Everyone is in agreement that this is one of the strangest Premier League seasons in recent memory. Not just because Leicester City are still in the title reckoning going into the New Year, and not just because defending champions Chelsea are so far below the rest of the chasing pack, but also because of how inconsistent almost every team has been.
Every team except Spurs, really.
Mauricio Pochettino’s team started slowly and built progressively. There were no huge performances, no explosive results – the Manchester City game aside, perhaps. Everything just built gradually. It all built so gradually and crept up on everybody so stealthily that now Spurs find themselves only four points off top spot – what seemed a long way is no longer so very far.
The Man City game showed that Spurs were capable of playing well sometimes, but it didn’t seem to show much else about Pochettino’s team at the time. Instead, what we took away from that game was how bad City were.
Yet since that game, the most surprising result that Spurs have managed was their defeat against Newcastle. They’ve gradually come into the consciousness as a very good side.
But that City game should show more than that. It should show Spurs as a team who are now capable of doing something very few Spurs sides have been able to do over the last few seasons of trying to break into the top four: hold their nerve in the big games.
In 2012, Harry Redknapp’s final season, Spurs were in a similar position to where they are now. By late January they were being heralded as possible title contenders after having come from slightly under the radar. That time, they had the two Manchester clubs in front of them. And it all fell apart during a January meeting against Manchester City, when Spurs came back from two goals down, but lost 3-2 to a last-gasp Mario Balotelli penalty.
That doesn’t tell all the story, though. Spurs should have won that game. They had chances at 2-2, including one for Jermain Defoe just before City went up the other end and won the game.
That was the Spurs that would reign for the next few seasons, even with all of the changes in the team. A good side let down by bottling the bigger games. Not simply against the big teams, but against any team in a big game. Some of the smaller ones can be ‘must-win’, too.
Since then, there have been some big scorelines suffered at the hands of Manchester City, but this season things changed. It was Tottenham dishing out the goals and City suffering on the big occasion.
And that’s the difference. Spurs now have a side that seem capable of winning the big games, or at least not losing them. They have the fewest losses in the league and also the most draws. Their machine-like grinding into fourth place has put them only four points off the top of the table, but it has also given them the best goal difference in the league.
It’s that sort of consistency that will see Spurs through this season because no other team has that level of it.
In a tight season, it’s all about making your team hard to beat, but also about having enough to win games too. Spurs have all the ingredients – they have the best defensive record, they have the happy knack of drawing the games they can’t win, and they also have one of the best attacking records in the division, too.
But by far and away the most important aspect of this Tottenham title challenge is that they now don’t look like bottling the big games. After defeat to Manchester United on the opening day – down to an unlucky Kyle Walker own goal, Spurs have suffered only one defeat, and that was one of the very few shocking results of their season.
In a season where we simply can’t tell who can win the league, with no favourites and no stand-out team, why can’t Spurs win the league?
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