Spurs should qualify for the Champions League on Sunday, but Spursiness works in mysterious ways, as their supporters are already well aware.
The reaction of Spurs fans to Arsenal’s 2-0 defeat at Newcastle United on Monday night was telling. Somehow or other, Spurs have stumbled into fourth place in the Premier League when it really matters, and are in a position that should guarantee them Champions League football next season. They are two points clear of Arsenal with a game to play, and on Sunday they travel to Carrow Road to play a Norwich City team that was relegated some time around when the clocks went forward and who haven’t improved much since. A draw would leave Arsenal needing a 15-goal win against Everton to take fourth. A defeat, and any Arsenal victory would do.
If you wanted a window into the mind of a Tottenham Hotspur supporter, it can be found in reading all of the above and remaining unconvinced. It can be realised in looking at the league table and the remaining fixtures, and concluding that facing Norwich is the biggest test of Antonio Conte’s managerial career yet: to get the result he needs, he not only has to overcome the opponent, but also Tottenham Hotspur themselves.
But Spursiness isn’t just a perpetual clown car, the footballing equivalent of a GIF of a dog scooting across a carpet on its backside, backwards and forwards in perpetuity. It’s more subtle than that. The current iteration of Spurs can play football. They will arrive at Carrow Road set to return to the Champions League, at the end of a season which saw them go unbeaten against both Liverpool and Manchester City, and fresh off the back of a fairly one-sided north London derby win against Arsenal.
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To the untrained eye, the north London derby was when this season’s team might have hit peak Spurs, but the more seasoned Spurs-watcher knows that this is all…
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