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‘Audere Est Facere’ - ‘To Dare is to Do’
Having steered my home club Bristol City to the playoffs last year and fortunately not promotion, when the opportunity to take over my beloved Tottenham Hotspur i simply had to apply. I think I said at the time of the Ashton Gate appointment that it and probably Inter Milan were the only jobs that I would ever look at, and then it was there.
Chris Waters was a gentleman and stood aside on the basis of me being a fan, which i am extraordinarily grateful for, and we were up and running.
This was the opening squad;
E_Green 23 ENG 25 1 1 1 22 198 1 1 1
N_Aguerd 29 mor 1 21 13 11 21 1 701 490 970
D_Calabria 29 ita 1 21 15 11 23 1 171 810 779
N_Sule 28 ger 1 21 15 11 29 1 17 640 967
R_Bensebaini 30 alg 1 20 15 4 24 1 544 930 60
R_Pereira 32 por 1 20 17 8 28 1 198 368 226
O_Kokcu 23 tur 1 15 22 8 25 1 490 292 973
D_Szoboszlai 24 hun 1 3 21 17 24 1 628 550 394
S_Bergwijn 27 ned 1 4 21 18 25 1 844 282 808
I_Perisic 34 cro 1 3 20 15 28 1 104 351 977
I_Williams 29 esp 1 6 15 21 24 1 104 646 77
M_Boadu 23 ned 1 4 16 21 26 1 717 814 684
Plus a few squaddies to make the numbers up. It looked like a tough battle and I thought mid table in my first season would be an achievement.
We then got Leon Bailey from the non-FFO auction thanks to a temporary caretaker which helped enormously
L_Bailey 26 jam 1 4 21 19 26 1 368 787 854
And off we went! We started with a bang, winning 4-2 at Old Trafford, with Bailey scoring twice and we looked like we could play a bit. Burnley at home, 4-2 again, hey this was easy! And then Watford away and a 3-0 defeat and a 3-0 home defeat to Leeds in round 6 as us and them slugged it out at the top for the early rounds. Leon Bailey was magical in the first 10 games or so, scoring goals and picking up MOM’s most weeks. Ivan Perisic put in some great performances as a veteran that looked like he was going to be first out of the door at one stage, and these boys battled to keep us up there - new signings Aaron Hickey and Eder Militao bolstering up the defence, and Daniele Podence sharpening the attack. We were completely schooled in round 12 by Chelsea 4-0 at Stamford Bridge, and at that point it became clear that we needed to strengthen if we wanted to be contenders. So we jumped on the Barca merry-go-round and brought in Hincapie, Tomiyasu and Hojlund, all players that massively increased our secondary skills. Week 14 saw us win at Anfield 1-0, looking back - a really pivotal point performance. Beating Man C at home 3-0 in week 17 and still being right up there, it looked like we actually had a chance, well at least of getting a European spot, so I wanted to make sure of that as we were still a lot weaker than our rivals. So it was time for the old warhorse and lucky charm, Dusan Tadic to come in for an eye-watering 40m from Juventus. Steve Talbot of Chelsea made a comment at the time of ‘Spurs going for the tiitle’ as it looked like i had overpaid, but Tadic took the captains armband from Green and never looked back. We had seen the experiment of young Victor Eletu playing with Kokcu as DM work but his quality wasn’t quite there so we started looking for a potential loan player to come in. Moscardo had signed for Juve and after finding their manager, Andy Banks, such a joy to do business with, we were able to agree a deal for the young Brazilian to come to London for the rest of the season on loan. This blew upafter Banks was hung, drawn and quartered the deal was cancelled. But by this stage I had convinced myself that he was the man to change our season, so I begged Steve Outten to loan him to me and actually paid a fee for the privilege as there was such heavy competition - again a few eyebrows raised amongst the managers.
I wanted to further strengthen the defence, so when the opportunity came to take Jose Gimenez from Sporting i jumped at it, with Calabria going the other way. He has to be one of the best of the signings, solid and popping up with some vital goals for us. Moscardo finally made his debut in week 23 for us after weeks of twiddling his thumbs, and we were still up at the top of the league. In the same game another loanee, Jarrand Branthwaite from Dortmund also made his debut and really added something to our squad - I think he maybe could have been useful for them given their relegation but we weren't complaining! This enabled us to sell Pereira and Perisic to Saudi Arabia and we had a bit of cash to play with. We invested some of this in upgrading Bensebaini to Mbabu which again turned out to be inspired.
