Squeaky bum time: Theatre of Dreams out, swanky megabowl in?

Sir Jim Ratcliffe isn’t one to shy away from big projects. That’s why he wants to knock down Old Trafford, the largest stadium in British club football, and build the – even larger – largest stadium in British club football.

It’s an ambition that divides opinion, but one that has to be viewed in the wider context of football finance. The Premier League’s new Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR) have thrown the cat among the big-spending pigeons. Suddenly, it’s not quite enough to have a shady oligarch or entire shady country bankroll your squad’s facelift. Revenue is king. Without enough of it, clubs are presented with an unenviable fork in the road: scrimp, or suffer a points deduction.

Old Trafford doesn’t exactly have a problem with matchday revenue – its 75,000 capacity is comfortably the highest in the league – but it’s an old stadium with mounting issues. Its roof is as leaky as United’s defen- oops, that one’s been taken. Rust and wear runs through the brickwork as much as it does the United squad (that’s more like it). Missing out as a host stadium at Euro 2028 to the noisy neighbours’ Etihad stadium underlines the ageing process of the England national team’s second home – used only once since the ‘new’ Wembley opened in 2007.

Convenient then that Ratcliffe recently declared his flagship construction project as the ‘Wembley of the North’. This managed to screw up quite a few mancunian faces, with the Oldham native not quite grasping his supporters’ self-identity in opposition to the wealth-hoarding capital city. Nevertheless, the tagline for a new 90,000 seater seems to have stuck.

The justification given by Britain’s richest man is unsurprisingly about money. It would help to make up ground lost to the league’s recent renovators. Tottenham, Arsenal, West Ham and the aforementioned Man City profit from modern, well-connected, multi-purpose stadia which can host visitors like Lady Gaga and Beyonce – far more glamourous than Burnley and Luton Town. Evidence, such as Tottenham’s 600% increase in new stadium matchday revenue, highlights a trend towards maximising sales by keeping doors open in the hours before and after a game. The new generation of match-going fans have their whole day mapped out. That’s right, red devils, get in there early. It’s wall-to-wall craft beer and banh mi.

It’s not an unrealistic task either. Like rats, you’re never further than 5 meters from a United fan at any moment. So there’s no concern about filling the extra capacity. Nor would it do any harm to regenerate Trafford Park, an area where if I’m not attending a match or a gig at Victoria Warehouse, I must be lost.

But it’s worth considering what could be lost for good if the Theatre of Dreams is bulldozed. The saying “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is probably frowned upon in architecture, but the truth is that Old Trafford continues to serve its purpose well. A leaky roof isn’t a sign of imminent collapse. Knocking the whole thing down and starting again would come with an immense cost (roughly £1.2 billion) which could otherwise be spent on improving the squad. It’s perhaps coincidence that Arsenal and Tottenham reached the Champions League final the same year their new stadiums were completed. But 2006 and 2019 marked these teams’ peak before a protracted, painstaking transition period. No more marquee signings when you need to pay off the new home.

For all their differences, I’m sure fans of Spurs and Arsenal share the sweet sorrow of latter-day White Hart Lane and Highbury. After years of routine, you take your seat at your club’s Saturday fortress for the final time. It then disappears to be replaced by a swanky mega-bowl. Despite attention to detail and a focus on acoustics, the atmosphere at Spurs felt flat during most games. Thankfully, the library comparisons had already been made with the Emirates. Although I’m now giddy with excitement at my club’s spending power, the humble quirks and mystique of White Hart Lane are still missed. Lord knows how United fans will mourn the Theatre of Dreams.

Even the most fanatical of United supporters may see their fiercest rivals as an example to follow. Like Old Trafford, Anfield is one of the remaining grand cathedrals of football. Over two rounds of redevelopment spanning ten years, its capacity kept pace with the league’s leaders, growing from 45,000 to 61,000. Kopites therefore don’t have to worry about losing what is such a core component of Liverpool’s identity and ethos.

Good for them. But for all its aches and pains, moving home is an inevitability in football as it is in life. Time swallows everything, including the steelworks of your football club’s main stand. Old Trafford’s best days are far behind us, so a new stadium for a new era makes sense – you don’t need a marketing degree to see that. Ratcliffe, in the spirit of ruthless modernisation (and self-congratulation), will choose to build. Fans are understandably sentimental folk but if they had their way, would any of the decaying stadiums of the 20th century be replaced? We’d still be sat in wooden chairs drinking Bovril.

Now, where’s my pint of Neck Oil?

Ten Hag needs a guiding principle. Is youth the answer?

Are Manchester United sleeping giants or just taking a power nap?

For now, times are tough at Old Trafford. We have here a colossal football club with barely a faint hope of a top 4 finish this season. They’re coached by a perennially stressed Erik ten Hag, who promised riches but is living hand-to-mouth, picking up just about enough wins to avoid the sack. Under new (minority) ownership, the road ahead – be that straight and smooth or winding and bumpy – is still unclear.

There’s been barely anything positive to say about the Red Devils since Sir Alex Ferguson stepped down from his throne in 2013. There have been cup triumphs and memorable victories, but the harmonious feeling of ‘we’re on the right track’ has been seldom felt for a solid decade.

That was until a United XI of a very youthful complexion turned in the club’s most convincing performance of the season in a 3-0 win against West Ham last Sunday. There came a moment, on an advertising board for a tyre company, where the wheels on a new United era got turning.

With the +3 in the bag, Ten Hag could sleep easily knowing his job status was intact for at least another week. But uninterrupted sleep wasn’t the only rare treat from the weekend. Finally, ‘hope’ was a word being bandied about the red side of Manchester. We can’t tell if this newfound optimism is naive. But it has a clear source: the joys of youth. Which, if Erik had any sense, will shape the second half of his team’s season.

So far, Erik the Red has been a different man compared to Erik of Amsterdam. The latter led Ajax to within a Lucas Moura’s hair’s breadth of the Champions League final in 2019, and lifted three consecutive Eredivise titles. The former, in year two at United, is more closed-off, exasperated and seemingly overwhelmed by all the plates he has to spin as the manager of England’s biggest football club.

There is mitigation, of course. He has had more than his fair share of man-management to do, ranging from the disquiet of Jadon Sancho to the serious legal cases involving Mason Greenwood and Anthony. His employers are the Glazer family, the target of an infinite number of rants from club legend Gary Neville (all of which are accurate). The club’s player recruitment strategy, if they even have one, has prioritised overspending on ill-fitting players. Ten Hag is a disciple of Cryuff, Van Gaal and Guardiola, but even he can’t magic up solutions to these problems. Yet it’s exactly because of his managerial pedigree that the team’s failings on the pitch have raised my eyebrows.

Ten Hag, the timid new hire, stunted his own progress last season by falsely believing that he will be judged more by his mistakes than by his initiative. The precedent was set after his team were embarrassed 4-0 by Brentford in Ten Hag’s second game in charge. Their next fixture was not quite a must-not-lose but definitely a must-not-be-thrashed versus Liverpool. Damage limitation was the order of the day, and a resolute United nicked a win against their rivals. As a one-off exercise in pragmatism this is fine. But it set the tone for the Ten Hag administration.

