Tottenham's defeats against Chelsea and Fiorentina last week leave them chasing fourth and little else once again, but there are suggestions that Mauricio Pochettino may be the man to break this pattern.

Overview

Back in 2004 Palace had just won promotion to the Premier League under the management of Iain Dowie and academy product Wayne Routledge had been one of the team’s stars on the right hand side of midfield. He’d caught the eye of Spurs and at lunchtime on deadline day Levy contacted Jordan with an offer for the player in the region of £1m. Jordan says he laughed that off but says he was then contacted at regular intervals for the rest of the afternoon by Levy and people acting on his behalf increasing the offer in increments so small they barely covered the cost of the fax paper they were sent on.

Eventually, at 23.00 that night, the bidding had increased to £1.2m and Jordan lost his temper, saying the whole thing was going nowhere fast and in any case even if Spurs did make a serious offer for the player there was now only one hour to go until the deadline and it would be impossible to get Routledge to White Hart Lane, have a deal agreed and complete a medical in time. It was at this point that Levy laughed and said that Routledge — a contracted Palace player who hadn’t been given permission to speak to Spurs or had a bid accepted for his services — was sitting in a hotel round the corner from Tottenham’s ground with his agent Paul Stretford with everything agreed ready to sign. The deal was done a short time later.

That’s Levy, hard-nosed and, supposedly, very shrewd indeed.

In support of that, let’s not forget that Tottenham as this potential challenger to the league leaders and Champions League hopeful is a relatively new thing, even in the Premier League era. Since 1992 there have been just as many near misses with relegation and scrapes around the bottom end of the table under the likes of Ossie Ardilles and Christian Gross as there have top five finishes. Spurs have been a cup side pretty much ever since Bill Nicholson left, it’s an achievement in itself for them to be competing as high up the league as they are with a stadium and matchday income smaller than Man Utd, Man City, Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea.

They’ve also been unusually unlucky — requiring a win at West Ham on the final day of the season to qualify for the Champions League under Martin Jol they were struck down by a dodgy lasagne on the evening of the game. When Harry Redknapp followed up one fourth-place finish with another, Chelsea beat Barcelona and Bayern Munich to win the whole thing against all the odds and take the qualification away from them.

But there’s also a growing opinion that Levy, his fearsome deal making technique, his ego, his broken fax machine that gets wheeled out on Transfer Deadline Day night and his control at White Hart Lane may also be detrimental to the club’s quest to regularly sit at European football’s top table. Extorting £100m from Real Madrid for Gareth Bale was wonderful, but the players acquired with the money have, almost to a man, failed. The three most expensive acquisitions — Erik Lamela for £25.7m, Roberto Soldado for £26m and Paulinho for £17m — have all been particularly poor.

Tottenham’s transfer policy leaves them massively overstocked in certain areas of the pitch — attacking midfielders, for example — and woefully understaffed in others. Only Harry Kane’s emergence this season has covered for their lack of strike power in depth. Levy’s stubbornness, and at times personal vendettas against other clubs, leaves players like Emmanuel Adebayor sitting around earning big money while not contributing, and having negative impact on training ground atmosphere. Aaron Lennon, not in the club’s plans, is on loan at Everton and is out of contract in 18 months but Spurs are still demanding £7m for a permanent signature.

There’s a hint that Mauricio Pochettino’s appointment as manager last summer may be an important moment. He arrived at Southampton speaking no English, with no history in English football, with the great and the good of the sport in this country queueing up to slate the perceived harsh sacking of his predecessor Nigel Adkins and yet quickly drove the Saints on from newly promoted hopefuls to a potential European qualifier. He’s not seemed overly keen on the big-money acquisitions he found at White Hart Lane — Paulinho hardly plays while youth team graduate Ryan Mason is coming on leaps and bounds, while Kane is first choice ahead of Soldado.

Crucially, Southamptons’ head of recruitment and analysis Paul Mitchell followed the Argentinean to North London. This the man who oversaw a summer of activity on the South Coast where Rickie Lambert, Luke Shaw, Callum Chambers, Adam Lallana and Dejan Lovren all departed and yet the team got considerably better through acquisitions made at a fraction of the price.

