The only statistic which really counts is goal difference. Not brain surgery, not rocket science, the teams who score the most goals consistently will tend to be top of the tree. We knew this in a cold changing room on Hackney marshes, we understood this in the freezing water showers after a match on Chingford plains. Those who score the most goals in a game win the points. Simple, really, isn’t it?
Spurs Record of GD over last 20 years.
2020/21 GD 23 League winning GD 51
2019/20 GD 14 League winning GD 52
2018/19 GD 28 League winning GD 72
2017/18 GD 38 League winning GD 79
2016/17 GD 60 League winning GD 52
2015/16 GD 34 League winning GD 32
2014/15 GD 5 League winning GD 41
2013/14 GD 4 League winning GD 65
2012/13 GD 20 League winning GD 43
2011/12 GD 25 League winning GD 64
2010/11 GD 9 League winning GD 41
2009/10 GD 26 League winning GD 77
2008/09 GD 0 League winning GD 44
2007/08 GD 5 League winning GD 58
2006/07 GD 3 League winning GD 56
2005/06 GD 15 League winning GD 50
2004/05 GD 6 League winning GD 57
2003/04 GD -10 League winning GD 47
2002/03 GD -4 League winning GD 40
Can you see the problem? Can you see in any season what it is you need to do to change the problem? What this chart says is two things; 1. Our defence has never been good enough. 2. Our midfield/attack is not up to strength.
As ‘H’ has said until his tonsils have bled, our bench is nowhere near good enough. The squad is poor. A poverty bought in the pound shop at the Ridley Road market.
Even when we supposedly get close, 2015/16 and 2016/17, we lose out because there is not the winning mentality in our squad to beat Leicester to the title, described by Lineker as ‘a miracle’, or overcome Chelsea despite scoring more goals than them in a season.
These two ‘chances’ were undermined by years of bad management. The sort of bad management that blames the people they hire for the failures they create. The sort of people who lack integrity and blame others for their own failings.
Goal difference is an important statistic. We have the best striker in the world, so some would claim, and even if you disagree no doubt you will be gallant enough to accept that Harry is not shabby. We have Son. Enough said. We also now have Kulusevski which in a three at the front is looking much more like the real deal. But we have a dire defence and a midfield made of one class player.
What all this is saying is that the history of our goal difference is telling us that our club management at the top do not know what they are doing. This is called evidence. Evidence for incompetence.
One look at the league table now is enough evidence to confirm this truth. Man City GD 50, Liverpool GD 55, Chelsea GD 38 and then all those fishing around in the bottom of the barrel hoping to pick up a lottery ticket. A GD of 13 is just not the real deal. Well, not unless you are Arsenal and looking for that consolation fourth spot in the Champions League places.
If we want to know just how bad Man Utd have become, then a GD of 8 tells you all that you want to know. West Ham has a GD of 12 and as they are one place below Utd this may seem to spoil the theory here. Try not to be so hasty, at the end of the season the Irons will finish above Utd and we will be hearing about that for the rest of eternity. Telling you all that Utd are a mirage in the desert, a phantom at the opera or the Marie Celeste kept afloat by god knows what referee decision is not news to Spurs fans.
We have a GD of 9. That’s not much better than what we have had on average over the last 20 years of ENIC oversight. The seasons looking at a GD of 4 and 5 whilst reading we are top four or title contenders in the football media machine have been painful to anyone with more than one brain cell. The GD is the clinching factor in defining a league challenger. This magic number is the statistic that tells you that your club is serious about winning trophies.
We have never been a serious football club under ENIC. We will not make the top four this season. Go home, take a chill pill and stop being wound up by the media. After Man Utd, we were out of the race, after Brighton we are back in it ********! We were never in the race. We are not in the race.
Furthermore, we will finish under Arsenal (That’s me in therapy for another year) because Daniel does not know what he is doing on the football pitch.
Arsenal went out and bought Tomiyasu, the Japanese defender who declared he wanted to play for Spurs. They arrived at the door, put the money on the table and took the player away. We bid millions below the cheap asking price, farted about trying to save a few quid and will finish below Arsenal, losing millions in prize money.
OK, so Tomiyasu has not been playing recently due to injury but he has been an effective part of a defence that has seen Arsenal climb into fourth and look like holding onto that prize. We have been dire in defence. Our goal difference tells us that.
The history of goal difference also tells us that over the last 20 years we have never been really serious title contenders, except for two small moments when everyone else took their eye off the ball. Even then we couldn’t make it to the finishing post. Make no mistake, that failure is because Uncle Joe and Danny do not know the importance of goal difference. You see, it does not appear as an entry, title or column on the balance sheet.
