Have Spurs Run Out Of Road? | The Brighton Collapse, ENIC's Failings & Are Tottenham Too Emotional?

0:00Jack:This podcast is part of the Sports Social Podcast Network.

0:08Danso, Van Hecker doing really well.

0:11Jack:There's Ruta! Do not take a touch. Van Hecker pickpockets him and picks out Ruta for an emphatic finish to break so many hearts in this stadium. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Rule The Roosh Podcast. Gavin, mate, welcome back. How do we, you know, how do we keep putting one foot in front of the other after that? It's just not fair, is it? I've just sort of had enough of it, to be honest now, Jack. It's good to be back, sort of. It would just be so nice to do one of these after we've won, just once. um i felt that the city result yesterday boosted my mood a little bit but given our predicament i don't feel in any kind of mood for for gloating i mean we can't we can't can we it just feels like i do a bit you know yeah i mean fair for me it felt like more you know like taking off your shoes after a long day on your feet that result was like satisfied you know but not not like this is this is fabulous it's just like there and we we kind of needed it because it's sort of the only thing i'm clinging on to at the moment do you no i don't i don't want to do the like do you think that's it like let's let's let's let's turn this into a positive right there was enough there in that performance against the team that is you know in the best form in the country at least prior to that to suggest that whatever it is that De Zerbi is selling, the squad are buying, right?

1:51Yeah, yeah, I think that's fair enough. And I mean, I celebrated the Xavi goal in a way that I haven't celebrated in such a long time. It was like a proper explosion of frustration, I guess. And I think, I know there's been a lot of talk about the over-celebration of it, but I think that the players felt that as well, because we just haven't had a moment to really hang on to for such a long period of time. And maybe this is just incredibly naive, but I really thought we were going to hold on to that game as well. It just felt, I don't know, it wasn't logical, but it just felt like to me there's no way that they're going to get a result that everything's kind of been building to this and this is the moment when it all turns around.

2:38Also, I was meant to be meeting some friends for a drink later that evening and I'd already put it back by half an hour so I could finish watching the football. It was one of those where I was meeting for the first time the boyfriend of a girl that my girlfriend has made friends with. So you know, it's that kind of scenario. So I wasn't that enthused anyway about the situation. And I was stood there watching the TV with my coat on, hands in my pockets, shoes on, ready to go immediately at the final whistle. And I was like, right, come on, just a couple of minutes to go. Then we can leave. And then Danso lost the ball and they scored.

3:11I was like, right, fine, no problem. Let's go. And like, you know, sort of stormed out. And Kelly looks at me like, please don't bring that energy to the pub. And she was like, look, he might not even like football. And I was like, well, he better not. There's, you know, there's some real emotional volatility currently going on within my head. But like, luckily, football wasn't mentioned. I forced myself to actually have quite a good time. But yeah, it just kind of like was very close to ruining my evening and ruining the atmosphere amongst amongst the group of people that didn't really know each other

3:46Jack:that well it's just like yep yep i'm done look we're ready we've got one foot out the door and and there we go and there we go and it's tbr because you just you're there aren't you it's like deserby's first game at home he wins the first game in 2026 i mean that's just that's mental saying it isn't it like that but still for him to be able to see that it just it felt like that's the way it was going it felt like you know I've watched enough football to be able to say Spurs are going to win this one yeah I think that's what it was I think that's what it was it did feel like that and obviously the crowd was up and everything else and to come back to what you what you said originally I think that we played pretty well in the first half actually against a really good Brighton team I think it's really hard at the moment to objectively analyze Spurs games because the floor has been so low for so long that I'm not sure I even know what a competent performance looks like anymore from us.

4:43I think I can be guilty of almost sort of overstating it a little bit. But then we came through as well a really rocky period in the second half where I felt that, you know, we were clinging on a bit, but I didn't feel like they were really creating any clear-cut chances. And we were showing a fair bit of defensive solidity. I thought Danso actually was playing really well up until this point. He was clearing everything and getting his head on everything and was really brave. So, yeah, it was such a gut punch. I was pretty bereft, really, yesterday. I couldn't really, I don't think, make sense of it again because it's just like nothing's going for us again, is it?

