We at Spurs are never short of drama. Sometimes it’s of our own making, sometimes not, but more often it’s stimulated and exacerbated by the media.
The last 12 months have flown by, as they always seem to. 14 May 2017, the Finale, the tearful heartfelt farewell to the Lane - roll on 12 months and whilst it’s been a pretty hospitable venue in terms of results (13 league wins, four draws and two defeats plus some truly memorable Champions League nights) there were vastly different emotions when the final whistle on Sunday brought the curtain down on season 2017/18.
It’s been a while! My last blog was back in October just after the super draw in Madrid. I talked then about the club and fans enjoying our ride on the maturity journey and about the big five weeks coming up.
It’s a cold Wednesday morning, the sun is still hours away from peeking over the horizon and the dog is keen for an early walk. But I’m watching a second re-run of last night's tactical masterclass at the Bernabeau. A triumph for both an increasingly tactically astute manager and a squad increasing comfortable to show disciplined shape and execution for 90 minutes plus. Or at least that’s how I saw it, and how my Madrid born Real supporting mate who I watched the game with saw it.
I wanted to stroll the streets around where the Lane once stood and take the chance to close the chapter on the old, and get my head around the new, writes our Spurs blogger.
It never ceases to amaze me how quickly the football season passes. So intense and all consuming whilst it is present, and yet we now enter a 12-week abyss filled only with commercial tours to far flung money pots and tedious transfer speculation. Those 12 weeks feel like an age.
I owe Danny Caro and the JC a debt of gratitude. To have been given the opportunity to write this blog, in this season of all seasons, has been a privilege. I now have a very personal chronicle of both a superb season on the pitch and a seminal season off it. My own personal story of the Lane, the finale.
On Friday evening on a packed Jubilee Line tube between Stratford and West Ham I was subjected to sustained and vile antisemitic abuse.
A few weeks ago I suggested that Spurs weren't Spursy anymore. In the weeks that have followed, the team collected league win after league win and then lost an FA Cup semi-final, despite playing well. Old Spurs would surely have then suffered a mental and physical collapse in the aftermath. Dropping points like confetti. But not new Spurs. Not Pochettino's Spurs.
In sport, the hardest steps to take are the final ones, the ones which take you to glory. For Spurs this season there have been so many steps forward, so much promise but, for now, those final steps remain elusive.
Something curious is happening in London N17. True, it's a bit disconcerting. But I'll admit, it's quite enjoyable.
Spurs social media has been a fascinating place over the past eight weeks. The ups and downs of Tottenham's January and February have been the subject of quite bi-polar reactions of both the press (to be expected) and sadly even more extreme on social media - a format not exclusively but predominantly dominated by younger, often less sanguine fans.
One of the challenges of having a job which consistently involves lengthy and often deep consideration of documents is a gradual erosion over my adult life of reading books for pleasure or personal knowledge. Terrible admission, but true.
Football spawns the most curious of superstitions. Left sock before right, right boot before left, shirt put on in the tunnel not the dressing room ... as for the fans, the same parking spot, the lucky pants or in the case of Spurs season 2016/17: a pre-match slug of whiskey and the petting of a bomb sniffing spaniel!
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