Sunday’s home game against Manchester City brings with it an unsettling sense of deja vu for Tottenham Hotspur supporters.
Just as in May 2024, when City visited north London in the penultimate game of Ange Postecoglou’s first season, a number of Spurs fans are ambivalent about their side getting a result this weekend — and some are even actively rooting for them to lose.
That is because City again appear to be the biggest obstacle between Tottenham’s rivals Arsenal and the Premier League title (although we should not entirely discount third-placed Aston Villa, who are level on points with Pep Guardiola’s side).
Arsenal’s 0-0 draw with Nottingham Forest and 3-2 defeat to Manchester United have allowed six-time champions City to close the gap to four points ahead of the league leaders’ potential banana skin at Leeds United on Saturday and, starved of joy by their own club, the prospect of another Arsenal choke is about as good as it gets for Spurs fans right now (at least in the Premier League).
No fan should be told how to follow their team, nor be scolded for feeling conflicted, especially as Spurs supporters have been put in this unenviable bind by the failings of their club — rather than the other way around.
But just as those supporters should not be blamed for having mixed feelings, so Spurs staff would be entirely justified in feeling bemused, frustrated and appalled by any suggestion that fans do not want to get a result, just as Postecoglou was two years ago.
The fanbase and the club are not one and the same thing. They are separate entities — perhaps the most obvious difference is that fans are paying, while club staff are being paid — and City’s visit is the latest unfortunate situation in which it feels impossible for everyone associated with Spurs to be entirely on the same page.
While no one is necessarily in the wrong here, a conflict of interest between fans and the club is a troubling symptom of an unhealthy organisation, and there is blame to be apportioned to the decision-makers whose mistakes have led Spurs to this juncture.
Years of decline have reduced Tottenham — one of the wealthiest clubs on the planet — to a place where the collective mood of the fanbase is at least somewhat conditioned by Arsenal stumbling again.
Supporters have had little to cheer in the top flight since the 2-0 win over City at the Etihad Stadium in August, and they go into the reverse fixture having taken three points from games against Brentford, Sunderland, Bournemouth, West Ham United and Burnley this year.
Against the backdrop of poor results, turgid football, sky-high ticket prices and a lack of faith in the new-look board, fan unrest is growing. The protest group ‘Change for Tottenham’ has organised a walkout in the 75th minute of Sunday’s game, following a series of other demonstrations around matches since the back end of last season.
The dilemma facing fans on Sunday is not the sort which should afflict a club of Spurs’ stature and resources, especially not twice in the space of three seasons, and is a direct consequence of their consistent underperformance in the Premier League.
Clearly, it was much easier for Mauricio Pochettino, Spurs’ most celebrated manager of the Premier League era, to say he did not care about getting one over Arsenal than it was for Postecoglou, because the Argentine’s teams were competing for the league title, while the Australian’s squad were watching from afar while Arsenal challenged at the top.
Healthy and competitive clubs can afford to focus entirely on themselves.
The stakes on Sunday feel lower than at the climax of the 2023-24 season, when any Spurs result against City would have left Arsenal with a first league title in 21 years by beating Everton on the final day. This time, there are still 14 rounds of top-flight fixtures after this weekend.
Then again, two years ago, Postecoglou’s Spurs went into the game still with an outside chance of a top-four finish and Champions League football, while their current league campaign under Thomas Frank already feels reduced to little more than a mid-table scrap.
The furore around the May 2024 game was damaging to Spurs.
Postecoglou said before the match that he would never understand supporters wanting their own team to lose and insisted “100 per cent” of fans were rooting for his team.
A 2-0 Spurs defeat, though, played out in a strange atmosphere, soundtracked by a conversational babble that felt more akin to Centre Court at Wimbledon than a high-stakes Premier League football game.
While few if any Spurs fans appeared to be actively cheering on City, it was plain that many did not know exactly how to feel about the occasion — at least until Son Heung-min raced clean through in the 86th minute, with the visitors leading 1-0.
The milliseconds before Son shot likely clarified the true feelings of many watching fans — Miss! Score! — but his effort was saved, and City added a second goal in stoppage time.
For many associated with Spurs, the result was cause for relief rather than celebration, ensuring that City (who typically inspire indifference in neutrals) remained in control of their own destiny. They duly delivered a fifth title in six seasons.
For Postecoglou, though, it was the “worst experience” of a long and storied managerial career to date, prompting the head coach to furiously suggest that Spurs were built on “fragile foundations” and admit he “got it wrong in terms of what the atmosphere was going to be like and what people felt”.
There seems every chance that the atmosphere will be similarly subdued on Sunday, not least because so many Spurs fans are currently gripped by a numbing apathy at the state of their club and have lost patience with Frank.
Some home supporters may even have two reasons to want Spurs to lose: to maintain the pressure on Arsenal and the heat on Frank, potentially hastening the Dane’s departure.
Looking back, it is easy to wonder now if the misunderstandings and strength of feeling around the defeat to City under Postecoglou was a turning point of sorts.
It is not easy to pinpoint the moment that Postecoglou’s Spurs tenure began to unravel — you could make a compelling case for the 4-1 home loss to Chelsea in November 2023, as well as any number of other bad defeats — but the strange circumstances of that City game felt like the start of a deterioration in his relationship with supporters (which was eventually repaired by last season’s Europa League win).
Perhaps being given permission to throw the City game by fans also negatively impacted the players, feeding into the sense that it was permissible to lose in the Premier League — a feeling that was also fostered by Postecoglou effectively writing off the top-flight campaign last season.
For Frank, a defeat on Sunday would further undermine his position, with Spurs still without a league win in 2026 and fans having made clear in recent games that they blame the Dane.
Ironically, though, there is a section of the fanbase who would be angrier with Frank if he manages to mastermind another win over City this weekend.