This was a season when Spurs lost Gareth Bale, but used the world record transfer fee to bring in seven new players and then changed manager midway through to produce a disjointed campaign, with some good sequences of results, splattered with big defeats by the top four clubs under both Andre Villas-Boas and Tim Sherwood.

Bringing in Paulinho, Roberto Soldado and Erik Lamela for ever increasing club record transfer fees, they were joined by Nacer Chadli, Christian Eriksen, Etienne Capoue and

While the season started in decent form, with a run of four straight wins without conceding a goal, only to be halted by a 0-1 reverse at Arsenal, the next four games saw Tottenham run up four more wins without a goal going in their net until Chelsea stopped that run with a 1-1 draw at the Lane.

The team were not exactly the most free-flowing at the start of the season under AVB, but they were tight at the back and were winning matches, especially away from home, where Spurs had been weak so often in the past. Soldado was not hitting the net with the frequency Spurs had expected and his scoring was limited to penalties. Capoue was injured in the match against Arsenal and was out with an ankle injury for months. Erik Lamela’s introduction to the team was hampered by injury and Andros Townsend hitting a rich vein of form.

And then Spurs lost 0-3 at home to West Ham in the Premier League. This perhaps marked the watershed for Andre Villas-Boas. Spurs fans had become accustomed to beating the Irons, but this was a bolt from the blue and there was little credit in Tottenham’s performance in defeat.  Three clean sheet wins followed and a penalty shoot-out marathon win over Hull City in the League Cup, preceded a 0-0 away at Everton and qualification out of the group in the Europa League before another set-back in the shape of a 0-1 defeat by Newcastle United at home, despite Tim Krul having the game of his life and Spurs having a huge number of shots on target, with Newcastle scoring with one of their rare efforts on goal.

Such defeats suddenly became magnified by the expectation that had built at the beginning of the campaign. But what happened next did not help. A 0-6 defeat at Manchester City, including a goal after 14 seconds, was hard to take. Spurs were in it and even had a shot kicked off the line, as the team responded well. However, a second City goal in the 34th minute set the tone for a collapse that saw four more goals hit the Spurs net, but without response.

But a win in Tromso in the cold of the Arctic Circle was followed by a home draw with Manchester United, two 2-1 away wins at Fulham and Sunderland, showing the grit the team had developed and a 4-1 home win over Anzhi Makhachkala confirmed Spurs as group winners with a 100% record.

Liverpool arrived at White Hart Lane with a good record this season, with them going two goals up, but with Tottenham having lost Sandro to injury before coming back into the game, referee Jon Moss sent Paulinho off for a contact with Luis Suarez’s shoulder when stretching for the ball and not realising the Liverpool man was there. A squeal and slump by Suarez and the red card was out and any hope Spurs had of getting anything from the match evaporated. The team let their heads drop, ending in a 0-5 defeat and losing their manager, as Daniel Levy brought the Portuguese Head Coach’s reign to an end.

It was a strange decision, with the season approaching half way and Christmas coming, so the chances of getting a replacement worthy of the name were not high. The appointment of Tim Sherwood, the club’s Development manager, on an eighteen month contract was an odd one to say the least. But the bringing through of someone at the club was commendable.
The first match under Sherwood saw Spurs lose 1-2 in the League Cup at home, but he got the benefit of the doubt in taking control for the first time. His second was more successful, with Tottenham coming back from 0-1 down at Southampton to win 3-2, in an attacking style that Tim claimed would be his trademark.

The restoration of Emmanuel Adebayor to the first team, after an exile under AVB, was one strong claim by Sherwood as to his man-management skills being suitable for the job. Getting goals from Adebayor, when the service to Soldado wasn’t forthcoming, produced a run of results over Christmas to mid-January, including a 2-1 win over Manchester United at Old Trafford, but also had a 0-1 FA Cup Third Round defeat thrown in at Arsenal.

Then came the end of the honeymoon, with Manchester City thrashing Spurs 1-5 at the Lane, with Danny Rose sent off at 0-1 down. A draw at Hull proved a little fortunate, but wins over Everton and Newcastle without conceding steadied the ship before to goal-less games against Dnipro Dnipetrovsk and Norwich City. Going a goal down in the second leg against Dnipro did not please Spurs fans, but a come-back 3-1 win saw them through on aggregate, but the cracks were showing. Another game after a Europa week ended with Tottenham losing 0-4 at Chelsea, with another sending off (this time Kaboul) and another red card later rescinded. However, the defeat was self-inflicted with mistakes leading to all four goals.

Benfica’s 1-3 win at the Lane showed that the Spurs team were a long way behind their opponents, so, following this Europa League match, Tottenham lost 0-1 at home to Arsenal to a first minute strike and then fought back in Lisbon, but could not do enough to go through.

A last minute 3-2 win over Southampton at home after being 0-2 down (again), only papered over the cracks, as Spurs once more capitulated to a top four side in going down 0-4 at Anfield against Liverpool, with an insipid performance. But injuries had hit the side now, with Vertonghen limping off in the first half and Soldado being carried off at the end.
Bouncing back with a 5-1 home victory over bottom of the pile Sunderland, who looked like Championship material at that point, it looked as though Spurs still harboured a hope of challenging for the top four, but realistically, they had to win all their remaining games and hope others slipped up. Only it was Spurs who slipped up with a 0-3 score-line against them at West Bromwich Albion before hauling a point out of the match with a last minute Eriksen goal. Christian’s late season form was one high point for Tottenham supporters in a campaign of too many disappointments.

Tottenham’s run-in towards the end of the season was fairly straight-forward, but wins over Fulham and Stoke City were undone by yet another sending off (Kaboul for good this time) and another defeat by West Ham United to end any hope of Champions League and only a faint hope of Europa League, with Manchester United below them but not having played as many games. However, the opportunity to take advantage of United’s annus horribilis was missed, but Tottenham did deprive the Salford Reds of European football with a last day win over Aston Villa, who were poor allowing Sherwood to sign off with a victory to maintain his claim as the most successful Spurs manager ever (if you believe the stats).

But the stats don’t tell the whole story and that has been covered elsewhere, with Sherwood being removed from his post just two days after the end of the season.

A season of transition in more ways than one was of no novelty to Tottenham fans, but having lost their star performer in the summer, the replacements failed to sparkle for one reason or another. Eriksen and Paulinho to a degree did show they have something to offer, while the Head Coach at the start of the season gained results with clean sheets and the Head Coach at the end of the season without. The way they went about their tasks was very different, but they achieved the same in the end.

Only Daniel Levy will be able to change the course of last eleven years and hopefully set us on a journey to more consistent success, but the art of patience might be well applied in trying to achieve that goal.
 

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Premier Under-18 League Group -
Finished : -th