5:21It feels like one of those a bit.

5:23Jack:Like I was saying, the opportunity, Welbeck's opportunity that kind of went off van der Ven's arse and just rolled across the line and stayed out. yeah yeah i just kind of thought maybe maybe maybe our luck's in this afternoon maybe yeah that's just we've just got that little rub of it today that it's it's gonna rub a van de ven's ass that's gonna um it's good that's gonna just get us there but to not do it it's like no you say it's one of those things that like i was having such i was having such a nice day yesterday like such a nice day and it's one of those things that it's almost like that result just like pokes its head out from behind a bush every now and again do you know what i mean and you're just oh god yeah that that that thing that that thing happened again where in some ways and i know this sounds a bit ridiculous but in some ways it almost feels quite worse feels more cruel to have played so well and been so close to winning and to have it snatched away as opposed to just brighton rocking up and winning 2-0.

6:25Jack:But I guess that's the emotional reaction to this. And I think probably the thing that we do need to take from it and the energy that we need to try and have going forwards is that the team are starting to prove that they can play football. Again, this is a point that I've been making for a few weeks and lots of other people have, so it's not like it's an original take by me. But still, the fact that Graham Bergvall have been doing an admirable job but as two young players young players who should be getting 20 minutes at the end of a game and it's our it's our misfortune for the amount of injuries we've had but also our poor squad planning that has seen those too heavily relied upon we've had Ben Tanker and Bersuma in there yesterday who are two experienced players they're not they're not the greatest but they're definitely not the worst they're both capable of brilliance on their days yeah they are inversely they're both capable of being very frustrating on their day however i think every everybody saw the the the distance in performance was stark wasn't it having those two felt like it felt like we had so much more control over the game sumer for a while for large parts of the first half and in patches in the second half was everywhere was everywhere breaking play up getting forwards being an outlet as well i thought i thought he was i thought he was really really brilliant in turn i actually think gallagher played quite well as well even though i saw you know quite a few uncharitable takes towards him i still thought he was i don't think he was brilliant he was definitely not as good as those two but i thought he was okay i thought he had a bit more freedom and there was more confidence about his play because he had two experienced players behind him that were doing their jobs quite effectively yeah um i guess you know what i'm trying to get to here mate is there's a lot of positives there and we can look we can look at the road ahead and say maybe we've just reached this point a bit too late however there is still five games to go if west ham don't get a result at palace you know there's still every chance that Spurs can just about scrape it and you know does Erby does Erby said as much does Erby said this team is capable of winning all five games that we have left I think we need to I actually think we're going to need to almost I think we need to win at least four out of five to guarantee that we're going to stay up probably yeah it's I think a huge amount rise on West Ham tonight if they go what would it be about four points ahead of us yeah before you know like that pretty much is it I think that that's we're adrift by that point with, I know, a few important game weeks to come.

9:10On Gallagher as well, he came very, very close to scoring when he charged down their keeper. Yeah. And when Havertz did that yesterday, he scored. And that also felt like a slight, you know, injustice, I guess. But I thought Benson Kerr and Bissinger were pretty excellent. I actually thought Benson Kerr in particular, the way he kept showing for the ball, he also I think is they're both far more press resistant than Bergvau and Gray currently and I think that you know Bentenguer has this ability to just take a couple of touches shift his body and turn quite elegantly and get the ball moving and I think that also he he sort of fires balls in with a single touch sometimes to take out two or three pressing forward so I thought that he he did a really good job and it was quite impressive given how long he's been out for.

10:03I kind of forgot that he even played for us, to be honest, Benson Kerr. I think, yeah, there's such... I do just worry, like you just said, that we've run out of road, though. We've had so many opportunities and we actually had quite a favourable run-in against teams like Palace, against Nottingham Forest. Those were crucial games. If we'd have won those, we probably would be okay. And we've missed out on so many opportunities. Yesterday felt slightly, Saturday even felt slightly different because I didn't really expect us to get anything from Brighton. They were in such good form. They're a very good team.

