Champions Lost?

We welcome another new writer to our growing Spurs community of writers. Today, Tom O'Neill provides us with some food thought, looking at the end of season drama we seem to face on a recurring basis. Welcome to e-Spurs Tom!

With Easter Sunday behind us it’s only right we should make a genesis themed parallel with the Spurs predicament. I will begin by calling upon a recent memory - cast your mind back three weeks; recall Scott Parker running 30 yards, tricking his way past a crowded Inter Milan midfield as if momentarily possessed by the holy ghost of his lost partner Luka or dare I say, John White himself. The home crowd chorused lovingly like a host of cherubim missing only the heavenly trumpets. White Hart Lane came as close to resembling the Garden of Eden as I’ve ever heard or seen it. For that short stretch, Champion’s League, Paradise, was all but secure. So I’m exaggerating; but three weeks ago we comfortably beat Inter Milan at home 3-0, honestly. Cue The Fall of Spurs. From whichever fruit the team hath partaken, it caused them to lose three on the trot, in a seemingly predictable twist in this tale. I will attempt to justify the ways of the footballing gods.

For fans, it has got to the point where, come spring, the fall of Spurs seems all but inevitable. Forced to relive the mistakes of previous seasons in a hellish cycle; a self-perpetuating punishment inflicted by powers seemingly beyond our control. Suddenly Kyle Walker’s every defensive error is punished, every surging Bale run ineffectual, every Parker 920 degree spin intercepted after just the second turn. Worst of all, Aaron Lennon was sacrificed to the injury god. If Tottenham were a character in Greek tragedy they would surely be the flawed hero, destined to come tantalisingly close to their objective only to fall at the last hurdle. Put simply, the wheels temporarily fell off, the curse won again. Can it be a coincidence that ‘To dare is to do’ and ‘So close yet so far’ share the same syllable pattern? (Seriously, say them quickly to yourself).

‘Wait!’ You chorus, ‘did not the footballing gods gift us free-will?’ You cry, ‘could we not have changed it this season?’ You plead. I must admit, it’s hard to argue with you there, a chance for redemption likely lay in the month of January with the purchase of a top class striker. It appears Levy decided that it is indeed better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven; hell being a wasteland of out-of-form and injured strikers, heaven being well…Damiao. His point was thus; had we purchased, we may well have been taken for a ride and forced to pay well above market price just for that sweet taste of heaven. Better to do the best with what we’ve got, a tired and misfiring Defoe and a currently incompetent Adebayor - Levy’s plan to rule in hell simply became hell.

So, is it simply an isolated screw-up of Biblical proportions? Perhaps this is unfair, after winning at Swansea yesterday we may be able to write it off the whole event as a minute blip, a momentary failing in the divine empire AVB is seeking to build. Yet it seems there was no one else to blame but ourselves - while Wenger might possess the forked tongue of a serpent; Arsenal, contrary to popular belief, are not more subtle than any beast of the field which the football gods have made. Granted, this whole analogy would work better if it were United chasing us and not Arsenal (red devils puns aplenty), but the point remains - their unbreakable habit of slithering into the top four year-in-year-out is not a product of Satanic influence or mind-games, but instead a simple matter of their own psychological strength. It was not the spiritual embodiment of arsenal whispering into the ear of Kyle Walker that caused him to inexplicably pass back to the pressurised Lloris at Anfield. It was something more dangerous yet more easily over-come - something internal. A fundamental trait ingrained into the very strands of Tottenham DNA, (of which Walker has plenty), Spurs’ original sin is simply being rewritten over and over, reproduced not continued. This raises the question that perhaps the proverbial Fall has nothing to do with previous seasons, instead, we wrote this script afresh. Is Andre’s ‘negative spiral’ coming back to haunt us in the form of our own negative double-helix? I say what we need is a little genetic engineering.

The enemy are out-nerving us at this point in time, but the mind can make a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven. It is down to the team to reverse their own fortunes. To paraphrase AVB in yesterday’s press conference, ‘keep the faith’ was the general message:

‘this is something that has happened before, but that doesn’t mean it has to happen again this year, circumstances are different’

And I’m inclined to agree, pre-lapsarian Tottenham under AVB oozed confidence. It’s possible to achieve that blissful state again, as glimpsed in the first half hour in Wales yesterday. We can rekindle that swagger, that winning way; paradise regained. So go forth and multiply you spurs, and don’t be tempted by the lasagne of knowledge, I promise it’s not worth it.

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