When United held an attacking Tottenham outfit to a 2-2 draw at Old Trafford last month, I saw nothing that pertained to a clear game plan from the home side. That is, nothing beyond praying Spurs’ high defensive line would create space for their pacey forwards to capitalise. Tottenham dominated possession but lacked bite in the absence of key attacking players. In the end, the scoreline flattered an uncreative United saved by clinical finishing from Marcus Rashford and Rasmus Hojlund.

Once an agenda-setter, Ten Hag now sets up his team purely to thwart the strengths or target the weaknesses of his opponent. That just can’t run in an Enlightenment era of football where clubs have a wealth of information and technology to drive a chosen philosophy. I’m not saying every coach has to be an ideologue – even Pep Guardiola displays ruthless pragmatism – but the most successful teams build from their own idea of how to play. Impose your vision first, then adapt it to your opponent. Even Luton Town have a distinct way of playing. It’s aerial and industrious, but it works for them.

Ten Hag’s approach this season has done both himself and his players a massive disservice. This was evidenced on Sunday when United finally took the handbrake off. Playing their natural game on the front foot, I saw things in a new light. You take a team of internationals, inject some confidence and belief, give them a framework of sound tactics, and suddenly the sum of its parts equates to its output. Makes sense, right? Even more exciting if your name is Erik and you want to be employed for another few years was that United had three fearless headline acts under the age of 21.

They say there’s beauty in the struggle. It might be the case that 2023/24 is a season of underachievement, but it may also be regarded by the football historians as a turning point for Manchester United. The season a new generation of talent found its feet. That is, after all, the main thing Ten Hag has going for him on the pitch. It runs deeper too. United’s under 18s are currently unbeatable, so there could soon be more youngsters joining Alejandro Garnacho and Kobbie Mainoo in the first team.

If Ten Hag previously lacked a guiding principle then he’s now got one staring him right in the face. He just needs to harness it. There are numerous reasons why he should champion the power of youth, too. The first reason, which glares down at him most matchdays, is Sir Alex. There’s no better example of a manager who stumbled around during the first few years of his tenure waiting for success. Then came the golden generation of all golden generations, the Class of ’92, which paved the way for a footballing dynasty.

There are other fine examples. Despite an FA Cup win, the jury was out on Mikel Arteta for at least the first two years of his time as Arsenal boss. ‘Lockdown Arsenal’ is something of an internet meme (though Arsenal Fan TV is largely culpable). But the light at the end of this tunnel was defined by the sprouting of young talent, in particular Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli.

Who could forget the pinnacle of Premier League youthfulness? That is, of course, the Aston Villa teams of 2012-14, who are statistically the team with the youngest average age in PL history. A 15th place finish in 2013 doesn’t jump out as success now, but Match of the Day’s Alan Hansen – notorious for his views on young teams – called for Paul Lambert to win the Manager of the Season award on account of the refreshing transformation of Villa under his stewardship.

My point is, even if you can’t win anything with kids, as a manager you sure can buy yourself some time. Fans are hardwired to back academy products as ‘one of their own’. Errors are easily forgiven, and outstanding performances are etched into a club’s history (see: Federico Macheda). It really is as simple as concluding: everyone’s happy to see a young lad playing well.

The second thing, which may be of greater interest to our Erik, is that investing in young players often produces results. It’s not an exact science, but fledgling footballers tend to play with more freedom. They’re keen to impress, have not yet been conditioned into playing a certain way, and usually don’t have to justify a heavy transfer fee or an international call-up.

Then there’s the financial side of things. Buying young and cheap is a win-win method. If a prospect makes the grade, you’ve avoided spending millions on an established player. Otherwise, he can be sold on for a profit. The wisdom of such a recruitment strategy will drive new investor Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s planned overhaul of the club. In fact, it’s in vogue at most big clubs. Chelsea and Manchester City have seemingly produced half the professional footballers in the world. Tottenham recently beat Barcelona to the signature of talented young Swede Lucas Bergvall. Whether or not he makes an appearance for the club, it’s safe to assume Spurs will make money from this.

I anticipate the ‘this is all well and good, but’ counter-argument from Man United fans. The fact is, a super-club like United can’t afford a protracted transition phase, crossing their fingers for Hojlund and co while the blue side of Manchester has all the fun.

The three-time Champions League winners have failed to qualify for said competition five times over the last decade. That’s five times too many. It’ll soon be six unless they muster a faultless run to the end of the season. Ultimately, few onlookers expect any success for United this season. But that doesn’t rule out the potential for productivity.

Erik Ten Hag has often appeared lost. Last week, while his young stars shone on the pitch, his North Star flickered ahead of him. Don’t worry United fans, there is a way forward. The future has already arrived.

Crystal Palace: the football club about nothing

The protestations of Crystal Palace fans at the Emirates this weekend felt overdue. But then so do a lot of things at Palace, such is the uneventfulness of their existence. Barely a day goes by where I do think of Crystal Palace. Yet the situation at the club is now heating up to boiling point. The supporters clearly aren’t happy, and it’s worth considering why.

Crystal Palace are, on closer inspection, one of the most fascinating clubs in the Premier League. They are currently busying their way through their tenth consecutive season in the top flight, in the very manner they did for the previous nine. In those ten years, Palace have finished no higher than tenth, and no lower than fifteenth. They’ve never flirted with Europe and have avoided being serious relegation candidates. It’s a record so unremarkable, it’s remarkable.

If the Premier League table was the M1, with every team quickly headed north or south, Palace would be loitering in a service station just outside Leicester. But their occupation of this anonymous lower-middle section of the table has not been as boring or bleak as it suggests.

Think of Andros Townsend at the Etihad, Dwight Gayle crushing scouse dreams, or Alan Pardew’s Wembley boogie. Palace have entertained. In Marc Guéhi, Aaron Wan-Bissaka and – unquestionably – Wilfred Zaha, some of the country’s best young talent has emerged at Selhurst Park. Speaking of, being a spectator there is often a fantastic experience, even when the game itself doesn’t match it. Palace supporters home and away are as passionate and devoted as you’ll get.

Right now, they’re definitely not glad all over. And I can totally see why. If I was a Palace fan, I would be looking around enviously at other Premier League clubs of similar stature who have managed to climb higher. Seagulls aren’t supposed to outfly Eagles, yet the trajectory of rivals Brighton – who not long ago were playing at a small-time athletics track – has been steeper and more inspiring.

‘Wasted potential on and off the pitch. Weak decisions taking us backwards’ is what the banners read on Saturday.

This definitely rings true. Crystal Palace are the league’s resident make-doers. Their life cycle goes like this: develop and sell talented young players, reinvest within their means, beat a Big 6 team under the lights at Selhurst, finish between tenth and fifteenth. Repeat.

Contentment with this routine points to a lack of ambition. So in that regard, supporters are right to feel short-changed. Shouldn’t ten years in the top flight merit more than this? We can’t know for sure what the winning fans at the 2013 playoff final expected, but it certainly wasn’t stagnation.

The worry amongst supporters must be in part due to the fine margin between comfortable mid-table finishes and relegation. The precedent set by Southampton exemplifies how Premier League status cannot be taken for granted. Following four top-half finishes and a taste of European football the Saints got complacent and wobbled around the wrong half of the table. Ralph Hasenhüttl steered them away from danger until he could no longer. In 2022/23 he got the sack, and Southampton hit rock bottom.

