Daring to Almost Do – Tottenham Hotspur

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Article by new e-Football Writer Paul Glanfield  (UK)

You could sense the expectancy in the crowd. A wave of excitement, a sense that we were about to top a season of magical last gasp moments with the most sublime last gasp moment of all. My friend John sat blank faced in his seat, unwilling to allow himself to dream. I was quite the opposite, bouncing on my tip toes full hearted in the belief that the imminent Bale free-kick was going to fly past Cech and hand us a crucial 3-2 victory on course to Champions League dreamland...

Bale stepped up and the ball flew tamely into the arms of Petr Cech.

We all know how Tottenham’s season finished up - precisely the way it always does with Arsenal and Chelsea ultimately walking away with the bragging rights for the summer. For the third time in four seasons Arsenal secured a finish above Spurs on the last day of the season. Whilst this demonstrates very small margins now lie between two clubs separated by seismic proportions a mere decade ago, in many ways the small margins of failure seem to accentuate the agony of Spurs followers even more.

Talk of a North London power shift has been rife for several seasons now, but the reality is that Arsenal are still top dogs in North London, whilst both teams find themselves looking enviously across at the ever growing trophy cabinet at Stamford Bridge. But it is Spurs whom are forever looking up come the end of May. Whatever star performer Arsenal relinquish each summer and whatever meltdown Chelsea go through mid-season, Spurs always seem to find themselves bottom of the pile. You get the feeling that if Spurs signed Messi and Ronaldo that Arsenal would still find a way to scrape into the top four ahead of them. And of course there was last season’s agony of actually qualifying for the Champions League through league position and still being relegated to the Europa League following Chelsea’s night of glory in Munich.

To make matters worse finishing 5th in the Premier League has essentially become the worst position to finish in outside of the bottom three. The ridicule of forthcoming Thursday night football seems to carry with it a derision only elsewhere aimed at teams struggling to cling on to their Premier League status. To add to the indignity, Spurs also put a lot of effort into the widely derided Europa League last season with a near full strength side competing throughout, only to see Chelsea steal in and snatch the trophy almost at a canter following their exit from the Champions League. Unfortunately being on the verge of success and then having to settle for total failure in the shadow of their greatest rivals seems a natural and expected closing chapter season after season for Tottenham Hotspur.

Despite this, there is some promise for Tottenham going into next season. They appear to have pulled off something of a transfer coupe by signing Brazilian Paulinho from Corinthians, although at the time of writing this is still to be confirmed by Spurs officially. This deal will allow Andre Villas-Boas to move towards a 4-3-3 formation similar to the one deployed during his time at Porto. It can be expected that Paulinho will be expected to hold alongside Sandro, allowing Mousa Dembele a more advanced role. If Spurs manage to hang on to Gareth Bale as reports are suggesting and pull off the signing of any of their alleged forward line targets in David Villa, Roberto Soldado or Christian Benteke, then there is the real prospect of them entering the new season with genuine cause for optimism.

Aspirations of a top four finish can be fully justified based upon analysis of the potential starting eleven and supporting cast that could be available to Villas-Boas. The return of Younes Kaboul and Sandro will be like new signings in themselves, whilst Hugo Lloris and Jan Vertonghen can be expected to continue their already impressive adaptation to the Premier League forming a solid defensive spine to the team. Kyle Walker and Danny Rose could potentially fill the full back positions. Both are still full of promise, although both still have plenty to improve in their game.

Up front it is likely that Spurs will be operating a front three which potentially will include one or two new faces alongside Gareth Bale, with contribution to the cause from Aaron Lennon, Jermain Defoe and Clint Dempsey from the bench. The signing of David Villa could be somewhat of a gamble given his injury troubles, but surely one Spurs will take if they are given the opportunity to sign Spain’s all-time leading goal scorer.

