I'm happy. I'm sad. I'm confused.

I’ve made it into the office early. Headphones on, music full blast, head down. I begin to close my incognito windows on Google Chrome.

"Why is life so sh*t?" reads one.

"Does God hate me?" reads another.

"Painless ways to kill yourself," completes this trifecta of depression.

One by one, colleague after colleague enters. Sarah's first. I hate this cow at the best of times, let alone today. I raise my head as slowly as possible; just enough to acknowledge her existence, but not enough to indicate that I'm willing to instigate any sort of meaningful conversation.

Sarah, however, ignores my subtle tells.

You did how many shots on Saturday night Sarah? It was ‘epic’ you say? And Jane did what?!

I don’t care, Sarah. I simply do not care.

My headphones go a little louder now. “Why do I keep f*cking up?!” screams Neil Young. Good question, Neil. Good question.

There I am, wallowing in self-pity, until I come to the realization that I work in an office devoid of football fans. St. Totteringham’s day, mind the gap, the North London rivalry - it means nought.

The joy. The bliss.

But many of you won’t have been so lucky. You’ve spent the morning clearing your desk of graffiti and sticky notes saying "LOL SPUDZ, CHOKERS!!11!!" (terribly handwritten and likely misspelt). Your classmates in your economics A-Level class are risking the teachers wrath with their interruptions, but they don’t care; price elasticity of demand is not important, not today it isn’t.

“Happy St. Totteringham’s Day” texts Dave from accounts.

"Where the hell has he been all season?" you think to yourself.

“Yeah but you’re happy finishing 2nd while we’re devastated at 3rd,” you reply.

“You spent all that money and you bottled the league, in a year where every other top team was well below par” you hasten to add, before he even has a chance to reply.

"You mocked us all season for finishing 2nd to Leicester, and now you're celebrating that yourself," is your last-ditch attempt at salvaging even the tiniest of victories.

But deep down, you know.

I know.

Dave knows.

There is little we can do to mask this particular failure. We lost. It is one of the many bitter pills we as Spurs fans have to swallow - although, at this point, I feel like I've overdosed.

But let's rewind. A season that started with the majority of us expecting nothing more than a fleeting top 4 challenge and a half-decent cup run ended with our first genuine title challenge since the 80s. Unfortunately, we lost out to deserved winners, but that's a sentence none of us thought we'd utter to begin with.

Our highest league finish in 26 years. Twenty six. A very long time indeed. Some impressive victories; a defence as solid as we've ever seen; the league's top goalscorer; an English core; Champions League football (automatic qualification no less!); Dele Alli; Danny Rose's improvement; homegrown heroes; no longer being pushovers (for the most part).

It's been good, very good.

Trust Tottenham Hotspur to make all of the above feel like the soul destroying disappointment that it is, eh? It was all going too well, so we needed something to remind us that behind the apparent squad unity, the #TogetherTHFC hashtags, the Dele Alli wonder goals, the Alderweireld blocks, and the new found belief and mentality, Tottenham is still Tottenham.

But, and it's an unbelievably crucial 'but,' they won't be for very long. The seeds have been planted, things are changing - we just need to endure some more pain and hardship before we get there.

I'm caught in a very confusing and awkward place. The angel on my left shoulder is telling me how all of us would have taken this at the start at the season; she assures me it's been an incredible year.

But the devil on my right, adorning an evil smile with his pointy pitchfork in hand, is telling me that we screwed up (again) given the way the season unfolded.

"I'm proud."

"I'm gutted."

"We were only good this season because others were terrible."

"We need at least five, no, SIX players this summer or we'll finish fifth."

I don't know exactly how I feel yet, but it's probably a weird combination of all of the above. It's likely that, in a few weeks time, my thoughts will be fuelled more by my head and less by my heart, and I'll look back with immense pride.

For now, I'll try to remain positive:

• We're way ahead of schedule
• Our youngsters are brilliant, yet are still nowhere near their best
• We're back among Europe's elite (and all the benefits that that brings)
• Our manager is among the best in the country, if not Europe
• We play some brilliant football when on song
• The stadium finally looks to be progressing well (screw you, Archway)

It's been one of the most entertaining seasons I've ever seen as a Spurs fan, and while a disappointing ending leaves a sour taste in my mouth, it can't erase it completely. Not a chance.

