Spurs ‘won’t come straight back up’ to the Premier League if they are relegated unless three things happen as seven players must go…
Also, Arsenal are ‘cardboard’ and a definitive answer is given to a ‘pretty tiring’ debate.
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Spurs must ‘bin off’ seven players to get promoted at the first attempt
I still have the ticket from my first Spurs match. It’s framed, and has always been something I have cherished.
That Spurs team had some great players; Hoddle, Waddle, Clemence, Gough, Mabbutt, Ardiles….Clive Allen was one season away from plundering 49 goals in one season as we came so close to glory.
We lost that match 2-1 – two red cards, two players stretchered off. There were 21000 people at that game. It was dark, damp and cold.
But…it was glorious.
Last summer I gave up my season ticket in protest (I know, big deal) at the ownership of the club. Not just Levy but the entire Enic board. I hoped it would reverse psychology the whole club into winning. That didn’t work.
If Spurs go down, and lets be honest, it’s likelier than it not happening now, they won’t be coming straight back up. Not a chance. Unless they bin off Vicario, Porro, Romero, VDV, Bissouma, Richarlison, Dragusin. Players who should be standing up to be counted, are shaming the fans, and themselves (most of them are kidding themselves that The Big Transfer is incoming by the by).
Keep the kids, and bring in some battle hardened championship stalwarts.
The irony is, I think I might enjoy the championship far more than the PL. No more VAR!
Dan
READ: Premier League predicted final table: Spurs doomed as relegation crisis is laid bare
A definitive answer to the Arsenal debate… from a Liverpool supporter
The back and forth about what Arsenal are good at it is pretty tiring, and like their football, extremely boring.
We can essentially just conclude the whole discussion with the following: “Arsenal are the most successful version of Stoke the league has seen”.
I think that will cover it for everyone. Neutrals couldn’t stand the football Stoke produced during the Pulis years and Arsenal fans can bask in the glory of seeing their team be hard to beat, physical and likely league winners.
Dean LFC
Arsenal are cardboard
Arsenal are good. Genuinely, good. Arteta has built something organised, resilient, and relentless. So why does watching them feel like eating nutritious cardboard?
The answer lies in what we’ve been spoiled by. Guardiola’s City didn’t just win, they made football look like philosophy made flesh. Positional play so intricate it required a glossary. De Bruyne, Silva, Sane, Aguero – watching them was fun. Klopp’s Liverpool were an act of pure, barely-contained violence gegenpressing as ideology. Salah, Mane and Firmino doing what they wanted, and never running out of ideas. Even Ranieri’s Leicester had romance baked into every mad counter-attack, Vardy and Mahrez were incredible to watch. Conte’s Chelsea had a zip to them too, marauding wingbacks and Eden Hazard performing like a wizard.
Arsenal offer to the footballing world is competence. Rigorous competence. But competence without charisma is just efficiency, and efficiency doesn’t make the hairs on your neck stand up. They are boring to all but Arsenal fans.
There’s also the Arteta problem. The studied sincerity. The press conference performances. The tactical fouling dressed as culture, set-pieces as style. The sense that every decision on and off the pitch has been workshopped, focus-grouped, and sanitised of anything genuinely spontaneous.
Nobody dislikes Arsenal because they’re bad. Everyone dislikes them because they’re good in a way that somehow makes football feel less than what we know it can be. They’re close to winning an argument without ever making you love the debate.
JB (Roll on next season)
A West Ham fan on ‘the best relegation battle in many years’
This is setting up to be the best relegation battle for many years. Having gone to every game the season we went down with 42 points, and currently still being the bookies favorites to be the third team to fall through the infamous ‘trap door’, I take no delight in this. I think that 40 points may well be needed to stay up this year. On that note, last season 26 was enough to stay up. Wtaf??
However, signs from The London are encouraging. West Ham are playing well. Fernandes has quickly become our best player, Summerville is a menace and dropping Killman has transformed the defense (though we still can’t defend corners). If we had held on to a comfortable 2-0 lead at Chelsea and a deserved 1-0 lead against Man U after 96 minutes, we would already be clear. In fact I see that we have managed to top at least one table, the one for most points lost from winning positions, 20 (twenty).
