The silent backlash continues...

[Sevens]

I am not convinced Harry would do any better with this squad. Only thing I do know, Townsend would play instead of Lamela.

Depends whether he'd ditch the dreadful 4-2-3-1 with inverted wingers. If Redknapp came in then I think both Lennon and Adebayor would be brought in from the cold too.

But Redknapp isn't coming back and as much as I am underwhelmed by Poch I don't believe in kneejerk reactions. Unless we are in serious relegation trouble Poch shouldn't lose his job this season.

 

[TottenhamMattSpur]

Going back to the original post. Think I could see quite a few empty seats.

 

[Misfit]

I dunno, I would hardly call myself an old man here, several years away from the big 4-0 yet, but maybe my priorities have changed and it's that simple. I've grown to completely loathe the sport as a whole and the last 5-6 years I have only really been involved in it due to my Spurs addiction or love/hate or whatever.

But even then, the last couple of years, I haven't felt a twinge of anxiety or pure joy watching even us. Maybe that part of my life is simply over and my attention is on other things.

What I will say is that I just had a good old look at the updated stadium stuff and that did get my heart pumping a little quicker. Maybe when that happens and we can all see some tangible progress made at the club, in any damn direction, things will change for others and myself.

I just don't think I have much more to give except to keep on keeping on and following events. Financially I have spent a medium sized fortune down the years, too much in retrospect, and emotionally I'm drained. Let the younger guys in their teens and early 20's take those particular hammerings.

The club had a real chance 4 or 5 years ago and that was missed for a variety of reasons. Now we seem to be treading water and are actually OK with that as a club. It's all on the stadium now. Until that is done, this is it and I can live with that I suppose.

Maybe someone 10 years older than me would be unhappy with that considering rhe cup runs and even the odd belter of a league season etc in the 80's but I grew up idolising such luminaries as John Scales, Jose Dominguez and Paolo Tramezzani etc etc. Let's not mention the Nethercotts et al. Nup. I had a brief couple of years in early childhood of Gazza, Lineker etc which cruelly tricked me into an obsession with the men in white and a brief couple of years of the likes of Barmby, Anderton, Teddy, the Romanians and Jurgen etc. But otherwise, a tepid sea of shit -at best - for well over a decade. Probably people 10 years younger than me are also a bit pist off with the situation having largely seen us fighting for an outside chance of the top 4 and qualifying for Europe regularly. My teens and early 20's were spent checking teletext to see if we had a chance to get into Europe via the fair play league. Hahahaha. That was my highlight for 15 years solid. All about perspective I guess.

 

[chavkev]

I feel quite similar to Misfit in the post above. Football itself is so unattractive right now. It is only watching my local non-league club that is keeping me in it tbh. I find myself increasingly trying to avoid watching Spurs (Successfully for the first two games this season) as the football is just awful to watch.

Maybe we all have a shelf life as supporters and some are longer than others.

 

[thelak]

Poch can only work with the players at his disposal. Oh for a berbatov up front, midfielders like VdV, Bale, Modric, Carrick? And a Ledley to marshall the back 4. But at the moment he is working with what he's got.
Bale proceeds were clearly spent unwisely, and I would love to see us bringing in a couple of real stars. However the stadium will need a huge amount of our revenue streams to finance it. Patience will be required while this is built.
But Poch is slowly shaping the squad, and it's great to see our youngsters getting meaningful game time to develop.
And this is still miles better than the 90's, we've got the French captain, a number of Belgian Int'ls , a number of England squad players and other internationals too. Keep the faith!

Please Please Please can we stop comparing where we are today to where we were in the mid 1990's??

Everyone knows we are better than we were 20 years ago!! and yes if you want to keep comparing it to one of the worst periods in our history almost a generation ago then of course life is rosy!

Its the steady decline over the last 3-4 years or so and having several world class players, being most neutrals second club for the exciting football we played and generally having the vibe and optimism of a club going places and on the up that which has now totally stalled that people are frustrated with as well as the lack of investment when the large majority of rivals and until recently non rivals are spending. Yes we keep coming 5th/6th but last season Kane totally saved our season and imagine if we did spend a bit more - we might come higher than 5th. I am excited we are playing our youngsters but a) that should be blended with some high quality experience and b) some of those youngsters are still not quite ready or good enough to be totally relied on but right now that seems to be the case. Even Kane - our only striker! Its a ridiculous burden on him. Embarassing almost and he should be looked after if he going to fulfill his potential. No one reasonable expects to go out and splurge £100m we dont have but spending a bit of money without having to recoup it in sales should be well within our means

 

[TwanYid]

Please Please Please can we stop comparing where we are today to where we were in the mid 1990's??

