The Bad…

If writing the ‘Good’ review last weekend was a process in which many fond memories were revisited, commenting on the ‘Bad’ may not be so pleasant. But, as they say, face your fears. Grasp the nettle. Getting these off my chest may even be cathartic…

The Problem with Semis

Spurs and semi finals… I’m not a football statistician but I’d wager that Spurs have had more semi final agony than your average team. And it’s in the FA Cup where the problem seems to lie. It’s a long list of misery: Everton ‘95, Newcastle ‘99, Arsenal ‘01, Portsmouth ‘10, Chelsea ‘12 and ‘17 and Man Utd ‘18. Hunkering down in the current Covid-19 outbreak, I still don’t think I’ll have enough time to dissect all of those fixtures. They all still smart, but some bite harder than others. The one that stands out for me was the Everton loss in 1995. Being young and new to following Spurs, I was a fanatic. Rain-Man-esque, I genuinely remember every team we beat that year during the cup run: Altringham in Round 3 (just after New Year’s); Sunderland in Round 4 (televised); Southampton in Round 5 (that Ronnie Rosenthal replay hat-trick); & Liverpool in the Quarters (Klinsmann’s winner). After that, Everton were the opponents standing in our way. Excitement built up throughout the weekend and when Sunday afternoon arrived I was absolutely bouncing. We were 1-0 down at Half Time, but I was still hopeful against an Everton side who seemed to be constantly flirting with relegation throughout that period. Trailing 2-1 as the game entered the final 10 minutes, reality was about to sink in. If there had been a glimmer of hope that was refusing to be extinguished, it was soon abruptly snuffed out. Up stepped Nigerian Daniel Amokachi with a brace to break Spurs hearts. (I’ve since learnt that he actually substituted himself on – Joe Royle didn’t want him on the pitch!) It didn’t make sense to the 9 year old me; we were meant – destined! – to win the FA Cup that year. Through stinging tears, I helplessly watched Ian Walker sat on his arse, shaking his head and smiling ruefully whilst Amokachi, grinning and tongue out, was lauded by the Everton faithful. The rest is history: Everton beat Man Utd 1-0 in the final – and the vision of Amokachi’s celebration still haunts my dreams from time to time.

The crushing disappointment of the Everton game was repeated time and time again over the next 25 years. I remember being gutted by League Cup Final losses to Mark Hughes’ Blackburn, Chelsea and United but I can honestly say they were not nearly as painful as the semi final loss to Portsmouth in 2010. Pompey had already been relegated and were in financial meltdown. They were a mess of a club. Once we’d beat them, standing in our way were Chelsea – a team that were a shadow of their former, dominant selves. Finally our name was going to be on the fabled trophy once again, I told myself. Yet football so often doesn’t follow scripts or make sense – and so I couldn’t believe it as we lost 2-0 after extra time. Stunned. Fuming. It was supposed to have been our year! Football arrogance personified – and I’d been punished badly for it. But it’s a scene that would play out time and time again. In ‘17 and ‘18 I fancied us to beat Chelsea and Man Utd respectively, but the hope was misplaced and both semi finals left me – and thousands of other Spurs fans – feeling miserable and frustrated, the dawns once again proving to be false.

