It’s official – Tottenham have ruined football forever. Sunday’s unforgivable late collapse not only lost two valuable points in this open league, it blighted the memory of some uplifting attacking football (and in these troubled times I need uplifting) and will forever undermine supporters’ confidence whenever we are ahead.

Some of us are perpetually anxious, having lived through Man City at home, 3-0 at half time against 10 men, lost 4-3, and Man Utd, at home, 3-0 up, lose 5-3. When the angst becomes overbearing, I start watching the clock. I’ve even created a hierarchy of times to match anxiety levels, a sort of league table of misery.

35 minutes isn’t up to much (you can see on bad days I begin this early) whereas 40 is getting to half time- either ahead or don’t concede, my system works either way.

Second half timings are naturally of a different degree entirely. 55 minutes, not much of a moment but we’ve got through the first ten minutes since half time. I have mixed feelings about the hour mark, initial relief that a substantial portion of the match has elapsed giving way to concern that fate still has 30 whole minutes to do its worst. 65 means nothing to me, neither here nor there, we can rule that one out completely. 70 is important as the time to avoid dangerous complacency because we’ve gone a long way but there’s still 20 to go but 75, more promising and 80, well 80 is significant because the next ten go past at half the speed of the rest, so in my head that can be twenty.

When it gets really tense, when time passes but the clock doesn’t move, I ascribe undue significance to the numbers in between, 73 is better than 72, 77 a step forward from 75. Curiously, around the 80 mark rather than levels increasing, I’ve taken lately to finding myself on another mental plane, where destiny will decide the outcome so there’s no point in worrying. What will be will be. But even I, at 82, 3-0 up, WHam have missed their golden chance early in the second half and while playing well aren’t making any impression on Hugo’s goal, even I…

We were even deprived of one of the classic moments of football crowd behaviour, late equaliser greeted with shared silent disgust so dense you couldn’t cut it with a sharp knife, the banging of seats as we rise en masse and jostle around the exit in a desperate rush to get away from it all. Out of sight, out of mind doesn’t work in a football context.

Most football fans have a healthy fatalism about their team’s prospects. It’s something that binds us, an antidote to contemporary tiresome tribalism, but we don’t think it will really happen, because actually, it doesn’t, at least not very often. But now here’s proof. It’s real, the Spurs of hardnosed serial winner Mourinho really can concede 3 in the last 8 mins. We can never enjoy football again.

Despite the ruthless destruction of the Saints and Man United defence, that feeling that Spurs have a soft centre never quite goes away. We’ll use these goals to blame whoever we usually blame when things go wrong. My hobby horse is conceding needless free-kicks, I’m looking at you Lamela even though you weren’t in the ground, but Sissoko then Aurier stepped up. It’s infuriating to give teams a free hit because it undoes all the hard defensive work and reveals a weakness embedded deep in the mindset. They just couldn’t stop themselves.

Marginal gains is a popular theory in sports these days where in an intensely competitive field, small advantages add up and make all the difference to the outcome. Spurs demonstrated the art of marginal losses. Moura has added hard work to his game but doesn’t have a defender’s mindset so he’s back to help out but doesn’t read the run outside him, leading to the second goal. Sissoko and Aurier challenges a touch too heavy. Spurs adopt zonal for the free kick but don’t respond to WHam overloading the far post with big blokes.

Where were you when Bale trotted on to the pitch? Er, making my wife a cup of tea, actually. One for the treasure house of memories there. One of my favourite Spurs players, straight into my ‘best ever’ team of the fifty plus years I’ve been going, alongside the other greats. Let’s be patient as he gets back to fitness, his body is not as robust as it once was. A tantalising glimpse on Sunday, the way he shifted that ball from one foot to the other at top speed, only to shoot wide.  

As to where we go from here, Spurs remain one big contradiction. Capable of dazzling attacking brilliance to cower hapless defences, dominating the game then folding at the slightest pressure like a house of cards in the breeze.

