I have supported Spurs longer than I can remember. My earliest memory of them was my older brother going to see them play Rangers in a friendly in Toronto in the late 1960s. I'd pretty much already become a fan by default as most of my maternal family were also Spurs fans and I'm old enough to remember the ignominy of being relegated in the 1976 season - it blighted the perfect year, but back in the 70s being relegated was not the end of the world, as Keith Burkinshaw's Spurs proved (even if they did end up making it difficult for themselves). That relegation season was a real nadir, but imagine what this season would have been like if Spurs had lost that European final to Man U?
The league form of the fifth richest football club in the UK was essentially relegation form. Had there not been three utterly woeful worse teams than Spurs they would have been relegated. They even managed to lose at home to two of the three relegated teams, in two of the worst performances I can remember Spurs ever dialling in. There were calls for the manager to be sacked as early as November; Ange Postecoglou had guided Spurs to a 5th place finish the season before, but a lot of the groundwork for that high finish happened in the opening 10 games, when the team accrued 26 points from a possible 30. Had they not had that start to the season they would, realistically have finished lower and might not have even qualified for Europe. That form, from the defeat by Chelsea, at home, after two sending offs and a couple of serious injuries carried into the 24/25 season and despite an okay-ish start, the wheels started coming off very quickly.
The manager, never frightened to speak his mind at press conferences, made the claim that would haunt him for the rest of the season - I always win something in my second season! There will have been Spurs fan who would have punched the air at the Australian's confidence, but there would have been more of us wincing and hoping our imminent failure would not lead to a spate of more Spursy memes, ridiculing us even more. The moment the manager said these words, after losing 1-0 at home to our biggest rivals, the team looked like anything but winners. Even a mindboggling 4-0 win away at Man City didn't really feel that mindboggling. City were just entering their worst slump in five years and we played like headless chickens in the subsequent games - unable to build any momentum. There was also a pattern forming - play in Europe, lose the next league game. An international break would literally mean lose the game before the team broke up for 10 days. Spurs went from wildly inconsistent to being simply rubbish.
However, I have to concede that the injuries we had were horrendous and where Brighton and Bournemouth lost more playing time through injuries, teams like Arsenal, Man City and even the awful Man Utd all had injuries, but they - with one huge exception - still managed to punch either their weight or above it. In mitigating circumstances for Spurs, most of these teams did not lose the number of first team players Spurs lost. The club's failure to cope with the depth of injuries had to be laid at the feet of Daniel Levy and the club's higher management. They chose to buy young, for the future, while trimming 20% of the squad despite the fact we would be playing as many as 16 extra European games. It was great that Spurs brought in Lucas Bergvall (who they'd already bought) and Archie Gray, while giving some opportunities to academy graduates like Mikey Moore. It was good to see them buy Toni Kinsky as a serious back-up keeper, while it felt a little desperate when they hijacked Wolves' transfer of Kevin Danso and then signed Mattys Tel on loan.
The problem for Postecoglou was as Spurs got through to the semi-final of the Carabao Cup and were pretty much nailed on to qualify from their Europa League to the knockout stages, he felt that the club simply couldn't compete on all the fronts, so sacrifices had to be made. This was presumably done with Daniel Levy's blessing. At the start of February, there would have to have been a set of unbelievable and catastrophic events to see us get relegated, so the Europa League was prioritised. There was, as usual, no thought given to the 60,000+ paying fans, who turned up at the White Hart Lane stadium or travelled around the country, they chucked their money at the Tottenham Hotspur machine and left every league match feeling like they were robbed. Maybe, if the club had been transparent about what they were doing, then the manager could have simply used that as an excuse every time we lost to a team we should be beating, rather than staring at the floor and wheeling out the same, 'not at the required standards' bullshit we got. The problem is being honest would have seen a dramatic drop in ticket sales - league matches would have become corporate days because the fans would boycott them and there might even have been scrutiny from the Premier League.
There can't be any doubt had Spurs lost in Europe, Postecoglou would have walked the following day, maybe even at his post match press conference. However, his team won one of the most turgid and anti-football games I have ever witnessed. But as many said, we won a trophy at the end of it, so who cares? I get this. I sit here writing this review of the season with the knowledge that my team finally won something worth bleating about... Finally. This seismic change in my club's fortunes also shifted the narrative. When we meekly capitulated against eventual FA Cup winners Crystal Palace in our penultimate home game of the season, I expect even the most hardened Ange fans (unless they were Australian) expected the manager to go. We weren't just easy to play against, we had no fight in us and most of our opponents never got out of second gear. We were losers and the Premier League Table made grim reading. When we won the trophy, we were suddenly winners and it was all Ange Postecoglou's fault. He was our messiah, after all. He should have his contract extended. He had to have a third season, to see where he could take his winners next? A domestic cup, perhaps? An unexpected title challenge?
While the support for the Australian increased, it didn't stop many of the fans from having grave reservations about whether the manager is capable of juggling four competitions, while insisting on playing a tactic that historically has caused injury problems at almost every club he has been at. An injury crisis at Celtic is different from one at Spurs. Celtic have no real opposition, most of the time. They had a squad of many players, where even the fringe players were better than everyone at most of the other clubs. At Spurs, he saw how fringe players are there in case of extreme emergency and probably couldn't be trusted if they were required to play as many games as they ended up playing.
