There was a distinct feeling in the air at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Wednesday night. Something that had been lacking for the past year or so, maybe even for most of Ange Postecoglou’s reign. But the crowd felt it and fed it. The players felt it and channelled it. It was both the fuel and the flames of one of Spurs’ best wins of the season so far. You could even give it a name: big game energy.
Spurs had won five home games before this one and at times played very well. But Everton and West Ham United were so poor when they came to Tottenham it did not feel much of a contest. Brentford, Qarabag and AZ Alkmaar were professionally dispatched. But Wednesday was different. You could see it at the end when the fans celebrated the final whistle and the exhausted Spurs players fell to the ground.
The reward for winning this is another home game seven weeks from now, against a Manchester United side who might be a very different prospect under their new manager. The hope for Spurs is that the players and fans can summon up the same energy, the same force that they did this week. Win that and Tottenham will be in the Carabao Cup semi-finals, their first semi in three years.
Before then there are seven more Premier League games, as well as three more in the Europa League. This starts with Aston Villa coming to Tottenham this Sunday. This will be billed as a gigantic game, a crunch clash, the chance for Spurs to get one over on the team who pipped them to Champions League qualification last season. For Villa, it will be an opportunity to avenge their 4-0 defeat to Spurs in March, which at the time looked like it marked Spurs’ supremacy in the race for fourth. (In fact, Spurs took 13 points from their last 11 games and Villa strolled over the line in front of them.)
But maybe this is wrong. Maybe no league game in early November can ever be as important, tense or momentous as a last-16 cup tie against Manchester City. Maybe the obsession with their Premier League finishing position has gone too far if it means seeing Wednesday as a warm-up or springboard for Sunday.
For all the talk of Postecoglou changing the mentality at Tottenham, this debate, this tension, is far bigger than the manager himself. It has been here for much longer than he has. It will survive long after he has left. It is a question as old as time: should Tottenham try to win a cup? Or should they try to finish as high as possible in the league?
Spurs celebrate their second goal in a 2-1 win over Man City (Stephanie Meek/Getty Images)
People can disagree on this in good faith. There are merits to both positions. Fans are allowed to change their minds. There was certainly a time, under Mauricio Pochettino, when it felt like establishing Tottenham as a regular Champions League contender was the right thing to do. (You could call it the ‘Top Four’s Our Everything’ era.) Pochettino upset some fans when he said that winning domestic cups “only builds your ego”, rather than helping the club, especially given he said that immediately after cup exits to Crystal Palace and Chelsea. But he said that from a position of strength after three consecutive top-three finishes. He could point to the example of his own work.
That was almost six years ago now, most of which Spurs have played in one of the best new stadiums in the world. That has done a lot for their global status, their cachet and their revenues. But not a lot for their trophy cabinet. In fact, it almost feels as if the clock has ticked louder in their new home, now almost 17 years on from the 2008 League Cup win. How can a team who plays in a stadium like this never win anything? Fans who pay so much for their tickets want a reward, a day out at Wembley (or Bilbao next May) that they will remember forever.
This has not felt like a winning argument in the past few years. Remember that the last time Spurs were in a final, the 2021 League Cup, they sacked Jose Mourinho six days beforehand. They wanted to give Ryan Mason six league games to try to save Spurs’ European hopes for the following season. Spurs ended up finishing seventh.
When Antonio Conte came in a few months later, he invested everything in a top-four finish and he nailed it. But he never gave the slightest indication of being interested in the cups. Middlesbrough, Nottingham Forest and Sheffield United all knocked Spurs out of cup competitions on Conte’s watch. His standing with the fans never recovered from playing a weakened team at Bramall Lane. He only lasted four more games.
Of course, no Spurs manager is making these decisions in a vacuum. When Daniel Levy was asked about fixture congestion at a fans’ forum in September, he did not exactly give a ringing endorsement of the importance of the Carabao Cup. “I agree there’s too many games,” he said. “But the problem we have, the particular problem in England is we have an extra cup competition compared to the rest of Europe.” Levy said that Tottenham “would like to see less games but higher-quality games”. “So if that means we have to see some changes in some of our competitions, then so be it.”
Since Postecoglou came in last year, we have all waited to see which side of the fence he would be on. To put it bluntly, would he be a cup man or a league man? Postecoglou, perhaps understandably, does not like being put in boxes like that. Last season he was very clear that the top four was not his target, saying that it was not a “Willy Wonka golden ticket” to success. (It would be impossible to argue otherwise after Spurs’ forgettable 2022-23 Champions League campaign.)
But then when Postecoglou was asked before the City game about this old debate, he gave an answer that would have been familiar to Spurs fans. “Progress in the league is a better indicator,” he said. “That’s still where I think our most meaningful progress lies.” A cup win would be great for many reasons, he continued. “But it’s not a panacea for everything, obviously.” It sounded like a more rounded version of the arguments Pochettino used to make in the same room.
No one is suggesting radically deprioritising the Premier League. No Spurs manager, or coach of any club, would last very long if he did. The beauty of those first three wins in the Europa League is that Spurs are on course for a top-eight league phase finish, even if they take a weakened team to Galatasaray next week. Manchester United in the Carabao Cup quarter-final is still a long way away.
But even if Spurs lose to Villa on Sunday, or even Ipswich Town next week, or if the top four or five starts to look beyond them, that does not mean this season should be written off. There is a huge amount to play for, three chances to make memories, three chances to make history. There is no shame in being a cup team. Tottenham just need to embrace nights like Wednesday, whatever the cost.
(Top photo: Catherine Ivill/Getty Images)
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