These contradictions are a stage in normal team development. Progress is never a smooth and steady upward curve. Hindsight smooths out the undulations and bumps that are all too jarring when you’re in the moment and don’t know the outcome, where the curve ends. Since Mourinho took over, my main concern has been an apparent lack of direction. What he wants to achieve on the pitch wasn’t clear and, worse, the players did not seem to grasp what was required of them either. Transition from defence to attack was a particular problem.

The manager has sorted that now. Low block, everybody behind the ball, absorb the pressure and move it quickly when we get the ball. Players know what is expected of them. Kane, already a titan, is getting better. He drops deep, Son and Bergwijn or Moura, soon to be Bale, go wide. If the centre half comes out, they leave a gap, if they stay put then there’s space. Defences can’t cope and it brings the very best from Son and Harry, our two best players, and Bale will gorge himself on service like this. 

Moreover, Levy has supported his manager’s efforts to strengthen the squad. Doherty and Reguilon give us pace and width. While some talk of needing more creativity in midfield, this means we can build attacking play in a variety of ways. Plus, the rehabilitation of N’Dombele continues. His ability to hold the ball in central midfield and to pick out a player with precision can unlock any defence. We’re impatient because we can see his untold potential, and so forget he’s young, relatively inexperienced as a late developer and he’s getting accustomed to a different culture. He’s never going to be box-to-box, covering the runners then hurling himself forward, so we need to accommodate that in the system, and Hojbjerg is the foundation upon which we can build all this. Highly impressive, he is alert, strong, mobile and a leader. We even have another centre forward, who can either replace Harry or play with him.

Above all, this looks like Mourinho’s squad, where he can take ownership. He has the players he wants, I say that, what he really wants are the players Frank Lampard can play fantasy football with at the Bridge, but at least Levy has sprung for new blood. Hojbjerg, Reguilon and Doherty look to be good value. Rodon I don’t know, he’s one for the future and at that price we can’t go far wrong.

So with time, let’s see where this takes us. Meanwhile, Mourinho has three problems to address, as highlighted by the WHam feels-like-a-defeat-but-remember-we-didn’t-lose. The first one is pretty basic – are the defenders good enough? Sanchez had a wretched afternoon, although admittedly he was out of position on the left side. Hesitant throughout, WH targeted him from the beginning. Misjudgements are a fact of any defender’s life and can be forgiven but his effort to head that ball was indecisive. Toby has lost that spark that made him one of the very best, while Dier does not yet convince as the dominant centre back we need. Tanganga is highly promising but needs time and his injuries are a worry. On the right, Aurier does good work but a mistake is never far away. With the proviso that Dier has room to grow because he remains relatively inexperienced as a centre half, this area is a problem. Also, we still don’t seem to have a natural partner for Hojbjerg in front of the back four.

The second problem was identified post-match by Declan Rice who said he was surprised that Spurs stood off in the second half. The interviewer then asked Mourinho if this was deliberate, he replied, ‘not really’. He’s being disingenuous because we always play like this. There’s an inherent problem with it, which is that it cedes the initiative to the opposition. It allows them to come forward and gives hope that they can get back into the game. It leaves Spurs vulnerable, however well it is put into practice, to a deflection, worldie or mistake. We can’t sit back as we did on Sunday. You can be more aggressive in that formation, looking for the ball, rather than being passive.

Finally, the speed in which confidence evaporated after WHam’s first goal revealed collective mental weakness. After the game, when Mourinho had pulled himself together (he was visibly shocked at the final whistle), he said again that his team were not psychologically strong enough. True, the football world now knows it and every opponent between now and the end of the season is going to bust their gut for 90 minutes because of it.

It’s legitimate to ask again what he is going to do about it. Mourinho the winner has been here for almost a year. He wants us to be a bunch of c***s. Fine, and Lamela and Lo Celso have taken that on board, but mental strength is about clear thinking under pressure and building resilience, and the manager has to do something about this.

I thought he was getting somewhere, that the penalty shoot-out versus CFC and, lest we forget, scoring twice late on to beat Plovdiv marked the turning points that build confidence in adversity. Now it’s one step back again. In his first match as Spurs manager, Mourinho saw us go three up against Wham only to concede two late goals. 11 months later, it’s three late goals. Mourinho the motivator has to get through to them.

