The race for the title

[DIEHARD]

The best team has been handicapped by having extra games to contend with whilst their rivals haven't for the last two seasons.

I'll be honest, if you want to be winners we can't use that line as an excuse. Otherwise we may as well not go for CL or anything.

 

[beats1]

The best team has been handicapped by having extra games to contend with whilst their rivals haven't for the last two seasons.

Again if you want to be the best you shouldn't be making those excuses and also we chose to field full strength teams in those competitions, we could have thrown them and played weaker teams in those competitions

If anything, it probably would have made no difference to our performance in europe

 

[glacierSpurs]

Any team going to Stamford Bridge can take heart from Palace that it is not impossible to win there.

 

[hodsgod]

Any team going to Stamford Bridge can take heart from Palace that it is not impossible to win there.

That can be said for every ground in the world. Any team can lose any week, that's the beauty of the game.

 

[ardiles]

I can see them dropping points at Man Utd and Everton, possibly West Brom, depending on what mood Pulis is in. They should win their remaining home games at a canter.

The Palace game showed that there are no 'givens' in any game. It's unlikely that Chelsea will drop many points from now on but it's still possible. It's for them to lose and for us to keep up the pressure.

If we beat them in the semis, it might psychologically affect their players, just like it did our players last season.

Our current form is better than our first half of the season form. Our boys are in the right positive mood.

I'm not giving up the dream just yet until it's mathematically over.

 

[Dundalk_Spur]

Man Utd are gonna have even more fans from London today.

 

[worcestersauce]

Finishing second because we didn't win all of the last fourteen games of the season is not Spursy, qualifying for Champions league and having it taken away from you by Chelsea winning it that season and UEFA changing the rules the next season so it will never happen to anyone else is Spursy.
Winning is the new Spursy, just win our games and see what happens.

 

[Riandor]

Again if you want to be the best you shouldn't be making those excuses and also we chose to field full strength teams in those competitions, we could have thrown them and played weaker teams in those competitions

If anything, it probably would have made no difference to our performance in europe

That is true...
But it is also true that the past few seasons have been a bit of an oddity, whereby big teams have dropped out of European qualification altogether and then come back the following season as title contenders (excluding Leicester obviously).

In the past, the top four all had a monopoly at the top and were all involved in Europe equally, with the rest of us doing our best to shuffle into the other positions.

 

[Dov67]

its probably been mentioned in a previous page but the Mail did the table from August 2015 to now - circa 70 games and we were 11 points ahead. Easily the most consistent team over the two seasons - shame no big trophy to show for it

when you think about it, (assuming Chelsea do win it this year), we have missed out on the title for the last two season due to two freak occurrences - firstly Leicester (WTF!!!!), and secondly Chelsea going on a 13 game winning run straight after being stuffed by the goons of all teams.

clubs who haven't won the league for a long time often have a couple of close run challenges before finally getting over the line - we would have had two (again assuming Chelsea win this year) - keep this team together, a couple of smart non-sisoko type buys and get over the wembley thing next year and who knows.

never thought i'd see a title thread on SC never mind two, two seasons running. This team seems to have some balls - been a long long time since any of us could say that. COYS!!!

 

[thelak]

its probably been mentioned in a previous page but the Mail did the table from August 2015 to now - circa 70 games and we were 11 points ahead. Easily the most consistent team over the two seasons - shame no big trophy to show for it

when you think about it, (assuming Chelsea do win it this year), we have missed out on the title for the last two season due to two freak occurrences - firstly Leicester (WTF!!!!), and secondly Chelsea going on a 13 game winning run straight after being stuffed by the goons of all teams.

clubs who haven't won the league for a long time often have a couple of close run challenges before finally getting over the line - we would have had two (again assuming Chelsea win this year) - keep this team together, a couple of smart non-sisoko type buys and get over the wembley thing next year and who knows.

never thought i'd see a title thread on SC never mind two, two seasons running. This team seems to have some balls - been a long long time since any of us could say that. COYS!!!

