What is the priority for Tottenham?

It’s been a weird season so far, and I feel it isn’t going to be plain sailing for us over the rest of the season either; after all we are Tottenham. We started the season with a good stable young manager and a superstar, and the expectation for most Spurs fans was to be knocking on the door of the top four and for a good cup run. However, here we are a few months down the line with a young inexperienced manager and a squad full of developing superstars, yet after all the problems we have had this season we are still knocking on the door of the top four and we have the chance to go on a cup run in the Europa League. In this article I plan to access which end of season possibility I would prefer most.

Now I’m 18 years old and have never seen Tottenham win a European trophy, in fact the only trophy I’ve seen us win was the Carling Cup in 2008. Although I hear stories all the time from my parents and on the radio of the great players that won the UEFA cup in 1984, wouldn’t it be great to bring an European trophy back to the lane again. Now I understand the European trophy most of us fans would like us to win would be the Champions League, but for a number of reasons we are quite far away from that goal, however a Europa League win this season shouldn’t be too hard to reach. We qualified with ease in what was a very easy group and we’ve got our ex-manager Juande Ramos’ Dnipro in the round of 32 draw, in what is a match over two legs we really should win. Next up if we do win is last years runners up Benfica, and these are the sort of games that us as fans love to see us play, and we all know about those special European night games at a floodlight Lane. If we do go past the round of 16 and get into the Quarter-finals, I see no reason for us to go all the way and try to win our first European trophy since 1984; it wouldn’t do any harm to Tim Sherwood either!

I did however see us qualify for the Champions League for the first time in the clubs history in 2009, and I remember quite fondly watching the jubilant celebrations of the players after Peter Crouch’s header gave us the 1-0 win over City, and yes I am talking about Harry’s soaking by David Bentley in those briefs. I also remember watching every game of our Champions League run and just enjoying being part of this great competition, and who knows if it wasn’t for a stupid early sending off and some Gomes gaffes, we may have gone further than the quarter-finals. Although, I also remember Chelsea wining a penalty shoot-out against Bayern and a certain goal being scored against Newcastle last season, so we all also remember the pain, and what makes it worse is how close we are from achieving our goal. If we look at our current season we are only 2 points off top 4 and we’ve played Arsenal and Man City away, and after that performance against Manchester United I genuinely believe we can finally reach the top 4 again this season. Against Manchester United we didn’t dominate and we was the second best team, but the best thing about the game was that we did the right thing, something we haven’t done very much this season. We defended very well but once we got the ball we attacked with purpose heading forward and towards the goal, not all these passes that go back to Dawson. I know a lot of fans complained about the performance that followed to Arsenal and I can see why, but Tim isn’t even 8 games into his managerial career and he will learn from games like this and try to push us on. There’s no reason why we can’t keep pushing on and picking up points to try and reach the top 4, however to do so I feel we need to pick up points in every crucial home game and especially the two home games against Arsenal and Manchester City. We also need to remember that we are in an injury crisis of our own at the moment, so once Paulinho and Vertonghen return we will be much stronger and hopefully will keep fighting for the points which last season Bale almost single handedly won us.

So therefore as I argued both points I’m no closer to knowing what outcome I would prefer. There are the financial rewards that come from qualifying for the Champions League; however winning the Europa League would mean another one of those special nights and maybe an open top bus parade down Tottenham High Road. Knowing Tottenham it will probably end in misery again, but under Tim I believe we can really push on and win a trophy or qualify for Champions League or maybe even both. However, things are certainly looking a lot better than two months ago, and a boy can dream, can’t he?