A good friend dropped me a line the other day, out of the blue. He’d not seen me, I’d not been around much online. He said something like, watching Spurs is depressing right now and so many of the people he has spoken to over many years are struggling at the moment. He wondered how I was.

Over the years, I have learned through bitter experience to temper my expectations, but still, once the last shred of hope disappears, it’s time to give up and I’m not ready for that. That’s the essence of being a fan, regardless of which club you support. Fans will tolerate almost anything if they have something to believe in. I’m a fan. I watch the game, support the team, love the shirt, regardless. But faith has been elusive lately. Reach out to replenish fast-diminishing reserves, only to find it’s slipped through your fingers.

Peaks and troughs of emotion are familiar to every football fan, comforting even, although most are loathe to admit it, because it’s fundamental to being a supporter. Explaining this to the uninitiated provokes two reactions in my experience, first, blank uncomprehending, then a silent search for other character deficiencies. But we believers know, without pain there is no true joy. Or so we kid ourselves.

At Spurs though, this season is wringing out a whole variety of emotions, match by match, frequently minute by minute. Never in my memory have we been through so much, so often, so quickly and, I’m sad to say, so repetitively. Dazzling attacking football followed by crass defending. The ability to slice through any defence, the inability to accurately pass the ball 10 yards. The foundations of team building destroyed by a quake of injuries. Manchester United and Fraser Forster.

We gasp at the attacking brilliance and the potential it holds for a bright future. We despair at how easily Spurs can throw it all away in a microsecond. It makes us angry, so many take it out on individual players, the manager comes in for heavy criticism, as does the board. We take it out on each other, whinging on social media or knocking bits out of other fans. Yesterday, stewards piled in at the end of the game to separate battling Spurs fans in the South Stand. Other fans pontificating that if we’re not Levy Out, we’re part of the problem. I’ve been going for 55 years, really, I’m not.

Yesterday was my first game back at the Lane since Qarabag, my longest single absence since 1969. I missed games when the kids were young but never over such a long period. My new knee is fine. Turns out it sets off the stadium security sensors, so getting in was fun.

Being there is my way of relating to Spurs. There are many other ways equally as meaningful. In fact, as I’ve said before, there’s more considered analysis from people who see the game on TV. But this is my way, and it’s important to me as an individual. It’s about who I am.

There was a stark and sobering difference in mood between the two games. Qarabag was upbeat and optimistic. We won easily, plus the lower prices and greater availability of tickets meant there were many Spurs fans, including family groups, who are not regulars, for whom the game was a real occasion.  Yesterday, although the atmosphere wasn’t dire, disappointment and apathy were never far away. When Wolves equalised, there was little anger, just a collective shrug in the South Stand. Nobody joined the chant from the Levy Outers at the back. A forlorn lone black balloon drifted in the wind, as aimless as our defending.

It’s difficult to see the way forward through the fog of disappointment and the footballing contradictions that cloud our perceptions, so we watch the game and we’re not sure exactly what we’re seeing, let alone make sense of it. By this point, a season and a half of Ange, I thought we would be further on than we are and it’s hard to shake that feeling, even though some of the reasons are beyond his control.

Another confounding factor is my exposure to more punditry than I usually consume because I’ve watched the games on television. Despite my determined efforts to avoid it (rule one: on no account listen on any pre- and post-match chat on TNT, rule two: ignore Jamie Redknapp), the Spurs Narrative is impossible to ignore. Spurs high-line, Ange never changes tactics, Ange is an idiot because he does not always conform to the expectations and prejudices of proper Football Men.

The players are knackered and so are we. I can’t pretend the mists have cleared completely, but I’ve not posted for a while so let’s catch up. Some issues are structural, and therefore embedded, others are situational with a (hopefully) short-term impact and (hopefully) practical solutions.

Spurs are victims of many years of mismanagement from a board unable and at times apparently unwilling, to define and implement a coherent, long-term footballing strategy leading to success on the pitch. More than mere changes of manager, the churn of playing styles and tactics and the associated transfer policies created long-term instability. Success or failure at any football club revolves around the relationship between three elements: the coach/manager, recruitment and finance. Since 2000, these have seldom aligned effectively. It’s the job of the chairman to make this happen, and he has failed. He speaks with pride about taking no notice of criticism, thus denying that some of this is constructive and that constructive criticism is the foundation of positive change. He speaks glibly of being the club custodian and of the club DNA, without either grasping what this means or understanding how to create, let alone implement, a strategy worthy of these laudable ambitions, indeed worthy of the club’s rich heritage.

