Dave’s Ramblings – Tottenham Hotspur
The upside of this game is that Spurs’ desperate scrap to avoid the full, glorious humiliation of relegation goes right down to the final day.
The downside? We don’t get to be the ones delivering the fatal blow. Imagine the scenes… Richarlison looking like he’s aged 40 years, Spurs fans rage-tweeting through salty tears, and their owners calculating how much the Championship TV deal pays. We were robbed of generational entertainment.
Without actually creating anything remotely dangerous, Spurs did start stronger than us. Plenty of possession, plenty of neat little passes, and enough sideways football to qualify for a London driving test.
To be fair, they looked pretty impressive right up until the point where something useful was required.
Meanwhile, we took the lead after 18 minutes when Enzo unleashed a shot that swerved past the Spurs keeper and into the net. A lovely effort, although I suspect their keeper was trying to save it via remote control. He probably should’ve done better, but that’s life.
A Spurs player did manage to head against the post, although I’m still not sure if Sanchez got a hand to it. He has certainly started to look better since he has been wearing Petr Čechs hat! Other than that, they were strangely flat which, to be fair, is the most Spursy thing imaginable.
We doubled the lead after 67 minutes when Santos finished from close range after a brilliant pass from Enzo, who had a great game. This was Andreys first league goal for us, putting him on the same number of league goals as Liam Delap…
Richarlison pulled one back with 16 minutes left, which unfortunately gave Spurs something they hadn’t had all evening: hope. And once they sensed that faint possibility of happiness, we immediately reverted to our traditional tactical approach of dropping deeper and inviting relentless panic.
Then came the penalty incident. Cucurella appeared to briefly abandon football altogether, and attempt a live-action WWE audition on one of their players.
Miraculously, VAR decided the ball was approximately 0.0004 seconds away from being in play, meaning it didn’t count. To say we got away with one is an understatement.
Despite a few scares we held on which, in my opinion, was a fair outcome overall. Let’s not kid ourselves though. At 2–0 up and absolutely cruising, we still somehow decided the evening needed a bit more drama.
Like a cat bringing a half-dead mouse back into the house, we spent the final half hour desperately trying to gift them something from a game they had absolutely no business getting anything out of.
One thing that did bug me was the booing of Conor Gallagher. I do understand that once you’ve had the privilege of wearing Chelsea blue, pulling on a Spurs shirt is a crime. But this is a lad who joined Chelsea at six years old, never wanted to leave, and gave absolutely everything every time he played for us.
I’m not saying you have to applaud him, although I did, because I’m clearly entering my mature and emotionally balanced era, but sometimes silence is sufficient.
Besides, booing Conor Gallagher feels a bit like shouting at your dog because he got adopted by another family after you sold him on Facebook Marketplace.
My takeaways…
Judging by the sudden uplift in performance from several players, you could almost be forgiven for thinking we’d appointed a new coach.
But I’m sure it has absolutely nothing to do with that. Players just randomly decided, all at once, to start passing forward, pressing properly, and remembering how football works. Incredible coincidence really.
Of course this did not apply to all players, or for the full 90 minutes. But it is a start, and hopefully something that will continue.
Despite displaying relegation form in the league for what seems like forever, a win on Sunday will see us qualify for Europe.
Not the Champions League, obviously. Let’s not get carried away. This is more the Thursday night against a team whose stadium doubles as a municipal athletics track variety of Europe. But beggars can’t be choosers.
I’ve heard some people say a season out of Europe would do us good. Personally, I disagree completely.
Football is about trophies, amongst other things. It’s also about ending up in a freezing airport in eastern Europe on a Friday morning. Wondering why you’ve voluntarily travelled 2,000 miles to watch us draw 1-1 with a team sponsored by a tractor company.
That’s the magic of the game.
Onwards and upwards. UTC 💙
Dave M
‘Chelsea Supporters Group’ can also be found on X and Facebook and Bluesky