Obviously the position is still greatly concerning. Bowen has had a prolonged dip in form (though still plays his balls off every game of course) and we are one key injury away from huge trouble. I also still worry about Nuno. His decision to play for the win against Fulham from the start was admirable, but doing so by replacing an in form center midfielder with a second striker, when we never play with 2 up top, and with players in that role who have never played together, was amateurish. It nullified our best attacking players and left us short in midfield. Fulham without Wilson looked completely there for the taking and it was infuriating that we ceded an obvious advantage by employing a novice ChampMan tactic.
However, I don’t think I would swap our position for the 3 teams above us. Leeds are quietly sinking since their, at the time, massive win against Forest at the start of February. They fit the job description for “team that has looked safe all season who surprisingly gets dragged into it”. Forest themselves have defied the odds by having a genuine new manager bounce in terms of performances. Perhaps most impressively they are showing substantial fight. The players seem committed and fully ‘bought in’ to the task at hand, as most obviously displayed against City this week.
Which leaves Spurs. As unlikely as it seems for a Big Six (sorry, had to do it…) club to be involved at this end of the table, last night’s performance was a genuine shock to me for the complete lack of energy, belief and fight of the players. There also didn’t seem to be any discernible game plan. Even before the sending off, Palace, who themselves have been on a terrible run and have officially carried “in turmoil” status since the start of year, were comfortably the better side before the red, regardless of the scoreline.
However, leaving aside the X’s and O’s, most worryingly for them, Spurs have “the stench”. I’ve talked about the stench a few times before, because it’s something that my own team has contracted quite a few times previously, including during one extended period this season. The stench is something you can palpably see and feel when watching a team play. No one has any confidence, everyone is playing with the crippling fear of being the latest person to bugger something up, you’re second to every loose ball, inexplicable errors creep in regularly (short hit passes, keepers slow to make positioning decisions. Also, the fans have moved through the period of angrily booing and shouting at the team at half and full times, to a strangely calm and quieter period where they are constantly waiting for the other boot to drop and for it to all fall apart again. It’s a nauseating and emotionally crippling period for a fan where it’s hard to summon the passion/energy to boo or scream anymore as you realise there’s no point. Importantly, it doesn’t matter how good your players are anymore, as once you have the stench everyone is infected. I’m sure Spurs fans are best placed to confirm or deny this theory, but it is definitely what I saw last night.
Re your (probably fair) point yesterday, after 2 years of having Spurs dropped into every single article, regardless of what it was about, at least 4 Spurs related entries in Winners and Losers every week even after the most mundane of draws, Spurs being featured in Big Weekend automatically etc etc, I stopped visiting the site due to this consistent perceived lack of journalistic impartiality. Unfortunately, after about 3 weeks of this, I felt like Mark Renton in his bedroom with the dead baby crawling on the ceiling and had to come back. Still a little sore about that maybe. But (cue Alan Partridge voice when he talks about Noel Edmonds), “obsessed with Tickers”?? Nah. Just a little shadenfreide perhaps.
Mike, WHU
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Hurzeler is not a white knight
Amused by how many people in the mailbox and below the line think that Hürzeler has come out to defend our beautiful sport from the existential evil that is Arteta’s Arsenal. Judging by the outright cynicism from him and his team in that match I think it’s safe to say he was aiming for some Mourinho style hijinks hoping it’d get under the skin of everyone involved from the opposition players and fans to the officials. Which it did but not in the way he’d wanted. Any coach who has told his players to obstruct the goalkeeper (literally every time) and delay set pieces like they did isn’t your saviour in this anti-football nonsense narrative. He’s the same as the rest of his peers, including Arteta! Hürzeler’s just playing games and you’re apparently his willing dupes!
North-East Gooner
Just keep winning, Arsenal
Matt, Dublin, I suspect the reason that Gooners feel the need to remind you that everything is good “as long as they keep winning” is because every time we turn on the TV, look online, read the paper or listen to talks*ite, we are constantly told that everything about Arsenal is wrong, everybody hates are and we are all “insufferable”. They waste time (as has 90% of teams that turn up at the Emirates for the last Lord knows how long). They bend the rules (yes, because that is just an Arsenal problem, I have never seen any other players buy a cheap foul or get the physio on for nothing. They only score from set pieces (clearly not a stick to beat anyone else with).