Ange has inherited this burden. It’s not his fault but he can’t escape it. One League Cup in two decades. A misshapen squad, the legacy of JM and Conte, the quicksand in danger of sucking him down, as it has done for several of his predecessors.

Also, the disconnect between club and supporters has widened, again through the board’s neglect. If you build it, we will come, but it’s sodding expensive. Fans try to resolve the equation. High prices, no success. The stadium makes us rich and self-sufficient, no success. It makes the chairman rich, but there are no new senior concessions because to grant them would potentially undermine the club’s ability to challenge the best. Recently, some informal fan groups have stated how hard it is to work with the club and will not do so in the future because straightforward requests designed to improve the atmosphere have been stifled. These things may sound intangible but they build up, lowering the threshold of tolerance and in the end, it’s support for the team that the board’s actions impinge upon.   

Then there’s structure and Ange. Mythbusting – go. Spurs are infuriating but not inconsistent. Basically, we play well and score goals if teams let us play. Very different teams and styles, but in this sense, City and Saints, the same. If sides press high and cut down our time and space, at the moment we’re not good enough to find a way out every time.

Also, underlying inconsistency is a lack of experience, confidence and nouse to find a way forward. Sometimes we overcome problems like this, often we can’t. We don’t have that steel, that resilience. That’s actually normal for a developing team, which is what we are. It’s not hindsight in my case to say our transfer policy should have added some experienced players in key central positions, someone with mental strength who has been there and done that, who can show our young talent the way. Players with the leadership qualities we sorely lack.

Ange doesn’t change tactics – not so. Although he plays up to this image, yesterday’s game showed how he adapts. Our first half press was decent, although how the players summoned up the energy for it I don’t know. Biss and Bentancur kept the central midfield under control. Second half, we tired and dropped into a lower block. He brought on subs early to sustain energy levels as best we can, given the current workload. It meant for boring football but it was a pragmatic response to the state of the game, and hardly flat out attacking.

What I’ve grandly called a situational factor is the injury crisis. Ange’s fault through overwork? Hamstring injuries plague the PL, while Brentford have ten players injured but the media do not appear to be blaming Frank. However, hindsight here, but the decision to risk VDV and Romero for the CFC game appears to be a big mistake with lasting consequences.

I don’t know what else we can do at the moment. You can sense the desperation as I type, can’t you. Our squad is not ready to be effective across four competitions. We’ve not got to know Odobert yet but his injury plus Werner’s unreliability undermines one improvement planned for this season, the addition of players who can beat a man and therefore expose packed defences. Another stifled change is our pressing game, effective earlier this season but again undermined by tired legs. Our defence can be wide open but pressing is all about defending, and that option is not often available now.

So Ange turned to the low/mid block yesterday, but we’re not good at that. This is in part about coaching, in part because we don’t really have midfield players keen and able to prioritise defending. At the risk of sounding reactionary, I have asked in the past for at least one defensively minded midfielder to fill the gap that often appears in front of our vulnerable back four and to work that double pivot that strengthens the team. We’re not ready to match Ange’s ambitions without them.

So to draw breath. Having decried the board’s ability to plan for success, the past year has seen us create that strategy, with Lange in charge of football matters and recruitment. Going for younger players has exposed the faults in the squad but augers well for the future. Painful rebuilds really hurt.

I see no point in changing manager now. We don’t know how good he can be if he has half his squad injured. We have been too open in the past but he has responded, I don’t see what significant improvements he can make at the moment, although that may change in a couple of weeks as the transfer window unfolds.

As ever, though, Levy has the final word. Will he stay resolute if we lose to Liverpool and Arsenal? History suggests he’ll fold. We have a plan at long last. Let’s see if the board are wedded to it.

Time away from Tottenham On My Mind, and more to the point from the ground. An opportunity for reflection. Take a step back. Big picture, overview, that sort of thing.