Leicester a freak yes but Chelsea going on a good run is exactly that a good run. Can't really knock a team for winning lots of games. Especially as we will need to do the same to win the league

 

[Dov67]

Leicester a freak yes but Chelsea going on a good run is exactly that a good run. Can't really knock a team for winning lots of games. Especially as we will need to do the same to win the league

agreed and wasn't knocking them - its just pretty rare for any team to win 13 on the trot. Even the great UTD and Liverpool team didnt manage that often.

 

[scat1620]

I'm not on board with the people saying that we were the best side in the league last season despite Leicester winning it, and similarly I won't think we're the best side this season unless we overtake Chelsea and win the thing (and if we did that, then I'd absolutely come over to the We're The Best Side In The League camp, because we actually would be).

I get that extra games for European football etc haven't helped us vs Leicester last season or vs Chelsea this season, but I don't really care too much about that: for me, the best side in the League is the one that gets the most points during the course of the season, and the discussion ends there for me. If Chelsea do indeed hold us off this season then they'll have deserved it for winning all those games earlier in the season when we weren't doing the same, and (other than the fact that they are Chelsea and therefore inherently dislikeable) you couldn't begrudge them from finishing above us if they simply ground out better results during the campaign as a whole.

I still hope that we do manage to overtake them (albeit my head says that we'll come up a little short) and would love it if we did, but even if we don't this has still been a far better season than I could have hoped for in August and I'm delighted with how we're doing regardless. But we won't be the best side in the league if we don't finish in 1st place this season, just like we weren't the best side in the league last season. League position trumps all, and even if we're not the best this season or next we still have so much to be happy about.

 

[thelak]

I'm not on board with the people saying that we were the best side in the league last season despite Leicester winning it, and similarly I won't think we're the best side this season unless we overtake Chelsea and win the thing (and if we did that, then I'd absolutely come over to the We're The Best Side In The League camp, because we actually would be).

I get that extra games for European football etc haven't helped us vs Leicester last season or vs Chelsea this season, but I don't really care too much about that: for me, the best side in the League is the one that gets the most points during the course of the season, and the discussion ends there for me. If Chelsea do indeed hold us off this season then they'll have deserved it for winning all those games earlier in the season when we weren't doing the same, and (other than the fact that they are Chelsea and therefore inherently dislikeable) you couldn't begrudge them from finishing above us if they simply ground out better results during the campaign as a whole.

I still hope that we do manage to overtake them (albeit my head says that we'll come up a little short) and would love it if we did, but even if we don't this has still been a far better season than I could have hoped for in August and I'm delighted with how we're doing regardless. But we won't be the best side in the league if we don't finish in 1st place this season, just like we weren't the best side in the league last season. League position trumps all, and even if we're not the best this season or next we still have so much to be happy about.

I agree with this season that being the case but last season teams were clearly rolling over for Leicester in a way that wasn't the case for us , opposition managers and players coming and saying they would like them to win the week before playing then and the scheduling was massively stacked in their favour last few weeks of the season

This season the playing field seems much more even

 

[Shadydan]

I'm not on board with the people saying that we were the best side in the league last season despite Leicester winning it, and similarly I won't think we're the best side this season unless we overtake Chelsea and win the thing (and if we did that, then I'd absolutely come over to the We're The Best Side In The League camp, because we actually would be).

I get that extra games for European football etc haven't helped us vs Leicester last season or vs Chelsea this season, but I don't really care too much about that: for me, the best side in the League is the one that gets the most points during the course of the season, and the discussion ends there for me. If Chelsea do indeed hold us off this season then they'll have deserved it for winning all those games earlier in the season when we weren't doing the same, and (other than the fact that they are Chelsea and therefore inherently dislikeable) you couldn't begrudge them from finishing above us if they simply ground out better results during the campaign as a whole.

I still hope that we do manage to overtake them (albeit my head says that we'll come up a little short) and would love it if we did, but even if we don't this has still been a far better season than I could have hoped for in August and I'm delighted with how we're doing regardless. But we won't be the best side in the league if we don't finish in 1st place this season, just like we weren't the best side in the league last season. League position trumps all, and even if we're not the best this season or next we still have so much to be happy about.