It still looked like Europe would be our best hope with 7 games left, but then we beat Chelsea at home, totally dominating them in a complete reverse of our earlier game. A hiccup at Barnsley who made a name of taking down big scalps in crucial games, then a massive win at home against Liverpool, our main rivals. Our final tweak saw Boniface come in for Hojlund and add a little more shooting, and we won at Everton.
The North London derby was massive and now the point looks extremely valuable especially having gone one behind, then a win against Man City away, which was just as massive, and then Cardiff at home. Before the Cardiff game, we had a goal difference of +10, by miles the lowest of the contenders. Liverpool were +20.
We beat Cardiff 4-0, Tadic, Mbabu and Gimenez all scoring which gave us a good chance of finishing 3rd, which was amazing.
Then the final week. I hadn’t really considered the possibility of winning the title at this point - I knew that we would need to win like 4-0 and Liverpool lose 4-0 or something to overtake them, but the way they had been playing and our lack of goals made that look pretty unlikely - and despite going down 1-7 to Man City at home, Leicester away for us was a tough ask to win heavily. Also, our arch rivals the Pesky Gooners were at home to West Ham who had secured their Premiership status and seemed to have very little riding on the game.
So we rocked up to the Walkers Stadium and did our thing which was all we could do, and amazingly we took Leicester apart. Boniface came off the bench to score a hat-trick, Leon Bailey scored as did Tadic and it was 6-1 - brilliant, 3rd place secure. As I wondered how the other contenders got on, I clicked on the Liverpool game and still thought I hadn't quite done enough to overtake them, so then went to the Emirates to watch Arsenal defeated at home and thought great, we’ve got second! As I scrolled down I realised we had done the unthinkable and taken home the Premiership title at the first time of trying.
It goes without saying that I am chuffed to bits with this, I do feel we deserved this as we have been punching well above all season. I just want to acknowledge Livi as well here though - we both came in with squads way below the standard of some of the other contenders and we have ended up on top with a goal separating us. We have both, I am sure, worked hard on our team sheets every week, so it is nice to get this reward.
In terms of our squad, Talbot was right , we did ‘go for it’ and clearly having 2 loan signings and a Dusan Tadic in your squad will leave holes to be replaced. We have Luke Shaw coming in from Leipzig in the close season and we will be looking for a couple of other faces to freshen things up, but these boys have performed remarkably well and if we never win another thing this will always be a huge achievement.
Also, nice to get Bristol City to the top of the championship so feeling especially smug, and look forward to seeing who will be managing them next season in the Prem.
Our final squad:
E_Green 23 eng 25 1 1 1 22 529 1 1 1
J_Gimenez 30 uru 1 22 17 12 27 1 406 690 477
K_Mbabu 30 aut 1 22 19 6 27 1 425 382 698
T_Tomiyasu 25 jap 1 21 17 15 28 1 866 557 33
P_Hincapie 22 ecu 1 21 19 3 27 1 579 286 510
J_Branthwaite 23 eng 1 20 16 3 28 1 205 720 806 (L)
O_Kokcu 23 tur 1 15 22 9 25 1 957 881 689
L_Bailey 26 jam 1 4 22 20 26 1 468 244 760
S Bergwijn 27 ned 1 4 21 19 25 1 956 890 607
G_Moscardo 19 bra 1 19 20 12 27 1 339 89 501 (L)
V_Eletu 19 Nga 1 13 17 9 22 1 632 859 81
V_Boniface 24 nig 1 7 17 23 25 1 415 824 127
D_Tadic 35 SER 1 4 21 22 25 1 118 302 558
Our player of the season probably has to be the mighty Serb Tadic who transformed our season - but all of the signings came off, including the loan players. Looking forward to a whole new challenge next season as I am sure all of the contenders will be stronger and we won’t be the plucky underdogs anymore, so it will be very tough, but we will relish the contest, and I can't wait to be in Europe with my club. Cheers everyone for a magical season!