That Spursy Reputation

Do you have a reputation for blowing it during the big moments of your life?  Then hopefully you are not inflicted in the way Tottenham Hotspur Football Club has been for many decades now.  That reputation for blowing it on the field of professional football has led to what is called "Being Spursy" or to lose a winning position and/or constantly underachieve.

In a must win game against PSV Eindhoven, Tottenham's World Cup winning goalkeeper who last Saturday was on world class form to earn Tottenham a victory of West Ham, was yet again engaged in one of his inexpiable decisions to rush out and foul a PSV player that the referee deemed to be a straight sending off and a red card.  At the time Tottenham were 10 minutes away from beating PSV away from home.

In a prior Champions League game, Spurs were leading against Inter Milan and conspired to go from 1-0 up to losing 2-1. Despite Barcelona beating Inter Milan today, the Italian giants (or least giants of many successes) now leads by 5 clear points. Thus Spurs got Spursy again, losing yet another game this season from what was a winning position.   Lloris hailed as hero on Saturday became a villian by Wednesday afternoon, 

Why Vorm replaced him as the Spurs goalkeeper and not the young new keeper for Spurs from Argentina (Gazzinga) is perplexing because Vorm has been conceding two goals per match.  Back in goal he conceded two goals in the final 10 minutes.  Spurs are now on the precipe and verge of elimination from this years Champions League.   They now cannot drop anymore points and will hope that Barcelona is generous to Spurs and not to Inter Milan when they play those up and coming matches.

WINNING is a mentality and though Spurs did win ugly on the weekend, today they were just plain throwing away superiority and giving the game away through inexperienced play.  Yet how can a World Cup winner be labelled "inexperienced"  This "Spursy" reputation is something this team could a couple of years ago put down to an inexperienced and young team.  This current Spurs team is loaded with international players who are key members for their respective countries. This year they cannot hide behind the safety of declaring themselves young.

Maybe it will be a blessing to go out of Europe completely and even let PSV Eindhoven have the Europa League position.  At least then this Tottenham team can take stock of its Spursy Reputation.  A reputation so finely ingrained that when Leicester beat Tottenham to the Premier League Title, Spurs somehow managed to finish 3rd in the league what as considered a two team tussle for the title that year.

It is nothing new for Spurs fans to see the team play well and still end up on the wrong side of the result.  Spurs do have great talent that is significantly underpaid in comparison to earnings players get with the "big clubs".  What does not help is that the Chairman of the Club is seeing a huge cost overrun on the new soccer stadium build, which is drastically behind completion and even a source of ridicule about Tottenham's "big club" ambitions.

A "Big Club" lives inside "Big Hearts and Minds" and giving the game away means that Spurs are still far away from becoming a ruthless team.  Too many times have Spurs promised much and then went on totally blow it, thus keeping long-suffering Tottenham fans to suffer the indignation of  another reversal of fortunes - going from a winning position to end the game again as the losing team.