(Football news) Tottenham Hotspur haven't won a trophy since their league cup triumph in 2008. Since then Tottenham have been on a gradual upscale in terms of the progress of the club and have never finished outside of the top 5 since 2008. They have secured a top 6 finish 11 times out of 13 and 6 of those have resulted in a Champions League qualification.
Between 2014 and 2019 under manager Mauricio Pochettino, the North London club finished 5th, 3rd, 2nd, 3rd and 4th. In 2019 Pochettino got Spurs into the Champions League final for the first time in the club's history. They lost the final to Liverpool but it was a huge step in the right direction. Under Pochettino, Spurs played a high intensity attacking style of football and would often cover the most distance in the Premier League season in those 5 years.
It all changed in the 2019/20 season when after a disastrous start, Pochettino got sacked and was replaced by Jose Mourinho. Under Mourinho, Spurs finished 6th in the League due to multiple injuries to important players including Harry Kane and Son Heung-min. Tottenham started the next season in great form and were top of the league after 12 games. They famously defeated Manchester United 6-1 at the Old Trafford but eventually, the fixture constraints started to have an effect on them as they lost their charm, resulting in Dinamo Zagreb shockingly eliminating Spurs from the Europa League.
Despite a run of bad results, Spurs were in the Carabao Cup final but Daniel Levy made the controversial decision of sacking Jose Mourinho 5 days before the final against Manchester City. The decision was taken despite the fact that Spurs under Mourinho had beaten Manchester City twice before. Mourinho is a serial trophy winner with an excellent record in the finals but all that seemed to not matter as far as chairman Levy was concerned.
Spurs appointed a former player with no managerial experience in Ryan Mason as interim manager and they unsurprisingly lost the final. Spurs ended up finishing 7th in the league thanks to an injury time win against Leicester City in the final match. Explaining his decision on the sacking, Daniel Levy said that he intended to bring an attacking brand of football back to Tottenham which was missing under Mourinho who was a more defensive coach.
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Spurs then had talks with a lot of managers including Mauricio Pochettino, Antonio Conte, Gennaro Gattuso and Paolo Fonseca. After all the talks collapsed, they appointed former Wolves Manager Nuno Espírito Santo. The appointment didn't make sense because Nuno is also a defensive coach and no different to Mourinho. The decision was contradictory to what Levy had said about the philosophy of the club.
Tottenham started the season well with 3 wins out of three but then lost the next 3 matches in which they scored only 1 and conceded 9 goals. Nuno is clearly looking to go out of his comfort zone by playing attacking football and it's clearly not working. Another part of the puzzle is the Harry Kane situation.
Harry Kane publicly expressed his desire to leave Spurs in search of silverware. Kane had the most goals and assists in the previous Premier League season but the striker has never won a piece of silverware at the age of 28. Manchester City were heavily interested in Kane which was kept very transparent by Pep Guardiola but Tottenham Hotspur were firm and had no intentions of selling Kane. The rumours suggested that Spurs turned down a bid for €150 million.
The decision has completely backfired so far as Harry Kane has been far off the player he was last season. He is visibly unhappy at the club and lacks motivation. Not only have Spurs kept an unhappy player, they might still have to lose Kane next season at a much lesser fee as his current deal runs out in 2024. Spurs are in a spot of bother and their so-called philosophy is unclear. After being so close to unparalleled glory in 2018, they have fallen way below to where they were 15 years ago.
