Analysis of previous top 4 races - how we have historically failed to take advantage of good opportunities

[BorjeSpurs]

One of Tottenham's biggest aims over the last 15 years or so has been to qualify for the Champions League. We have succeeded with this task 5 times in total, once with Redknapp and four times in a row with Pochettino. While these seasons have been largely successful, it's only really in 2009/2010 where we have 'won' a top 4 race. The other times we were comfortably a top 4 team and were in a title race (15/16 and 16/17) or we lucked out due to the failure of others like 18/19 where we finished 4th despite only winning 3 of our last 12 games.

We know that our record in semi-finals and finals is bad, but the number of times we've been unable to capitalise on a good league position is exceptionally poor. I've highlighed 8 seasons below where we have had a good position towards the latter end of the season, and where we've failed to accomplish our goal 7 out of 8 times (2009/2010 being the exception). In all but one we are fighting it out for a CL spot, and the outlier is the Leicester season where we went for the title. In these seasons, I've taken a snapshot of a promising league position where we've failed to sustain our good performances throughout the season.

This thread isn't trying to doom and gloom or to highlight the boring Spursy narrative, but more a realisation that we have rarely been able to deliver come the business end of the season and that this stretches across many managers and player squads.

2005/2006 (Missed out on CL)
- Spurs beat Blackburn 3-2 on 5th of March 2006 (Keane solo goal from a throw-in) which gives us a 5 point lead ahead of Arsenal with 10 games to go of the season.

- Spurs lead in the last NLD at Highbury, but Henry equalishes in the 84th minute which keeps Arsenal in the race for 4th.
- Spurs have it in their own hands on the final day but Lasagna gate happens at Upton Park and we miss out on a CL spot.

2009/2010 (Successfully qualified to CL)
- Spurs lose against Sunderland away 3-1 on the 3rd of April 2010, which leaves us within 1 point of 4th placed Man City with 6 games left in the season.

- Spurs suprisingly turns up when it matters and beats Arsenal and Chelsea 2-1 at home, before clinching a CL place for the first time with a 0-1 win away at the Etihad.

2010/2011 (Missed out on CL)
- Spurs win against Sunderland away 1-2 after a Kranjcar winner on the 12 of February 2011, which gives us a 3 point lead ahead of Chelsea in 5th place.

- Spurs go on a really bad run at the end of the season (3W, 6D, 3L) and finishes 5th with 6 points up to 4th place.

2011/2012 (Missed out on CL football)
- Spurs beat Newcastle at home 5-0 on the 11th of February 2012 with Saha scoring his first two goals for the club. This gives us a 10 point lead ahead of Arsenal and Chelsea.

- In the next game Spurs lead at the Emirates 0-2 before losing 5-2 changing the lead from a potential 13 to 7 points.
- The Arsenal loss is the beginning of a terrible run (1W, 3D, 5L) which eventually sees Spurs dropping to 4th place and we miss out on CL due to Chelsea winning the final in Munchen.

2012/2013 (Missed out on CL)
- Spurs beat Arsenal 2-1 in the NLD at WHL on the 3rd of March 2013 after goals from Bale and Lennon. This gives us a 7 point advantage versus Arsenal going in to the final 10 games of the season.

- Spurs final run gives them (5W, 3D, 2L) and we lose out to Arsenal by one point after they go on a brilliant run (8W, 2D, 0L).

2013/2014 (Missed out on CL)
- Spurs beat Newcastle 0-4 with an Adebayor brace on the 12th of February 2014, which moves us within 3 points of 4th placed Liverpool.

- Spurs go on a bad run to finish the season (6W, 1D, 5L) which leaves us 6th in the table, 10 points away from the 4th spot.

2014/2015 (Missed out on CL)
- Spurs beat Arsenal in the NLD 2-1 on the 7th of February 2015 thanks to a Harry Kane brace which takes them above their local rivals and on the same points as United in 4th.

- Spurs end the last 14 games of the season with (6W, 3D, 5L) and they finish 5th with 6 points up to United who take the 4th spot.

2015/2016 (Missed out on PL title)
- Spurs beat Swansea 2-1 on the 28th of February 2016 and are title contenders, being only 2 points from league leaders Leicester with 11 games to play.

- Spurs lose away to West Ham 1-0 and draw to Arsenal 2-2 at home which starts an awful end to the season (4W, 4D, 3L). We finish with 11 points up to Leceister in 1st and 4 points down to United in 4th.

 

[fishhhandaricecake]

One of Tottenham's biggest aims over the last 15 years or so has been to qualify for the Champions League. We have succeeded with this task 5 times in total, once with Redknapp and four times in a row with Pochettino. While these seasons have been largely successful, it's only really in 2009/2010 where we have 'won' a top 4 race. The other times we were comfortably a top 4 team and were in a title race (15/16 and 16/17) or we lucked out due to the failure of others like 18/19 where we finished 4th despite only winning 3 of our last 12 games.

