May 25, 2013
MAY 25 ― As the English Premier League came to an end last Sunday, the Spurs fan in me simply couldn't help but feel disappointed at missing out on a Champions League place for next season.
We did our part by beating Sunderland 1-0, thanks to another brilliant goal by multiple player of the year award winner Gareth Bale, but our rival for fourth place, Arsenal also did their part by winning against Newcastle.
And since Champions League qualification is no longer in our hands, credit must go to Arsenal for taking their chance and securing a Champions League place next season.
Having been a Spurs fan since I was in primary school, sometimes I forget how rarely this feeling of "success" and increased expectations occur in the life of a Spurs fan.
I forget that it's only in the last five seasons or so that we've somehow managed to be consistently there or thereabouts in the Europa League and Champions League places, thereby creating this increased expectation of nowadays wanting to finish in the top four every season.
I forget that before five years ago, before our adventures in Europe against giants like Inter Milan and Real Madrid, the best that we could hope for is an extended run in one of the cups to compensate for the non-excitement of being a mediocre mid-table side.
Our glory days in the 1960s were long gone, and as a Spurs fan who's not yet a senior citizen, those glory days weren't even a memory for me.
It's okay to have increased expectations though, because that just means that we've started to acquire (or re-acquire) that winning mentality as a result of our club and team steadily progressing to become better and better as the years roll on.
But sometimes it's good to have a little perspective. I know there are many Spurs fans out there who regard finishing fifth this season as some sort of "failure", but I think that's only the case if we think in terms of "what-ifs" or "what could have been."
In reality, I think this season is quite a success, considering the things we had to deal with. First and foremost, most people forget that this is a season of transition for Spurs, as we had to acclimatise to a new manager in Andre Villas-Boas, which also means that the players will have to learn and adapt to new systems of play and training.
We may have finished fourth last season, but a new manager (especially one so young, modern and tactical like Villas-Boas) means a fresh new start, and we all know how bad that can turn out in some cases (like it did with Villas-Boas and Chelsea in his last job).
Secondly, we sold not one, but two creative midfield forces in the team in Luka Modric and Rafael Van Der Vaart, and to be honest, we didn't even come close to replacing them with like-minded players.
We may have brought in three central midfielders, but Moussa Dembele is more of a box-to-box midfield powerhouse instead of a playmaker and both Clint Dempsey and Gylfi Sigurdsson are goal-poaching attacking midfielders instead of the much needed playmaker.
It just shows how tactically sound Villas-Boas is that even when having to make do without a playmaker (which is the way we've played in the last five years), he's come up with the rather nifty idea of having two box-to-box midfield powerhouses bossing the midfield (in the form of Sandro and Dembele), breaking up play and quickly launching attacks when possession is won.
Our quite brilliant form in the first half of the season, with Sandro and Dembele sweeping all before them (even winning away against champions Manchester United at Old Trafford) is living proof of the effectiveness of this tactical mutation, which was however cruelly cut short as Sandro got injured and had to miss the rest of the season and we simply had no back-up for the kind of energy he provides on our bench. A fading Scott Parker, who's also just recovering from injury, was simply no substitute.
And it's on the bench that even a larger perspective is needed as we evaluate our season. We may have a first team that can beat anyone on their day, but as the loss of Sandro proved, and later on the loss of Aaron Lennon and Benoit Assou Ekotto to injury later illustrates, we're quite obviously lacking in quality cover for many positions.
And when you factor in the fact that we're also taking the Europa League seriously, the increased number of games and the light bench is not an ideal position to be in, especially when we've let out on loan such impressive young talents like Andros Townsend (one of the few bright lights of the latter part of Queens Park Rangers' season) and Danny Rose.
The issue of not having enough first-class strikers is another. Complaining about our failure to sign a striker during the January transfer window, when the horribly off-form Emmanuel Adebayor was away for the African Nations Cup leaving only the regularly injured and inconsistent Jermaine Defoe as our only senior striker, was foolish indeed.
Wherever the blame might lay for making these less than conducive decisions (or letting them happen), the fact is that we've finished the season with our highest points total ever in the Premier League era, which would've been enough to finish third or fourth in previous seasons.
To do so in a season of transition and with all the aforementioned handicaps, I think we did more than good. And judging from the players' faces and body language at the end of the final match of the season, and despite the disappointment of having missed out on Champions League football next season, I think they think so too.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist
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