The truth is that Southampton were a ticking time-bomb for five seasons before their eventual demise. There just happened to be three worse teams in the league. You can make a fair case that Crystal Palace have now taken on that mantle. Swap out Hasenhüttl, and it’s Roy Hodgson as the competent but limited caretaker.

Roy spoke diplomatically after Saturday’s embarrassing defeat. If he’s sacked anytime soon there could be a job for him in the Foreign Office. It’s not like retirement appeals to the veteran coach.

“All I would say is they (the fans) are totally entitled to their opinion. I do understand their frustration, even anger and disappointment that things haven’t got better… If we are going to go forward and avoid relegation and do well, we need these fans with us. Hopefully we can keep them on board and the best way to do that is by winning football matches and playing better than today.”

It wouldn’t surprise me if it was another manager who carried out the tasks Hodgson outlines. The unemployed Graham Potter, responsible for Brighton’s aforementioned rise, was in attendance at the Emirates.

But to give Hodgson his due, there is an alternative way of viewing Palace’s situation.

The Premier League is a beast. It will happily chew up and spit out any team that takes a couple of missteps. In fact, since Palace came up in 2013 twenty clubs have also celebrated promotion. Of those twenty, only ten are in the Premier League this season. So we’re talking about a 50% chance of survival.

Break it down further, and you can deduce three subcategories of promoted club:

Established PL outfits: Newcastle, Brighton, Aston Villa, Wolves, Brentford.
Unsettled PL status: Leicester, Burnley, Bournemouth, Watford, Middlesbrough, Fulham, Leeds, Norwich, West Brom, Sheffield United, Luton, Nottingham Forest.
Not seeing them in the PL anytime soon: QPR, Huddersfield.

Where do Palace fit? Based on the evidence it has to be the ‘established’ section. But their PL status appears more precarious than the other five, perhaps with the exception of Brentford.

For all the tedium and moans and groans concerning the last ten years, the bottom line is Crystal Palace have fared much better than the promoted clubs who are now jostling for what Palace have: stability.

Should Palace fans not instead reflect on the ten years preceding 2013, rather than the ones following? After all, they so nearly suffered the same fate as clubs like Charlton, Portsmouth and Bolton. If you thought QPR and Huddersfield had it rough, try plotting an escape from League One. Two points kept debt-stricken Palace away from the third division in 2009/10 following a points deduction, and we could so easily have never spoken about them as a Premier League team again for a long, long time.

That lived experience is probably what influences the judgement of chairman Steve Parish and sporting director Dougie Freedman, the latter of whom is a club legend who played and managed at Selhurst Park during their Championship years.

Of course, Crystal Palace could break convention: hand over the keys to John Textor, deploy a ‘Moneyball’ recruitment strategy, go for broke and finally breach Europe. But that project could so easily go down in flames. Parish and Freedman probably see it that way too, and thus battle on knowing they will just about have enough to stave off relegation for another year. This season, it would be the first without the talismanic Wilfried Zaha.

It all comes down to the one thing every football club craves. No, not trophies. Stability. That key word again. Mauricio Pochettino once infuriated Spurs fans and made a meme of himself by likening top-four finishes to trophies. But he had a point. The same notion was more eloquently worded by new Tottenham boss Ange Postecoglou ahead of his first FA Cup match. He effectively said the end goal should not be the silverware itself, but positioning the club to compete for silverware on a regular basis. Palace might still be some way off that, but success is relative.

What does the future hold for them? Palace could be West Ham or Brentford, capitalising on their geographical placement to grow their club and looking up the table rather than over their shoulders. But by the same token, they could be Milwall or Charlton – the forgotten quarters of London football – stuck and frustrated lower down the pyramid.

The enlightened view may be that fans care about how stability is achieved. Villa have been propelled by an elite manager who gets results. Brighton have cracked player recruitment. Newcastle have a bottomless pit of petrostate funds. Whichever way it’s done, all three examples speak to purposeful improvements. A clear line of sight in an upward direction. Were Palace to find their own version, they could finally secure that coveted ninth place finish. Accomplish that, and for the Eagles the sky could be the limit.

Arsenal and the crushing weight of near-success

Time moves way too quickly in football.

On Christmas Day, Arsenal were top of the Premier League having earned a more-than-respectable point at Anfield. ‘Top at Christmas’, a purely symbolic accolade, is nonetheless a firm indicator that a team are title contenders.

Fast forward two weeks from Christmas. Arsenal have lost all three games they have played, scored just once, and are engulfed in a ‘crisis’. A small, forgetful minority of Arsenal fans (presumably the ‘Amnesiac Army’) are calling for Mikel Arteta’s head.

I’m a Tottenham fan, so Arsenal’s long-overdue meeting with cataclysm does, in one sense, fill me with joy. And I could jump on the bandwagon. Yes, definitely sack Arteta! Get rid of Bukayo Saka too, he’s useless!

But I also observe this with intrigue and empathy. Arsenal seem to be suffering a case of ‘near-success syndrome’.

1: what crisis?

At present, the press is rife with criticism of Arsenal, as well as reasons and remedies for their recent failings. ‘We need a killer’, says Ian Wright, essentially describing himself in the 1990s. Arsenal have ‘killed William Saliba’s love for the game’, speculate Sport Bible with just a hint of exaggeration. Even Arteta himself fears his attackers have ‘mental block’.

Reactions like these aren’t unfounded, but they are overblown. Arsenal are obviously having issues in front of goal, but at Christmas, i.e. three games ago, Arsenal had scored 36 PL goals in total – just one fewer than Liverpool and four fewer than Manchester City. They also had the joint-second best goal difference in the league, and had scored 3+ goals on seven occasions in all competitions.

So clearly then, it wasn’t long ago when Arsenal’s supply of goals was healthy, and helped by their defence keeping it tight at the other end of the pitch.

And yet I was led to believe that Arsenal’s forwards couldn’t hit a barn door and that, given the circumstances, paying £100 million for Ivan Toney was ‘sensible’ and ‘the price of success these days’. That’s not to speak disparagingly of Toney, who I would take at Spurs in a heartbeat. But for that money, it would be the kind of short-sighted deal for a player who hasn’t kicked a ball in eight months that invariably backfires.

The situation at Arsenal still feels quite disastrous though, doesn’t it? Even if it probably isn’t.

2: last season was mad close

Perhaps the cause of this malaise is the psychological impact of near-success.

We need to remember how good Arsenal were for so much of 2022/23 before, tragically, ending the season trophy-less.

At Christmas last year, Arsenal had taken 37 points from 14 games. That’s points dropped in just two matches. They were comfortably the league’s best team for eight out of ten months. For the first time since 2013/14, Spurs were beaten home and away by their North London rivals. The 0-2 at our place was one of the biggest NLD non-contests I can remember.

04 March 2023, London – Premier League Football – Arsenal v Bournemouth – Reiss Nelson of Arsenal celebrates their third goal with his team mates – Photo: Jacques Feeney / Offside.

The bottom line is, Arsenal hit terminal velocity and practically every single squad member was playing out of his skin. They were dancing their way to success to the tune of the Saliba chant.

But that success never came. We all know what happened and sadly for the Gooners of this world, it wasn’t even that big a down-turn in results. ‘Bottlers’ is an overused term, and does not apply to Arsenal in 2022/23. It’s nigh-on impossible to win every game, and invincibility is – well, I’ll stop right there.