Nah. I’m unsettled, disengaged. Not feeling it. This is my longest period away from the Lane since my kids were young in the nineties and it’s done my mental well-being no good at all. I can see the game better on television, frankly, but that’s not the point. There are many ways of being a Spurs fan, all equally meaningful. It’s just that my way is being there. A lifetime connection not just with this football club but the thread of my life. Trace it to find my true self, boy to man, son to father to grandfather.  And so, if I don’t feel it, what then?

This should be about missing a few games for a perfectly reasonable reason. I now have a new knee and should soon be able to hold my own in the post-match sprint for the Northumberland Park queue. Instead, and perfectly unreasonably, it exposes the dogged obsession that my support has become. After a defeat, I’m irritable and distracted, my energies drained by the strain of suppressing disappointment and frustration.

Yet I’m even more consumed by not being at the Ipswich game. For most, a lucky escape. For me, bordering on an existential crisis because I couldn’t make the effort to watch on TV. If I’m not feeling it, this thing that has followed me and led me through my life, then what’s left?

 There have been times in the recent past where any sense of logic driven by finance and family could have meant I broke the chain and stepped away. More recently, the club have brazenly displayed their disdain of loyal supporters, with high prices, the Roma game being the latest example, and the changes in the senior concessions is a barefaced message to all fans that income matters, loyalty is just another commodity to exploit. Instead, everlasting support for the navy blue and lilywhite carried me through dark times that I would not wish on anyone. Now, here comes the biggest threat of all – indifference.

It’s ok. Just a blip. Back on the beat now. I’ll never let go. Haven’t failed the ultimate test – five minutes before kick-off at the Lane, where in the world would I rather be? Nowhere but here. I’ll enjoy it all the more when I’m back, because I know what I’ve missed.

My new knee is fine, it’s the rest of that leg that hurts. It has swollen to Paramot-esque proportions. My physio is keen that I define progress goals. When I said it was to climb to row 49 for the Liverpool game, she responded with a blank look, wrote something in her file then thought better of it and scribbled it out. Maybe it was, ‘hopeless case’.

So taking a step back to consider where the team is at might be the way to go. But little changes – is it two steps up and one back, or one step up and two steps back? This is Tottenham, there are never any neat answers.

It’s the former for me, just about. There’s progress without consistency. If I’m honest, this time last year I would have said that by now, we would be further down the road, but much of that comes from my frustration. I keep returning to Ange’s biggest problem, the burden of the past. Not his fault but he’s weighed down just the same and has to exert undue effort to escape the quicksand of thwarted expectation.

Tottenham should be a club with secure foundations to build upon. Now is the time, finally, or it should be. Ownership is settled, the club not merely financially secure but positively blooming, taking over £5m per home game. Yet the legacy of the last two decades is one of uncertainty and lack of purpose, with an absence of real direction. Such doubt and ambiguity has a way of seeping into the cracks and causing subsidence. Lloris’s recent comments in his autobiography about how before the Champions League final the chairman proudly presented each player with a watch, paid for by sponsors not the club, to commemorate being finalists may be taken out of context (I haven’t read the whole book) but have the ring of truth, that Levy is content to be at the top table without committing wholeheartedly and ruthlessly to be a winner. His proposed membership of the Super League is another example, entering a competition he had no intention of trying to win.

This season, we continue to evolve. We’ve played some dazzling football and have a squad full of talent. Also, Ange has shown his ability to alter his tactics to get the best from his players, although listening to most media pundits chuntering about the high line you wouldn’t know this, notably moving Kulu to be the fulcrum of our play (he’s had an outstanding season), which also enables him to play two out of three of Sarr, Bentancur and Bissouma, giving us more solidity in the middle. Solanke is an excellent buy, and I’m delighted with Johnson’s form. Our pressing is an important weapon now. The full-backs come inside but sometimes they don’t, according to what we need. That is as it should be.

Quincy Jones, the great arranger and inspirer of funkiness in whatever he tackled, died last week. Ange’s approach is football jazz. Some arrangers write out each part and the musicians duly play the dots, whereas like Quincy, Ange suggests a theme within defined chord structures, then allows his players to improvise.

I warm to the way he encourages and develops creativity and individual responsibility, and I think the players do too. Ange is creating positive change but two problems remain. One is where Spurs come up against a more drilled, systems based approach. Teams this season continue to exploit our weaknesses, either by a dense low block with no room in and around the penalty area and/or where they press and man-mark high up the pitch. More recently a couple of teams of gone three at the back which cuts out our favoured angled ball into wide channels.

