund Gallagher’s purchase.
Spurs are sleepwalking towards relegation. Lousy form, shattered confidence, no structure. I hear that the squad is more than capable of staying up. It is, except half of them are injured. Players who thought they would be competing for honours are not ready for a relegation fight. The current hierarchy is riven with complacency. It could spell disaster.
As I write, Spurs have appointed Igor Tudor as a temp until the end of the season. Good luck – he has my best wishes. I only know what you know after your frantic googling, same as me. I quote Wikipedia: “On 13 February 2026, Tudor agreed a deal to become Tottenham interim head coach until they get relegated from the premier league in the 2025/26 season.” David Ornstein, a reliable source, says that the process was led by Ventkatesham and Lange. That does not fill me with confidence.
On Tuesday night, the booing at full-time was full of righteous fury. What received less attention, but is just as telling, was that as many fans, if not more, shrugged and wandered silently home. Perhaps I’m over-interpreting, but I’ve seldom heard as many non-football conversations going on around me during and after a game, given that stakes were high and despite being excruciatingly bad, we were never more than a goal down. Injury time, ball in their box, there was no excitement in the stands, no tension or jeopardy, and for the first time this season, the players looked utterly dejected as yet another aimless cross went weakly by.
This has been going on for years and we are drained of enthusiasm. Watching Spurs is joyless. It’s the ultimate criticism as far as we fans go. If Spurs can stagger through to the end of the season and avoid relegation, that’s all I care about. But the long-term problems are structural and chronic, and they won’t go away.