There’s nothing like Spurs being rubbish to focus the mind. Football right now is distant, out there rather than within me. I’ve been an active participant all my life, now we’re all viewers, peering in from the outside. It’s a huge relief to know Spurs can make me angry, because it means I can still feel it.

The covid mindset is changing. No longer can we delude ourselves that things will return to normal, illusory though that always was. We won’t have big crowds in football grounds until next spring at the earliest, not safely at any rate. My wife is highly vulnerable because she has an autoimmune condition. It heightens the sense of anxiety and danger, let me tell you. I won’t be back for a long time. Meantime, I’ll polish my pitch to the doctor that I’m a priority case for a vaccine because I need to get to the Tottenham Stadium.

Spurs are more than just a part of my life, they are central to it. Being a Spurs fan is integral to my identity and to my well-being. I am husband, father, Spurs fan. I am many other things, male, overweight, bald, Jewish, white, British, part-time student, old-soul fan, but character-shaping though these are, I know what I value most.

I’m conscious this sounds trivial and shallow to the non-believers, but I’m being honest with myself, and with you. I’m no emotional eunuch, it’s just that football is core to my mental wellbeing. I know what’s truly significant in life, but as someone once said, of all the things in this world that aren’t important, football is the most important.

I’m part of a community, something real. I can find companionship or, if I choose, disappear into the crowd, and that is denied me precisely at the moment when we all need to feel other people are around us to get through these troubled times. Spurs winning is important, being a fan even more so. Not being part of the crowd creates a sensation of loss and separation. It leaves a gaping hole.

Football is how I express my emotions. I go to the game. Shout and cheer to let off steam. Be with my family. Meet my friends, meet people who I don’t necessarily know that well but we have something deep in common because they feel the same way too. How can I be myself if I can’t go to the game?

Football beats the rhythm of the years. Results aren’t predictable but the season is, and the feelings that accompany it. Close season to relax and refresh, something to look forward to. Tickets renewed, fixture lists come out. Weekend midweek weekend, and so it goes. Enjoy the game, process the result, don’t look back, look forward to the next one. Spurs will be there, like they’ve always been, one true certainty as life flows this way and that. It’s been pulled out from under my feet.

There’s nothing like the soaring elation of a good win. Lose and it affects my mood for days, until the next time. But I’ve discovered something worse, not being able to express those emotions at all. It’s out of reach, fading into nothing. I am diminished if I can’t feel it. I turn in on myself.

And the game itself, we win, we lose, but it doesn’t feel the same. Games are devalued because there is no atmosphere. How I miss the gasps of joy and astonishment as Harry curls another one in, or that collective intake of breath as he advances on goal, that moment of delicious anticipation as he pulls back his foot to shoot. Without us, the game has no soul.

More than that, fans have no stories to tell ourselves about the game. Who we were with, where we watched it, how we celebrated or commiserated together. This is what we do. Nobody will tell a story about how Spurs’ determined football defeated Arsenal last season, the disappearing north London derby. How it looked from your sofa is not something you are going to hand down to the next generation. However much Martin Tyler shouts down the line that the Premier League is back and it’s live, it’s not the same.

So perhaps I should be grateful in some warped, distorted way that Spurs were so awful yesterday, devoid of motivation, creativity and energy. It’s got me back to the keyboard at least, although that may not please you as you read it.

The sole reason for Mourinho’s appointment is to win something. Passing through, he’s not part of the Spurs Way, nor will he build the foundations of a new dynasty. He’ll take the credit for any success that comes our way, blame the players, fans and board when it sours, as it eventually always does, then move on. That’s what he does. Levy knew this when he was appointed, and so did we. Lots of people were happy about it. He’s our manager, so we’re all sucked in. It won’t change.

Everything is short-term and we’re already into his second season. Post-match, he blamed the absence of a full pre-season, but this is the same for every other side. Also, his tactics, unchanged from last season, are familiar to the players. It’s the new Spurs Way. Whining about the free-kick being taken from the wrong place is pathetic even by his post-match standards.