Everyone knows we are better than we were 20 years ago!! and yes if you want to keep comparing it to one of the worst periods in our history almost a generation ago then of course life is rosy!

Its the steady decline over the last 3-4 years or so and having several world class players, being most neutrals second club for the exciting football we played and generally having the vibe and optimism of a club going places and on the up that which has now totally stalled that people are frustrated with as well as the lack of investment when the large majority of rivals and until recently non rivals are spending. Yes we keep coming 5th/6th but last season Kane totally saved our season and imagine if we did spend a bit more - we might come higher than 5th. I am excited we are playing our youngsters but a) that should be blended with some high quality experience and b) some of those youngsters are still not quite ready or good enough to be totally relied on but right now that seems to be the case. Even Kane - our only striker! Its a ridiculous burden on him. Embarassing almost and he should be looked after if he going to fulfill his potential. No one reasonable expects to go out and splurge £100m we dont have but spending a bit of money without having to recoup it in sales should be well within our means

I wish I could give two winners for this.

 

[hellava_tough]

The club had a real chance 4 or 5 years ago and that was missed for a variety of reasons. Now we seem to be treading water and are actually OK with that as a club. It's all on the stadium now. Until that is done, this is it and I can live with that I suppose.

Got to be careful with this; you tread water for too long and other teams catch you up and overtake you.

Don't want to go back to the 90s!

 

[TwanYid]

Here we go with the revisionism again. Should I bite? Why not. It's been a while.

Amazing how so many people think Lamela needs more time and is only adjusting to the league (first season doesn't count apparently) and yet Modric was world class and needed no adjusting when Redknapp first took over.

Redknapp took over an absolute pile of dog turd. The squad was awful. It had two or three players with potential but the balance was a mess and most of the first team was mid-table, at best, quality. We had lost our three main forwards in the space of 6 months. We had Pavlyuchenko as our main man up front! Or maybe we could just bring in Frazier Campbell.

It's funny because people remember what they want to remember. People remember Bale & Modric always being brilliant in Spurs shirts and remember them as always being available. They were not. The season we qualified for the CL Modric was out for most of before Xmas with an injury. Bale only started playing after Xmas and whilst he did well he wasn't the player he was two seasons later.

King? The season we qualified for the CL he made just 20 league apps. The following season he made just 6. The season after that he was pretty much finished and a shadow of the player he was.

Redknapp was far from perfect but to give it the BS that any half decent manager would have won things is quite frankly an idiotic statement to make. There have been far better teams than Redknapp's Spurs teams that have failed to win trophies.

We (as do most fans of their clubs) also over rated how good we were. We were close to being a very good side. But there were still better sides than us, including Arsenal.

Our best XI wasn't better than Arsenal. A lot of Spurs fans beat themselves up still that we "blew" the chance to beat Arsenal. In truth they were better. Their team had beaten us in the Premiership for years before and have beaten us in the years after that season. Their core players in that team have proven themselves to be top four quality year after year before and since. Ours hadn't and haven't. Combine that with Van Persie staying fit for the first time in an age and scoring 30 Premier League goals? It would have been a brilliant achievement to have beaten them that year and in hindsight it wasn't a failure that we didn't in my opinion. They had better players and a better Manager and still only managed to beat us by 1 point.

...and four winners for this.

 

[Misfit]

Got to be careful with this; you tread water for too long and other teams catch you up and overtake you.

Don't want to go back to the 90s!

Oh I agree but I guess I just can't be all that arsed about it. I would hope that if we did start regressing horribly and we were back to the days where I would mentally tell myself that as long as we finished in the top half of the table, we'd be able to get a couple of decent signing in that summer, then I would bloviate a tad more sarcastically about THFC. Oh, how the difference between 10th and 11th place could royally fuck my first few weeks of summer back in the day. Or, as may be the case, I might not even be bothered then and, like Chief Justice Fargo in the 1995 cinematic masterpiece Judge Dredd, have to embark on a long walk into the cursed earth once and for all wrt THFC.

Point taken though. It's a gamble the club is clearly taking. I'm probably wrong, when it comes to Spurs that is usually the case, but it's the stadium or bust it seems and cross our fingers we can hold tight until then.

 

[greaves]

Yep. In many ways this is nothing to do with Spurs (or any particular club that any supporter follows) but to do with us and who and 'where' we are as people. Not a particularly profound observation but there we go. Always comparing ourselves to what we could be is inevitable but can be gnawingly grim and always never quite. We never measure up, and any high is unfortunate in that it can be nigh on impossible to replicate. Measure, worry, stress, measure. We can choose instead to cut ourselves (and the Spurs that 'stands for us') some slack. We should always proceed with hope. But it would be good to be kinder to ourselves and those who we have 'chosen' to represent us. Damn that seems sober! Sincere apologies. Misfit, for what it's worth, it's great to see you, for however short a time.