Manchester Madness

Now all clubs have their fair share of disappointing results over the seasons. It’s part and parcel of the game, of course, but some results just stick in the consciousness and fester. And Spurs have had an awful lot of ‘bad’ results. Yet two games (or should that be implosions?) spring to mind – both against Manchester opposition. Both involve Spurs snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. In 2001, inexplicably, we were 3-0 up against Man Utd at home at half time. The late Dean Richard’s debut, he was on the scoresheet as we totally outplayed Utd for 45 minutes. I couldn’t believe it as I gazed at the teletext screen. Even rural mid Wales was a hotbed for boisterous, vocal Man Utd supporters in the early 2000s – and on this day I could finally give some lip back to them after years and years of taunts and vitriol from smug ‘glory supporting’ reds. Back in the days when a text cost you 10p, I blew a couple of quid in reckless abandon, letting the United fans know what was happening to their beloved stars down at the Lane. Fast forward to full time: Spurs 3, Manchester United 5 (five!). Phone switched off. Pride hurt. Lesson learnt. A dark day indeed. But history has a nasty habit of repeating itself. Three years later and we were playing Man City in an FA Cup replay at the Lane. Same shit, different year. 3-0 up at half time – my cousin Craig and I laughed as we heard that Joey Barton had received a second yellow card in the tunnel for dissent on the way to the changing rooms. They were terrible, almost to the point of embarrassing, with 11 men. How many would we score against 10!? “We could be looking at double figures here, Craigo!” I beamed. Fast forward to full time: Spurs 3, Man City 4. Lightening had struck twice. “It could only happen to Spurs…”

A Bridge Too Far

After the euphoria of Amsterdam, it was always going to be tough for the Champions League final to live up to expectations. John Steinbeck once wrote “It is not good to want a thing too much. It sometimes drives the luck away.” Maybe this explains what played out on that June evening in Madrid. Of course, IF we had won it it would have been the zenith of a Spurs fan’s joy. Alas, ‘IFs’ don’t count for much in sport and the final can join a long list of ‘almosts’ for Spurs supporters. In all honesty, the game wasn’t up to much and the penalty in the opening minute (which I still can’t really see how it was justified) stunted the game and took away so much of the game’s drama, expectation and bite. Weeks of intense buildup and bubbling excitement were dashed by the sound of the referee’s whistle. After Salah’s penalty, the game seemed to be a formality. I said in my last post that although fairytales happen in sport, they seldom happen to Spurs. In fairness, we had our fair share of miracles on that cup run: Llorente’s goal versus Man City; VAR rescuing us at the death in the same game; Moura’s heroics in Amsterdam. But beating Liverpool in Madrid after a long, gruelling season was ultimately a bridge too far. As a Spurs fan, it was still a special day. The build up and the pre-kick off hope, although it ultimately kills you, still has a resonance and importance. Rarely getting the chance to get up to matches, the Champions League final was similar to a Welsh Rugby International ‘all dayer’ in many respects. A couple of hundred Spurs fans descended on Cardiff RFC in the heart of the Welsh capital for the game. I was out with my brother in law – a die hard Bluebird – and he too was swept along in the wave of excitement that was building amongst us Spurs’ fans. Yet, I’ll repeat, it’s the hope that kills you. One minute in and the game seemed gone. By the time Origi scored late on, the writing had already been on the wall since the first minute. Looking back at highlights of the game with sober eyes (not the most enjoyable thing to watch in all honesty), we had more chances that I remembered and Alisson made some decent saves. But, like so many times, it wasn’t to be and I nursed the following day’s hangover with a mighty sense of ‘what if’ hanging over me.