No one can say Arteta stood still in the summer either. The state of his squad was, on paper at least, stronger in August than it had been in May. The £100 million spent on Declan Rice looked to be (and still could be) the difference between first and second.

But no amount of money can pay off the psychological deficit Arsenal plummeted into last season. I say this because it must be so challenging, even for the hardiest of athletes, to reach what is seemingly your absolute best and still stop short of victory. More so in a collective sport where there are additional parts involved.

3: empathy

Let’s put it this way: I have been conditioned to block out anything close to a positive thought about Arsenal. Yet it was hard not to like their team. Bukayo Saka was England’s best performing player. Martin Odegaard, rejected by Real Madrid, had fulfilled his huge potential which for years looked misplaced. Reiss Nelson scored one of the great last-minute winners against Bournemouth, and my feelings of contempt and dread (it had the air of a title-winning moment) were strangely mixed with admiration. What a goal and what a moment.

I mentioned empathy before, and I did so because Tottenham have experienced similar. In the 2018/19 season, my team looked to have performed every possible footballing miracle to reach the Champions League final. It was such a pinch-yourself scenario – the kind of pie in the sky ambition you never think is actually going to happen.

As brilliant and unexpected that journey was, I look back on it with a bitter sweetness that poses the same question Arsenal currently ponder. How do you better your best?

What followed, after the loss, was the worst kind of comedown: intense and long-lasting. Many of the players who were instrumental during Tottenham’s run to the final were shadows of their former selves. We were, let’s face it, rubbish, and continued to be rubbish for another four years. From the starting XI in the CL final, only Heung-min Son is still at the club. The manager lasted four months. There’s no doubt about the mental toll that the defeat took on the squad and staff, and some former players have attested to this.

4. monkeys and elephants

There are two possible prizes for second place. One is hope, the dream of going one further in the future. The other is an existential crisis, at the core of which is the anxiety that you’re at the ceiling and can go no higher. Arsenal started this season with the former, but risk allowing the latter to take over with this dip in form. There’s a monkey on their back and it needs to be shaken off quickly.

But more important than the monkey in this room is the big, sky-blue elephant: Manchester City.

Last season, Arsenal were the latest in a line of unsuccessful rebels to contest City’s Premier League hegemony, which has stood since Pep Guardiola’s first of five titles came in 2018.

There is a more devastating complexion to City’s dominance than anything Sir Alex Ferguson ever built with his great Manchester United teams. United, even during their two Premier League peaks, traded blows with other clubs – mainly Wenger’s Arsenal and Mourinho’s Chelsea – and were knocked down. Never did United’s power appear absolute. With City, who flaunted five major trophies to their faithful at the end of 2023, it feels different.

You can view Guardiola’s City in one of two ways. There’s the Star Trek version, which is a vision of Man City as a vessel of football discovery, going where no team has gone before, constantly innovating the tactical rules of the game. Full-backs are wingers. Full-backs are midfielders. Full-backs are centre-backs. Centre-backs are midfielders. ‘We cannot replace him’, so Sergio Aguero for some time is not replaced. Then the False 9 becomes the Most 9 you can get, and Erling Haaland subsequently elevates City to an even higher level.

For the more cynical among us, there’s the Star Wars vision. Pep, obviously, is Darth Vader. The Death Star represents the City Football Group, using its endless resources – harvested from an ethical minefield – to mow down the rest of the footballing galaxy. The fact that Guardiola mentored Arteta makes this even more of a compelling analogy – Mikel, I am your father.

Manchester City’s stranglehold of English football is such that it would take something miraculous to dethrone them, which Arsenal so nearly conjured up. But if you shoot for the king, you best not miss.

Arsenal are, right now, hyperconscious that their best chance to do that may have passed. That realisation has tainted what was otherwise an assured first half of the season. How they manage the crisis from here will have a huge bearing on the second half. Use the force, Mikel.

How many more times can we wrongly write off Harry Kane?

For someone who for so long has consistently scored goals for club and country, it is strange that Harry Kane always seems to have a question mark looming over his head.

Sticking up for him over the years has personally felt like a full-time job. No matter the time or place there is someone there having a go, and I feel a duty to defend him.

At first there was widespread agreement, a rare British consensus that this man was a certified One Season Wonder. The ensuing goal drought of August 2015 was a difficult time for me, arguing the toss in the face of adverse scepticism. I’d like to think the consecutive golden boots he went on to secure proved me right. Surely I had won the argument; this guy was quite evidently the real deal.

Well clearly not, because in the years since I have had to refute all sorts of claims about him. You get the classics: that he’s a penalty or tap-in merchant, that his injuries have slowed him down a few yards, that his World Cup golden boot was earned more by luck than judgement. Then there’s the ridiculous: that he should be exiled for not squaring it to Raheem Sterling against Croatia, that he can’t talk properly, that his baby’s gender reveal video was weird. There’s always something new cropping up.

I generally accept that all opinions are of equal value; no single opinion can be objectively correct. However, I make an exception to this particular pillar of rationality when it comes to the issue of Harry Kane’s ability. I watch a lot of Tottenham, probably too much for my well-being, but it’s because of this I declare myself more qualified to debate this matter than most others.

And that’s the problem with the football discourse being shaped by Sky Sports pundits and teenagers on Twitter who hide behind a footballer in their display picture. They simply don’t watch it all, and therefore don’t see the whole picture. Do we honestly think Roy Keane and Graeme Souness would choose to watch Tottenham play the likes of Leicester and Newcastle if they weren’t paid to? As a result, everyone seems to think Kane is ‘finished’ because he’s gone two Super Sundays without scoring.

This is why I avoid the hour-long build up to televised Spurs games. The panel, who are more often than not by some crazy coincidence former Arsenal or United players, sit there and happily fulfil their obligation to stir up some doubt about Harry Kane’s ominous form and equally ominous future as he approaches his late twenties – otherwise known as an athlete’s physical prime.

Worse still, questions over Kane’s capabilities have began to occupy the minds of actual qualified journalists. Anyone who pays their two bob a month to The Athletic will see how Jack Pitt-Brook has had many a field day over Kane’s diminishing xG and deeper average position.

Don’t get me wrong, I would be willing to concede that there may be some cause for concern. He has indeed taken a few serious knocks to the ankle. Each comeback from the sideline does seem increasingly protracted, with Kane spending a few games finding not just his rhythm but also his melody, tempo, pitch, guitar strings and pick. It’s usually a bit of a crescendo, but it always comes. And if Google is anything to go by then it would be accurate to describe his performance against Leicester as exactly that – a crescendo. He returned, as he never fails to do, to his brilliant, boisterous best. You couldn’t ignore it.

This was tip-top, hotshot, virtuoso Kane. A vintage display. What is so satisfying about both of his goals is the precision with which they were struck. Shot anywhere else at goal, you’d expect Kasper Schmeichel to save them. But the placement is inch-perfect, and Schmeichel cannot possibly reach either. As cliché as it sounds, Kane’s excellence is enhanced by how easy it is made to look. As he shifts the ball onto his right foot for his second, the surety is equally high as it was when he stormed (at surprising speed) into the box and lined up his shot for the first. You know he will score, and he does.