We know that our record in semi-finals and finals is bad, but the number of times we've been unable to capitalise on a good league position is exceptionally poor. I've highlighed 8 seasons below where we have had a good position towards the latter end of the season, and where we've failed to accomplish our goal 7 out of 8 times (2009/2010 being the exception). In all but one we are fighting it out for a CL spot, and the outlier is the Leicester season where we went for the title. In these seasons, I've taken a snapshot of a promising league position where we've failed to sustain our good performances throughout the season.

This thread isn't trying to doom and gloom or to highlight the boring Spursy narrative, but more a realisation that we have rarely been able to deliver come the business end of the season and that this stretches across many managers and player squads.

2005/2006 (Missed out on CL)
- Spurs beat Blackburn 3-2 on 5th of March 2006 (Keane solo goal from a throw-in) which gives us a 5 point lead ahead of Arsenal with 10 games to go of the season.
View attachment 109861
- Spurs lead in the last NLD at Highbury, but Henry equalishes in the 84th minute which keeps Arsenal in the race for 4th.
- Spurs have it in their own hands on the final day but Lasagna gate happens at Upton Park and we miss out on a CL spot.

2009/2010 (Successfully qualified to CL)
- Spurs lose against Sunderland away 3-1 on the 3rd of April 2010, which leaves us within 1 point of 4th placed Man City with 6 games left in the season.
View attachment 109864
- Spurs suprisingly turns up when it matters and beats Arsenal and Chelsea 2-1 at home, before clinching a CL place for the first time with a 0-1 win away at the Etihad.

2010/2011 (Missed out on CL)
- Spurs win against Sunderland away 1-2 after a Kranjcar winner on the 12 of February 2011, which gives us a 3 point lead ahead of Chelsea in 5th place.
View attachment 109865
- Spurs go on a really bad run at the end of the season (3W, 6D, 3L) and finishes 5th with 6 points up to 4th place.

2011/2012 (Missed out on CL football)
- Spurs beat Newcastle at home 5-0 on the 11th of February 2012 with Saha scoring his first two goals for the club. This gives us a 10 point lead ahead of Arsenal and Chelsea.
View attachment 109867
- In the next game Spurs lead at the Emirates 0-2 before losing 5-2 changing the lead from a potential 13 to 7 points.
- The Arsenal loss is the beginning of a terrible run (1W, 3D, 5L) which eventually sees Spurs dropping to 4th place and we miss out on CL due to Chelsea winning the final in Munchen.

2012/2013 (Missed out on CL)
- Spurs beat Arsenal 2-1 in the NLD at WHL on the 3rd of March 2013 after goals from Bale and Lennon. This gives us a 7 point advantage versus Arsenal going in to the final 10 games of the season.
View attachment 109868
- Spurs final run gives them (5W, 3D, 2L) and we lose out to Arsenal by one point after they go on a brilliant run (8W, 2D, 0L).

2013/2014 (Missed out on CL)
- Spurs beat Newcastle 0-4 with an Adebayor brace on the 12th of February 2014, which moves us within 3 points of 4th placed Liverpool.
View attachment 109870
- Spurs go on a bad run to finish the season (6W, 1D, 5L) which leaves us 6th in the table, 10 points away from the 4th spot.

2014/2015 (Missed out on CL)
- Spurs beat Arsenal in the NLD 2-1 on the 7th of February 2015 thanks to a Harry Kane brace which takes them above their local rivals and on the same points as United in 4th.
View attachment 109871
- Spurs end the last 14 games of the season with (6W, 3D, 5L) and they finish 5th with 6 points up to United who take the 4th spot.

2015/2016 (Missed out on PL title)
- Spurs beat Swansea 2-1 on the 28th of February 2016 and are title contenders, being only 2 points from league leaders Leicester with 11 games to play.
View attachment 109885
- Spurs lose away to West Ham 1-0 and draw to Arsenal 2-2 at home which starts an awful end to the season (4W, 4D, 3L). We finish with 11 points up to Leceister in 1st and 4 points down to United in 4th.

Great analysis, we’ve also made top 4 emphatically with the crouch goal at the etihad under redknapp having also beaten arsenal and Chelsea on a run of games before that I believe.

Top4 has traditionally been an overachievement for our squad most years so makes sense if over the course of a season more often than not we miss out.

This season it was hiring Nuno that fucked us, we’ve been playing catch up ever since.

What will be will be now.

 

[Strikeb4ck]

This is titled like a research paper or something. Thought I was on PubMed for second.

 

[DenverSpur]

It doesn’t matter if you want to call it Spursy or not. The fact remains when the pressure’s on; when a prize is in sight we fold. As I’ve mentioned before it doesn’t matter who the players are or who the manager is. If you look at the makeup of the teams we’ve had over the last 40 years it’s scandalous how few trophies we’ve won. It’s like there’s some curse on the club.