When Lamela fires home our third against Manchester United, it's carnage. The rows above you are collapsing like dominoes; all you can see are limbs upon limbs, and at least 5 of your party have come out of it bloodied and bruised. You go into work on Monday to the underpaid job that you hate but all is right with the world.

That's what football is all about - those seconds of pleasure - and we've had many of those moments this season.

But with highs there are lows. I can live with losing the league, I really can, but above all else, the biggest disappointment is that I genuinely thought we'd turned a corner mentally, and the Stamford Bridge and Arsenal hoodoos still remain. I thought we'd truly changed tact and shed that loser mentality completely; we are closer than we've ever been, of that I have no doubt, but not close enough.

But, while I won't go as far as saying that yesterday was a blessing in disguise, it was certainly an eye-opener. One that grounds us, takes us down a peg or two and tempers expectations for next season, but also one that, in Pochettino's words, "helps us to make some decisions in the summer."

Ruthless, but brilliant.

And that's why I'm finding it hard to be completely suicidal: the manager.

We have had many a false dawn, but this one feels a little bit different than the others. Who knows? Next season could see us gloriously crumble, with the natives booing off the team and calling for the manager's head following a 0-1 home defeat to Burnley in early October - it's Spurs we're talking about here, after all - but I really don't think it'll be the case.

Would I swap our team for Arsenal's or Leicester's?

Nope.

And the manager?

Definitely not.

And how about United or Liverpool?

No thank you (though it would be very foolish to not be weary of all of the aforementioned next season - they will all improve).

While I hasten to go into too much detail, 3 or 4 more players are needed, but we knew that well before yesterday. A backup striker to Kane, someone to cover Dier and/or Dembele, and what I call the 'Philippe Coutinho' player; the one who saves you when the rest of the team hasn't turned up against West Brom, or when Stoke are displaying a stubborn, backs to the wall performance - but I'm sure the staff are all aware of what is needed far better than all of us.

And besides, who cares that we only needed one extra point from our final four games, without having lost back to back games leading into the final game of the season, never having lost by more than a one goal deficit in the league, playing against an already relegated side with ten men who couldn't even muster a goal against Aston Villa, to ultimately stop our arch rivals leapfrogging us on the final d...oh.

Come to think of it, maybe I do want to hear about Sarah’s weekend after all.

 

Nice piece Socrates! Now enjoy the Summer!

 

nice read; my thoughts/questions/worries now the fog has cleared:
- an epic season has been horribly tarnished; yesterday's performance was completely unacceptable on so many levels
- is Poch a fraud? We didn't actually even achieve our best PL season in terms of points & this in a season where everyone, bar Leicester, was absolute shite. Have we massively overhyped him?
The waving of the white flag in Dortmund & poor team selection at West Ham & in the FA Cup against Palace were serious & costly errors.
- just how big will the hangover of yesterday impact our start to next season?
- what on earth happened to our defence in the last few weeks? Toby was responsible for too many goals; Hugo looked exceptionally average; Walker was simply awful, a total dereliction of his defensive duties in the last 2 games. Why was Wimmer just discarded when he hadn't put a foot wrong?
- Mason, Chadli, Son, NJie, Onomah are not nearly good enough to be understudies in a CL squad - big squad overhaul required (again)

 

Yesterday was a disgrace and no excuses are valid to make up for it.
We had a relatively samey season as last 7/8 blown out of proportion by the p;ss poor standard of the League.
21 years weve finished behind them, 21 years theyve been able to gloat, we had it there in the palm of our hands, something to make up for the many hammerings we took in that time and the trophies etc theyve lifted, it would have been a consolation to a title capitulation but like i said it would have eased it and stuck a big middle finger up to that lot and their delusions of grandeur.
But its like we didnt care and it always appears to me that whenever crunch time comes we always have that frailty like that winning killer instinct is totally void from our club.
A few recent seasons its been down to them and us battling it out for 4th/2nd spot and every single time theyve held their nerve to deliver n this time to pip us.
I get so frustrated over the whole thing, lets reverse yesterdays fixtures/positions theres no way Scum wouldve fallen apart at Newcastle and we'd of prob drawn with Villa, its almost like a loaded dice.
Why dont we ever seem to have that conviction that nearly isn't good enough, we constantly over hype and praise failure, which almost gives our teams a pass that almost nice try is enough.
Well its not!