Players like Bergvall, Gray, Moore and even Djed Spence were expected to sit on the bench for most of the season and get game time in the closing ten minutes of guaranteed wins. Archie Gray spent half the season playing at centre back, because our other centre backs were either injured, about to become injured or had been loaned out because they weren't yet good enough for the Premier League. As an aside, because Gray played so well in a losing team at centre back, when he did get the chance to play in his preferred positions he looked exactly what he was - out of his depth and not yet good enough. Lucas Bergvall's elevation was for opposite reasons; despite a slightly shaky start, he started to outperform the senior players he was covering for and by the end of the season and before his season-ending injury, I expect his name was one of the first on the team sheet. We simply didn't have enough players to compete, so the fact we managed to win in Europe is a testament you can't take away from the lads, even if the Europa League was no longer as difficult to win as it had been.
Spurs ended the season with 22 league defeats - the most any Premier League team has had without being relegated. They were four points adrift in 17th, 13 points ahead of Leicester in 18th and 15 points adrift of Crystal palace who finished in 12th. It was an abysmal season for a team that with one exception had qualified for Europe throughout the last ten years. It was depressing and I was not the only person who'd given up on football before Easter. The Facebook page I run became a hate site with constant attacks on the manager, the board and even the players; there were many Ange supporters with their 'trust the process' posts and their blind devotion to a man who says 'mate' a lot, but the general tone was one of resigned failure. By the time we qualified for the Europa League final, most polls held on social media only had Arsenal fans and Australians demanding the manager stays.
We're now into June and the mini-transfer window is open, but we're not being linked with much, it's like 'journalists' have realised that no one knows what is happening at Spurs and are not about to speculate until a decision is made about whether the manager stays or goes. Smart money has Postecoglou being thanked for everything he has done, but the club is going to take a different approach now that many of the board have been replaced. However, there is also a potential fan backlash against whatever person is brought in to replace the Aussie. Remember Nuno Espirito Santos? He lasted 10 games and as we've seen this season, he's no slouch when it comes to managing football teams; the problem with us Spurs fans is we're as fickle as fuck. I actually thought the treatment of Nuno was appalling, but back in those days, anything that Levy and co did was abhorrent; they seemed to lurch from one stupid decision to another.
Postecoglou has ruined Spurs for me. I know this is just my opinion and winning a trophy should negate that, but where I usually go into pre-season with a healthy dose of unrealistic expectations, I worry that with Champions League, an increasingly tight Premier League and two domestic cup competitions, have we got the squad and the coach to manage all of that and put the club on an upward trajectory again? I seriously doubt that. I understand the sentimental reasons for keeping Ange, but given his record in the league, you have to wonder at what point of the new season does he decide that the Champions League has to be sacrificed to save the league season? Will he put out a losing team in the Carabao to make sure that his squad isn't overstretched? I mean, we hear Guardiola, Arteta, Slott, Emery and Howe complaining about being unable to cope and will sacrifice one competition for the benefit of the club every week, don't we? Oh, yeah, of course we don't.
The thing is I should be brimming with confidence, but I'm not thrilled at the names being linked to our club as a replacement for the Aussie and if I'm not you can bet there will be rabid pro-Ange fans out there doing what anti-Ange fans have been doing all season - calling for heads to roll. Postecoglou has divided the fan base like no other manager before him. The Spurs Facebook page I run has four admins and none of them can be arsed to run it, so I know it isn't just me. For every 'Give him another season' cry you hear, there's twice as many fans muttering and grumbling about Groundhog Day, but without a trophy at the end of it.
The crazy things that have happened this season aren't just a Spursy thing. Man U finished 15th, Everton and West Ham also in the bottom half. Palace and Newcastle won domestic trophies, Liverpool won the league without really trying and Sunderland completed a fairy story return to the top table, probably in the knowledge that their first aim is not to be as bad as Southampton. It has not been a season like others, yet there's no indication that any of the season's underperformers are going to set the league on fire next season. Man U have a massive rebuild; Everton are moving; West Ham have a new manager who, at the moment, is actually worse than their last manager who was sacked for not being very good. Wolves have a new coach who is capable to improving them greatly and then there's the likes of Brighton, Brentford and Bournemouth who will push on next season. There is nothing to suggest that Postecoglou can turn this bunch of cup winners into a consistent team - there literally is no data from his two seasons that says we're going to be anything other than midtable - at best. Equally, there's nothing, but gut feeling, to say that a new manager will return us to the top six straight away. I want to think our squad is better than the results suggest, but I'm no longer sure. I don't think any of our players have improved because of the manager and I'm not sure what a new manager can do with them. That doesn't mean I don't want a new manager, I just think winning a trophy papers over crevasses and not cracks.
So when the manager said the club had an 'outstanding' season, he wasn't really lying. It wasn't anywhere near outstanding, but it was because we won something. How do you reconcile winning a cup with finishing as the 17th worse team in a 20 team league? Some can. I can't. Yes, we had a better season than Arsenal. Would I have been happy with 2nd place and no trophies? Probably, because it would have said to me that Postecoglou was moving in the right direction and might go one better in his third season. 17th and a trophy sounds like Wigan the year they stopped being an elite team; I doubt any of our fans would want Spurs to be where Wigan are now.
In conclusion: a great trophy win, albeit in a devalued Europa League. A dreadful league campaign with no fight, no desire and no chance. If we keep the manager, I'm betting his odds to be sacked by game week 10 will be very very low. That will then require us to sign a new manager, new staff and the league season will be over two months old. Without getting a top candidate, that's next season written off. Is winning a trophy this season worth that risk?
