CityVP Manjit

5 years ago · 5 min. reading time · ~100 ·

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Tottenham Revert To Their Reputation for Choking

Tottenham Revert To Their Reputation for Choking

VHEN SPURS GET SPURSY

ill Tottenham Develop a Ruthless Winning M,
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EIGHT CONSECUTIVE
FA CUP SEMI-FINAL LOSSES

Spurs manager Mauricio Pochettino has made Tottenham competitive over a short number of years but still has not eradicated their flair for failing on the big stage.  The irony this year is that Tottenham, due to ground redevelopment has been using Wembley Stadium as their home ground.  So much so that when Manchester United and Chelsea both qualified for the semi-finals, each of those teams lodged a protest that Spurs were not neutral playing a semi-final at Wembley.

There was a time when going to Wembley was a really big thing and while football fans all over the world remind us about the magic of playing at Wembley Stadium,, perhaps allowing a Premier League club to play all their games at the stadium.  Years back to 1991 when Spurs last reached a Wembley FA Cup Final (or even a Final of any sorts) the "Spurs are going to Wembley" song is a permanent fixture of the Tottenham Hotspur culture and that built up from their 1981 Cup success :

The smell of greatness is beginning to waft into the noses of Spurs supporters but so is the smell of decades of false dawns and hopes.  Pochettino is right to say that winning the FA Cup this year meant nothing to the long-term project of the club, but there is that SPURSY reputation that clearly Tottenham have not overcome and losing EIGHT FA Cup Semi-Finals in a row is a sore thumb of a reality.  It is also true that had Spurs reached any of those Eight Finals the teams that they would have met and who eventually won the FA Cup would probably result in the same winners - but the games would have been blockbusters because they would have mainly been Cup Finals against Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea.  Those games don't come bigger than that unless it is one of the top Champions League past winners.

The irony of the new stadium build is that so much focus has been given to it being able to host NFL games and its retractable pitch, but the hope is that Spurs as a soccer team do not become retractable as a mentality.  The NFL contract is a superb way of bringing extra finances into the hands of the financial house that Daniel Levy and the chief owner of Spurs have invested in but succeeding getting an NFL franchise is not what Tottenham Hotspur fans are paying any heart or attention to - indeed there are ground shares in Europe where teams like Inter Milan and AC Milan play in the same stadium, but it is not at all the same brand.

Now what is left of the season, Spurs must not get Spursy again and miss out on Champions League football, especially when Chelsea gifted them 3 points at Stamford Bridge. It was not that Spurs broke a hoodoo of not winning at Stamford Bridge for 28 years, it was that this Chelsea team was the first to succumb and surrender to Spurs in 28 years.   After successive Wembley loses against both Manchester clubs - the question of whether Spurs can consistently beat the TOP SIX clubs has returned with a vengeance.  Tottenham players went back to the dressing rooms crest fallen and deflated, it is their reaction to loss which needs greater resilience also and maybe a far greater maturity.

It is only a month ago that Spurs yet again got Spursy against Juventus and lost a game they really should have won - and that is what SPURSY is all about.  Juventus went on to lose in what was nearly a miracle come back against Real Madrid.  Maybe Tottenham are not ready to win big competitions yet and so lose the battle now, but they have not at all lost the war, and that war is the the one that takes them to the pinnacle, where a Tottenham team can stand head and shoulders above the best clubs in the World and justifiably say we are the best there is - that is not a pipe dream, that is what is most exciting about the Tottenham project today and moving into the future - but for the immediate future Tottenham have to get the psychological mentality right and stop doing what their opponents hope them to do , which is to suffer loss against teams they should now have learned how to beat and beat well.

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