 

[dontcallme]

It doesn’t matter if you want to call it Spursy or not. The fact remains when the pressure’s on; when a prize is in sight we fold. As I’ve mentioned before it doesn’t matter who the players are or who the manager is. If you look at the makeup of the teams we’ve had over the last 40 years it’s scandalous how few trophies we’ve won. It’s like there’s some curse on the club.

Maybe we’re often just not good enough.

 

[KirstyG]

This was all a bit depressing

 

[whitesocks]

2009/10 is the season to cherish. We had a series of difficult high profile games we had no chance of winning, but won the lot. We broke through the wall with these results, and were rightly considered a genuine top4 contender from that point.
Even today, no-one is writing that this is a challenge by an underdog - us being back in the CL would be restoring the natural order. It is where we belong.
But we have to prove this tonight. Get this right and the next few seasons could be very very bright.

 

[GetKaned]

When we had that horrendous end to 15/16, I genuinely thought we would win the league in 5 years. It just felt like a team of young people who just didn't know how to "win". And we only need to sign some... sigh.."winners"

 

[DogsOfWar]

Maybe we’re often just not good enough.

This is the real reason. We were beaten to 4th by teams such as Utd, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool etc who were all stronger than us at the time.
Our final losses are always to the likes of Liverpool, Utd, Chelsea etc, so exactly the same, our team wasn't good enough.

Just as Everton's last final was a loss to Chelsea, Villa to City, or West Ham's a loss to Liverpool.

 

[Neon_Knight_]

2009/10 is the season to cherish. We had a series of difficult high profile games we had no chance of winning, but won the lot. We broke through the wall with these results, and were rightly considered a genuine top4 contender from that point.
Even today, no-one is writing that this is a challenge by an underdog - us being back in the CL would be restoring the natural order. It is where we belong.
But we have to prove this tonight. Get this right and the next few seasons could be very very bright.

Most pundits continued to predict us finishing 5th-7th, while expecting Arsenal / Liverpool / Man Utd to all improve and finish above us (following failure to qualify for CL), for no logical reason.

It was interesting to hear one of the commentators last night referring to 5th as an "over-achievement" for Arsenal. ?

 

[mil1lion]

It depends on the end goal. Top 4 has always been our highest goal before the season and we got good at it under Poch and finished top 4 twice under Redknapp. In our 2nd season under Poch we missed out on the title but had never expected a title push. We already secured CL qualification which was the best we expected at the start of the season. That ambition changed when there was small chance of a title push. We drew at Chelsea to miss out and the players were down after that and found themselves in a similar position to Chelsea this season (comfortable in the top 4 but no chance of the title). We then got 2nd the following season by 8 points. Even when we finished 4th 2 years later we still got over the line despite the CL final in our minds. When it comes to CL qualification we've been a lot better at getting over the line. It's also different being chased than chasing down particularly the longer the chase goes. On this occasion we've chased down 4th and got that spot with 1 game to go. I think we'll see it through again.

 

[mil1lion]

It doesn’t matter if you want to call it Spursy or not. The fact remains when the pressure’s on; when a prize is in sight we fold. As I’ve mentioned before it doesn’t matter who the players are or who the manager is. If you look at the makeup of the teams we’ve had over the last 40 years it’s scandalous how few trophies we’ve won. It’s like there’s some curse on the club.

This word Spursy is way overused. I mean many teams fall short not only us. At the moment there's really 3 teams that regularly win titles (City, Liverpool and Chelsea). I don't understand why there's so much made when we miss out. I'm sure there are plenty of teams more 'spursy' than us. I think its just a word that sounds natural and it doesn't work for other teams. Are West Ham spursy because they missed out on their best chance of top 4 last season? Or when they lost in SF of the europa league? Are arsenal spursy because they missed out on Europe altogether last season and will they be if they miss 4th? Are Fulham spursy because everytime they come up they go back down again?

There's a lot of teams who haven't won anything and had nowhere near the success we've had this last 20 years. We've consistently competed at the top level and qualified for Europe year on year. We've had success and we've performed under pressure so no we don't always fuck it up. We literally just beat arsenal in a high pressure situation and won 3-0. We just haven't won titles for a long time but that isn't the be all end all in football. Not many teams have won titles since we last won one either. I just think people conveniently ignore when we don't fuck up and like to bring it up when we do.

 

[fishhhandaricecake]

This word Spursy is way overused. I mean many teams fall short not only us. At the moment there's really 3 teams that regularly win titles (City, Liverpool and Chelsea). I don't understand why there's so much made when we miss out. I'm sure there are plenty of teams more 'spursy' than us. I think its just a word that sounds natural and it doesn't work for other teams. Are West Ham spursy because they missed out on their best chance of top 4 last season? Or when they lost in SF of the europa league? Are arsenal spursy because they missed out on Europe altogether last season and will they be if they miss 4th? Are Fulham spursy because everytime they come up they go back down again?