It’s a football thing.
“We will not make the top four this season. We were never in the race. We are not in the race. Furthermore we will finish below Arsenal”… Sorry brother, didn’t mean to offend. Everything you said was right, apart from those words… I have actual faith for us whether we finish top four or not. Now the crowds are back that revenue will go up releasing money to spend. Conte here building his team fills me with hope. I’m sure he will be backed. Seeing Dele leave for pennies was a good sign. Hitchen gone finally.. Also Mr Harry Kane is back on board. I’m so pleased he wasn’t sold… Certainly not a fan of Levy, but right now we are on the right track. He kept Kane, brought in a new sporting director and the specific manager I adored. Exactly what was needed after years of poor scouting and poor management.
Have to agree with the hydrology here. When I look at us I always think about a sieve.
Wooooaaa Steve!!!! ……backing the Gooners….. No-one is backing them but we can legitimately compare management strategies and how their board have behaved against ours. Backing the Gooners!!!!!! I’d rather saw my own leg off with a wet lettuce leaf. What I am really saying is that I will believe our consistency is established when we sit in fourth spot at the end of the season. I did write about our run in on my previous blog contribution and suggested we get top four by one point. Cut me some slack though, I can’t be the only doubting Thomas Spurs supporter who feels that he has seen this all before!
Would love the answer to this question.
It’s a good point but I just feel that their defence is better than ours. Maybe by a cigarette paper buut in terms of goal difference, that is all that is needed.
surely Arsenal having almost exactly the same GD as us points to them being in the same shuffle as us? any of the also-rans could claim CL qualification because all are equally unconvincing
Well they must have spent well on defence because I remember well them being a joke now they are watertight
On the subject of the defence, does anyone know why Rodon has never been given a decent run. When he plays for Wales he always looks very aggressive and commanding, 2 words that don’t often feature in sentences when discussing our defence.
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They are worth 459 million.
Funny how our squad on transfermarkt is worth 522 million when you add up the players… Arsenal are worth less.
I think we will beat them mate.. If they would have bought Vlahovic, and addressed their back line properly then they would be flying.. They have some good young and they will get stronger in the next few years.. But right now they have serious weaknesses.
Another Yiddo backing the Gooners. I find this defeatist mentality is pathetic. Of course we are in the race for top four. 6 points off and we have ten games to play for. That’s 30 points.. Now have you even seen the remaining fixtures? The Goons definitely have a harder run of games. Hilariously Martin Keown disagrees and thinks we’re the favourites… Spurs 4 – Spam 2.. Up the Yids….. If you want to chat about a team that’s out of the CL race then how about Leicester. They are out of it. Not us… Doubt Conte and write us off at your peril.
PSG have just lost 0-3 to Monaco away. This is probably the nail in the coffin for Poch but it wouldn’t surprise me to see Conte at PSG next season and Poch back at Spurs with Levy dressing it up as PR coup. The thing I dislike most about Levy is not just his incompetence as a football executive which is borne out by the amount of silverware we have won in the last twenty three years, the amount of managers he has sacked to deflect criticism from his own failings, his shambolic track record in the transfer market, never backing the managers picks to reinforce the squad and his ill concealed contempt for the supporters whom he continuously rinses on an annual basis, no, it is something else. It is his complete lack of empathy for his fellow man. I have no respect for him because he is patently not a mensch. He hides behind his PR machine when it suits but is clearly someone who also hides when things go wrong and then fires the current manager to deflect any attention on his own appalling track record. To a certain extent, I can live with our lack of success if the club was run properly and we stuck to our traditions as a team that always plays good football but the reasons for our continuous mediocrity lie in the lap of one man. If Enic was a public company, he would have been sacked long ago but the most reprehensible thing about him is that he has no redeeming features. He is certainly not a mensch.
Look down the leagues for several decades and the GD rule works at top and bottom with only a few exceptions. I had a team that was nearly relegated when I took them on. We were 20 GD below the top team. Next season we scored ten more and conceded ten less and we were promoted.
I don’t think we will but it really doesn’t matter anyway as the extra money won’t go on the team. That we know already. Arsenal are investing to get back amongst it and that’s why they will pull further and further away from us. Levy out.
Arsenal spent the most on transfers in the Premier League last season, they also spent the most of any team in Europe according to 5Live stats
Imagine if Spurs beat Arsenal or whoever to that fourth spot.