There now seems to be a genuine belief among the Tottenham squad as well as parts of the fan base about the possibility of mounting a serious title challenge this season.
The late collapse against West Ham seems to have dented some of that confidence but talk of a bringing the Premier League title to N17 certainly does not sound as far fetched as it did 10 or 15 years ago.
When Heurelho Gomes arrived at Spurs from PSV in the summer of 2008, the Lilywhites were trying in vain to gatecrash the so-called ‘big four’ (Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal) for quite a while.
Although the club had lost both Dimitar Berbatov and Robbie Keane that summer, they made some promising acquisitions in Gomes, Luka Modric and Giovani Dos Santos.
However, the Brazilian admits he was laughed at when he opened up on his desire to win the title on arriving in North London.
Gomes told ESPN Brasil (as relayed by Sport Witness): “The difference between my time and this time… I arrived at Tottenham, and my interview was like: ‘Gomes, why did you come here? You left PSV and what are your intentions?’ I said: ‘win the Premier League’. The guys started laughing at me.”
The goalkeeper admitted that title aspirations at Spurs are now much more realistic than it was during his time at the club and credited Mauricio Pochettino for transforming the club’s mentality as well as playing style.
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He added: “Mauricio Pochettino for me is a football genius. He transformed Tottenham’s way of playing.
“He put a methodology that Tottenham didn’t have. In my day, we couldn’t go out playing. I had to kick Peter Crouch so we could get the second ball.
“So today you can say that Tottenham is one of the candidates, at least to be in the top 4. And with José Mourinho there, it’s one more possibility that they believe they will win the English title.
“Because it is often a club of that size, of tradition, but perhaps many times what Tottenham lacks is to believe that they can win.”
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There is no doubt that Tottenham have come a long way both on and off the pitch in the last 10 to 15 years but Gomes’ description of the football we played back then as route one is extremely harsh. We certainly played direct to Crouchy on occasions but we also played some lovely football at times under Redknapp.
In fact, some of our football in the 2011/12 season, when we had a midfield of Parker, Modric, Van der Vaart, Lennon and Bale, was up there with the best football I have ever seen us play, although we did fall short of winning trophies.
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