I'd normally agree and I'd say that we weren't the best side in the league last season, Leicester were. But this season Chelsea are leading on the basis of two things: lack of European football which meant they can focus on the league and rest players and lack of inuries compared to ours. We are a better team them them, we've scored more goals and we've conceded less. The period that messed us up was in November when two of our best players went down which is the equivalent of Luiz and Hazard being out for a prolonged period, if that happened they wouldn't be top, in fact if they had Euro footy and suffered the same amount of injures as us I'm pretty sure we would have been ahead of them. In fact if you look at who's been out this season, Kane, Lamela, Alderweireld, Rose, Vertonghen who all suffered freak injuries and were out for 4 weeks or more we've had utterley horrendous luck.

Anyway it doesn't really mean much in all honesty and it doesn't really matter to me and the team who finish top deserves to win the league but in my honest opinion we were better this season and I think we'll beat them next week.

 

[scat1620]

I agree with this season that being the case but last season teams were clearly rolling over for Leicester in a way that wasn't the case for us , opposition managers and players coming and saying they would like them to win the week before playing then and the scheduling was massively stacked in their favour last few weeks of the season

This season the playing field seems much more even

We weren't even the 2nd best side last season, that was Arsenal (as much as it pains me to say it... and it hurts like a motherfucker). The season is over 38 games, not 34, and both of those sides were better at picking up points than us last year: that's the cold reality of the situation, and anyone claiming any kind of 'moral' victory last year (should stress that I'm not saying you are with your post above, @thelak) is kind of in RAWK-y territory for me.

 

[Pellshek]

I notice that Pep in his post-match interview yesterday said the top 2 CL places are done, so it's 4 teams chasing the remaining 2 spots. Didn't sound like mind games, more a statement of reality as he sees it.

 

[spursfan77]

So that's it, no more "bankers" left for the season. Every game now represents a serious challenge for the points, whether coming up against rivals desperate to spoil our party in Arsenal/West Ham, Mourinho and his draw specialists, in form Palace and Leicester sides, or even Silva's unbeaten home record at Hull whereby they may need the points on the final day to stay up. Every game now gives cause for concern. On current form, teams should be more scared of us than we are of them, but even the best teams drop points somewhere and it's hard to see us getting the whole way to the end of the season without any slip ups now.

However, the difference between this Spurs team and teams of the past is that, whilst we know there are some tough games coming up soon, we made damn sure we got the three points in the easy games. Think of the best Tottenham sides of the past 50 years, featuring Chivers, Peters, Hoddle, Waddle, Lineker, Gascoigne, Klinsmann, Berbatov, Modric, Bale....none of them ever won seven games on the spin. That's a pretty shocking statistic to be honest - even Everton managed seven wins in a row under Roberto Martinez, but too often we've seen Spurs sides over the years who didn't appreciate that you get the same number of points for beating someone crap at home as you do for beating a big team away - this year we're not seeing any such complacency and are ruthlessly ripping the weaker teams to shreds.

Not even in the 86/87 season?

 

[Neon_Knight_]

I think a win for Chelsea today would be all but the end of our title hopes. It's not just the three points but the psychological boost that beating their toughest remaining opponents will give them. If we also then lost to them in the FA Cup SF, it would be a real test of our metal resolve.

It might not come to that, but even if it does, I have confidence that we'll maintain our current fantastic league form until it is mathematically impossible to catch Chelsea.

Whatever happens from this point onwards, we have already enjoyed a very positive season:
We've just won seven games in a row (our best run in PL era), the last two of which were very convincing 4-0 wins. We're one point off our PL record (72) with six games left to play and look like achieving for our highest ever PL finish. We're also in the FA Cup semi-final, for the first time in five years.

 

[Lilbaz]

Think we should wait till the end of the season before patting ourselves on the back and saying how good we are. Lots of work to do yet.

That said we are looking good.

 

[THFCSPURS19]

Can see Liverpool and City winning all their remaining games TBH (although City still have the Manchester Derby).