Gone Fishing
I'm on my hols soon. Back the weekend of the away game to Newcastle.
I'll be on a sunbed whilst Levy will be out signing players.
AMIRITE?
I'll leave you with this from Chelsea's trolling boss Conte. It follows up from Jose and his (what appeared to be) kind words about how we are having a successful summer by holding onto our best players (tad patronising yeah). Both men clearly frustrated that they can't sign the core we clearly won't be letting go regardless of interest.
“My question is this; what are Tottenhams' expectations? If they don’t win the title, it’s not a tragedy. If they don’t arrive in the Champions League, it’s not a tragedy. If they go out in the first round of the Champions League it’s not a tragedy. If they go out after the first game that they play in the Europa League and go down against Gent, it is not a tragedy.
Maybe for Chelsea, Arsenal, City, United and – I don’t know – Liverpool, it is a tragedy. You must understand this. For us, if it is not a tragedy you can keep calm and then face the Champions League and try to do our best as we always do. But you must understand the status of the team.
I think Tottenham were very good and I think Pochettino is a very good manager and the club is a very good club. But in this season, you built something important. You never won.”
We're being dug out because...what? We don't spend untold millions on players that would probably get into most Premier League sides and then loan them out and sell them on like cattle for slaughterhouses? Everybody knows we're over-achieving, we're not meant to be involved in the title push. There's no way that compared to them and City and others that we should be up there. But we are and to suggest that the pressure is any less...I guess is true to some extent. Look at City this summer. Pep really does have to win the league, no? To justify the cost spent on ready made superstars. Football at this level is usually dominated by the teams that spend the most.
I've never liked that philosophy. I've seen some of our supporters recently say they wish we could do that. That doing so means we end up with the silverware we crave and that's all that matters. I guess this is not too dissimilar to a few seasons back when the other philosophy some of our fans were spouting concerned the one about 'winning, don't care about the style, as long as we get the points'. The crux being that 'winning' or rather 'success' is now the only commodity people care about and f**k identity and history. Yet, when we do shift into the new stadium and we can afford the bigger wages, we'll find a way to validate and rationalise. We might find ourselves conflicted. Yet in some ways, I suppose, it's a far more organic progression towards the very thing we hate / are jealous of.
Our over-achieving still has this unavoidable tinge of under-achieving. We don't have to spend the money others are splashing out. We obviously can't afford to do so with the same level of wages. But where there is an element of truth (frustration) is that we unquestionably do have the money to get involved. It just so happens that we don't have to throw a load of it in the same high profile desperation others are doing. We have our team. We simply need to bolster the depth to allow us the flexibility of rotation and surprise. I say desperation but in the context of their team building, they don't care. The only important factor of the transfer is that they've signed the player they wanted to strengthen their squad. That's what we need to do. It's no different, the only reality here is we've yet to start.
I've already written about this. We've all discussed it. It's all we are currently discussing. The broadsheet think articles about how we are doing admirably are agreeable only in the context that we do actually end up with two or three new players. Signings like Wanyama, where perhaps you didn't expect the impact he gave us. Competition for places in a Pochettino side is our greatest weapon. To push players from within to ascend performance and keep everyone on point.
To suggest that no new blood is somehow this virtuous God send is way too romanticised. I don't mind the patient game. I understand that signing the right type of player for us (forget everyone else) involves bringing in someone that is happy to fight for his place in the side but also give us that edge in selection. We've signed seventeen players under Poch (let's not pretend he's not getting his chairman's backing). We've sold a few that have failed to settle (unavoidable risks). Acquiring these additional required players might be an illusion of time (we have targeted them and Levy is doing his usual slow brooding stalking) or we have a problem of process (cue calls for another director of football) that might hold us back with positional danger.
We won't know until the window is shut and we can review the players we have/haven't signed. Continuity for us is imperative. It's something we haven't had for decades, not really. We've threatened with it and then it's fallen apart because tactically we've not had what we have now. Continuity, however, could again be threatened if we don't retain the momentum we've generated in the past two seasons. Spurs fans shouldn't default to self-loathing here. We are up against it, there's no two ways about it. What we have is fantastic. Signings that have yet to ignite might just do that this season and new injections of academy hype might also give us something brand new to fill us with pride. All of this is grand. All of this can be the icing on the cake if that cake has some moderately to expensive new cherries added on top.
Enjoy (suffer) the next two weeks.
I'll see you on the other side.