One of the common anxieties of football’s age of billionaire owners and nation state PR projects is the fear that clubs will lose their long-standing identities, that they will become instead plasticised entertainment vehicles, anonymous machines for winning. Although not quite yet, it seems. Relax for a moment. Kick back. And take a long cool drink of the mixed and flowing substance that remains forever Spurs.
There was at least something reassuringly familiar about the collapse at home to Southampton on Wednesday night. Tottenham may have the greatest new-build ground in Europe. They may have an A-list manager in his mid-career prime. They may have in Harry Kane – and bear with this – the outstanding Premier League attacker of the last eight years. But the ability to shift effortlessly between fluent attack and showing all the defensive resilience of a beaded curtain remains intact.