10:38And so that's where it, I guess, made me feel slightly more optimistic. And we were chatting before this. It was a feeling of optimism, not necessarily that we're going to stay up, just that, oh, I can actually get some enjoyment from football again. Because it's been such a long time since Tottenham's made me feel positive that that single, you know, Javi Siemens goal made me kind of remember that actually, you know, maybe all isn't lost. And no matter what happens for the rest of the season, there might still be a couple of highs. There might be some pretty catastrophic lows as well. But I think nevertheless, you know, when we go into next season, we'll still be Tottenham Hotspur.

11:19You know, we'll still be a football club that I sort of hate and adore in equal measure. So there might be better times ahead. And it's just a nice reminder of that, I suppose.

11:33Jack:There was a good tweet that I saw today by somebody called Felix Paul on Twitter. He actually runs a German language Spurs pod called Anderlein. Oh, cool. But he tweeted, and thanks to X's auto-translation feature now, he tweeted that Tottenham's relegation would be the most unnecessary relegation of all time if you react in November and sack Frank you easily stay up if you splash out in the January transfer window you easily stay up the incompetence of the club's management really knows no equal and the timing of what you were just saying towards the end there mate I think leads into this next bit quite nicely because I guess just look I think you don't want to manifest this stuff but I think also people are talking about what life looks like for Spurs in the championship well you know I'll help but think about exactly we do have one eye on it and stuff so you know I'm not really gonna buy into this superstition that I shouldn't discuss with what's going to be one of the most sort of important things that's ever happened to Tottenham really yeah so you know as you were saying there like you know the sun will shine tomorrow and i think that's kind of the note we ended on last time we did a pod when maybe things weren't quite a stark and we were like yeah we might get relegated but we probably should stay up i guess the the thing that worries me and i'll say this up front the thing that worries me about tottenham going down yeah look it's embarrassing to go down i think that's a huge part of this right a huge part of the horrible feeling is the embarrassment of it right i agree yeah and i don't fancy the idea of being in the championship i don't think it sounds fun i don't really buy into the idea that it's going to be a good laugh and everything because it's all miserable teams it's southamptons and stokes and west broms and stuff that and i watched a couple of games recently actually and it's it's pretty shit isn't it and i can't the wrexham game is going to be a circus like yeah tolm against wrexham will be a circus and it yeah i already find it nauseating the idea of it the camera switching to rob mcelaney and ryan reynolds and always crap do you know what i mean i that's a nightmare for another day i guess the the the thing i want to i want to get to is that we're sort of replacing a lot of trust and i'm not like i'm not trying to doom this maybe you know maybe they can learn from this maybe they can say right we do have to do something different but there's nothing that the owners the enic the the lewis family whatever you want to call them there's nothing that they've done at all at any point that suggests they have a firm handle on how football works on on the just the the overall tone of it the overall ebb and flow the emotional kind of beats of the game and you know a prime example of that is the lack of spending in January just this sense that Spurs will just be okay because we're Spurs when it was perilous at that point already anyway and most of our you know star players if you want to call them that were injured right at least the attacking talent is out injured they didn't spend any money at that point well they bought Connor Gallagher to be fair but he didn't spend any real money in that sense so I think we're placing a lot of faith in people who will see a large part of their operating budget removed if we do go down that's number one so there's going to be a lot less cash and even if we do start selling your van de vends and whoever and recoup a bit of that lost money this sense that they're also not going to be sat there thinking well it's a championship it's the league below the premier league and we've always been a premier league team so we won't need to do that much in order to stay up will we that they might coast into this again and see spurs i you know i I think this is what genuinely worries me about Spurs going down.

15:30Jack:And just I think Spurs going forwards, whatever happens to us, is I think this year for Spurs to be in this position just shows that despite the sort of memes and I guess the partially informed conversations that we have about the Lewis children, the succession kids that are running the club now, I think it's becoming clearer by the day that this club, this huge institution it's not just a business this institution that millions of us love and pin so much of our identity upon is in the hands of people that are not fit to serve they don't they don't know what it is that they have they don't know how to use it like it's just it's it's becoming almost normal to talk about the fact that tottenham what five six years after building a state-of-the-art, incredible stadium, having been in a Champions League final, are on the brink of relegation.

