I don’t think anybody seriously thought Spurs would take something from Manchester City this week, not least because they’re just not very good at football.
But the glee with which their chronically-online fans celebrated their defeat, and the corresponding evaporation of Arsenal’s Premier League title hopes, left a bitter taste.
Arsenal fans have been looking for a favour for months now; a freak goal, a controversial penalty, a goalkeeping masterclass – anything from anyone – but it has been non-existent as absolutely everybody has quailed before City in the most pathetic manner imaginable.
For all that, though, nobody else has been as determined to lose, as delighted in failure as Spurs fans – the very definition of inveterate losers.
If that sounds like sour grapes from an Arsenal fan, it’s not. It’s the sentiments of their own manager, a man who pulled no punches in his post-match interview when he took huge swipes at the mentality of the club’s supporters.
It was a bold move from Ange Postecoglou, no fan ever wants to have the lens turned on them, but it was absolutely spot on and hit on the rot that runs to the core of that club. It is infested with mediocrity and, in the absence of any tangible success of its own, flails around in search of anything it can draw comfort from – typically the misfortune of other larger, vastly more successful clubs.
Arsenal will almost certainly come up short this season as Pep Guardiola’s 115-charge juggernaut steamrollers its way to another league title, a fifth in six years. And though we’ll likely come away with nothing from two seasons in which we should have won league titles, we can say with considerable pride that we competed manfully. Ours is a club that puts winning first, a club that is well run, focussed and pulling in the same direction.
From the depths of despair some four years ago, we are again competing at the highest level with the biggest and the best: we’re back where we belong.
Spurs, meanwhile, remain where they have been for the last 50 years – mired in mid-table obscurity and with the stinging criticism of a third successive manager ringing in their ears. What do their fans know that Jose Mourinho, Antonio Conte and Postecoglou don’t? Not a thing.
As we prepare for the final match of this brilliant campaign, we can be proud of how far we’ve come and look ahead to an exciting summer. Best of all, though, we’re not them.
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