Short term it seems that Spurs are going to suffer from the shameful situation in modern football where the team that ducks out of the cup competitions early but finishes fourth every year is richly rewarded, while the one that reaches the League Cup final and Europa League latter stages is ‘rewarded’ with an unworkable, unmanageable fixture list that ultimately derails the whole season.

And the idea that Levy is going to shrink into the background and leave Mitchell and Pochettino to it seems fanciful. On deadline day the club accepted loan offers from QPR and Crystal Palace for Adebayor, with Tottenham contributing to the wages. Adebayor wanted to go to West Ham, and the deal on the table at Upton Park was financially better for Spurs than what Rangers and Palace were offering. Levy, who has fallen out with West Ham several times, notably over the Olympic Stadium, refused to let the player go there and in the end the moody Togo target man stayed put on Spurs’ dollar.

There’s a sense that Tottenham are always on the verge of something, always building towards something, but never quite getting there. But medium term with a visionary new manager, and long term with a big new stadium finally moving ahead, it seems possible that breakthrough may finally be made.

Then maybe Spurs can be that team that finishes fourth every year after ducking out of all the cups early. Dare to dream boys.

Scout Report

We last saw them at Wembley on Sunday against Chelsea, where Jose Mourinho responded to Matic’s suspension by playing centre half Kurt Zouma in defensive central midfield in his own 4-2-3-1 set up. That created a problem for Tottenham because while it’s Kane grabbing all the headlines and goals, it’s clearly Christian Eriksen who holds the key to their best play in key matches.

The Dane, playing in the centre of the three behind Kane, is a glorious footballer, but against Chelsea he had Andros Townsend one side of him and Nacer Chadli the other. Now Townsend impressed on loan at QPR, and is well capable of causing them damage on Saturday, but his tendency to drift inside and shoot, rather than stay wide and cross, has become and habit he cannot break and it makes him easy to read. Chadli, despite a rush of early season goals, isn’t good enough against the very best — although, again, plenty good enough to cause QPR hassle as he did in the first meeting.

That not only left too much weight on Eriksen’s shoulders, but also crowded his space as the “inverse wingers” moved infield. He was crowded out of the middle. Kane was isolated and carried little threat as a result. At one point in the first half with the score at 0-0 Danny Rose looked up to cross the ball from the left wing and there were nine Chelsea outfield players in the picture plus a goalkeeper with only Rose and Kane in shot in white. West Ham had done something similar at White Hart Lane a week before, and lead 2-0 before their version of Zouma — Mark Noble — was taken off before he was sent off and the space he left behind allowed Spurs to salvage a draw.

The full backs were clearly a key part of Pochettino’s plan in that match. To combat the threat of Eden Hazard, they encouraged Kyle Walker to fly forward down the right and force the Belgian to defend. Walker, sadly, hasn’t kicked on as he should have done after a fantastic loan spell at QPR and promising start to first team life at Spurs. He looks heavy to me. That lightning speed across the deck that made him Rangers’ best attacking threat from right back just isn’t there any more. Likewise Danny Rose on the other side, who admits himself he’s about fifth in line for an England call up in a position the national team isn’t particularly strong in.

Ryan Mason, who impressed against QPR for Swindon in the League Cup last season, is one notable success story. Little Tom Carroll, out on loan at Swansea, must be looking on and cursing. While he has stood still, Mason, of similarly slight physical stature, has matched and past him.

The first goal at Wembley gave a hint of where QPR could have some joy. A wide free kick was defended by Spurs in a straight line of seven players strung out along the edge of the six yard box. John Terry simply withdrew into the acres of space that left between the six and eighteen yard lines and waited for the ball to drop. That won’t have escaped Charlie Austin’s notice.

That, and crowding the area in front of Kane so that Eriksen can’t operate and Kane doesn’t receive possession, must be the key learnings from Spurs’ difficult week.

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TacticalR added 11:19 - Mar 7 Thanks for your oppo profile. I'm surprised more people don't ask questions about whether Levy's clever deals are all that clever. It's interesting how Pochettino seems to have got a much better balance in the team by introducing players from the academy. Eriksen seems to be the danger man, so we need someone on him. The decline of Kyle Walker is quite sad.
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