It’s the sort of goal-scoring knack once possessed by another Tottenham legend – Jimmy Greaves. Ask any football follower over 60 and they will gladly tell you how easy he made scoring a goal look, “like passing it into the net”. A highlights reel of his or Kane’s best goals wouldn’t feature too many ‘belters’ or ‘screamers’. We’re still yet to see Kane thump a volley into the top corner from 35 yards. But to think that these types of goal make a striker is to misunderstand the art of goalscoring. It’s not by chance that these two, and others of that ilk such as Gary Lineker, always find themselves in the right place at the right time, or find the corner of the goal the keeper can’t get to. It’s a prised skill, and one that Kane has mastered.

Those who watch more than just the highlights will also notice the other, less stated sides to Kane’s game. Tottenham’s first goal against Leicester came from Kane’s sublime control and pass to Son Heung-Min. The Korean could also have added a fourth in the second half when he was found by another Kane pass, this time a stunning reverse through ball. And then on top of this you have Kane the workhorse, willing to sit deeper if needed and defend from the front. What’s clear is that even when he isn’t scoring, his contributions to the team are invaluable.

Kane turns 27 next week, which unfortunately for me means I have at least a few more years of convincing people that he is in fact a world class footballer. You’d think it no longer necessary, wouldn’t you? You’d think if there’s one thing we must have learned by now, it’s not to doubt him for a second.

There is no happy ending for this Mourinho marriage

Credit where it’s due. You would’ve left me incredulous had you told me on Monday that Tottenham’s next outing would be even more lifeless and uninspiring than it was against Everton. To that end, Mourinho and his team have pulled the rabbit out of the hat tonight. They’ve performed this miracle flying straight in the face of implausibility, maybe even impossibility. That’s where the praise, if you can call it that, ends.

I have now endured five Spurs games since the restart. Two wins, two draws and a loss. Goals scored: five. Goals conceded: four. Clean sheets: three. On the surface, this doesn’t paint that bad a picture. A solid effort if not slightly underwhelming. The problem is that I’d rather watch the paint on this fictitious picture dry than another ninety (or in today’s case, 102) minutes of this team playing football. These five games have been enough for me to (re)conclude that though I will always support this club through thick and thin, I am no fan of this manager.

Deciding to espouse José Mourinho was a risk, even if our playing style has since been nothing but risk-averse. But it seemed to make some sense. The best way to describe the arrangement would be a marriage of convenience. Here’s José, long time big shot, looking for a quick fling to boost his damaged ego and renew his reputation as a football equivalent of a ‘top shagger’. It wouldn’t require much effort. Champions League semi-final, a couple of domestic trophies, throw in a title challenge perhaps. Perfectly doable, given his track record, and what better club to do it with than…

Tottenham Hotspur. The other half of this arrangement. Very recently out of a long and emotionally-invested relationship, looking for some short-term satisfaction to fulfil the only need their previous partner couldn’t. It says a lot about Tottenham that they packed it in at the first bump in the road considering it was all going so smoothly. But all is fair in love and war. Mourinho is destined to provide the goods that Pochettino couldn’t.

Except he doesn’t. The marriage, after a promising start, hits a snag. Expectations don’t match the reality. It’s boring and frustrating. There’s this tension hanging in the air. The vows – trophies, new and improved tactics, maximising Harry Kane’s ability – are all broken within just a few months. Mourinho has moved in (quite literally, he has lodged at the training ground) and you realise he’s not what you expected. He’s created this horrible stench, stuck up some ugly portraits on the wall and jumbled up your record collection – don’t bet against him selling the best ones either (hang in there, Tanguy). It’s actually true what they say about his style of football. And his erratic press conference displays are in fact only amusing when he’s not your club’s manager. Hell, in times like these you’d be forgiven for indulging in some longing thoughts about that one-time affair with Tim Sherwood. Anything for a bit of fun!

So it turns out José is clearly not the catch he once was. But then neither are we. Tottenham are if anything a downgrade for Mourinho. This man has won the Champions League, whereas the best we’ve done is reach the final and instead of a home run, we’ve run home scared. It wasn’t long ago he was boasting about the number of titles he’s won (note, more than Tottenham) and holding his hand to his ear to aggravate Juventus fans. Now he’s tied down to a team heading for its worst league finish in a decade. The classic “it’s not you, it’s me” could be applied on both sides. If it’s not meant to be with him then who can be his replacement? All the best managers are taken. Eddie Howe might be available soon, but even he has greyed and wrinkled.

Some questions I considered during the match:

What do they practice on the training ground? It can’t be passing, because we appear incapable of stringing together three in a row. It can’t be attacking either, because we don’t allow ourselves into our opponent’s final third. There are only two things that seem rehearsed: Lo Celso and Bergwijn’s two-man wall at set pieces, and Vertonghen’s passes back to the goalkeeper. I know club social media teams can only show snippets of light training. They can’t stick a camera inside the manager’s team talk (unless it’s an Amazon camera of course), but surely the players are doing more than just endless tournaments of Teqball?
How awful must we be to not manage a single shot on target against the third worst team in the division? This question was answered, whether I wanted it to be or not, when I read on Twitter that Spurs had become the first team to fail to register a shot on target against Bournemouth since Middlesbrough in the Championship, March 2015. My voice had barely broken then.
Is there any way I could cancel the North London Derby on Sunday?
What time does The One Show start?

I feel like an idiot because back in November I allowed myself to think this appointment was a master stroke. This would be the final piece of the jigsaw, the ace to compose a royal flush. Prosperity, in the form of trophies, was around the corner. In fairness, I’d still sacrifice one of my kidneys for a bit of silverware. But I fear we’ve sacrificed more than that without a guaranteed return. Any sort of excitement, flair or creativity has been vacuumed out of this team. We used to embarrass defences, even if we were then in turn embarrassed by our own. Now it’s just clearances and Serge Aurier crosses, and Harry Kane defending the near post at corners. It’s so bloody dull.

There is no easy way out of this mess. Daniel Levy has already set a precedent and will happily replace a manager rather than an ailing squad. Whether it is during or at the end of next season, or perhaps – and god help us all in this instance – at the end of his contract in 2023, Mourinho will depart. Whenever the ending comes for this marriage of convenience, it won’t be a happy one. When is it ever a happy ending with him?

Until then we will have to limp on, putting off the thought of going through the divorce papers. But mark my words, one day soon Tottenham will be back in the market for a manager to a chorus of ‘told you so’ from onlookers. If we had any sense we’d get back with our ex, that handsome Argentine.

Parking the bus is the sort of ‘new normal’ Spurs fans may have to get used to

The phrase ‘new normal’ has been thrown around so much in recent weeks to the point where I cannot stand hearing it. But last night watching Tottenham retreat to their 6-yard box in the defence of a one-goal lead, I couldn’t help thinking this may just be our very own ‘new normal’.

This was a growing concern of mine way before the season was disrupted. At first it was the apparent lack of invention as Mourinho prepared for life after Christian Eriksen. Then came the onus on the long ball. This works when Bournemouth’s back four can’t form a straight horizontal line, but is stifled by a coherent defence or by VAR noticing someone’s shoulder being an inch offside. By the end of February, Tottenham were relying on moments of individual brilliance to scrape together points. Think Bergwijn versus City, Dele versus Brighton. The problem is there’s only a finite amount of individual brilliance in our squad, especially when none of our attacking players can avoid injury. This was a shambolic advance to Europe even Field Marshall Haig would have frowned upon.