16:26Yeah, I know.

16:27Jack:How is this happening, you know? And it's because of them. Yeah. I think we're so conditioned as well to view extremely wealthy individuals as being in some way impressive or as in some way learned and assume they must have some kind of specialist insight. But from my experience and working in other industries and things, quite often those people aren't that impressive, actually. A lot of them often come from the same sort of backgrounds. They're always immensely privileged. And particularly in this case, it's often built on a sort of vast amount of inherited wealth. And I think that that leads to enormous hubris, which is being played out in front of our eyes as well.

17:11Like you said, there's nothing to suggest that they will take the necessary steps to get us back into the Premier League. The players we've been linked with most recently have seemingly all just been proven well-known Premier League players. Gibbs White as a... I know I'm linked now with Sensei as well, at Bournemouth. You know, players like this who are going to be extremely expensive. It doesn't feel like it's showing any degree of sort of scouting now. or any kind of, I don't know, like almost any kind of a nuanced approach towards signing footballers. If we end up in the championship on a massively reduced budget, I have so little faith also that we're going to be able to very quickly pivot and take a new approach.

18:01I don't think anybody within the club will definitely, nobody understands how to get out of that league and what sort of players they should be signing in those instances. One other point I sort of want to make, I don't know if this is controversial, we've signed a lot of young players for really large sums of money over the last couple of seasons. And I think there's almost an assumption in some quarters that all of those players are going to become world-class in some capacity just because they're young and they cost a lot of money. I don't think there's any guarantee that all of Odebeer, Bergvau, Gray are all going to immediately turn into world beaters.

18:37And we might actually be hindering their development at the moment anyway. They obviously look like, you know, tell as well. They obviously look like talented footballers, but we've all watched football for a long time and we know that sometimes it doesn't work out like that. So I think that even if we lose our more established players and, you know, we think, well, you know, maybe it will be a chance for these younger players to develop and really, you know, lead the club going forwards. Well, I'm not sure that's based on necessarily. I look back at when we signed some very promising young players in the past, like, you know, Ericsson, when we signed him was, I think only 22, 23.

19:07Ali they almost immediately slotted in and showed enormous ability and really took the league by the scruff of the neck with this current crop of youngsters you see like I say you see a lot of promise but I'm not totally convinced that we haven't signed a Yamal for example amongst that group even though they have cost a lot of them 35, 40, 45 million pounds so I don't think we can purely rely on that

19:36Jack:I know, I was just thinking about it because we do have this nod along kind of, you know, great, okay, well, the people in charge of the club are, you know, not very fair. And then we sometimes have a protest or whatever. And then they give us a few flags and, you know, an important game. And we sort of think, oh, maybe they're all right, actually. But I think I've just, I've really just hit this point that, like, there has to be, surely there has to, you know, maybe I should get changed for Tottenham on and have a chat to them about it. but there has to be something we can do as fans to get these people out of the club now because as I was saying at the end of my last pre-match, post-match pod, is I just, I can't shake the feeling now that nothing good really is going to happen for Spurs with these people in charge of the club.

20:27Yeah, yeah, I know, I know.

20:28Jack:And there might be, like I say, we can always go through and win a League Cup or an FA Cup. that type of stuff happens but in terms of our spurs going to build a sustained and lasting foundation of success no we've seen we've seen all sides of the face of enoch now it's as you say so as as as a lot of this stuff does the the snake has started eating its own tail you know we're kind of it's all falling in on itself they've they've chanced it too far they've neglected the core purpose of what this whole thing is about. And that's going to come back to bite them in stark fashion. But really, we're the ones that are going to feel it the most.

21:11Jack:You know, because there's a lot of talk, isn't there? There's a lot of talk, well, they're going to lose a billion off the rest. They're going to lose a billion off the value of the club. Great. So they'll still sell it for what? Two, three billion pounds? More money than people could spend in thousands of lifetimes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. tens of thousands of lifetimes. You know, it doesn't really hurt them. But us now, you know, we're going to face years, years of Spurs potentially being just in ruin. And this is such a doomy pod, but it's so hard to escape from feeling like this. I mean, look, let's bring it back to the game, you know, and I'm loathe to do this.

