Tottenham’s FA Cup campaign came to an end on Friday night with a late 1-0 defeat to Manchester City in round four.
Nathan Ake’s goal was City’s first at Spurs’ billion-pound stadium in 538 minutes of action, bringing a grinding halt to the visitors’ supposed curse and the hosts’ quest for a domestic cup.
Though the scoreline was level for 88 minutes, the gap in quality was rather evident. Tottenham tried their best to play their own way, but the experienced and ruthless City weren’t having any of it, restricting Spurs to just a single shot all night long.
For those in the stands, it was the resignation that their team is – barring a barnstorming Premier League run-in – going to finish another season without silverware. For those on the pitch, it was the end of a dream for a squad that would die for one another.
Sure, Tottenham didn’t really deserve to advance or even take the tie to a replay, but the despair lingered in the air more than a normal defeat. Hell, fans stood and applauded after November’s bitter 4-1 loss to rivals Chelsea, with Mauricio Pochettino’s return stinging Spurs with a significantly smaller dose of venom.
Ange Postecoglou perhaps surmised it best in his post-match press conference.
“They’re a top team, they’re the benchmark,” he said about City. “We’re not there yet and we’re under no illusion about that.
“It’s fair to say they’ve got eight or nine years on us. I hope that people have a little bit of perspective about the team we’re trying to be. It doesn’t happen in six months. I don’t think even City did it in six months.
“That doesn’t mean you shy away from the challenge of it or don’t get disappointed by it or don’t feel like you could have tackled it in a different way. It’s not an excuse but the reality of it is that they’re well down the line in being the team they are and we’re still very much in the early stages. You need to use that as your benchmark moving forward.”
From the moment Postecoglou touched down in north London, he has been unwavering in his belief that everything his Tottenham team will try and do will help them build for a sustainable future. Here, they tried to go toe-to-toe with the best club team in world football and it resulted in their worst attacking performance of the season by a considerable distance, but he ultimately has grand ambitions and visions which will serve Spurs well in the future – the squad is in a much better state than when he arrived and they were without their best player in Son Heung-min for this loss.
Postecoglou has brushed aside the rhetoric around Tottenham’s desperate need to end their trophy drought, which is now likely to enter a 17th year bar a miraculous run to this season’s Premier League title. Unlike his win-now and short-termist predecessors in Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte who viewed even one cup as a holy grail, Postecoglou wants to construct a team and refurbish a club built to consistently win trophies.
Unfortunately for Spurs fans, it means they may have to reset that clock in their head to zero years. Every year becomes year one in trying to win a trophy. Frustration and an understandable drop in patience has permeated right through the club, but if Postecoglou is truly ushering in a new era, the many seasons without silverware must be forgotten. Only the present and future are important.
There are several reasons why Tottenham’s run without a trophy has gone on so long, but if you were to redo the last decade-and-a-half, they would almost certainly have scooped up at least one cup. This is just the universe where they were unlucky not to get even that, and it’s now the universe where the beat team in the land and all the world have knocked them out of another competition via an extremely late winner.
Spurs came into the 2023/24 season with little expectation and it’s to Postecoglou’s credit that a narrow defeat to City feels like the end of the world a few months into this new process. But as expected for year one of this project, Tottenham will just have to firm that feeling oh-so-close feeling of disappointment for a little while longer.
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