Mourinho will park the bus, then throw his players under it if they don’t deliver. Strong words were essential but best confined to the dressing room. One of the countless qualities football managers must exhibit is the ability to hide in public their bitterness at football’s vicissitudes. Save them for the memoirs. The only thing that matters is what helps the team play better. He has to be wholly certain such public pronouncements are the right motivation for the variety of characters he looks after. Key players like Dele and N’Dombele are not improving their games under him so far.  

Mourinho’s chosen approach at Spurs is dull. That won’t change. I’m frequently told he’s always been a defensive manager. I haven’t studied his previous teams in depth but from watching them and being beaten by them, I’ve never come away with that impression. Hard to beat is not the same as being defensive, and his sides attacked effectively. At the moment, Spurs can’t make the transition to a side that dominates the game in their opponents’ final third or, as yesterday, stop them from playing.

He’s also been criticised for being a footballing dinosaur, all back behind the ball and an attacking right back in an era of gegenpressing, inverted full-backs and tactical sophistication. While that suspicion lingers, he’s too bright for that and anyway, it’s not the main issue. You can’t win consistently with submissive, reactive football, however well it is implemented. It might be effective during a cup run, not in the league.

It’s predictable. Yesterday, Everton denied Spurs the opportunity to play on the counter by keeping the ball. On the few occasions we were able to break, we made and missed the rare chances that came our way, or their mobile midfielders recovered. We had nothing else.

I can’t escape the feeling that this formation and approach is Mourinho’s pragmatic response to the lack of quality and depth in the squad. Maybe he reckons this is the most they are capable of, and that a more open approach leaves us unduly vulnerable.

He’s discovered what we already knew, that his chairman will not invest heavily to change that, and it will get worse because an empty stadium rips up Levy’s meticulously crafted balance sheets. On the pitch, it leaves us short. Docherty and Hojbjerg are good signings and will improve from yesterday’s poor performances once they are match fit.

Early days yet it is impossible, however, to avoid comparing the performances of two sides who are rebuilding under shrewd, veteran managers. Ancelotti outwitted Mourinho with a dynamic, mobile midfield that kept possession and minimised our available space. Rodriguez on the right operated in the space Spurs leave because Davies stays back, mostly, and Son is not the best at covering him. Allan looked a level above any of ours.

Meanwhile, Spurs trapped themselves in their devotion to the shape, unable to use a solid platform as a basis to take the game to our opponents. Substitutions were strange, moving Moura and Son more centrally where it is easier to nullify their pace and threat and where Everton were strongest. N’Dombele should have been on earlier.

Plus, money really isn’t everything, but Everton invested, wisely so on this showing. Meanwhile, Kane still has no cover or alternative, Mourinho is now saying Aurier is a valuable squad member, i.e. we can’t sell him because Levy seeks an unrealistic fee and we won’t fund a decent replacement. And I’ve not even mentioned Spurs’ ludicrous fixture list or the money shelled out by those we see as rivals.

Yesterday, despite their superiority, Everton won by a single goal, not from open play. Mourinho’s Spurs will perennially live on fine margins. Holding on to a narrow lead is an art, something we need and there’s much post-match back-slapping when it works, as it did towards the end of last season. Another inescapable truth to live with, however, is that it leaves us vulnerable, to that one chance the opposition takes, a deflection or as in this case a free-kick. If we ever get back to the Lane, and there is the real possibility that we will never again see a Mourinho side in person, crowd anxiety will transmit to the players, exerting even greater pressure on them.

So we move on. Enough of our failings. I wish I could be crushed on a sweaty tube. Become uncontrollably over-anxious because the train is 5 minutes late. Leave the house absurdly early. Eat an overpriced burger too quickly and get indigestion. Pop into the Antwerp. Bump into Rob on the concourse. Get a hug from Chris. Wish I was back on the Shelf. Ignore pre-match build-up as I marvel at this wonderful stadium. The adrenaline rush as the whistle goes. Feel like a kid again. Feel sick even though we’re two up with five minutes to go. Straggle breathlessly behind my son and granddaughter as we dash back to Tottenham Hale. Fall asleep on the sofa. Be me.