Vectis Spurs

Have the last three season really bought the progress we all want to believe they have or is this just another White Hart Lane false dawn?

Former Spurs boss Martin Jol

Following a very poor start to the season and with Martin Jol’s job looking less and less secure by the minute I find myself asking if the past 3 years have been just another of Tottenham’s many false dawns. Even in my short lifetime I have seen so many new dawns come and go at White Hart Lane that I almost expect failure whenever things begin to look promising, but isn’t that a required trait of any Spurs fan?

I’ve been a big supporter of Jol from the day he took over from Santini, he came highly recommended by those in the know and he talked of being a lifelong Spurs fan which actually seems to have some truth. In his first season we flirted with European qualification but missed out on the final day of the season. Over that summer we all began to dream, with a few more signings this could be our season.

Aaron Lennon

The 2005/06 season saw us play football which at times was painfully boring to watch but saw us in 4th spot for a long time before ultimately missing out in a food poisoning incident which may well have had effects up to this very day. Qualifying for the Champions League at that time may have in fact done us more harm than good but it was still a heartbreak after months of excitement. A great season of performances from Mido, Michael Carrick, Paul Robinson and the emergence of Aaron Lennon took our excitement further and suddenly the rest of the football world was looking at us to be the potential “Top 4 Breaker”.

The signing of Dimitar Berbatov along with a much more exciting brand of football made the 2006/07 season one that will surely be remember fondly by all Spurs fans that experienced it. A home win over Chelsea will no doubt be long remembered as will our 4-3 win at Upton Park against the Hammers. We also reached two Cup Quarter Finals and one Semi Final. There were bad points of course; we were horrible in defense, conceding almost as often as we scored; Aaron Lennon failed to further on the promise he had shown the previous season; we missed our captain Ledley King for long periods; and our cup runs, though exciting, all ended at the first real challenge.

Looking back on those two season, particularly last year, how much of our “success” was actually just good old fashioned luck? Our cup runs in particular owed a lot to the draws we received. Our long hold over 4th spot in 2005/06 was more down to Arsenal’s poor form than our own brilliant form.

Jermaine Jenas

Now I’m trying hard not to sound like a miserable fan here but I really fear that our progress has been more hype than real progression. People can talk up our “amazing” winger Aaron Lennon all they like but for me he still fails to regularly impress, and despite signing approximately 100 midfielders in the last two years we still have yet to find a seriously convincing partnership. Any team that depends on Jermaine Jenas week-in week-out to perform is a long way from breaking into the top four.

Now I come back to Martin Jol. I mentioned earlier on that I loved the big man, and I did but I truly believe his time at Spurs is done and the longer he sticks around the less real progress we will make. We are at the point in time where we need to win a cup to really wake people up and take notice of us and to do that we need a manager who knows how to win, something I fear Jol knows nothing of. We need a manager who can provide Jenas and Robinson the kick up the backside they both so desperately need at times. We need a manager who will make Lennon realise that there is a lot of work to be done to live up to his potential. We need a manager who will address the long running problems in defence, particularly on set-pieces.

Paul Robinson

I worry that anything less than European Qualification this year will see all this end as yet another false dawn. I know there are many of you who think that qualification will be fairly easy for us but I strongly disagree. There are a lot of clubs challenging for very few places this year. Everton, Portsmouth, Newcastle, West Ham and Blackburn are the obvious ones that spring to mind.

I really want to be wrong here. I would love to see Martin Jol turn all this around and lead us to a Cup win and perhaps even further in the years to come, but for me there are big decisions that have to be made at the club. We need to stop wasting time trying to figure out what Martin’s future is, time is of the essence and the longer we spend pretending to move forward the less chance we have of actually doing it.