‘Lads, it’s Tottenham’: missing out on Eze just the latest slip on a banana skin

Earlier this month, my Spurs WhatsApp group was debating whether, if you could only have one, you’d sign Eberechi Eze or Savinho. Ever the ray of sunshine, I confessed that my “gut feeling” was that we wouldn’t get either. A few days later, I doubled down.

Despite reports suggesting Eze was practically on the 149 bus headed for N17, I had the nagging sense that Arsenal might gazump us at the last minute. The reason for such a grim forecast was that I’d seen this tragi-comic movie before. Spurs have “nearly” signed everyone from Jean-Pierre Papin to Eden Hazard to Rivaldo, who famously wrote to Glenn Hoddle outlining why he’d inexplicably chosen San Siro over White Hart Lane.

All clubs miss out on transfers from time to time. My pessimism sprang from somewhere else, somewhere darker and more psychologically deep-rooted.

Supporting Tottenham Hotspur so often means imagining the most ludicrous, embarrassing thing that could possibly befall the club and then knowing, with crystal clarity, that it’s going to happen. Fans of other clubs – Wimbledon, Bury or Morecambe – have had it much worse, but no other club so expertly combines the slapstick and the high-profile. At Tottenham we wait until everyone is watching, then we slip on the banana skin.

Think missing out on the Champions League because of a dodgy lasagne, or blowing a 2-0 lead in a European tie to a team whose manager is in prison. Think the famous “Lads, it’s Tottenham” game, which warped my expectations of football - and indeed life - as an 18-year-old in the stands in growing horror. Far from breaking the curse, the Europa League triumph seems merely to have angered the footballing gods, who swiftly set about restoring the karmic balance via the Morgan Gibbs-White debacle, the heartbreaking injury to James Maddison, and now this.

View image in fullscreen Eberechi Eze scores for Crystal Palace against Tottenham in May. Spurs fans will be dreading the thought of him doing the same in Arsenal colours this season. Photograph: Charlotte Wilson/Offside/Getty Images

Missing out on Eze is a worthy addition to the pantheon of pratfalls, although not necessarily because of the player himself. A fine footballer he may be, but Eze isn’t necessarily the right fit for the gap left by Maddison’s injury. Right now, Spurs badly lack passing ability and there are better candidates who are younger, cheaper and have a higher ceiling than Eze. No, there are two reasons this one will stick in the collective psyche of Spurs fans. The first, of course, is that we’ve been done over by that lot up the road, who appear to have been stealthily plotting for weeks, even as details of our haggling over add-ons and chairman-to-chairman talks played out in public.

Arsenal fans won’t tire of reminding us about this all season; in the office, the pub and in the ground. More than that though, this episode encapsulates the reign of Daniel Levy in microcosm. While rivals act decisively, we dither in the hope of a better deal, then miss out entirely. We spend but not quite enough, unwisely, or at the wrong time. We are all mouth – Levy says he wants to win the Premier League and Champions League – and no trousers. When it comes to transfers, the failure of Levy-era Tottenham to match his supposed ambition does not even have in it, to paraphrase the great Bill Nicholson, an echo of glory. Rather it is an echo of incompetence.

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View image in fullscreen Screengrab of a conversation between Rob Davies and a fellow Spurs fan on WhatsApp from Tuesday, 12 August. Talk about prescient …. Photograph: Rob Davies

Nobody can argue with what Levy has achieved, delivering state-of-the-art facilities, a world-leading stadium and a regular place – albeit a fragile one – at football’s top table. For all the vitriol that is aimed at Levy, many of us are grateful for what he has done. But Levy is like a man who spends thousands of pounds tricking out a car that he never takes out of the garage because of the price of petrol. What was the point if you’re not going to test what it can do?

There remain many reasons to be optimistic about this season. Tottenham have a tactically-astute new manager, taking charge of a squad that is both young and under-rated after last year’s freakshow. The scouting set-up and club administration have been professionalised, putting Tottenham on a good footing for the future.

Yet, as long as the clownish blunders continue, the calls will grow louder for Levy to step aside, to find a new steward for Spurs, one who refuses to allow the club and its fans to be the butt of every joke. The game, after all, is supposed to be about glory.

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