 

[Spurger King]

At least we won a couple of trophies in the 90s!

 

[jabbathehut]

No FA cup final since 1991.Will be 25 years this May.A whole generation haven't tasted FA cup glory.

 

[Misfit]

Yep. In many ways this is nothing to do with Spurs (or any particular club that any supporter follows) but to do with us and who and 'where' we are as people. Not a particularly profound observation but there we go. Always comparing ourselves to what we could be is inevitable but can be gnawingly grim and always never quite. We never measure up, and any high is unfortunate in that it can be nigh on impossible to replicate. Measure, worry, stress, measure. We can choose instead to cut ourselves (and the Spurs that 'stands for us') some slack. We should always proceed with hope. But it would be good to be kinder to ourselves and those who we have 'chosen' to represent us. Damn that seems sober! Sincere apologies. Misfit, for what it's worth, it's great to see you, for however short a time.

And you mon ami. Not sure I'll be going anywhere. Missed the posters in this place, lots of interesting topics to discuss while pretending to work hard during the day. I would be happy enough with a BMJ/HR kind of club if I'm honest. I'd prefer attractive winning football of course but attractive football is really what would keep my interest. Just a little excitement. Maybe not quite as much as the Ossie days as manager but anything that at least entertains. Maybe getting the Spurs out of you is harder than I thought. I would accept minimal success with attractive football over stodgy successful football. I might even prefer it.

Honestly, and this is specific to me possibly, everything post 2004ish has been gravy. I'm very glad to have witnessed our club not being viewed as a total joke by everyone. Other clubs, the press and culturally. That's where we were for my formative years. An actual joke. The only time we were mentioned was as a punchline. And never by the "big clubs". We weren't even an afterthought. We were right there, side by side with Sheffield Wednesday on match day to the Yaniteds of the 90's. Obviously the club should never stop striving for more or the fans should just accept their lot in life but meh, I just remember the dark days very vividly. An FA Cup aside, life was stupidly grim except the odd 6-2 away win at Saints (with the obligatory Ronnie Rosenthal cameo) or a Carling Cup final come back from behind victory with only 10 men (fuck you, Lily Savage). Maybe I can only really sing myself hoarse for players who are complete crap? Oh, how I miss thee Nicola Berti!

 

[Misfit]

At least we won a couple of trophies in the 90s!

And 2008! We never should have sacked Wendy!

 

[HappySpur]

And 2008! We never should have sacked Wendy!

I have heard rumor that we only had 2 points in 8 matches. Not sure, if true, but if the case, a change was probably necessary.

 

[Spurger King]

And 2008! We never should have sacked Wendy!

Just meant that as shit as we were in the 90s we still won more trophies then than in any period since. Plus we always seemed to convince ourselves we were on the brink of being a better team.

We also had a reputation as a cup side, so I was never massively bothered about our league performances. For whatever reason I had a lot of fun supporting Spurs in the 90s. It was the early 2000s that were truly shit.

 

[Spurger King]

I have heard rumor that we only had 2 points in 8 matches. Not sure, if true, but if the case, a change was probably necessary.

That does ring a bell. Surprised we didn't hear more about it.

 

[Misfit]

I have heard rumor that we only had 2 points in 8 matches. Not sure, if true, but if the case, a change was probably necessary.

But that hair! A barnet worthy of a Spurs manager.

 

[Misfit]

Just meant that as shit as we were in the 90s we still won more trophies then than in any period since. Plus we always seemed to convince ourselves we were on the brink of being a better team.

We also had a reputation as a cup side, so I was never massively bothered about our league performances. For whatever reason I had a lot of fun supporting Spurs in the 90s. It was the early 2000s that were truly shit.

Furry muff really. I always longed to have a better league standing. The sign of legitimacy in my mind for some reason. Of course, I never realised it could be at the expense of our FA Cup fortunes.

And I also had a blast. Wouldn't have missed it for the world, especially my ST days and away days from 98-01. And yeah, the early 00's were the murkiest depths but that 98 season did my ticker no good at all. Ring was twitching for months during that season.

And for all of this, we still won 2 trophies last decade. We're like feminists really, Spurs fans. Always looking up at the CEOs and never down at the vast army of street sweepers. Hahaha. No wonder most other fanbases have a hate hate relationship with us.

 

[Spurger King]

But that hair! A barnet worthy of a Spurs manager.

It's odd how our last two proper managers (not including Nice but Tim) have essentially encapsulated the two key traits of Ramos...

AVB with his Euopa League success exaggerating his managerial skills, and Pochettino being unable to speak English.