There's a lot of teams who haven't won anything and had nowhere near the success we've had this last 20 years. We've consistently competed at the top level and qualified for Europe year on year. We've had success and we've performed under pressure so no we don't always fuck it up. We literally just beat arsenal in a high pressure situation and won 3-0. We just haven't won titles for a long time but that isn't the be all end all in football. Not many teams have won titles since we last won one either. I just think people conveniently ignore when we don't fuck up and like to bring it up when we do.

Great post. Also for the majority of those seasons our budget financially and our squad was no where near as good and deep as the other 4-5 teams around us so it’s not really they we bottle it or are spursy more that until very recently we’ve just been punching above our weight and can’t sustain it for a whole season, that is changing now with conte and current squad he is building.

 

[Phil_2.0]

Spurs aren't some mega losers like other fans like to claim but we do have a problem showing up and getting over the winning line in the biggest moments.

It's not in our DNA as that would mean it's systemic but the fans are so desperate for cups their anxiety transmits. We've all been in the stadium millions of times and every game there's a moment where the fans get on the team's back unless we go up a couple of goals early. I remember last season during the Arsenal home game Sanchez played one backwards pass and the South Stand went nuclear, was in the first 20 minutes of the game. It was an amazing atmosphere in the end that game but we were bailed out by Arsenal shitting the bed. Arsenal played that game all wrong, should have been calm and sat back and frustrated us, not gone toe for toe because it could have got toxic in that stadium.

I am aware our home record right now is great and it has been great in the past, the unbeaten year under Poch. When we have a team that's on the bubble and struggling for confidence I don't think they get much help from the fans.

It's a self-perpetuating cycle of being overly desperate for success leads to anxiety-ridden performances and/or over playing and not playing your natural game. If we win something big or pick up a few cups the squad and club will settle down and we will probably get more success.

I look at the outsiders in this team, Bentancur, Kulusevski, Romero, Perisic etc. players that have joined recently and have won things or are young, they play with calm confidence and a general level of freedom. Lloris, Dier, Davies, Kane, Son, Sanchez all have scars of past traumas in a Spurs shirt and understand the history of the club. They can get very tense in big moments.

These players need Conte, they need to have his robust low block to be able to rely on and have their movements exactly mapped out for them, so when under pressure it's automatic. Even still that's not enough, you see chaos sometimes as we saw at Arsenal.

Over the last 3-4 years I've often felt we are a much better team when we are a goal down. It frees our player's minds to know they have to play, take risks and not worry about mistakes. We had that farce under Mourinho where we'd get a lead and try to hold it forever. Mourinho even said 'I am not telling these players to not attack.' I believed him. Mourinho likes to allow his players freedom to motivate themselves. He wants structure tactically but it relies on the players being confident and strong mentally. We have players that cannot function in this way, I believe there is a culture of hard work in this Spurs dressing room but we're lacking the mental fortitude and confidence winners as a squad and club to get it done. Was a bad fit for Spurs. With Conte it's different because hes got the players fitter than they were under Mourinho and hes coaching every single movement on that pitch so the players don't have to think.

We are capable of some amazing comebacks. I think it's down to what I said above, when we are down we just play with pure freedom and the football zips around, when we are up we are edgy. Theres a reason why the Leicester and Man City results happened last season.

I am optimistic for the future. Conte is the perfect man for this team and the club in so many ways, will force the hierarchy to invest or he walks. The fans believe in him because they know he's a winner. He will make things automatic so all our old long term players don't have to think too much on the pitch. We are going to be fitter than ever because the main positive about the Spurs squad is they are all willing workers. It's what happens when you have so many leaders who lead by example. We don't have independent thinkers. We have good boys who are willing to take on instruction. Conte's issue came at Chelsea with players like Costa or Hazard who are free spirits and downed tools on him. Other things happened in that club ofc but it can be traced back to the Costa falling out.

We are going to hit at least 85 points with Conte as our manager one season if he stays, I have no doubt, he's never not hit that target. It's just whether its enough to finish 1st when we do hit that number.

 

[mickdale]

Yes football was invented by sky in 1992

Up until 1987 we had never lost a cup final

you write the year we went for the league - don’t all clubs do that every year?

 

[arnoldlayne]

Yes football was invented by sky in 1992

Up until 1987 we had never lost a cup final

you write the year we went for the league - don’t all clubs do that every year?

We lost UEFA Cup in 1974 and League Cup in 1982

 

[mickdale]

We lost UEFA Cup in 1974 and League Cup in 1982

Sorry I am obsessed with the FA cup

yes my bad