Kevin Wimmer has admitted that he still has regrets over the fact that he and his Tottenham teammates could not get over the line and win the Premier League during his time in North London.
Spurs are now sitting pretty at the top of the Premier League table, which has got some supporters dreaming of a potential title tilt this season.
The last time that the Lilywhites were in a title race was during Mauricio Pocehttino’s time at the club, with Tottenham falling short in the 2015-16 and 2016-17 seasons.
Wimmer admitted that Spurs missed several chances to put pressure on Leicester City in the first of those two seasons.
Premier League title regrets for Kevin Wimmer
The former Tottenham centre-back told The Athletic: “We had the chance when we played West Ham away. We had one chance and we didn’t use it. It was a difficult game. A lot of fights, it was raining, a fighting game.
“We could never close the gap. Sometimes, you think back to this time because we saw it as such a big chance to win the title and it would have been very special for Spurs.
“But it was crazy, because Leicester were always winning. They always played a day after us towards the end and they didn’t always play so special, but at the end they somehow managed to win.
“Whereas we had a few games, like against Arsenal (a 2-2 home draw versus 10 men three days after the West Ham defeat), where we were so much better on the day but didn’t win.”
Leicester eventually secured the title after Tottenham were held to a 2-2 draw by Chelsea at Stamford Bridge, with the game being dubbed ‘the battle of the bridge’ for the number of altercations between the two sets of players.
Wimmer admitted that there “should have been five red cards” in the game, adding: “In the last few minutes, you could see everybody realised the title was gone and there were so many emotions during this game and afterwards.
“The Chelsea and Spurs players were getting into each other, but then in the dressing room, it was so quiet. Everybody needed some time to realise what had happened. It was really, really disappointing.”
Tottenham were also in the title race until quite late on in the subsequent campaign, finishing with their record points tally of 86, but they were pipped to the title by Antonio Conte’s Chelsea.
Wimmer said about that campaign: “In that second season, we didn’t have the feeling like we did the year before, when we had more of the feeling (that we could win it). We had a big chance.”
Spurs Web Opinion
The 1-1 draw at White Hart Lane with West Brom just ahead of the clash against Chelsea was the game where we lost the title.
We were dominating proceedings and were leading for large parts of the encounter but allowed a late equaliser, which meant that finishing above Leicester became near impossible.
Had we won that game, the pressure would have mounted on the Foxes and history could have been a lot different.
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