So I should have known better than to think this was the start of something great when Stevie Bergwijn raced past the United defence to open the scoring last night. But who could blame me? After all, José and his number two, Joao Sacramento, had undoubtedly profited from these months to finally get to grips with this squad; watch hours and hours of past games, work out strengths and flaws, who should play where, how we can kill games off. All the players, with the exception of Dele Alli and Lucas Moura, were fit and available to play. Sure, United had plenty of pace up top, but didn’t we? We could make mince meat out of Lindelof and Maguire! Come on you Spurs!

Half-time. We’re a goal up and Roy Keane is so angry I can feel the heat from my television. This is going rather well. Defence solid. Attack dangerous. Lamela surely just one foul away from getting booked and winning me £38 from William Hill. We’ve got them on the ropes here. Just one more feeble shot past De Gea could secure the knockout.

Then came the bus. The dreaded bus, parked very clumsily in our eighteen yard box. And it was at around the 48th minute mark that I realised we would no longer win the game.

Before the match Roy Keane, in all his ferocious wisdom, mentioned an inherent weakness in the DNA of Tottenham teams past and present. I’m not convinced on the science here, or if weakness is the sort of trait stored in DNA, but he can’t be that far off the mark.

Luckily, I rarely enjoy watching my team for fear of total collapse (there is form there). So mustering only 39% possession on our home turf doesn’t affect me too much. Nonetheless, it was hard to watch as we dropped further back yard by yard, minute by minute. It’s no surprise Paul Pogba was at the byline when he earned his team a penalty.

Were it not for John Moss’ visual deficiencies being picked up on, we would have lost that match. It would have been another case – just like against Liverpool (twice) and Chelsea (twice) – of Tottenham trying and spectacularly failing to win a game by prioritising the evasion of defeat. Life seemed much easier when if we were to lose a big game, we would go down in flames. Not by conceding one in the 88th minute, but by conceding five in the first half. Parking the bus may prove fruitful against Manchester City once in a blue moon. But even that particular victory required a one-man advantage, a penalty save and about seven near-death experiences. In any case, we can’t keep playing with fire.

There are of course some positives to take and some excuses to make. That first-half performance was perhaps as good as I’ve seen all season. It would also be unfair to overly criticise a team on their first competitive game back in three months. We did lack attacking options off the bench. And most importantly, I am 99% sure if I bet on Lamela to be carded in the next game I’ll finally get the money I deserve. It’s not all doom and gloom – no, that’ll be when we lose to West Ham on Tuesday.

The reason I’m annoyed, perhaps excessively, is for the same reason you get most annoyed at the people you love. It’s because you care, and because you hate the Europa League. So José Mourinho, if you stumble across this, consider letting us play some decent football for a while longer in games. Don’t let parking the bus become the new normal.

Football is back and as boring as ever

100 days. 3 months. Bloody years! The time we’ve waited for the return of Premier League football has perhaps even felt incalculable. For something so cherished in so many of our lives to have disappeared for so long… a pat on the back for everyone is well and truly merited.

And I believe another pat on the back is required for all those who endured 180 minutes (factor in all those bloody drinks breaks too) of mind-numbing football last night without succumbing to equally mind-numbing amounts of alcohol. This is because, despite being given the time to forget, we were all reminded last night of how uninteresting our beloved sport can be.

Both games were, for want of more action and a better word, boring. Unfortunately this remained true with or without crowd noises. I’m sure we all experimented with both, and chose between what was the better of too eerie and too mimic-y.

That is not to say there was absolutely nothing exciting that happened. We got to revel in the ridiculousness of VAR and technological officiating. We awed at Manchester City’s beautiful attacking moves. We all laughed at the idiocy of David Luiz.

For all the excitement of these things, there is as much predictability. Therein lies the problem. VAR is back to dominate conversations (in the Midlands and West Yorkshire for now, expect it to spread southwards soon). City are still extremely good. David Luiz is still extremely bad. We knew this!

I’m not quite sure what I was expecting. Some sort of interesting narrative? An exciting backdrop in front of which these games – all viewable live – are to be played? Oh wait, there is.

Aston Villa are still in an awfully precarious position, despite possessing a visibly talented team. They should have lost in theory, but posed much more of an attacking threat and had three times the attempts Sheffield United had. Sheffield United are, for all intents and purposes, the biggest overachievers of the season so far. But the level of quality they have shown must be maintained. An emphatic win for Manchester City renders their ground the most likely location for Liverpool to secure the title. Arsenal looked hopeless but have played no games more than anyone else and could still earn a Champions League place. Every single player and referee participated in a momentous display of solidarity to black people. And that was just one night.

Despite what some may think, no team is yet relegated or promoted. Some teams are winning the race, but have not yet won. Some are sitting in mid-table, supposedly with nothing to gain or lose, but that could also change.

This is, I suppose, why we’re here with no crowds, awkward fist-bumps and pointless drinks breaks (did I mention that?). This season had to be completed. There is still so much to play for. If you don’t like it, tough! Roll on a summer of football.

Sporting Ethics #1 – We’ll Sing What We Want

The fifth Tottenham penalty was saved, and they were out of the FA Cup. All the players headed down the tunnel, but for one exception. England international Eric Dier, incensed, jumped the hoardings to enter the crowd. He hurdled over rows of seats to confront a fan (sat near members of Dier’s family) from whom he had received abuse during the game. Such an incident at the highest level of English football hadn’t been seen since Eric Cantona infamously kicked out at a Crystal Palace supporter in 1995 . Although in this case it did not succumb to violence, Dier’s actions were widely condemned as reckless and unprofessional. Former Spurs midfielder Danny Murphy wrote, “if supporters go to the match as a break from the other difficulties of life, they do view it as a place where they can vent frustrations. As a footballer, get on with the game, do your job.”

Can we say, sing or shout anything we want in view of a football pitch?

The first obvious response is, well, not anything. It is certainly worth stipulating the obvious exceptions to free expression. Discriminatory language – racism, homophobia, sexism – is of course beyond the realm of debate, and can incriminate anyone who uses it.

This still leaves much to be considered in a milieu where so many act in a manner they wouldn’t elsewhere. Eric Dier was not the victim of racism or homophobia. Rather, just very tough criticism and strong language. This is the sort of thing many would excuse as being ‘part and parcel’ of the sport. But is there a line to be drawn anywhere? That is to say, can supporters be morally culpable for their speech?

Surely not, some would argue. Football is a spectator sport after all. Supporters are paying customers, and they pay a lot – not just through money, but also the time invested following a team. A certain level of performance therefore ought to be expected, much like when going to a theatre or concert. Anything falling below that level can be rightly submitted to criticism. So if my central midfielder isn’t tracking back, I am very much entitled to tell him to track back. In the heat of the moment, I might even tell him or her to ‘fucking track back!’. Admittedly swearing isn’t the most courteous or pleasant way of expressing oneself. But why is it deployed? To cut through, to emphasise and intensify. It’s also a component of dark humour, which is what many football chants are. It’s why football fans sing ‘yourrrr support is fucking shit!’ instead of ‘yourrrr support could be improved!’, or other child-friendly words to that effect.

