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19 points gone missing in the excitement

provence

New Member
May 9, 2005
25
0
We have so far gifted 19 points to the bottom five. With these points in hand - or rather on the table - Manchester United would have had a fight for the title right to the end. This shows both the Spurs team's potential and the disappointment that we are feeling at the end of an otherwise great season.

And the disappointment shows how far Spurs have come in the course of just a couple of years. It is not so long ago that qualification for the then UEFA Cup was rated as a huge success. Now it is not good enough - and rightly so.

This season the team has lived up to the famous Bill Nicholson quote of aiming so high that even failure had in it an echo of glory.

And we must remember the glorious performances - Inter, Milan, Ar23nal etc. - before we pass a too harsh judgement on the strikers' inability to score, the officials who cheated us and the 19 points that went missing.

We got a fabulous taste of Champions League football that we want to repeat. And even if we don't beat the odds and sneak into fourth this time, there is always next year.

If we should manage to grab a Europa League spot then use the Thursday matches to blood some of the youngsters and give the fringe players a night out. Rack up some UEFA coefficient points for the coming years, but primarily concentrate on challenging for the Premiership title. Let's win the title next season!!!

We have the talent and the potential. We have the in-depth squad to cope, and just add a proven goalscorer or two without disrupting the squad and the continuity too much over the summer.

I believe it is just a matter of adding the last 5% of mental strength to some of the key players. They have already shown that they can come back from falling behind. But I would like to see that capability developed into a United'esque 'refuse to surrender/refuse to loose' attitude, which ensures that we take the 19 points next year along with...let's say 65 more...

Looking forward to next season. COYS !
 

parj

NDombelly ate all the pies
Jul 27, 2003
3,586
5,861
what concerns me is the "small team" mentality we have. We keep turning it on against the big teams, but the smaller teams we dont turn up. Im sorry but dominating games isnt enough. We play well enough against the top 4 and end up with more points than we get against the bottom 4 where we are "unlucky".

Luck evens itself out over a season, but to some extent you make your own which is a clear failure this year.

We need to take smaller teams more serious to get top 4.
 

Stavrogin

Well-Known Member
Apr 17, 2004
2,360
1,472
what concerns me is the "small team" mentality we have. We keep turning it on against the big teams, but the smaller teams we dont turn up. Im sorry but dominating games isnt enough. We play well enough against the top 4 and end up with more points than we get against the bottom 4 where we are "unlucky".

Luck evens itself out over a season, but to some extent you make your own which is a clear failure this year.

We need to take smaller teams more serious to get top 4.

Well no, not turning up was what we used to do a few seasons ago... when we'd be markedly inferior to supposedly lesser opposition in almost every respect.

Now, we do actually turn up and dominate most of these games. But this presents a new problem in that most of these teams go on the defensive and we have to score against resolute opposition. Its a new problem and you see over the course of some of these games how we're playing under great pressure when we fail to score... as the game goes on we lose composure and get edgy. Add to that our strikers generally being poor this season [and Redknapp's decision to save the most effective combination Crouch/VdV, for only the biggest game] and we struggle.
 

Paolo10

Well-Known Member
Apr 6, 2004
6,179
7,621
I was going to post a similar column.

Home draws are the problem and that's through not finishing teams off/having that bit of luck. It's clear to everyone that we need a new striker or two, personally Pav would be my first to go. Defoe will score goals, just had a rough patch. Crouch to stay as a sub (if he will) a la his time at Liverpool, he does offer something different.

It would be worse if we weren't playing well or creating chances, but we are. This is why the Harry criticism does my head in, we are a good side playing good stuff.

If you want to blame anyone for the lack of a striker, blame the chairman, you only need to look at our history of lastminute.com deals to see that this particular problem does not fall at Harry's doorstep.

A bit more luck with injuries and the right strengthening in the right areas (few experienced/senior players too)and we're in very good shape for the league.

I'd amost throw the Liverpool game to give them Europa League football so we can really make a go of it.

I would bite the hand off United for Berbatov back, he is exactly the type of player we're missing and Pav as his replacement (£14m, 3 years ago almost) isn't fit to lace his boots. New striker or two, maybe Scotty Parker and I'm very optimistic for the new season.

COYS!
 

mawspurs

Staff
Jun 29, 2003
35,066
17,739
I posted this on another thread but I can't remember which one.

For all the talk of points against the bottom clubs if we had beaten City in the two games this season, in which we outplayed them both times by the way, we'd be 5 points better off and city 4 points worse off. We would have qualified for the CL again.
 

TheChosenOne

A dislike or neg rep = fat fingers
Dec 13, 2005
47,870
49,700
I posted this on another thread but I can't remember which one.

For all the talk of points against the bottom clubs if we had beaten City in the two games this season, in which we outplayed them both times by the way, we'd be 5 points better off and city 4 points worse off. We would have qualified for the CL again.


I never looked at it like that until you stated so. Darn it.
 

MikeCOYS

Member
Jan 8, 2011
553
19
Really 19 points? That'd put us right behind ManU.

Well, what's done is done. We just need to move on, keep the style, possession and flair we have and add in a 15-25 goals per season striker and we may even challenge for 3rd. But I see we'll be hanging around 4th-6th next season because City is gonna improve immensely and Liverpool.

Maybe to win against Liverpool Harry should say to our strikers, "Listen you 3, if you fail to score in this match, you'll be shipped out of here!"
 
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