We haven’t found a consistent answer to this, which leads to us giving the ball away in dangerous areas and players being isolated on the ball. If we can draw sides out, we are much happier, as against W Ham and Villa. At the risk of oversimplifying, this remains a fundamental issue facing our manager. We don’t protect our back four as well as other sides do, especially the full-backs, where our wide forwards do not defend well. I get it, I know why, but that leaves us vulnerable without compromise.

The other is us, maybe. How much time will we give him to sustain progress? Do fans have unreal expectations? Judging by social media, many do, but we forget a lesson that anyone who has ever watched the game should know, which is that these things take time. We have a relatively young squad with a great deal of potential. We are going to have to watch them make mistakes, and sometimes crumble.

That learning process would be accelerated if in January and the summer we are able to buy a couple of players with proven experience and leadership qualities, especially a dominant figure in centre midfield. Such players are few and far between but there’s something lacking there at the moment. They don’t have to be top class because of the talent around them, but some players exert an influence on their team-mates over and above their qualities with the ball at their feet, and we need someone like that. Even another Wanyama, a man with limited abilities but who alongside more talented contemporaries was smart and uncompromising and who enabled others to be the best they could be.

Not feeling this season yet. Until the derby. On the train, the buzz is back. The crowds, the blue smoke flares on the High Road corner, the extra rush to get to my seat. Shame the football had to spoil it.

But the emotion was there. Maybe like the players I need to ease myself into each season, especially as I get older, before I’m fully match fit. Because there have been so many seasons now, they tend to blend into one. Hope not, it will be over for me if they do. There’s nothing to compare with going to see the Hotspur, may that feeling never fade. I still feel a loss, detest a loss to the neighbours, but what’s important, essential, is that it matters. Joy and pain, I want to be affected by both. Apathy is anathema. I fear it, but the derby does it still.

It is without question the biggest game of my season. Other rivalries and squabbles pale into insignificance compared with the force generated by the weight of history. Battle of the Bridge and all that, old rivalry has turned into bitterness, it’s a nasty one, while WHam is the lopsided derby, good to win but it means more to them than it does to us. The NLD runs deep.

Because of that emotional involvement, look elsewhere for considered analysis. I watch games as a fan and as such, I’m far too frantic for this one. Sitting back and taking a considered view is the last thing I want to do in matches like these. I can’t analyse these games, I feel them.

Yet maybe that approach reveals some fundamental truths about where Spurs are right now. I feel frustration and some anger that once more, we’ve lost at home and to a goal that could, should have been prevented. What I felt is that this was another muggins goal, a free header 5 yards out. Mugs again. Mugs too often. That after a decent first half, we failed to up our game. Them lot were playing well enough but not at their most fluent or effective. There was our opportunity and we failed to exert sufficient pressure. That once they scored, we were never going to come back.

These feelings are all too familiar. Once we concede, we deflate. It all looks pretty similar, the shape, the movement, but nothing happens. There’s no edge. And here lies one big difference between them and us. They are resilient, disciplined and tough-minded, where we are not confident in ourselves. Ange talks about instilling consistency and belief, come what may, but it looks like we don’t have full and complete confidence in our method.

The gunners play decent, attractive football (by the way, this is a Spurs blog but unless we acknowledge that right now they are a better team than us, we’re deluding ourselves and we’ll never be able to move forward) with a precious clinical edge. Spurs are the opposite of cold and clinical. it’s freewheeling and risk-taking, albeit within established patterns. It’s great to watch and good fun when it works, but there’s no safety net and little margin for error. I like to see Maddison, Bentancur and Kulu weaving patterns in midfield but that deeper interchangeable role for Madders isn’t working because the foundations aren’t solid enough.

There’s a hole somewhere, something missing. Weakness where there should e strength. Nobody takes charge, there’s no authority in the middle of the park. It’s similar up front. Solanke will prosper, I’m sure. He adds a focal point and I like the way he contorts his body to get something, anything, on the ball to propel it goalwards. Old school centre forward play, that. But he was outnumbered two to one and overpowered yesterday. It’s a measure of our desperation that we have to stick a centre half up front for the last ten minutes in the vain hope of getting on the end of one of our wayward crosses.