That we excuse the track back shout and the support taunt is perhaps because there is no real, countable victim or recipient. In the first instance, it could be any central midfielder. We are not shouting at the person as such. Rather, we shout at them as they happen to be in a position with a specific role to track back, which they are failing to fulfil. In the second, we inflict no harm on any individual when mocking the atmosphere generated by a large group, as any one fan’s contribution would be negligible. No one loses sleep after a match thinking, ‘if only I cheered louder today’.

Here the problem arises when shouts and chants become personal. Perhaps the least severe of such chants are those that attach an individual with a slur. Think, ‘the referee’s a wanker’ or the cry of ‘you fat bastard’ directed at a goalkeeper taking a goal kick. We may be able to justify such examples as more playful, dark humour born out of rivalry and competition. Another common defence is that players, managers and officials (albeit to a lesser extent) are privileged to have such jobs, earning handsome salaries. In no position to complain, they should therefore grudgingly accept what comes their way.

Let’s go further though. I personally remember as a seven year old at my first north London derby hearing thousands around me shout ‘sit down you paedophile!’ at Arsene Wenger, as well as a number of spiteful chants towards Sol Campbell. That’s just from my own fan base. In stadia up and down the country footballers are on the receiving end of the same sorts of chants. How can we give grounds for this? Trying to squeeze it under the umbrella of dark humour may narrowly suffice. One could possibly expand by saying that fans are a vital ingredient in making a football match spectacular. More must be done than just ‘clap clap clap clap clap, [insert team name]’. By pushing the boundaries with their chants, supporters add more bite and intensity to a game. The risk is that the cheeky and creative can so easily turn foul.

There are of course instances where no humour is intended at all. ‘Get out of this club, you useless c*nt’… ‘you’re a fucking disgrace’… the imagination can provide further examples. This is just plain abuse, but I for one would barely bat an eyelid if I witnessed it in the stands. How is it in any way normal? Perhaps it can be justified by taking into account the number of people who contribute to a chant, or more broadly a hostile atmosphere in which such insults are heard. One person saying these things may be bad, but what about fifty thousand at the same time? We may believe such a circumstance alleviates personal culpability, and thus the moral consequences of the activity itself. In other words, what is deemed right or wrong may be subject to change depending on how many people do it. One student walking across a freshly cut lawn on a university campus with a ‘do not walk on’ sign puts them at fault. If all the students decide to ignore the sign and walk on the grass, is it still wrong? We may well accept that, for better or worse, the sign is redundant and no one is really blameworthy.

This sort of anarchistic attitude of ‘well everyone does it, so I can too’ may not however be enough to provide a plausible moral account of limitless fan behaviour. What is crystal clear is that football stadiums stand alone in being the only places where this sort of abusive language exists. No other sportsperson would have to put up with abusive shouts about their appearance, personal life, or even their performance! Have your serve broken? Bad luck. Out for a duck? At worst a light groan from the pavilion.

The idea that fans need to ‘vent frustrations’ seems to serve as weak reasoning. Everyone builds up some stress in the rat race. Does this make Saturday afternoons a free-for-all to shout and swear as one pleases? Surely there is no concomitance between working all week and being a hateful arsehole at the weekend. When the bell for last orders is rang on a Friday night, there isn’t a chorus of ‘the barman is a wanker!’. The football fan is not a different breed of human. These are ordinary people with jobs and families. Why is there a separate moral code?

With so many rhetorical questions to ponder, it appears difficult to ascertain where to draw the line, if one has to be drawn at all. Though it has always been a point of concern, the past season has thrown up persistent cases of abuse from the stands. Dier’s incident may not be in isolation for much longer. When fans return to their seats, whenever that may be, they ought to reflect on how they conduct themselves.

Liverpool did not need a rebuild to become serial winners. The same can happen at Spurs.

Some football matches stand out as turning points in two club’s paths.

The last time Tottenham beat Liverpool was in October 2017, a resounding 4-1 victory at Wembley.

Perhaps ‘turning point’ is too strong a term. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was this current Liverpool team. But like Trajan in his heyday, Klopp and his team today are European conquerors. Not to mention the thirteen-point cushion they’re sitting on so comfortably at the top of the Premier League, plumped by a game in hand. Not even Trajan could manage that.

Spurs were Liverpool’s opponents in the Champions League final just six months ago, but the ironic truth is that our squad has regressed in the past two years, while Liverpool’s has gone from strength to strength. The Reds have lost just one league game since the start of last season. In the same period, Spurs have lost twenty.

Liverpool’s ascendancy has taken some five years to materialise. For at least the first two of those years, they and Tottenham were following the same trajectory. Both squads were young and packed with potential. Klopp and Pochettino were emblematic of a new breed of manager; paternalistic with their squad and philosophical with their playing style. Both teams passed it out short from the back, and pressed high up front. They were exciting projects. Breaking the top four was the first step along the way to future glory.

Evidently, Liverpool have since fared much better. But hark back to that Sunday afternoon in October 2017, and most would have cast a brighter light on the future of the Pochettino project. That project is no more. José Mourinho has inherited a squad that has looked completely out of sorts this season.

So why have things turned out that way? How are Liverpool so good? Why are Tottenham not as good?

In what’s to come, I’ll draw comparisons between that Liverpool side that was defeated then and the Tottenham team today. These similarities, if you’re as optimistic as me, show that Spurs with the right investment and leadership can still achieve great things.

First, let’s remind ourselves of the Liverpool starting eleven beaten that day:

(4-3-3) Mignolet, Gomez, Matip, Lovren, Moreno, Milner, Henderson, Can, Salah, Firmino, Coutinho

Only four of these players (Mignolet, Moreno, Can and Countinho) have since departed the club. The house hasn’t been knocked down and rebuilt. The core of the team and its formation remains the same.

What Liverpool have done so well is identify and address their weak areas. Look at that team and three areas of weakness should jump out straight away: goalkeeper, full backs, midfield.

These are, conveniently, Tottenham’s three weakest areas at present. Many supporters are calling for a complete rebuild at the club, but here I suggest that by investing smartly to address those weak spots, it may just provoke a transformation.

Between the sticks

My opinion of Hugo Lloris has rested firmly on the fence for most of his time at Spurs. He merits a lot of respect, of course. He is a World Cup winning captain and one of the best shot stoppers in the game. His penalty saves against Aguero and Aubameyang last spring prevented our season from unraveling.

Lloris has held down the no.1 spot at Spurs without question for almost seven years now, yet it feels like he has given me a mini-heart attack every other game. Since the 2017/18 season he has made 8 errors leading to goals. This sticks out like a sore thumb in comparison to the other goalkeepers of the ‘Big Six’. It is even double the errors made by David De Gea; he himself has experienced his lowest dips in form during the past two seasons.

Unfortunately, part of the job description as the last line of defense is that any mistake will likely lead to a goal. All keepers make them. The difference is with Lloris is that in 2019 he was still making the same kind of mistakes he was making at the start of the decade: rushing too far off his line, getting caught on the ball by opposition strikers. These are worrying signs.

So is Lloris a world-class keeper who makes the occasional bad decision? Or has he now been cut adrift from the elite level of keepers for good? Aged 32, and recovering from the worst injury of his career (sustained while conceding a calamitous goal), the signs sadly point to the latter.

