Is This The Real Thing, Or Is This Just Fantasy?

Like some kind of interminable purgatory, Spurs find themselves precariously stationed halfway between two possible narratives. In recent matches there’s been a glitch in the Spurs matrix, as the same Jekyll and Hyde game plays out on repeat. We come out for the first half somewhat dedicated to going down a goal or two, camped around our own box, before bursting into life as Conte seems to stick eleven rockets up eleven arses for the second half. The last eight consecutive matches have seen us concede the first goal, often in the first half, yet paradoxically we are still picking up points and generally progressing. Like the 1930s Delta Bluesman, Robert Johnson, we find ourselves at a tricky crossroads, but with two thirds of the season still to play out, which road are we going to take and do we need to sell our soul to the devil in order to achieve our aims?

The first narrative has a positive outlook. We are cleverly grinding out results, currently sitting 4th in the league, with one of the best points tallies that we’ve ever witnessed from Spurs in the Premier League era (29 points from 15 matches), and through to the last 16 of the Champions League. We are a relentless machine, producing enough points and scoring more last minute goals than ever before, so how can we possibly complain about that situation? Surely we just need to sustain this exact trajectory to the season’s close and we will have had an incredible campaign, right?

Well, the other direction of thought suggests a more gloomy prospect; that we are playing a negative, intractable, ultra-defensive style of football that sees us start games horrifically full of fear, conceding both territory, possession and goals, particularly in the first half, indeed only waking up in the second 45 minutes, and that this cannot possibly be preserved over the longer term. The team isn’t fulfilling its enormous potential, key players are underperforming, we particularly lack creativity, and we look unbalanced, something which regularly sees us dominated if not completely toppled over.

We all know that playing football ‘the Spurs way’, (a swashbuckling, push and run, attacking style that’s etched into our DNA by many of our favourite Spurs legends, from Greaves, to Villa, to Hoddle, to Gazza, to Bale, to Kane), is a key demand from our fans and by proxy our Chairman too. But Conte doesn’t alter his plans for anyone and having won multiple titles, with multiple teams, in multiple countries, who are we to argue with his methods if results keep coming in and especially if he ultimately satiates the appetite for trophies that our fans have been badly starved of.

There are two very reasonable, but worrying questions at play here. Firstly, is the ‘Conte way’ sustainable over the course of the remaining games? Indeed, is his style now showing signs of being consigned to the past, (much like Mourinho’s similarly defensive style had been overtaken in recent years?), with the best performing, most successful teams, such as City, Liverpool and more recently, (whisper it), Arsenal, doing a far better impression of ‘the Spurs way’ than the current Tottenham side?  Secondly, just like Robert Johnson, do we sell our soul to this Italian devil and accept a negative style if it means we still achieve our dreams?

Our season looks simultaneously excellent whilst equally in a state of perpetual collapse. It’s also possible that our sensitivity is magnified, having suffered a similar fate during the recent Mourinho era. With most teams having now completed a dozen Premier League games to date you might just want to cast your minds back to when Jose Mourinho once had Spurs sat at the top of the table at pretty much this point of the season. Mourinho was derided for playing sluggish, negative football, relying far too much on magical moments, mostly from Kane and Son. Here was a world class manager that had won multiple titles, with multiple teams, in multiple countries, yet pundits and fans alike declared his football methods outdated and universally claimed that it was only a matter of time before we watched an inevitable collapse. It did indeed collapse and Mourinho was out of the job the following season. Are there parallels here, or is there something different with Conte? Indeed, do Spurs seem like a team where good managers go to die?

We’ve all watched football for years, some of us for many decades and if we’ve learnt any inalienable truths, it’s that if you passively sit off the opposition, if you drop deeper and deeper, and allow the other team to have the ball for long stretches, then we will eventually make critical mistakes, they’ll create chances and these moments will ultimately become goals. Individual errors are part of the game, (looking at you somewhat sternly, Eric), but if you push your team up the pitch then the individual errors tend not to prove so costly. If you camp out around your own box then the brain farts will cost you. This is especially true if you’re playing against top teams.

Does our prognosis ultimately come down to whether you’re a glass-half-empty or half-full personality type? The narrative depends on what you look at. So far (as of November 11th), we’ve beaten all the teams you’d expect us to beat in the league, we’ve only really dropped points in traditionally tricky away fixtures to good teams in good form and we had fantastic home form up to very recently, (bar the fixtures against the improving Newcastle United and Liverpool teams). It’s perfectly reasonable to consider a top four finish as a successful aim in (another) transitional season, reserving clinical judgements on Conte’s tenure until he’s had three or four transfer windows. He’s only had two. As things stand, just maintaining our current form will see us hit that key aim.