The goal was an example of how they use this edge. I don’t think Vicario is as weak at corners as is often made out. Last season we left him unprotected and therefore vulnerable. Now, we have players around him and also the new interpretation of existing laws should help. So they put two players to pressure him, pushed away by two of ours. What this in fact did was increase his problems by creating a solid four man barrier in front of him. Their men didn’t want to get to him, they just wanted to commit two of ours. Gabriel slipped into that pocket, the ball was perfect, our marking less so, but they turned our defenders to their advantage.

Searching for explanations in the sulky silence of the journey home, there was one that stood out. It wasn’t about Angeball or tactics. We weren’t consistently exposed at the back and picked up more than enough possession. On the day, we weren’t bad, we were just ordinary, and ordinary isn’t good enough. if we’re set up to cross the ball, but barely produce a decent ball all afternoon, that’s not Angeball to blame, that’s just rubbish football. If we buy a centre forward, then leave him on his own as these crosses come in, or as yesterday sail over his head, that’s not Angeball, that’s rubbish football.

It feels as if the NLD is pivotal, a benchmark for progress. In fact it’s probably an outlier, given the frantic nature of these games not the best guide to the nature and quality of the football we play over the course of the season. But there are two inescapable conclusions to be drawn from yesterday’s game. One is that we don’t deal well with pressure, and we won’t get far until we do. The other that they are three years ahead of us in their development. With that comes that sense of certainty and resilience we have yet to learn.

We can make that progress, I’m certain of it, and the squad is full of promise, but of the many he must face Ange’s biggest problem is the burden of history, in particular two decades of unfulfilled promise and one trophy. So turn back the clocks. This is year 2 AC (After Conte). Then both the progress made and the distance to still to be covered come into focus. We have the best set-up and strategy at the club arguably since Levy took over, with focused recruitment and bags of potential waiting to be released but it takes time. As fans, patience is the gift that keeps on giving, but that’s tough even for an old lag like me.

My problem comes back to that emotional commitment again. I’m invested in Ange and I want him to succeed. I like his style, values and ethos. This is the right way to grow the club. But sometimes I wonder what he sees when he watches us play. I hear pundits drone on about Angeball and the high line but his tactics and shape aren’t significantly different from that of Man City, and other teams often play the high line. Our players are good but are they good enough to play this way? That’s the difference. Until then, patience. But while we’re about it, play a strong side at Coventry tomorrow so there’s some short-term joy.

Thanks for hanging around while Tottenham On Mind creaks into what passes for action for another season. I’ll post frequently but not necessarily regularly, basically when I’ve got something I want to say, starting with something about fans and the state of our relationship with the club. Click subscribe if you want to join about 500 other fans who get every post sent to their inbox. I’ll add links to Twitter and Bluesky, but will rarely post on the former because it is foul and bad for my mental well-being. Up the Spurs!

Endings matter. Settle with the past to move on. I’m not so bright with endings. Leaving dos are important, and I advise people I manage to always hold one, except I don’t go to mine. So here’s an ending to this season, it’s the right thing to do. Less of an analysis, more a ramble through events and emotions. Let’s see where this goes.

It’s been an odd season. It hasn’t, really, but it feels like an odd season, cluttered with mixed emotions. It occurs to me that early in my ramble, I have stumbled upon the single most significant element, which is that I still feel it. That powerful emotional attachment with Spurs has been severely challenged over the years but remains intact in this, my 54^th season of going to the Lane and the single point of continuity with childhood. The team infuriate me, energise me, give me joy and sorrow, but they are all one and the same because football reminds me of who I am and what I feel, deep down. Of family and friendship, loyalty and camaraderie. Of how being a fan has sustained me through darker times. Of what’s important in life.  

I’m less demonstrative at games these days but that’s the only difference compared with when I was a kid, travelling across London on my own and queuing at the boys’ gate. Now, it’s dodgy knees and the family keeping half an eye on me in the crowds. A reminder of how my life is gradually changing. I used to keep an eye on them.

Now, less of a leap of celebration when we score, more an unsteady wobble to my feet.  I miss that, when the ball hits the net and the instinctive leap of celebration, or, better even, standing to crane your neck in anticipation as an opportunity opens up and the mighty Lilywhites bear down on goal.

