We published a whimsical list of all the reasons why Spurs could win the league a few weeks ago.
We feared they would lose to Liverpool and that would mean the opportunity to claim they might win the league would be lost, so we did it before the Liverpool game. However, they didn’t lose against Liverpool, did they? They prevailed, justly and without any semblance of debate. They then defeated Fulham and Luton, two formidable teams, 1-0. At the top, they lead by two points, and if we don’t take precautions, they might lead by five points by Friday night. The way the record players have turned. We now need to provide five reasons why Tottenham won’t win the league, since their season is gaining pace like a runaway train and a Tottenham title triumph suddenly seems imminent. which is far more difficult because they will undoubtedly succeed.
1) Depth of squad
Really, this is the one. Actually, you don’t need four more. On Monday night, Will Ford mentioned it in these very pages. Examine Spurs’ starting lineup. It’s really good, isn’t it? This season, Manchester United, Arsenal, and Chelsea have all added new No. 1s, but none of them appear to be nearly as good as Guglielmo Vicario thus far. Together with a refocused and energized Cristian Romero, Micky van de Ven has settled in wonderfully. Pedro Porro has taken everyone by surprise, and Destiny Udogie is fantastic. Son Heung-min has come full circle, Pape Sarr is unbelievably promising, Yves Bissouma is back to his Brighton self, James Maddison is the league’s greatest player right now, Dejan Kulusevski is unceasing and unrelenting, and Richarlison, well, we adore Richarlison.
It’s time to look over the bench alternatives and have a long drink of coffee. Stupid. There are very few possibilities for benches. Porro has a suitable substitute in Emerson Royal. Wide on the left, Brennan Johnson may easily take Richarlison’s place. Additionally, they will have three excellent choices for the two central midfield spots when Rodrigo Bentancur recovers from injury, which should happen soon.
Well, that’s it. Only those players, who are not in the first-choice starting eleven at the moment, can fit into it without causing a significant decline in quality or requiring a radical change in the essence of what Angeball is and can be. Without Van de Ven’s quick recovery rate, they are unable to play a high line, defend with such confidence in Romero’s all-around chaotic brilliance, penetrate through the midfield without Bissouma, create without Maddison, or score without Son.
It is both a benefit and a curse that they are no longer in Europe or the Carabao. It is obvious that they will have a better chance of getting by with a core group of 14 or 15 players until January, but it also means that when the second-string players are used, they are not only noticeably worse than the starting lineup, but they are also extremely rusty.
It was evident by the end of the Fulham match that Spurs were missing Bissouma, Sarr, Udogie, Maddison, and Son from the field. Not many clubs have a second team that is as good as their first, nor are there many where the decline is as noticeable and swift.
2) Their Opponents
Even though it seems cliché to simply state, “Manchester City exists,” it is true. With aspirations of a record fourth consecutive title and a sixth in the previous seven years, they are the most dominant club team in the history of English football. Spurs won’t defeat them in 38 games, any more than Arsenal did the year before or a truly outstanding Liverpool team could in all but one incredible season.
Unlikely championship contenders will always and unavoidably be compared to Leicester in 2016. Leicester’s brilliance, though, lay not just in pulling off a ridiculously successful season of their own, but in doing it during a year in which everyone else—including City—was struggling miserably. Their 81 points gave them a 10-point lead and the title. Now, the world is very different. In the seven seasons that have passed, that sum would only have once put Leicester in the top two and once—in the year that City won it with 86 points—even into what would have been a real title fight.
This Spurs team could easily score 80 points or more if they had a favorable wind. They have a real chance to win the Premier League in 2015–16. Most likely, they won’t get
3) Contextualizing results
Although overdone, it is unquestionably true that Spurs have mostly defeated opponents they should have defeated and have occasionally had to work very hard to do it. They have faced three historically poor promoted teams, a badly struggling Bournemouth, and Manchester United, who outplayed them for forty-five minutes before, admittedly, stunningly defeating them in the second half. The ridiculousness of the Liverpool match hardly needs to be reiterated.
In their most challenging test of the season thus far, Spurs earned a point at the Emirates, but they also had a very real chance to lose.
In the upcoming weeks, Spurs will face a much tougher schedule of games that will probably highlight all of their known and apparent weaknesses and show them for what they are—a very good team that is also a lot of fun—but one whose goals are to finish in the top four or five instead of the top two.
4) The Incident
The thing we’ve liked the most about Spurs’ start is that, even though nobody really believes they will win the league or even seriously contend for it, it is now necessary to at least acknowledge the potential. Fans of Arsenal, as well as those of City and Liverpool, are expressing their lack of concern for Spurs on Twitter, or whatever it’s called these days. Naturally, the greatest method to express your concerns to others is to express your lack of concern to them without having to be asked.
It would be even better if you looked up Spurs’ schedule for the next six months as a means to demonstrate that you are not concerned about them. Those are unquestionably the acts of someone who is unconcerned with the Spurs. Searching the schedule months in ahead for teams you don’t care about is pretty normal, isn’t it?
Nevertheless, the Spurs game is amusing. The remainder of the league can at least find solace in the buffer provided by a run of games against Newcastle, City, Arsenal, and Liverpool that will undoubtedly bring matters back under control and stop the world from spinning off its axis, in the extremely unlikely event that they are somehow still meaningfully engaged in what might be termed a title challenge by mid-April.
5) Lads, it’s Tottenham
And let us never ever forget that this is still Spurs we’re talking about. In its own way, surely there is nothing Spursier than emerging from that run of games top of the league only to blow it in the last two games of the season against Burnley and Sheffield United.
