Ask most people, and even some Spurs fans, what the definition of ‘Spursy’ is and they’ll give an answer resembling something like, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Or, to put it in more suitable vernacular, ‘to bottle it’.
It’s unclear exactly where and when the term originated, but the red half of North London certainly had something to do with it.
From the 90s, and for several decades after, Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal ruled north London. The teams he built were a stark contrast to the haphazard approach at Spurs during the same era, as they hoovered up trophies and Spurs misfired.
Arsenal fans could claim Spurs flattered to deceive and despite some superstars had no stomach for the fight, while Spurs might weakly fire back that they were at least ‘proper Norf’ (Arsenal having moved to Highbury from Woolwich in the southeast of London).
The sense that Spurs had a weakness of character gathered pace in the noughties, with one famous example coming when they played Alex Ferguson’s Man Utd. Highlighting the gulf in mentality, supposedly Ferguson’s team talk consisted of three words, “Lads, it’s Tottenham”.
It wasn’t always the way. Tottenham Hotspur are one of the supposed ‘big six’ of English football, along with Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United, Manchester City, and Liverpool (it’s likely they’ll be joined by another state-funded chancer in the shape of Newcastle United soon to make it seven).
They are the same big six who were ready to head off and form the new European Super League with Europe’s elite before it was stopped. For now.
Before this, in the early to mid 80s, there was the ‘big four’. Spurs were joined by Arsenal, Liverpool and Everton in this group. Manchester Utd seemed to be taking a decade or two off, and Chelsea and City were dawdling in obscurity until they were revived by the filthy lucre of an alleged klepto-industrialist and oil state.
In that 80s era, despite the crushing dominance of Liverpool, top flight football in England enjoyed a varied array of trophy winners. The more level playing field that seemed to exist financially meant that the capabilities of managers like Brian Clough, Howard Kendall, Ron Saunders, and Keith Burkinshaw were allowed to shine through.
Outside of the big four, Villa, Ipswich, West Ham, and Forest all regularly vied for honours, and if you’d asked me what Spursy meant back then, I would say it was about making something unnecessarily dramatic but often glorious. A sense of style rather than function.
Spursy was Ricky Villa’s iconic winning goal in the 1981 FA Cup Final replay, as he mazed in and around the Man City defence. It was the hugely tense and dramatic 1984 UEFA Cup Final win against Anderlecht, where second choice goalkeeper Tony Parks emerged as the unlikely hero.
More recently, the staggering 2019 Champions League semi-final against Ajax, where Tottenham’s Lucas Moura scored a second half hat-trick to drag Spurs improbably into the final.
Isn’t that Spursy?
Or even last season’s ability to finish top four despite doing their best to self-destruct early in the season by employing the club’s uncanny ability to make poor managerial choices a little too often.
As a fan, there’s a sporadic resignation that we don’t and won’t fulfil our potential. That’s not quite the same as throwing it away.
I have a friend who personifies this. At the kick off of every single Spurs game, he will send me a text along the lines of, “Here we go again, inevitable disappointment on the horizon”. And this is a sentiment all too common to fans of other clubs outside of the three or four that win virtually everything in the English Premier League.
While Bill Nicholson brought the glory back to Spurs in the 60s, the 80s were my own fun decade of footballing discovery. Following relegation in the 1976–77 season, Spurs came back and won two consecutive FA Cups, one UEFA Cup, and finished third in Division One three times.
In my view, the best Spurs team in that period was the 1987 group that gave us pure enjoyment and flare as we watched Hoddle, Waddle, and Ardiles mesmerise opponents.
It gave us one of our best defenders in Richard Gough, a steady supporting cast including Chris Hughton, Steve Hodge, Gary Stevens, Ray Clemence, Paul Allen, and a striker who won the PFA and FW Player of the Year award, Clive Allen. Clive (Paul’s cousin), scored a club record 49 goals that season.