So an odd season and mixed emotions. Ange has brought so much that is good to the club, chief amongst them that sense of anticipation that Spurs have the ball and something is going to happen. The thrill of early season as we, at the same time as the players, discovered Ange’s philosophy and style, fast attacking football in the Spurs way and players and fans released from the suffocating rigidity of our last three managers. Reading another end of season article this week reminded me that Spurs topped the league early on. I genuinely didn’t recall that. What mattered to me was the style, the excitement, going to the ground and looking forward to the football.

Later in the season, I still felt something could happen when we attacked, although I note that I typed ‘could’ not ‘would’, then thought we would concede every time the opposition attacked. It meant that I couldn’t enjoy games, or goals, because from my seat high in the South Stand, I had a perfect view of the yawning gaps we left behind. So this leaves the sobering conclusion that this was the most enjoyable season for several years but I didn’t enjoy it as much as I should have. This is what football does to the committed fan, the unspeakable emotional contortions of watching Tottenham play.

Odd too, in that our best players this season are all defenders. Van der Ven swooping down on attackers like an eagle closing on its prey, Romero rising as true leader on the field in the latter stages of the season, front foot defending at its best, Udogie such a prospect, Porro highly committed, and behind them Vicario excellent both on and off his line, exuding confidence. I am protective towards him – the corner thing has been over-exaggerated and is down primarily not to him but to weak organisation and defending at set-pieces, plus some rotten refereeing.

Football’s changing, I hear, I read, but it hasn’t really. Not in its fundamental nature. It’s highly tactical, the players are supremely athletic and meticulously prepared, but you have to defend, still have to be creative to score. If we make a ricket at the back, I curse out loud, but there’s a little voice inside saying, hey, human frailty, what can you do?

Well, at Spurs what Ange can do is sort out that defending better than he has. Good players need better organisation than we have, especially that they need more protection. I’m wholeheartedly supportive of our manager. In a single season, he’s had to overcome both the loss of one of the greatest players the club has ever seen (and do not doubt that Harry is that good), and the heaviest burden of all, the weight of history. It is impossible to underestimate his efforts to change the culture of caution and negativity imposed by That Man and Conte, which came on top of our lack of trophies during the Levy era.

He understands how to take the club forward and bring supporters with him, an understanding improved rather than harmed by the bruising experience of the reaction to the City game. But the relationship between fans and the club is reciprocal, and maybe we’ve learned about his infectious will to win and utter determination to succeed.

 He’s had to work with and revamp a squad made up of components from, what, four previous managers, each with their different perspectives, as well as integrate new players, several of whom are young and new to the PL. It is a mark of his success that we view Udogie, VDV and Sarr as established first choices when they were respectively 20, 22 and 20 at the start of the season.

Given all this, I’m delighted with fifth place. The Europa League is a winnable competition, and the manager deserves real credit for getting us there, however nervy it was getting over the line. It’s ok. First season, so much achieved and we know what the problems are. Result.

Turning points. I said at the time that he was wrong to field a weakened side at Fulham in the League Cup but at least he learned fast about weaknesses in the squad and our mentality. I see that Chelsea game as a one-off, not a turning point in the season.

What happened is what always happens in the PL. The league learns quickly and sussed us out before you knew it. Teams shut us down with blanket defences and cutting out passing lanes in front of goal. Some added intensive pressing in midfield and punished us on the break. W Ham and Villa at home come to mind as early examples the rest of the league followed. We struggled to get over this and to break down packed defences. We made mistakes, and Ange’s system relies on not giving the ball away in situations where we are moving into attack. Later, to make matters worse, we got in a right mess at set-pieces.   

So by and large, we need to improve collectively, rather than focus unduly on the faults of individuals. As an example, Bissouma is a fine player in my view, albeit his form fell away in early 2024, but the real issue is that alone, he cannot deal with all the defensive midfield responsibilities as well as perform his role in turning defence into attack.

By the end of the season, Ange dismissed one strand of criticism, that he had no plan B, by trying different set-ups out of possession. This needs more work and another player who performs the deeper-lying midfielder role.

