Spursspotting

Growing up Trainspotting was one of my favourite movies. Being a child the 80s and most of the early 90s, I missed out on the change of scene, the new style of music drugs and culture. In all honesty I barely caught the Brtipop movement. If it wasn’t for a Gooner I used to sneak out of school to smoke B&H Gold with, I would have missed it completely. I was too obsessed with football, Denise Van Outen and running around a playground destroying my school shoes. Trainspotting though gave me a glimpse at a different world.

What I found interesting about Trainspotting, other than the music, being chased by cops and the sheer unprovoked violence, was the characters use of heroin. Here were a group of individuals operating at a decent level, playing football, holding down “jobs” of sorts but enjoying sticking needles in their arms to add that extra bit of pleasure. They had relationships, they had interaction with each other and their in-laws despite their drug use. Somehow they were able to combine the needle induced glory, with their general lives outside of the needle.

However as the film shows us, it was unsustainable. You can’t chase that high for a long period without bottoming out.

Yesterday as I stared at my screen as the second consecutive home game ran away from us, I started to think perhaps we are heroin addicts? Perhaps all of us right now are overdosing? In search of the glory we touched briefly nearly half a decade ago we have pushed too hard and too fast? Perhaps in search of eternal happiness we have buried ourselves?

[linequote]Redknapp didn’t have to build anything, it was a flat pack operation, follow the instructions, screw this here, tap that bit with a hammer and in minutes a beautiful structure is in your front room[/linequote]

When Juande Ramos left us after that apocalyptically bad start to the 2008/09 season, in rolled Harry Redknapp, the perfect man for the job. He had a highly talented yet unmotivated and disorganised unit. All that was needed was to put some mindsets in place and allow them to express themselves. He didn’t have to build anything, it was a flat pack operation, follow the instructions, screw this here, tap that bit with a hammer and in minutes a beautiful structure is in your front room.

It wasn’t a five year plan to bring success, it was a quick shuffle and display. It was a team built without following the rules. It was an instant fix to a deeper problem, we had rolled up our sleeves and injected this team into our bloodstream. We had skirted past the dark days and here we were, marching up the league and enjoying our football, but most importantly for Spurs fans, others were enjoying our football also. We became the team others were compared to.

Being Spurs it matters almost as much what others think about our football as we do. It is something that even those of us who weren’t around for the late 50s and 60s have learnt, glory is nothing without being seen and acknowledged to be glorious.

Under Redknapp we were operating at a level that many of us had never seen. We became a designer drug and our pace and flair something we would inject by the barrel full. We were interesting, we made people think and the more we used the better we became.

A magnificent night at home, an incredible one in Italy, we were Ewan McGregor and the football world was a young, naked and enthusiastic Kelly MacDonald grinding on top of us. We were having the time of our lives. We were able to take the lows and forget them and as the glory train rattled past, because those highs, those European nights, beating Chelsea, Arsenal and City in 10 days, they were special.

As one we became hooked. It was the first time for most of us that we had felt the toned thigh muscles of glory wrapped tightly around us and we wanted more. We chased more, we pushed for more. We had collected this buzz but we hadn’t earned it, it was just given to us. This was the seed of our downfall.

[fullquote]As time passed we found ourselves reaching out for the highs even more, we became obsessed with those prefect nights, forgetting that in reality they are one offs[/fullquote]

Looking back in hindsight is always easy, but now I see it was unrealistic to hope that Spurs could sustain that level of performance or feeling amongst us. Players who had helped us achieve the “success” left for bigger clubs and more money. Suddenly we found ourselves chasing it, looking harder and harder for that buzz, it became insatiable.

Champions League nights made way for Thursday nights with our kids playing in the Europa League, 5-1 semi final defeats and losses to Norwich, QPR or any other team who had plan to stop us playing to our plan. As time passed we found ourselves reaching out for the highs even more, we became obsessed with those prefect nights, forgetting that in reality they are one-off’s, you have to move on, you can’t spend your life searching to repeat the past

We slipped into the Andre Villas-Boas era, then into a nightmare with Tim Sherwood, now under Mauricio Pochettino we are in trouble. Either we are slipping into a carpet lined coffin whilst Lou Reed sings at us, or we are in a locked room sweating out the junk from the last three years whilst Daniel Levy crawls across our ceiling.

The truth is right now, where exactly are we? Who in Trainspotting are we?

Are we Tommy ready to shrink into foetal position and give up, or are we going to push through it, lean over the side of the bed and hurl into a bucket and cleanse ourselves?

[linequote]It’s going to be a hard to get back to a clean sense of what we are, not the misty eyed memory of drug induced glories past[/linequote]

The honest truth is this was never going to be a quick dash into rehab to find ourselves and come out the other side bright-eyed and ready for the cameras. Pochettino wasn’t hired to build upon success, he was brought in to fix us. We are broken, we have a team that doesn’t suit his or our past managers philosophies and we have a team that doesn’t even suit his secondary philosophy. For two games running we have made changes at half-time because, as he sees it, the team haven’t been doing what has been asked of them.

It’s going to be a hard to get back to a clean sense of what we are, not the misty eyed memory of drug induced glories past. Those nights as great as they were never going to last because they were built on fragile foundations. A first XI that was good, even special on occasions, but scratch away at the surface and there wasn’t the concrete pillars of sustained success that the big teams across Europe have.

What we have to accept, if we decide to follow the path of cleansing, is the Pochettino program. Hold tight, ride it out and perhaps with a slice of luck, a good decision here or there, we can get back to the level we were at, but without the help of the temporary and short term injections. The club has to be rebuilt, not remodelled.

What else are we going to do? Stop supporting?

Football, life and work, they aren’t supposed to be easy, and if they are, you are probably just cheating yourself.