Why Wigan’s woe puts Spurs’ DW fortunes into perspective

While the majority of Tottenham Hotspur fans rejoiced, kakked themselves and bled white and Dave Whelan blue for all of 20 odd minutes last night, the writing felt very much on the wall for our mooted Champions League saviors last night.

It was hardly a vintage Arse performance by any stretch of the imagination although while Bobby M’s picture-perfect brand of pretty patterned football looked very good indeed, their glaring faults – and indeed, why they deserve to be relegated – were exposed all too easily in the end.

How is this relevant to us, I hear some of you cry? Shouldn’t we be focusing on the final weekend of the season, where our top four-dream is still very much alive?

Indeed, the usual happy-go-lucky contingent amongst the Spurs support were out in force after the final whistle blew at what really was a very empty, EmptyCrates stadium last night. And while that’s an extremely sinister overview of the more optimistic that exist amongst us, they are of course correct – the dream remains and it’s not unfeasible to suggest the Arse could come unstuck against Newcastle this weekend.

But although the post-mortem can wait until after we know our fate, The Hotspur Way couldn’t help but feel an extremely bitter dose of reality after watching the gentlemen in red perform the double over Dave Whelan’s FA Cup wunderboys.

Come the end of the season, every review up on our network of blogs, forums and websites are going to frame statistics to cater to how they weigh up the fortunes of our season. And to some extent, we’re all going to cherry pick fixtures.

But while we can put the fact we took four points off Manchester United up on a pedestal, it’s the single point we managed to scrape against what has been in all honesty, an extremely poor Wigan side, that really resonates.

We’ll go out on a limb now; we’re AVB supporters, we back him to the hilt and in a taste of how you can imagine our season’s musings are likely to read, we believe Mr. Levy has a few questions to answer this term – regardless of where we finish.

Yet for as scintillating as the victories against United away and Manchester City at home were this season, it’s the results that leave a far lesser impression on your memory, that tend to have the most important bearing on your league finish. And this is where this particular Spurs site found it difficult to feel particularly zany after last night’s result.

Because the truth is, while we can all account for bad days at the office, saving two of them for a team that went on to be relegated and whom could well finish the season a good five points off the magic 40 point mark, perhaps hasn’t been the best way to do it.

There is definitely a danger of getting too caught up with one particular team, but when the four teams above us have all taken six points a piece in the league against them, our solitary point perhaps tells a certain story in itself.

Because it’s not been the 4-2 home defeat to Chelsea, the hammering we took against the Arse or even the hard-fought 2-2 draw at home to Everton that has cost us this season – it’s the Wigan games, Norwich games and QPR away that’s done the real damage.

Next season, we all want to see a stronger Tottenham with Villas-Boas at the helm (most rational supporters, anyway) and some real, palpable backing from the chairman. But we’ve got to eradicate this lingering, inability to get the job done when it’s expected of us – not when we’re billed as the underdogs.

The dream’s still alive and we’ll move onwards whatever the weather – just don’t let hope blinker the realities.

COYS

You can follow me on Twitter @samuel_antrobus