However, the away games at Chelsea and Arsenal were sickening to watch, only worsened by the heightened hope brought about from derby games and cast further downwards by the fact that our players, unforgivably, didn’t really turn up. Sure, we didn’t lose the former, but the performance was utterly dreadful, akin to the sinking style we once witnessed with Jose or Nuno. Almost impossibly, things looked even worse for the opening 45 minutes at Bournemouth and Marseille. Even victories that looked great on paper, such as the 6-2 thrashing of Leicester, had journalists writing it up with headlines such as “Are Spurs Shit, Or Good, Or What?”. What on the surface could look like a secure 2-0 league win at Nottingham Forest had Harry Kane declare “We didn’t play our best, we know that”.

What are we to think? It’s always felt as though we have another gear to go to, like we are yet to truly click, that this squad is strong and capable and that at some point we will win and do it with a confident, dominant display. Yet we are still waiting for that moment. In fact, instead of going up a gear, we’ve kind of got stuck in 3rd, with first half performances continuing to show us a dizzying repetitiveness, like a bad driver getting stuck going round and round a roundabout looking for an exit – there’s a progression of sorts, but we keep repeating the same errors. With Spence forever sat on our bench whilst we watch Royal start almost every game, it’s like the fans are sat in the passenger seat shouting “For fuck’s sake Conte, the turning’s right there – TURN Conte TURN!”.

If we have to watch the opposition score first again, I’m pretty sure my wife will find me rocking back and forth in the corner mumbling something about Dier or Sessegnon to myself. The recent Bournemouth game grated more than most in what was an unforgivably shitty first half; a 45 minute pattern that’s become familiar following an equally slow start against Sporting Lisbon, and that first half against Marseille had us suffering Nuno flashbacks. As we welcomed Liverpool to our home we may as well have asked Klopp if he fancied reducing the game to just 45 minutes but that we’d give him a two goal headstart? In fact, you’d be forgiven for only watching second halves from now on. It’s been that bad. Ending first halves a goal or two down will ultimately cost you football matches. If you consistently have less possession than the opposition, home or away, then you will lose more than you win.

Our slow starts have even given birth on social media to a recent conspiracy theory surrounding our negative tactics. The theory goes that Conte has designed each game as follows: We sit back and conserve energy in the first half, camp around our own box, hoof it out when in possession, let the opposition have the ball and only allow them low XG, longer-distance shots, hopefully keeping any score as low as possible up to half time. By asking us to concede possession, Conte is supposedly saving our legs for the second half of every game, going full throttle as the opposition tires, relying on our ability to outscore the opposition by the time 90 minutes is up. With two games every seven days, this has us effectively only playing for 90 minutes each week. Conte has looked at this squad and considers his bench too weak to cover for the injuries that twice weekly games would throw up were he to go for it for a full match every time.

Clearly this is a ridiculously flawed theory, unthinkable from a manager like Conte, and typical of the kind of conjecture that social media loves to grow in its ecosystem when things appear unexplainable. It just goes to show us how far people will go to try and resolve the contradiction that Spurs have become this season. Besides, you run more when you don’t have the ball, proven by the fact that Spurs have covered more distance this season than most other teams in the league.

So there’s plenty to be concerned about, especially seeing as Conte’s not exactly new around here, having recently completed his first full year with us. You’d have expected him to have his methods, style and tactics woven into the side by now, yet performances regularly seem to be in the descendancy. Injuries to key players (Son, Kulusevski, Richarlison and Romero to date), are piling up fast, and we look worse than at least four teams in the league up to this point. We certainly can’t rely on 94th minute goals every week. The whole thing could unravel like an unwanted Mourinho sequel, but yet the cold facts don’t lie.

And so here’s the alternative narrative. We are still fighting in the top four in the league and through to the last 16 in Europe. We go into the World Cup break in 4th, following a breath-taking win against Leeds (a game that played out in a way that could sum our season up to perfection), so we are well set up for a positive second half of the season. And we all know what our second halves have been like, right? We will also continue to invest in the team come January (with Champions League football on offer to potential recruits) boosting our squad – hopefully our starting eleven – lifting spirits and refocusing our existing players. We undoubtedly have the foundations of a good side, sitting there like an unsolved puzzle, waiting to click into something that resembles its potential. The real question it seems is whether Conte has the keys to unlock it.

It’s not how your team starts the season, but how they finish it. You’d be a fool to bet against Conte making tangible progress. Teams such as Arsenal and Manchester City have impressive momentum, so they’ll be mortified to hit the World Cup pause button, but this very factor could actually prove to be our making, as Conte can spend a few weeks mid-season hunting for that key. If he finds it and finally unlocks our beloved Tottenham, then who knows, we may well find top gear by May.