 

still don't know why he picked verts ahead of wim,also we blew 20 pts frщm winning pos. no plan b , need to grind out results not always bombing forward .disgraceful we were 1-0 up against wba , yet couldn't close , we had 4 games to win 1 . shocking and we don't deal with high ball ,and also some players like kane were only concerned about winning golden boot .when you want to win games and title s u need to put more bodies in box and bust a gut

 

As an Arsenal fan, I've been enjoying myself listening to all your bitter rants, hating us, hating yourselves, but putting that aside for the minute I have no problem saying that Arsenal were lucky. We achieved second because we performed well in the first half of the season, leading the table, but bobbled between 2nd and 4th by default. Lacklustre performances were still, just about, better than the performances of the other teams. Except Tottenham. I can't explain the Tottenham Choke, but this year you handed us St Totterinham's Day on a silver platter. We've had a season of (as usual) savage injuries to our best players (Sanchez, Wilshire, Carzola), other players going missing (Giroud for 3 months) and then all out civil war (with the ridiculous, vociferous minority calling for Wenger's head with the majority of fans pleading for him to stay). Add on top a good deal of bottling. Somehow we finished second. Tottenham played the better football. But your last four games culminating with the Newcastle rout, was the most embarrassing end to a fine season I've ever seen. As I read somewhere today, "Spurs just, well, Spurs'd it up". North London stays red, so thanks for making that happen. See you next season.

 

It hurts and the feeling won't go away !!!

 

Very eloquent, mate. You've put it better than anyone. Got to believe it's real progress as Harry Kane says, but it had a funny way of showing us that. Picking the positives from a kicking has never made more sense!

 

that point is the key to all the frustration. we simply cannot blame anyone other than ourselves. the other 'so called' big teams failed earlier than us....which gave us the opportunity. ....losing to poor sides will always cost you.
Personally I've never had any concern where we finish in relation to Arsenal. (for a fact...if I had to....I'd prefer to watch them on tele than fecking Chelski!). To me it is where we finish in relation to 1st place. And this season, for the first time in many years, we were closer than ever. To let it slip away by playing badly.....and letting Chelski 'do a Chelski' on us......was a sorry end to the season. we didn't recover from that.

But lets not go overboard on rubbishing to team for the whole season. we finished in a damn good position.
imagine if we were in our usual 4th or 5th position....and fell away to 7th or 8th!

 

Utterly brilliant my long suffering friend. You have eloquently summed up precisely my thought process and feelings.

 

It's cracked record time again, so here goes - why does Pochettino get a free pass for our humiliating end of season collapse? Apart from the demonstrable fact that his teams ALWAYS run out of steam because they're plain knackered, he was responsible for encouraging the 'naughtiness' which led to Alli and Dembele's suspensions (when Alli kicked a fallen Fiorentina player back in February he should have been told to cut it out in no uncertain terms, not patted on the back and told 'you remind me of myself'), he demonstrated his usual tactical poverty in games against West Ham, WBA et al, and he showed that he was taken in by his own hype with the SAF lunch incident - what the hell was that about? As I and others have previously said, he MIGHT become a decent manager if he learns from his many mistakes, but so far at WHL he's been absolutely average, no better than Redknapp, AVB or Sherwood, and I can't believe that the Mancs, Liverpool and our London chums won't be back next season to give him and us a far tougher ride, and then we'll see how good he really is.

 

Great piece. Well written and well considered. Much better than my reactionary piece directly after the game.

 

Thanks for your kind words, mate (and everybody else).

As I said in the article, it's hard not to react with your heart shortly after the fact. We're all hurt, fuming, distraught, and that sometimes clouds judgement.

This pain will subside by next week. We'll soon have the Euros to focus on, we'll soon be signing new players (I hope) and we'll all be buzzing for the new season.

Come August, when they draw the names out of the hat for the Champions League group stage, a little bit of paper that says 'Tottenham Hotspur (ENG)" will be there, and we'll all be beaming.

COYS.

 

Because this is Poch the great who gets his team to run a lot 'work hard', and has had an amazing season in which exactly half our games we played was unable to actually beat other teams.