As already touched upon the midfield three of Dembele, Sandro and Paulinho have the potential to dominate the centre of the park with all three players full of energy, pace and power. Gylfi Sigurdsson and Lewis Holtby, impressive in the U21 European Championships for Germany this summer, offer a more creative edge should it be required. However, it is still debatable whether either of those players can really make their mark at the top end of the Premier League.

An area where Spurs were lacking last season was the ability to break down opposition at White Hart Lane who set up to defend. The loss of Van Der Vaart and of course Luka Modric meant that Spurs were looking for a new lock picker for games which were becoming tight and tense. It was a search that was ultimately fruitless with nobody quite stepping up and becoming that consistent creative midfield force that they needed. Sigurdsson and Dembele both impressed at times with their energy and technical prowess, but neither possess the intricacy to unlock defences game after game.

Dropping home points to Norwich, Wigan, West Brom and Fulham could certainly be looked upon as a key factor in failure to qualify for the Champions League in a season where Spurs fared well against the league’s top teams. In recent years Spurs have usually suffered at least a couple of 1-0 home defeats against the league’s lower sides, but they are also used to their fair share of high scoring victories at the Lane. Last season Spurs laboured in many home games and only just scraped victory on several occasions largely down to inspiration from Gareth Bale. In fact Spurs did not win a home game in the Premier League by more than two goals all season.

Spurs can take heart from their manager, whom certainly seems to have plenty of it himself. Having turned his own career around once more following a nightmare spell at Chelsea, Andre Villas-Boas will be desperate to secure Tottenham Champions League qualification in 2013/14. Despite guiding Spurs to their highest ever Premier League points total, falling short of the main objective will have hurt Villas-Boas just as much as the cruel hand of Roman Abramovich a year before.

The influence of Andre Villas-Boas on the Spurs team grew throughout last season, both tactically and mentally. Inspired substitutions like those that helped Spurs overcome Manchester City in a wonderful seven minute spell demonstrated why Villas-Boas was so highly rated during his time in Portugal, but perhaps more impressive was the way Villas-Boas took a team leaking late goals on a weekly basis in the opening months of the campaign and produced a second half of the season in which Spurs were finishing games strongly and snatching their own last gasp rewards. In addition to the late turnaround against City, Spurs scored late goals in both ties of their Europa League encounter with Lyon, Gareth Bale hit a wonder strike against West Ham to complete an astonishing turnaround and there was the dramatic Clint Dempsey equaliser against Manchester United deep into stoppage time in a White Hart Lane January blizzard.

In fact Spurs scored after the 80th minute in all of their final seven Premier League games, which is in stark contrast to the previous campaign where they seemed to fall apart for the rest of the season following a 5-2 defeat at the Emirates in the North London derby. Spurs fought to the bitter end last season, and were only outdone by a quite simply unbelievable spell of form by their North London rivals whom dropped just 4 points in the league following their defeat in the North London derby at White Hart Lane. As the curtain fell on another final day disappointment, Spurs fans could at least console themselves with the spirit and resolve their team had shown during the crucial run-in period.

It has felt like a definitive season for Spurs every year since they qualified for the Champions League in 2009/10, and 2013/14 will be no different. Spurs have managed to pick up an admirable knack of failing to qualify for the Champions League but still managing to put up a very decent fight for qualification the following season. There’s no doubting that Spurs are edging back towards the embodiment of their motto, ‘To Dare Is To Do’, but there is still a step up required to actually fulfil this promise and ‘Do’ what it is they are trying to achieve. There is a feeling at the moment around the Lane that maybe Villas-Boas and this current crop of players are on the verge of something special. Much will depend on the shape of the squad come the end of the transfer window.

This is without doubt a crucial summer for Spurs which could shape not just this coming season, but perhaps the next decade of the football club. If they can keep Bale and add a couple of top quality signings there is every reason this team could genuinely challenge for the title in the next few seasons. Do the opposite and we could easily be comparing the plight of Spurs in three seasons time to that which has recently befallen Aston Villa, another side whom until just recently were consistently just missing out on the fabled top four and yet now find themselves firmly back at square one following a season in which they only just about managed to survive relegation.

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