I’m old enough to have enjoyed the Graham and Wenger eras. If you think I celebrated winning the league in 1989, 1991, 1998, 2002 or 2004 any more or any less than each other, then I question your knowledge of football fans. I am desperate to see Arsenal win the league, to share the experience with my son, who can’t remember watching them win anything and has endured the pain of finishing second for the last three years. Will we find something to be upset about? I very much doubt it.
Steve Lynch
I’ve been an Arsenal fan since my Dad told me I was.
In my lifetime I’ve seen Arsenal lose:
* The FA cup final
* The League Cup final (more than once)
* The Cup Winners Cup final (no longer exists)
* The UEFA Cup final (also no longer exists)
* The Europa League final
* The Champions League final
And, for good measure, I’ve also seen us lose the Premier League on the last day of the season.
I will take winning ugly over losing every time.
Steve
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Laura Woods missed the point
So I have just seen the comment that Laura Woods made regarding Alan Pardew’s comments that any Arsenal win may be seen with an asterisk next to it. Whilst I agree with her that it’s insulting to belittle any teams achievements I think she has ignored the crux of who caused this negativity around the so called “right” winners and subsequently why most fans pray they don’t win it.
Now I’m a 40 year old Chelsea fan that lived through some of the greatest years as a fan. Was our football pretty? Rarely. Was it efficient? Always. Was it frustrating to the purists? Deliciously so. Who were the “purists” at the forefront of said outrage? Arsenal fans every time.
I vividly remember Arsenal supporters fan girling over Barcelona desperately trying to draw comparisons between their mediocre tiki taka and Barcelona’s all dominating messi days. Whilst I despised that Barca team and have my tin foil hat theories on their success they did what they did and they knew how to win clean and how to win dirty so fair play.
The thing that I think gets under a lot of fans skin with this success is that it is diametrically opposed to what Arsenal fans have espoused for the past 20 years. You turned your noses up at us when we held out for the famous win at the nou camp, belittled any team that sat back for not playing the game to your own pre-defined rules and screamed “anti-football” from the rooftops like you were the greta thunbergs of football and Yet you have become the exact thing that you professed to hate.
You’re the Kier Starmer of football. Hollow and without principal. A match made in heaven.
Anthony, Kilburn (The problem with principals is that you have to stick to them)
Has Glasner signed a new contract at Crystal Palace?
Even by the standards of it’s never dull at Crystal Palace, it’s been eventful these past few weeks. They’ve played four teams in the relegation battle, beating Wolves and Spurs, drawing with Nottingham Forest and losing after seven mad minutes against Burnley. They’ve beaten Brighton, were unlucky to lose to Manchester United (a game I note garnered zero emails in the Mailbox), and are through to the last 16 of the Europa Conference League. All of which leads me to just one conclusion: we are not far away from discovering that actually, everyone has patched up their differences and Oliver Glasner has actually agreed a new contract to carry on as Palace manager.
In hindsight, supporting Palace this season has been like watching a band you like have a huge hit and struggle with the aftermath. When they were starting out, right up to playing 500-capacity venues, they were fine, they’d built a following who appreciated what they did and some critics admired their musicianship. But once they’d had success, the tensions that had been simmering previously were now boiling over. Everyone involved had their own opinion on who the primary factor in the success was, and therefore who should have the biggest say in what they did next. All of which are disagreements that had been festering all along, but with less willingness to put them aside for the sake of the music. And like with an imploding football club, it’s the fans who suffer.
Speaking of imploding football clubs, we have to talk about Spurs. Last night, they were not far away from Palace in terms of xG, had the same number of shots on target, more touches in the opposition box and actually took the lead. But at the first sign Palace might get back into the game (ignoring the goal ruled out for a tight offside) they panicked and ended up having one of their defenders sent off. They made a couple of substitutions and changed formation to a back five, but still conceded two more goals after the penalty. It’s hard to pinpoint where the majority of the blame lies. Typically any sort of failure of organisation would suggest the manager was at fault, but I have sympathy for Igor Tudor, watching his side crumble. The ten players tasked with seeing the game at least to half time had an average of 169 top flight appearances to their names, so it’s perfectly reasonable for the manager to think they would have enough experience to draw upon to help them get the job done, but apparently not. So the drama continues, to the detriment of their chances.