Players in and out – go. Bear in mind we need squad depth too in what, all being well, will be a 50 plus game season, so don’t go chucking players out too readily. We need another 6 and a central striker with presence in the box, someone who will occupy centre-halves and be on the end of crosses. Too often this season we’ve played it wide, got the crosses in and it’s turned into heading practice for defenders. We need two central strikers – Sonny is wasted there. I wouldn’t sell Richarlison unless we have those two in place, unless of course the club know his fitness is more of a concern long-term.

We need like-for-like cover for both full-backs, who work so hard in our system and have to be rotated. I’d like another creative, busy midfielder, plus 4 centre-backs and cover for Vicario. Austin has just been given a long-term contract but I have no idea if he’s ready to step into the first team.

Also, it’s hard to gauge how close our group of promising youngsters are to the first team. Moore, Donley and Hall impress me in what little I’ve seen of them, while Devine, Phillips and Dorrington are rated, plus Keeley, the keeper who has been on loan at Barnet this year. And Bergvall arrives this summer (let him settle and play, set Youtube showreels aside).  They all deserve a chance yet the league is unforgiving in a team with Spurs’ aspirations.

Outgoings require the board to exhibit realism to move players on. I’m sure we can get N’Dombele a loan but he’s not going to go until his rumoured £200k a week contract runs out, surely, or is paid up. Thanks to Hojbjerg, Lo Celso, Gil, Sess and Emerson, and goodbye. Davies deserves our heartfelt thanks but with a year left on his contract his time may have come too. I would keep Skipp unless we can replace him, either with a transfer or the youngsters.

As always it remains to be seen if the board support their manager’s ambitions. The burden of history again. The board have consistently failed to identify the moments of opportunity where transfer commitment is an investment not a waste, and that must change, a sentiment I have repeated so many times, it should be my equivalent of a pinned post.  

I feel more confident about our recruitment processes now, another change that has come with Ange, an upgrade sanctioned by the club. We’re ready for a couple of top quality players, difference-makers, but I’ve said that several times under Redknapp, Poch and Jol, and they didn’t arrive. One shred of optimism here is the financial situation in the PL. In terms of FFP, we’re in a good position whereas other clubs need to sell. Levy came a cropper in recent years when his policy of exploiting weakness suddenly became outdated as clubs had the PL money to resist his lowballing and brinkmanship. Now, we’re in a stronger position but he must recognise market prices set the fee, not what he thinks the price is.  

And so to end with another reason for mixed feelings about the season. Our chairman often refers to his role as the club’s custodian but it seems this does not extend to looking after loyal Spurs fans. The season was bookended by fan protest summed up by the slogan ‘Stop Exploiting Loyalty’, beginning with the ticket price protest and ending with the Save Our Seniors campaign. The decision to reduce senior discount and, more perniciously, to refuse to allocate any new senior discounts to season ticket holders turning 65 the season after next is utterly disgraceful. I wrote more about this a while back.

I’m left with the inescapable conclusion that the board do not care about supporter loyalty. They just want people to pay the maximum amount and do not care who sits in those seats. This isn’t just about us seniors. That they choose to exploit and punish the club’s longest-standing fans demonstrates their contempt for loyalty, the one quality fans value the most.  

When I complained to the club about this, I received a standard reply. They said an increase in the number of senior concessions was no longer sustainable. They also said it will start to limit ticket choice for others. In other words, senior season ticket holders are blocking other fans getting a ticket. On one level, this is a lie – in respect of the waiting list my holding a senior ticket is no different from that of any other fan who chooses to renew. On another, it implies seniors are getting in the way, an encumbrance. The website trills about the Spurs family. The message to me is, this is a family where the younger members are keen to shift unwanted seniors into sheltered accommodation.

In response to adverse publicity, I understand Arsenal met with their supporters trust, who have not protested as vocally as we have, and reversed their decision. It gives Spurs the opportunity to follow suit. Acknowledging a mistake is a sign of strength, but I fear, despite critical pieces on Channel 4 News and the BBC (with ‘ahem’ me), the board remain intransigent. So, sadly, this is the feeling I’m left with.

To end on a more upbeat note, sincere thanks to everyone who has supported and read Tottenham On My Mind this year. Deeply appreciated, it means a lot and keeps me going. I’ll still be here come next season, writing as and when something is on my mind. Come on you Spurs.