Spurs news: Consistency the key

By Sunshine
February 14 2005

Spurs could go on a run and win/draw our next 12 league games on the trot, get into Europe via the league, yet we still wouldn’t have earned the right to call ourselves a top 6 team.

Whilst we’re capable of producing displays like the first half versus an honest, though limited WBA team, we’ll never be able to go into games confident that we’ll do a job. We’ve seen enough glimpses of attractive, effective football to know that Martin Jol has put us on the right track, but it’s now that the hard part comes: Producing the goods on a consistent basis.

This season, a season of transition, true transition, has brought with it an almost unavoidable, even customary variability in form. Spurs contrived to lose six games on the spin, then go eight games unbeaten and then rack up another three losses. Performances such as the 5-1 win against Southampton contrast very sharply with, for example, the 3-nil beating we took from a poor Crystal Palace side.

Now that we’ve finally got decent competition for places almost all over the field, the excuse that such-and-such a player was missing no longer has any credence. I don’t see any of the top three teams ‘suffering’ particularly because they’re missing two or three players, they just get on with it and continue to knock out results despite of everything.

One thing the club have to be, and I've no doubt that they will be, is utterly ruthless when it comes to weeding out players who don't cut it. I won't mention my 'favourites' for the chop, since I'm pretty sure that Arnesen and Jol have very clear ideas on the matter (it also avoids me being accused of having it in for certain players).

Top three teams aside, the rest are nothing special. Everton are having a one-off season, Liverpool are going backwards rather than forwards, Newcastle in disarray, Charlton reaping the rewards of changing very little, Villa doing ok but without the financial backing to ever progress above where they are now and Boro’s relatively expensive squad of ‘nearly’ men trying to take advantage of the vacuum behind the top teams.

Now is the ideal time for Spurs to be making a push in order to establish the club in the nation’s élite. I think Levy has understood this and that is one of the reasons why the £8m deal for the Forest pair was sanctioned on the last day of the January transfer window and why we’ve been so active in signing players in general.

Opinion is divided on whether or not the hierarchy down at The Lane ‘expect’ qualification to European competition this season (or at least expect the team to give it a heck of a good go). Certainly, it would explain the generosity with which Arnesen has been spending the owners’ money. On the other hand, the suits could just be looking to the future, confident in the knowledge that Arnesen is building a squad free of gaping flaws (we’re not there yet, but we’re not eons away any more, either) and that Jol is shaping it into a force capable of becoming a fixture in the top six section of the table.

Personally, I think European qualification isn’t the be all and end all this term, though to say that there is absolutely no pressure on Jol to deliver as early as this season is a bit of wishful thinking.

Tottenham are on course to lose their tag of perennial also rans and it hasn’t come a moment too soon.