Spurs. They’re not very good, are they? Keep losing in silly fashion, don’t they?
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!They have also been doing that for really quite a very long time. That’s not a new point, but we do keep seeing people saying it’s important not to make kneejerk judgements on Ange Postecoglou and his methods. We’re not sure precisely how long a knee must take to make its move before it loses jerkiness, but we’re confident that ‘more than a year’ fits the bill.
Let’s run those numbers again, shall we? Spurs have 20 points from 15 Premier League games this season, in which they’ve lost more often than they’ve won. Which is, you know, bad. But go back into last season as well and it soon gets even worse. It’s 26 points from their last 22 games. In 2024 as a whole it’s 47 from 33, with 14 wins to go with 14 defeats.
In all, since that laughably false 10-game dawn at the start of last season, Postecoglou’s Tottenham have managed 60 points from 43 Premier League games. That form would equate to 53 points from a 38-game season – at least six fewer than Spurs have managed in any Premier League season since 2008/09.
It’s still absolutely fine to be one of the Postecoglou diehards who still believes in the potential for it all to come together. Lord knows the glimpses we get of it working are magnificent. And the argument that the last thing Spurs need is another restart, another reboot, another return to square one with a new manager who at this point is unlikely to be a significant upgrade anyway while the deeper issues at the club go unaddressed is an absolutely solid one.
But it’s also not exactly baseless or a rush to judgement to have concluded this isn’t really working and the overwhelming likelihood is that it never really will.
Which brings us to the main point we wish to address, and something we hear a lot in the face of the increasingly disastrous results. “It’s not dull, though, is it?!!? At least it’s exciting!!?!” Here’s the thing with that: it is dull and it isn’t exciting, and we’ll tell you for why.
Do you know what isn’t exciting? Predictability. And Spurs under Postecoglou have turned predictable unpredictability into an absolute art form. They are entirely consistent in their inconsistency, and we hold vanishingly little hope that what Postecoglou is attempting will bring any meaningful success in the medium to long term.
So it’s not exciting. It’s not exciting precisely because it doesn’t appear to be leading anywhere at all. It was exciting in those early days of last season when the full flaws of “What we do, mate” were yet to be so brutally and frequently exposed. Back then it was just about possible to imagine we had miraculously found ourselves in the one universe of all the universes where Spurs actually do something.
But now we know with almost total certainty this is not that universe, and in the absence of that potential what is there to get excited about, really? Sure, thrashing really good sides like Aston Villa and Manchester City is fun enough at the time, but ultimately there’s no point to those wins when they exist as they do in such absurd isolation.
After the City game, Spurs fans already knew exactly what to expect in the Fulham, Bournemouth and Chelsea games. And despite the bleak gallows-humour lowness of those expectations, the team and manager have somehow contrived in those three games to fall beneath them.
READ: 16 Conclusions on Spurs 3-4 Chelsea: Postecoglou sack, Sancho, Bissouma, Cucurella and the title
It was the visit of Chelsea last season that exposed the first cracks in the armour; this season it just hammered another probably unnecessary nail in Angeball’s already very securely nailed coffin. There were similarities between the two games – conceding four goals, conceding braindead penalties, losing both centre-backs for who knows how long – but with one big difference. This time it wasn’t remotely a surprise.
Ultimately, Spurs are only really fun for everyone else. If you support them it’s exhausting, a perfect blend of a club big enough to be the butt of everyone’s jokes and stupid enough to ensure it. If you don’t support them then they are an absolute hoot. You literally cannot lose. Switch on a Spurs game and you’re either going to see them smash some other poor fools to pieces – while not ever having to worry in the about whether they might actually kick on and do something real as a result of it – or watch them step on rakes for 90 minutes. Either way, you’ve got a result.
Southampton away up next for these absolute clowns, and that’s absolutely perfect, isn’t it? On the face of it, there is literally no team better equipped to exploit Southampton’s own brand of witlessball than Spurs.
We cannot think of a more ideal game in all of association football for the neutral to enjoy given that the only two possible outcomes genuinely appear to be Spurs scoring about 723 goals or suffering their most pitiful defeat yet, and it’s something close to 50-50 as to which one you get. Brilliant. Unless you’re actually a Spurs fan.
