Tottenham will not win the title, but they are no longer Spursy. A real North London power shift remains some way off, though, writes our Dave Tickner.
We’ve waited. And waited. And waited some more. But as Mauricio Pochettino’s team just refuse to Spurs it up, it’s time to resort to new twists on the old favourite.
After nine straight Premier League wins, the latest a thorough filleting of their archest rivals in White Hart Lane’s final North London Derby, there is literally nothing else for it but to traverse ever more tortuous routes to find the inherent Spursiness that we know must be there somewhere.
The new Spursy is one built not on their own failings – for these days there are seemingly none – but on how their own consistent and continued excellence brings only the smallest of reward.
New Spursiness, for instance, would be comprehensively beating your fiercest rivals in your biggest game of the season but seeing your best/only chance of the title disappear thanks to a marooned-in-seventh Everton having the flip-flops on against Chelsea at the previously-impenetrable Goodison Park.
Or having a home record matched in Europe’s Big Leagues only by Juventus at the precise moment you make the final decision to knock that home down and move to a ground where you always lose.
Or the fact that, in what is admittedly a Not-A-Thing accolade that puts even the Fourth Place Trophy to shame, you lead a Premier League table of the last two seasons by a full 15 points without ever really looking like winning the thing in either of those seasons.
Of course, what will really happen is that at some point Tottenham’s winning run will come to an end at nine, 10, 11 or whatever, and at that point we can all jump up and down and get excited about typical Spursy old Spurs, they’ve bottled it again.
But my word this would have been a dull old season without them. Liverpool were the great entertainers in the first half of the season, but they’re currently in the middle of the bit where Sideshow Bob has stepped on so many rakes that it’s stopped being funny. Defeat at Watford tonight might just be the rake that tips it back to funny again, but it’s hard to be sure. Comedy is an inexact science. Manchester United producing the most toothless and inconsequential unbeaten run of all time has been a mild diversion, but no more.
Without Spurs, we would all have to pretend to be excited about whether Swansea or Hull will join Middlesbrough and Sunderland in the Sky Bet Championship.
Because it will not be Spursy when they finally cede the title to Chelsea’s relentless machine. Tottenham have not lost this title race; they have created it.
On February 25, Tottenham were in third, 13 points adrift of Chelsea and two behind Manchester City. They were level on points with Arsenal, one clear of Liverpool and two ahead of Manchester United.
Nine wins later they have left all the others in their wake and eaten into Chelsea’s seemingly unbridgeable lead. Had Spurs produced a perfectly tidy run of, say, five wins and four draws then Chelsea would have been crowned already.
Spurs still just about retain greater ambition, but they have achieved a couple of things. It says much for just how well Tottenham are finishing this season (and how badly everyone else bar Chelsea is doing) that a top-four spot is now secured, barring extreme goal-difference shenanigans, and that nobody even mentioned it.
What was mentioned was the fact that Spurs will now finish ahead of Arsenal for the first time since 1995. That they have done it so easily, and secured it with the most startlingly straightforward, bloodless derby victory, has only amplified the talk of a North London power shift.
It should go without saying that it is nothing of the sort. Spurs are having the best season since the 1960s, Arsenal comfortably their worst of the Arsene Wenger era. There was relief as much as anything else in Spurs fans’ celebrations of the cancellation of this year’s St Totteringham festivities, but they have so far to go in order to truly shift the balance of power in their corner of the capital.
Twenty-one years of superiority cannot be cancelled out by one, however significant the lurch towards N17 may have been. The reason Spurs have no equivalent for St Totteringham is not because they are less obsessed with their rivals, but because the situation has never come up. St Totteringham’s Day doesn’t commemorate finishing above Spurs once; it marks an annual event. The joke, at the risk of overexplaining something that shouldn’t need it, is that this, like other saints’ days, comes round every year.
This is at least as likely to represent a blip in a run of sustained Arsenal dominance as it is the start of a changing of the natural order.
What is undeniable, though, is that Tottenham have taken monumental strides towards creating such a shift. It is only three years ago that Arsenal suits felt comfortable enough to quip about Gareth Bale "joining one of our rivals” when he swapped Tottenham for Real Madrid.
Sunday's astonishingly one-sided derby served as a microcosm of both sides' campaigns. Spurs were the very essence of a Mauricio Pochettino team. Harrying, hassling, creating and, eventually, finishing. Arsenal were... well, what are Arsenal now? The most striking difference between the two old rivals right now is that while Spurs are the division's most identifiable by style, Arsenal have no defining quality. They're not a short-passing side, they're not a counter-attacking side, they're not a rock-solid build-from-the-back side. They are, if they are anything at all, a side that functions when their best players perform but falls apart under the flimsiest of pressure.
If one wanted to be harsh, one could argue that the only point at which this performance contained something recognisably and demonstrably Arsenal was when they responded to going a goal down by immediately and inexplicably handing their opponents another.
Arsenal will almost certainly restore order next season by finishing above Spurs once again, but the reason that’s the case is the other major reason for nervousness in N5. Arsenal will finish above Spurs because Spurs will be at Wembley, and Spurs will be at Wembley because they are finishing the building work on a new stadium that will significantly level the playing field with their neighbours.
Spurs have spent the past two years punching significantly above their weight. Arsenal this season have punched well below theirs. If those things remain true in two years’ time, then Spurs may be able to claim North London as theirs, and maybe even instigate St Goonstumble’s Day.