If Spursy means disappointment, then perhaps the ’87 season was that. How could this team, so strong and skilful, competing on every front, in every competition available, reaching finals and semis, fail to win a single trophy? Was that Spursy now? It jarred at the time.
Times changed. Oligarchs and TV money led to greater inequality and wider gaps between leagues and then elites. Leagues within leagues appeared, and a new mentality in fans and clubs arose driven by the need to ‘qualify’ for the glittering funds of the Champions League rather than winning an actual trophy.
Teams like Chelsea, Man Utd, City, and one suspects soon Newcastle, can put out second XIs that easily progress in most domestic cup competitions, leaving their elite squads to rest up and canter to a good League position.
Spurs haven’t won a trophy since 2008, and that’s not good enough for a club of its size and profile. But aside from the anomaly of Leicester, the number of teams winning trophies in most elite leagues is small.
Eight different teams have won the FA Cup in the last 20 years, and it’s the same for the EFL Cup. Equally, teams like Arsenal and Spurs haven’t spent the same amount or at the same frequency as teams like Man Utd, City, or Chelsea. And in the case of Spurs at least when they have, they’ve often spent poorly.
And if you spend less frequently, you can’t afford those mistakes.
For some time now, Spurs fans have got used to paying huge amounts at the gate or in TV subscriptions to watch the odd superstar like Gazza or Harry Kane trot out, but rarely doing better than 3rd in the league, or the odd final. Is that failure? Or is that just inevitable?
As a Spurs fan, for the last five or so years it feels like we’ve been punching above our weight. That’s not Spursy is it? Though when Pochettino’s young and dynamic Spurs were impressing in every way, the club made the crucial error of not investing in the squad and building on the progress being made.
Instead, that team was allowed to fracture and tire, and ultimately break apart in a huge missed opportunity.
Most clubs have a characteristic attached to them, and perhaps being Spursy is something most fans experience at some point. And it is the clubs’ own fans who are often its fiercest critics.
West Ham fans used to expect their form to crumble after Christmas.
When Alex Ferguson left, the now spoilt Man United fans were furious for years at the club’s inability to immediately replace a once in a lifetime manager with someone comparable.
Forgetful Arsenal fans wanted Wenger out when they failed to challenge the new billionaire class around them, and after a decade or so of newfound wealth, Man City fans now see winning the League as par.
Which is the real Man City,is it the late 90s and early noughties versions who were relegated while Man United soared to new heights? Or is it the one funded by Sheikh Mansour that has spent over £1billion and using that to scoop up 13 trophies?
If Spurs are Spursy, maybe the definition is just capable of thrilling and disappointing its fans interchangeably, while they fork out astronomical amounts of cash for the pleasure of this psychological rollercoaster.
Spurs could do with winning a trophy that’s for sure, and spending some money to keep up let alone get ahead.
Many fans are conditioned now to think it’s more about the money you get from qualifying for the Champions League than the silverware. If you ask them, ‘What would you rather, win an FA Cup or qualify for the Champions League?’, you can be sure a large amount would say the latter. Mirroring the mentality of the boardroom.
That’s quite miserable.
Spurs’ state-of-the-art, billion-pound stadium shouldn’t just be about ‘revenue generation’. It needs joy. It needs to hold memories. And that isn’t necessarily about silverware either.
Tottenham have won the League twice, the FA Cup eight times, the League Cup four times, and the UEFA Cup twice. They have had more players represent England than any other team in history.
They’ve had the likes of Greaves, Ardiles, Chivers, Gascoigne, Lineker, Hoddle, Kane, Mullery, Son, Waddle, Archibald, Jones, Bale, Mackay, Gilzean, Klinsman, Ginola, Jennings, King, and Perryman pull on the lilywhite shirt.
That’s quite the legacy.
Perhaps the view of their double-winning captain Danny Blanchflower should be the aspiration, “The great fallacy is that the game is first and last about winning. It is nothing of the kind. The game is about glory, it is about doing things in style and with a flourish, about going out and beating the other lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom.”
Tom James