21:53Jack:You know, there's been a lot of talk about Xavi Siemens and the celebration. Was it OTT and all this type of thing? But like you say, when I've seen Spurs lose game after game after game, see so little sparks, see no sort of joy really whatsoever, seeing somebody dink in from the wing and slap one in across goal, I was celebrating. I don't resent or judge the players at all for doing that. No, I don't either. We can't say on one hand we want these players to show something, to give something to be do you know i mean to give us something and then when they give us something say don't give us that a thing they are human beings like yeah you know they're miserable the wrong thing yeah you know like i don't want them to do the 1950s clap fish pump and jog back to the halfway line i i want them to act happy i want them to show that they care and that's that's what they did you know and there's there's all this i was i've dug out chevy siemens before but there's a lot of, oh, he made it all about him doing that celebration.

22:58Jack:And it's just what footballers do, isn't it? Yeah, it is. I agree. I mean, also, I don't think it wasn't like, it wasn't affected. It wasn't like an affectation, that celebration. It was genuine. I think that they were sort of lost themselves in that moment. I know there have been times in the past, I know that Arsenal often get beaten with this stick, where things almost are kind of overly emotive and heightened. And I think that almost sometimes that can be forced at certain football clubs. But in that moment, it quite clearly was a natural reaction. I mean, all the fans went mental in the stands as well.

23:37And I think, you know, they weren't holding themselves back, thinking there's still 15 minutes to go, because you can't when you're in that moment. when you're actually, it's easy, it's easy sort of, it's easy sort of making those points at a distance, I guess. And I think that I, you know, the day that we sort of try to further rinse any kind of emotion out of football is, you know, a day that I don't really want to be a part of it much, I think. If we are to be, I don't know, more cynical about it, do you think someone like

24:10Jack:to Zerbi will be saying to them, we need to calm down, we need to manage the occasion. It was 75 minutes in, maybe we need to find a level between half the team piling into the crowd and... Probably. I mean, he's a pretty volatile guy as well, isn't he, to be honest? I mean, I don't know if he... I mean, yeah, he was giving it some on the touchline, wasn't he? Yeah. I mean, also, this is kind of a side point, but I cannot stand Herzler. he's got this like resting smirk face he just looks constantly bemused with everything like bemused he's even a football manager and involved in the in the game he's very he's very arteta he's got very nasty energy about him i think yeah yeah i agree i agree with you completely um so you know i'm glad in the way that he was giving a bit on the touchline but yeah i guess so you're you're probably right but again like all of this it feels like how much can really be imparted in terms of like culture over five games over a few weeks.

25:12I feel like we kind of need to ride any positive emotional wave that we can at this stage. And I don't think, the thing is, I don't think it was that that led us to conceding in the 96th minute. I don't think we were lacking concentration really. You know, it was a bit of a freak. It wasn't a freak, but, you know, it was a mistake. Up until that point, we'd had, as you said earlier, a little bit of luck. we defended pretty well so you know i don't think it was that that led us it was over celebration that led us to conceding in the 96th minute or whatever it was um obviously

25:48Jack:part of the reason why we did concede at such a late stage was kevin danso getting robbed by um van hecker i think a lot of people are going to be playing the replay of that just howling just hoof it out at him um again it feels a bit harsh that and we will address obviously the awful racist abuse and everything that kevin is kevin first name terms that danso has suffered out the back of that but like just on on on the football itself it feels harsh to just kind of single him out when um i can't sorry i forget who it was that added me with this but there was you know if you actually look at the passage of play spurs allowed more brighton players in our box than the were spurs players that there was that lack of urgency and that lack of tracking back that there was basically an orderly queue of brighton players that could have picked up a loose ball in the box and hammered one home as as is what happened so again to pin all of this on one player is more often than not that sort of thing is ridiculous isn't it but especially somebody like Dan Sohu, like you say, for the most part, has been pretty impeccable, hasn't he?

