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3 hours ago
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How do you solve a problem such as Tottenham Hotspur? They’re the ninth-richest club in the world, who pride themselves on a thrilling style of play – “To dare is to do” – and have been blessed through the years with a pantheon of household names: Blanchflower, Hoddle, Ardíles, Gascoigne, Bale, Kane, Son. Last August they were seconds from beating Paris Saint-Germain to win the Uefa Super Cup, which would have made them – tenuously – the best team in Europe. Seven months later they’ve wilted into a shell-shocked laughing stock careering towards the Championship. They’re the club that launched a thousand memes.
In this most Spursy of seasons, hiring Mr Fixit Igor Tudor as interim manager looks like being the biggest misstep yet. The Croatian hard man has taken a squad who needed an arm round the shoulder and stuck them in a vice-like headlock. He has openly suggested there’s only three things wrong with them: they can’t run, they can’t score and they can’t defend. You could count the number of fans who backed his appointment on the fingers of Captain Hook’s bad hand, and if three crushing defeats are anything to go by, his shock treatment is going down like a cup of cold West Ham lasagne. Is there any way out?
I may have the answer. Speaking as a lifelong Tottenham fan and a season-ticket holder, and a producer on Have I Got News For You, I couldn’t help noticing a parallel between the club and the satirical news quiz. (Which one produces more laughs per minute is a close-run thing.) With nine games of the league season remaining, it would be perfect timing to sack Igor and bring in a guest manager for each remaining match. Harry Redknapp, Glenn Hoddle, Jürgen Klinsmann, Sue Perkins, Stephen Mangan, ChatGPT – let them all have a go. One game. No strings.
It’s a plan born out of despair. But pundits are predicting Spurs may need only three wins to stay up, so in that case only a third of these guest gaffers would need to be any good and they’d be home and dry. Trying the continuity route with Thomas Frank didn’t work, so why not keep rolling the dice? It’d be more fun in any case. Who wouldn’t want to see Brian Blessed in the home dugout?
On the flipside, if Tottenham make yet another managerial change it would be ridiculous. They’ll have brought about the fastest Tudor sinking since the Mary Rose, and will look as chaotic as the dying days of the last Tory government. But isn’t that where they are anyway? Would they have played any worse against Crystal Palace if managed by a lettuce?
What’s beautifully infuriating about Spurs is that within the wreckage of their self-destruction are flickering sparks of wonder. As fair as it is to mock their generous league form as “Doctor Tottenham”, we mustn’t forget the nocturnal escapades of Mr Hotspur, rampaging into the last 16 of the Champions League. The Spursiest thing of all would be for them to win it a week after getting relegated.
When the story of this season is wrapped up, last week’s match against Crystal Palace may turn out to be the decisive nail in the Spurs coffin. Micky van de Ven’s needless red card was a totem of a team bereft of leaders, and off the field the visuals were torturous: the TV coverage cut between countless shots of distraught fans, while in the corner of the screen the scoreline abbreviated the teams to TOT-CRY, which seemed like a command. Worst of all, as overhead cameras showed disgruntled supporters pouring out of the ground at half-time, it was hard not to notice the giant banner above the main entrance: emblazoned in huge capital letters was a single word, WINNERS. Arsenal-supporting friends aren’t crowing about all of this. They’re genuinely sympathetic. That really hurts.
Of course it had to be Palace who turned the Spurs crisis into a full-blown meltdown. I just knew it. My brother Dan was an avid Eagles fan until his sudden death in 2015, and for us this was always the real London derby. You’ll have something similar – that special game you look for first when the fixture list comes out. For me it’s Spurs and Palace. It was heartbreaking that last May he couldn’t see his team finally lift the FA Cup and rub my nose in it, just as it was agonising for me he didn’t see Spurs trump them four days later by lifting the Europa League. Now the bragging rights are firmly Dan’s again.
As it happens, these two sides played the first league game at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in April 2019 (which frankly feels like the last time Spurs won there). That night, sitting high up in the North Stand of that futuristic colosseum, a nagging question formed in my mind: could Spurs match the standard that the gleaming ground seemed to demand? To me, the place reeked of hubris. It still does. Last Thursday the club’s X account posted a pre-match video with the message: “In the zone.” Steady on, guys, we’re one point above it. For now.
Whatever happens next at Tottenham, it sure as hell won’t be dull. There’ll be magic and there’ll be madness, probably not in equal measure. The word Spursy, despite its ubiquity in the sporting world, is not in the Oxford English Dictionary. Yet. It’s waiting for promotion. And the team may soon be joining it.
