Cause of Death: A Postmortem Report

On Saturday most Spurs fans were glued to TV screens, watching Chelsea take on Bayern in Munich for the Champions League trophy and a place in next years competition. I was no different, I was watching with bated breath as Bayern offered up useless attack after useless attack. As soon as Drogba headed the equalizer it became all too evident that despite the lack possession or meaningful chances Chelsea were going to lift the cup. This belief was increased by Robben missing a weakly struck penalty. As predicted Chelsea beat the Germans on penalties, of all the times for a German side to forget how to take penalties, of course it would happen when Spurs were relying on them to win. I found myself in the unfortunate position of watching the match with many Chelsea fans, who as expected gave me plenty of banter as I cried into my beer thinking about what could have been, but it was all in good humour. At the end of the day no one wanted Chelsea to win, but you have to take your hat off to them, they have out defended some of the best teams in Europe on their run to the trophy and you have to say "well done". While their victory is extremely disappointing it has to be said that we have no one to blame for our lack of Champions League qualification than ourselves, our poor run of form has cost us dearly and it may well end up being the cause of a major downturn for the club. So where did everything go so wrong?

We started the season in blistering form, at one point giving ourselves a twelve point gap between over the team in fourth. At that stage it looked impossible that we would finish outside the top three, and we were even being cited as a not so outside shot for the title, we started to believe our own hype, started to believe it was our year. Things started to turn a bit sour when Harry Redknapp spent most of his time in court over tax-evasion charges. The trial dredged on for a few weeks, with Harry even missing the trip to Liverpool as he could not make it up north in time after the days proceedings had finished. However we continued to persist and when the verdict was returned that Redknapp had done nothing wrong, we all started to dream once again. The dream lasted little more than a few hours though as on the same day Fabio Cappello left his post as England manager following a dispute over whether John Terry should be England captain while awaiting a trial for alleged racist comments towards Anton Ferdinand. Instantly Redknapp became darling of the press and the nation as he was wooed for the top job. Things were initially ok, a fantastic 5 0 win over Newcastle at home seemed to suggest everything was going to end well after all. After the thrashing of Newcastle things turned sour. An awful run of results saw us drop outside the top four, below Newcastle and Arsenal. It was not until the FA appointed Roy Hodgson that our picked up again, securing three wins and one draw in our last four games. When Arsenal failed to pick up all three points at home to Norwich we missed to chance to jump back to third as we could only draw at Villa. Arsenal then picked up all three points on the last day of the season at WBA, with more than a little bit of help from former Spurs reserves keeper Martin Fulop.

While the stats seem to show that when Redknapp was being linked with the England job we were not as good as before or after, Harry himself has always maintained that he was unaffected. It seemed clear to most fans that he didn't have the same passion for the job, and his press conferences did seem to suggest he was well prepared to take the England job, but only at the end of the season. The thing that makes me think that he did take his eye off the ball is that Kevin Bond, Harry's best mate had said to him on many occasions that he didn't seem the same as when he before he was linked with England. I am not going to go through all the facets of where Harry went so wrong, Bale on the left, Defoe getting more game time, I have been through it all before, as regular readers and generally anyone who speaks to me about football will know. I personally think the blame does rest squarely at Redknapps' feet, he showed us a real lack of loyalty, not a trait that is uncommon of him, just ask Portsmouth and Southampton. He has also shown himself to be tactically inept this season at times.

So where now for Spurs then? This summer will be one of the most important summers in the history of the club. Will Bale, Modric and others want to jump ship, if they do want to go, will they be allowed to, will we be able to add to the squad, who will be in charge on the opening day of next season? Modric has stated that he will consider his future after the European Championship, and you can't help but feel that he is once again going to try and force his way out of the Lane. I wonder if this season we may not be able to hold on to him, especially if one of the big boys from Spain come in for him. I don't think Levy will let him go for any less than about £50mil and he will not let Bale go for even more than that. It is realistic that Modric and Bale could both stay at the club and and we could add a few more players, Adebayor has already said he is trying to negotiate a permanent deal with Spurs. We will have to add a few more players to the team, we will have to be sensible with it though, there is no way Eden Hazard will be signing for us now, but the squad does need padding out. We need to get some of the average players off the books, Bentley, Pinaar, Saha, Nelson come to mind, and replace them with quality players. I think Redknapp will get one more chance, and it may surprise some of you to know that I think that that would be the right decision. He should not be offered a new contract until next season, and he should only get a contract offer if we qualify for the Champions League. It would be nice for us to take the Europa League seriously next year, it is a chance at silverware and a good competition, one which we have had some marvelous matches in, and it would be great to get some of those glory nights out.

If I could sum this season up in five words they would be loyal, disloyal, disappointing, quality and unlucky.

Loyal - Kyle Walker, Adebayor and others who have shown great spirit and fight for the club all season declared that they want to stay for the long haul, or join permanently in Ade's case.

Disloyal - Reknapps' handling of the whole England affair and I suspect we will see another outburst from Modric; Bale and Assou-Ekotto have already had their five minutes of misconceived self belief and claimed they are destined for bigger things (Bales comments were not so bad).

Quality - By far and away this season has given us some of the best football I have ever seen in my life, at the end of the day we have shown ourselves to be the fourth best team in the country.

Disappointing - The bad run of form has cost us very dearly.

Unlucky - Stoke Away (correct decisions would have granted us third place), Chelsea FA Cup Semi-Final, others results, and most of all, Chelsea winning the Champions League.

We now wait, wait to see what the summer holds, wait to see what Daniel Levy can pull out of the bag for us, and wait for the 2012/13 season, we are Tottenham Hotspur, and we will be back!