If Lloris is to be fazed out of the club, Mourinho is left with a stick-or-twist. In the captain’s absence, Paulo Gazzaniga has been a very capable stand-in. But could he be more than that?

The Argentine has kept just one clean sheet in fifteen league appearances this season, conceding a relatively leaky 1.46 goals per game. That being said, his save success of 70% is up there with the best in league.

Number crunching can, for all its merits, be numbingly boring. It also cannot paint the whole picture. Watch Gazzaniga’s performances recently and you’ll see a keeper growing in confidence, with sound distribution and reflexes. But you will also be left feeling not entirely convinced. The mistakes made at Old Trafford and more recently at home against Chelsea are the sort that the best keepers don’t make.

When it became apparent that neither Karius nor Mignolet could cut it at the elite level, Liverpool entered the market for a world class goalkeeper. In Alisson Becker they now have the best in the world. Though he may not be winning games on his own, it makes a world of difference when a defensive line can trust the man behind them. He is a vital part of a team that currently seems unbeatable.

Obviously, it’s not as easy as that. ‘Going and buying a top keeper’ is a risky business. The £80m fee Chelsea paid for Kepa Arrizabalaga is probably the only thing that separates him from Paulo Gazzaniga at the moment. I wouldn’t swap the two if I could, though maybe that says more about Kepa’s misfortunes.

Either way, Mourinho will be faced with a difficult decision once Lloris returns from injury. While Gazzaniga has made a case to be the new no.1, both keepers have shown signs that the spot shouldn’t be designated to either of them – especially if Tottenham want to have one of the most water-tight defences in the world.

Full-backs

At the apogee of Pochettino’s tenure, his team were absolutely ruthless going forward. Tottenham topped the scoring charts in 2016/17 with 86 goals. Opposition teams faced full-frontal assaults; 11 of our victories were by at least a three-goal margin. Harry Kane ran away with the golden boot. Dele Alli and Heung-Min Son’s tallies were also well into the teens.

Much of the praise went to the forwards, but the attacking energy of that team was in large part facilitated by Kyle Walker and Danny Rose, undoubtedly the best full-back pairing in the league that season. Having those two charging down the flanks created space for the forward players to roam the central areas and overload the box.

Those days are long gone. It is now Liverpool’s full backs who are the envy of the league. Trent Alexander-Arnold and Andy Robertson registered a combined 23 league assists last season. To provide some context, Trent’s tally of 12 set a new record. Roberton’s 11 equaled the previous. But it is not just their attacking contributions that are so vital to their team’s success. They also display the defensive reliabilty that is required to avoid defeat week in, week out.

Kyle Walker left Tottenham in July 2017 and has still not been adequately replaced. We currently have two right backs on opposite ends of the spectrum. Serge Aurier has always looked more comfortable in the other team’s half than his own. A loose cannon all too often, he has already conceded six penalties during his stop-start time at Spurs. His rival for his position, Kyle Walker-Peters, seems defensively solid but going forward rarely offers more than the occasional half-hearted overlap.

I supported selling Keiran Trippier last summer, but given his renewal at Atletico Madrid that sale now seems like a shot in the foot. Despite his dips in form, Trippier had proven that he could both defend and attack competently. The same cannot be said about our two current right-backs.

On the other flank, the Danny Rose of 2019 is visibly more error-prone and a yard slower than the Danny Rose of 2016. Much of this is down to the effects of injury, but at 29 these effects are increasingly hard to reverse. Ben Davies, despite being a good servant for some time, will never be anything more than a useful squad player. A lot rests on Ryan Sessegnon to realise his potential.

As full-back pairings go, Spurs are currently languishing in Liverpool 2017 Gomez & Moreno territory. That is not to say Gomez & Moreno were bad full backs. But they were certainly not good enough to be starters in a Champions League winning team. The position plays such an important role, now more than ever. (For more on this I recommend this piece by Jonathan Wilson.) It has to be addressed in the coming transfer windows.

Middle of the park

There seems to be a massive hole in Tottenham’s midfield at the moment. Nothing is created there, and opposition teams seem to bypass it so easily.

And this is a bona fide paradox of a problem. You’d expect an attacking-minded midfield to create chances but be vulnerable to the counter, in the same way that a more conservative midfield would offer defensive protection but lack flair and creativity. Our midfield demonstrates the worst of both; often left wide open while offering little going forward.

Club record signing Tanguy Ndombele has, due to injuries, featured sporadically this season. However, what we have seen of him has been impressive. Glimpses can deceive, but it has been refreshing to watch a player whose first instinct is always to play forward. The way he twists, turns and traverses on the ball is much like how Moussa Dembélé used to.

Indeed, many comparisons will be made between the two. Much of them will be accurate. But the main and most significant difference is that Dembélé was much more defensively capable than Ndombele seems to be. Having just turned 23 he can still learn, but it seems marking, tackling and general defensive discipline don’t come naturally to the Frenchman.

So, even if Ndombele is the bright spark that Tottenham’s midfield needs, there still remains the question of who will partner him.

With Victor Wanyama set to leave the club this month, there remains three flawed candidates: Eric Dier can win it, but not play it. Harry Winks can play it, but not win it. And Moussa Sissoko can barely do either.

Granted, this is perhaps an over-simplified indictment of our midfield options. Some might be wondering what ‘it’ even refers to (the ball). Essentially, this team is crying out for a quality holding midfielder.

That player would have to be in the mold of Liverpool’s Fabinho, or Manchester City’s Fernandinho. Not to the extent that he must be a Brazilian with a name ending in ‘-inho’. Rather, that he can effectively break up opposition attacks and release the ball effectively, setting free our more creative players.

Since adapting to the English game, Fabinho has greatly enhanced Liverpool’s midfield. The trio of Can, Henderson and Milner (or Wijnaldum) was by no means a bad one. But it was flat, and lacked anything special at either end of the pitch. It was never clear who was doing what. All three took adequate but unconvincing turns in the holding role. Going forward, the front three were often left to their own devices.

Fabinho carries out a simple but critical function for his team: snuffing out attacks, and starting their own. In doing so, he has taken the harnesses off his midfield partners. Jordan Henderson, who scored the winning goal against us earlier this season, has become perhaps the best box-to-box midfielder in the world, and is beginning to be spoken about by Liverpool fans in the same breath as Steven Gerrard.

Conclusion

The rise of Jordan Henderson ties in perfectly with the whole Liverpool success story. It’s as much about perseverance as it is about transformation. The additions to the squad, though few, have had immense knock-on effects on the rest of the team. They have evolved organically into a serial winning machine.

That isn’t to say that a few signings will reverse Tottenham’s fortunes overnight. Success in football requires more than a cheque book, but it can go a long way if used effectively. The example has been set by Liverpool.

Despite possessing some of the most talented players it’s had in its entire history, I’ve just lived through a whole decade without seeing my team win a single trophy. The pessimist in me says the window for success has passed, the big names will look to pastures new and Mourinho is well past his best.

But I’m a football fan, so the glass will always be half full. Even worse in fact, I’m a Spurs fan. Naive optimism is all I’ve ever known. I’m not going to concede the ship has sailed just yet. With smart investment, the current crop at Tottenham can be elevated to the heights they once seemed destined to reach.