27:03Yeah, I thought so. And obviously, you know, the abuse afterwards is moronic. And it did feel more structural. I know in your post-match you said you wondered if Kinski could have done a bit better, which I feel was more than harsh. Probably. Rifling it into the top corner.

27:22Jack:I was genuinely asking it in a sense that, like, could he actually? Yeah, yeah. I hadn't really watched it well enough. I think you're right. You'd have thought that when the ball gets pulled back to that Brighton player, you know when sometimes you can see goals happening? I couldn't see that event unfolding because so often or not, towards the end of games when that happens, a player makes a block. But actually there were these kind of quite cavernous gaps, it felt, in our defence. And it was a really good finish as well. but it kind of I left feeling still although I left feeling quite defiant nevertheless because a lot has been said about how poor we've been quite rightly and we haven't won a game for so many days but I think you know that Brighton team felt they were going to probably turn up and do us pretty easily but so it was nice just to see the old Tottenham you know start to show a bit of fight again but then it did have me wondering where you know where has this been all season I have no doubt that some of the players weren't really playing much for Frank now.

28:28I don't know if it was they were confused by his instructions, but you definitely saw more application, I think, and had them over the last few weeks, which has partly led us to the situation where we're in now as well. Maybe there's a bit of complacency there, but it does feel like that it's all a bit chaotic and frantic at the moment. And, you know, that does sort of speak to the constant, the desperation that probably all the players and fans and everyone around the club feel as well I kind of wonder where that energy was a little bit earlier in the season I just you know as I say I

29:00Jack:can't I can't believe it's like even just recording this I'm trying to like stay with the positive stay with the fact that Spurs look like they're improving it look you know we've got a few players coming about we obviously have Madison on the bench that it genuinely seems to be something of like a cheerleader role as opposed to yeah yeah him actually tangibly you know making making a difference for us um and it's just hard it's hard isn't it to to find that and i guess that's that's going to be the job of the manager to to do this right now to to to dust us off and to take us to somewhere like wolves where we've not tasted an awful lot of success but you feel like if we play like we did against brighton we should be able to win right you do but you can guarantee that wolves won't fold like they did against West Ham as well.

29:53Jack:Did you, did you, I know like they've got an outside chance of catching like the European places, but didn't you feel as well a bit like with Brighton at the end there? Piss off. Like this doesn't really mean anything to you. Why are you, why are you lot playing like a pack of rabid dogs chasing after a chop? Do you know what I mean? Like trying to get the ball and score a goal. Like piss off, you know? Just let us win. Yeah, this doesn't concern you. Exactly. Yeah, I know what you mean. The other thing that I'm kind of thinking about a lot at the moment is this desperate desire to see Spurs go down.

30:32I know that a lot of fans would have a similar viewpoint if this was any large team. But, you know, this is a Tottenham podcast, so I'm going to say that they're particularly vitriolic because it's Tottenham. I do remember when we were doing really well under Pochettino and then like Pochettino was then suddenly a Sky Sports darling and Neville was talking about how much he loved Tottenham and all this sort of stuff because we were doing well. So it was almost easier to do that rather than try to criticise us. I don't want to see us ever, if we turn a corner, bow down to those sorts of individuals anymore.

31:08I think that we almost want to be taking names about all those that are kind of showing glee in this instance and saying to the players, you saw how much everybody was desperate for this to happen use it as motivation say as a club we're going to be totally insular and create a total siege mentality you know that there's that sun tzu quote which is like if you sound tony soprano if you um if you if you sit for long enough on the river blank you see the enemy the corpses of your enemies floating by or something like that and i feel like there's element of defiance we need to show and also you know if we're gonna the culture of the club feels broken so how about you know we use this as a way to turn it turn us into something really nasty something that you know teams hate playing against you know let's come with like venom and spite and um you know come back with a sort of a vengeance and just you know all that stuff around like you know when the premier league twitter account posted that thing of vicario and stuff like that i'm like all of that i feel like we should be reigning against it so loudly because what we've got to lose now you know we're going to be out of the top tier they've kind of destroyed the culture this football club so let's just be like you know the enfant terrible of the to use incredibly ostentatious terms it was the first one that stuck into my head um of like of the football league you know and like why not i do wonder if