 

I've read posts on this forum all season and found most of them by the usual members very good. The past 48 hours though has seen them almost committing suicide. I've been a spurs fan (yid) or whatever you call us for 55 years and believe me I've been on a rollercoaster ride with our beloved club more times than I can remember so the end of this season is nothing new to me. I went through the usual tantrums on Sunday like throwing my mobile down, cursing everything associated with the Woolwich scum and calling the day black Sunday but once again I'm calm and thinking what a great season we had. To you younger yids especially those born just before or during the premier league years it gets easier so just remember when you wake up each morning give thanks you're a spurs fan and not a gooner scum. Forget this season now and look to the future because I've not felt so optimistic for years. Yes we need to clear out more dead wood and yes another central defender, striker and midfield magician is needed but pochettino has already publicly said levy has got to release funds to buy so in him I'll trust. Back to the arsenal thing and how much we hate them here's what I do. The night before the first match of the new season set your alarm to go off a minute earlier and then you can hate them a little more.

 

Your lead article is one of the best postings I've seen on this forum Socrates".

I know how I feel, how we all feel. It's not being negative or suicidal, it's just trying to offload some of the stress and pain that is finishing below Arse N All one more time.

This season will live in my memory for a very long time. I can remember EVERY loss, nearly every draw....we were so good, then we were awful....perhaps some things never change...roll on August....what am I going to do until then..

Have fun this summer...one and all.

COYS

 

Socrates has done an excellent summary of the season, covering with a superb facility for brevity everything we all feel, love, hate and suffer in equal measure.
As one I suspect with a few more miles on the clock I add:
- this is probably the best Spurs team since the Double but in a much more competitive environment given all the money now in our game
- Poch must get hold of the attitude which has cost us dearly. Getting long term suspensions from childish acts is simply UNPROFESSIONAL. I don't have to name the two concerned but I liken it to a carpenter turning up in your house to build a wardrobe or whatever having left all his tools at home some 200 miles away. It doesn't matter how good a player is if he doesn't get on the pitch for vital games for avoidable reasons. Just look at how effective their contributions have been when they have played. These guys just have to man up
- At 5.00pm on Sunday I was on the point of sending my One Hotspur Card to Mr Levy in 8 pieces. A few beers and a night's sleep soon reminded me that I am lucky to support a truly great football club that hasn't needed to play gypsy to get noticed for the right reasons.

Can't wait for next season.
P

 

Morning P. I too think this is probably the best team since the double side. In those days there would have been fewer richer clubs, we were attracting the best players - Blanchflower, Mackay, White, Jones....what would they have cost today.

Now we are relatively poorer than the gypsy sides, so it goes some way to showing why this group did so well. Like 60-61, it was achieved with a small core squad. I guess the physical demands are greater now, so if the Chairman can free up funds very soon, so that Poch and Mitchell can secure some quality additions, then a season like 61-62 might follow......probably no chance of a Greavsie though...lol

COYS

 

Although I was alive and well (and living just down the road from the old Brookfield Lane training ground) in 1961, I was more interested in newts and sticklebacks than football in those days, and I've always had doubts about the likes of Baker, Henry and Medwin - the Mackays and Joneses were world-class, undoubtedly, but there were some spear-carriers as well. On paper (where 'projects' and 'schedules' which the AVBs and Pochettinos love so much are to be found), I reckon both the '67 and '87 FA Cup Final teams were better than the Double team, and how they achieved so little with so much talent (Greaves, Jennings, England and Knowles in '67; Waddle, Mabbutt, Gough, Allen and Clemence in '87) is just another part of the story of endless under-achievement which is Tottenham Hotspur. Yes, we've got some great players now, just as we've had throughout the club's history, but we've won so little, and the season just ended is merely the latest in a long story of 'might have beens' (or 'should have beens') - a missed opportunity for glory instead of ridicule.

 

Good evening Cheshunt Boy....such times, such class....it's interesting in your '87 list of players that you haven't listed The Messiah....I took my 13 year old son, we were right in front of seeing Chrissy Waddle cross for Clive Allen to head home early on.....and to see Keith Houchen score his equaliser...

My lad was devastated, I was gutted, and in truth, from my recollections on the day, Glenn didn't turn up. I loved him, we all loved him, the best Englishman of his generation and many generations for me. He came from Harlow, like me. I played against his dad when I was young and his dad wasn't.....

Doesn't that sum up Spurs....wonderful players, artists, entertainers.........all of those. Winners..not. Sad but true.....doesn't change anything...we love them and will always.

COYS