Mauricio & Harry

The managerial merry-go-round has always been a feature of supporting Spurs, even if the departures have been less frequent in recent seasons. Some managers have just not worked and their departures had a sense of inevitability about them (Christian Gross anyone?) However, two sackings in particular have left a nasty taste in the collective mouth over the seasons – that of Harry Redknapp and Mauricio Pochettino. Redknapp was a tonic for Spurs and the wonderful work done on his watch enabled us to kick on in the last decade and helped to develop us into the European force that we are (or were?). They were four brilliant years – with exciting, world class talents like Van De Vaart, Luca Modric and Gareth Bale helping us to forge an exhilarating style of play, ultimately helping us to qualify for our first Champions League adventure. The lack of silverware probably forced Levy’s hand in sacking Redknapp but I remember a feeling of seething resentment when I heard the news. In my eyes, Redknapp was absolute class. The man himself was humble, honest, shrewd and his tenure had absolutely redeemed Spurs and made us a force to be reckoned with. Everything about his Spurs side was right – and the fact that the wait for silverware still goes on makes me wonder what may have been achieved if he had been allowed to stay on. And yet, the game of football moves on quickly and they say that everything happens for a reason. If Redknapp hadn’t been given his marching orders then Mauricio Pochettino may not have become Spurs manager two years later. And what a tenure it was. As a kid who grew up following Spurs in the 1990s, we were often a bit of a laughing stock in all honesty. Roy Keane’s recollection of the Fergie quip of “Lads, it’s Tottenham”, springs to mind. We’d get the odd big result, but too often it was said that our end of season party doubled up as our Christmas Do – mid table mediocrity was the all too familiar pattern year after year, season after season. Under Poch, I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that we became one of the dominant forces in English football. Naysayers would ask what silverware we won – but consistent league finishes and deep cup runs point to our talent. Pochettino was an alchemist; the brand of football we played at times was breathtaking and we were lauded for it. Our last season at the Lane in 2016-17 will be something that Spurs fans will cherish forever: unbeaten. Tottenham Hotspur, unbeaten at home for a whole season – ‘chopped logic’ once again. Regarding the league, Leicester’s heroics in 2015-6 torments us as the one that got away. There’s hard luck stories in sport and our glorious chance went up in smoke in the defeat by Chelsea at the season’s end, Mark Clattenburg’s yellow cards being given out like penny sweets as the boys realised the game – and the title – was up. Leicester’s fairytale success will rightly go down in football folklore, but for me it’ll be forever linked with a hint of regret. Silverware may have eluded the club during his reign, but Pochettino allowed fans to experience the thrill of following a world class outfit, weekend in, weekend out. His departure, in the cold light of day, was not as shocking as Harry’s. In all honesty, it was on the cards as the results dictated that something probably had to change, as much as us loyalists pleaded for more time. The magic had gone, in all probability first vanishing up into the Madrid night in June. Prophet like, in the aftermath of the Liverpool defeat, Poch had warned us all that the impending rebuild would be ‘painful’. But it still hurt more than we could have imagined. For a man that had transformed Spurs and made us all believe, it was an inglorious and sad end. As the old saying goes, you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone…

Long Trips to London

Shared experiences are what supporting a club is about. The heights, when your team experiences them, are all the more glorious and life affirming when felt across a fan base – and collective disappointment arguably helps blunt the edges of a defeat a little. But I’d like to finish this edition by detailing a couple of personal disappointments – losses that may not have registered all that much across the wider Spurs fan base. Being a Mid-Wales country boy, the opportunities to get up to London come few and far between. A dozen or so games attended over the decades, two spring to mind when reflecting on the bad times. Around Christmas ‘99, my father and I studied the form book, fixture list and transport times and our eyes were drawn to the 22nd January, 2000. Spurs were playing Sheffield Wednesday – a team propping up the whole table, a team who had only won one game before Christmas, a team who were devoid of form and ripe for the picking. I’d been up to the Lane a couple of times previously, but couldn’t wait to go again, thinking that this game was a guaranteed three points and hopefully, a Spurs goalfest. Alas, things often don’t turn out the way you hope and, well… you can probably guess what came next: a 0-1 defeat. Only Wednesday’s second win of the season, it was their first win away from home! They’d save my blushes by winning one other away game against Wimbledon before the season was done, but the psychological damage had been done. Needless to say, the trip back to Wales was a long one. A similar story befell me just last year. My father and I, along with cousins Danny and Craig, got our hands on 4 tickets for the Bank Holiday game against Newcastle, which for my father and I would be our first trip up to new Stadium. We had a fantastic weekend in the big city. The only fly in the ointment was the 90 minutes of football we had paid good money to witness. Of course no result in football is a certainty, but even this weary and cautious fan expected us to dispatch Steve Bruce’s Newcastle with relative ease. As with Wednesday, we lost 0-1 and barely registered a shot all game – our disappointment compounded by the missed train connection on the way back home. Both results were… let’s say…“Spursy”.

What are your thoughts? Any results stand out? When will we fix our FA Cup semi final jinx?

Andy, South Wales, March 2020