A bottle job? Spurs are progressing nicely...
THEIR eyes told you the full story as Tottenham left the London Stadium. Harry Kane posed for photos and smiled but the dull thud of pain is impossible for the defeated to hide.
His team-mates filed out after him following the crushing loss at the hands of West Ham, but there it was again: the same deadeye stare which sportsmen wear at their most difficult professional moments.
Elsewhere Tottenham’s manager Mauricio Pochettino was telling reporters that the title race wasn’t fully over yet. And Hugo Lloris, that mostmature of ambassadors for the club, maintained something similar.
Or, at least, he was determined that Tottenham’s surrender of the title does not disintegrate into the chaos of last season’s disastrous finish.
After squandering a twogoal lead at Stamford Bridge, they lost at home to Southampton before a 5-1 defeat at relegated Newcastle on the final day to finish third, behind Arsenal.
‘This season is not over yet,’ insisted Lloris. ‘We’ve got to secure the second place, that is the most important thing.
‘My feeling hasn’t changed after this game. It’s the same as before this game: we must stay focused on ourselves and try to finish the job in the best way. There are three games left and we must try to win all of them and finish second. This would be a success for Tottenham, even though we wanted more.’
Factually he was correct when he added that Chelsea are not yet champions. ‘It is not tonight because they must finish the job on the pitch obviously,’ he said.
But neither Pochettino nor Lloris are deluding themselves. They know, as everyone does, that it’s over for another season.
It took an extraordinary nine straight wins in the Premier League — a club record — just to make a fight of it and hang onto Chelsea’s coat-tails. Eventually, that took its toll.
‘It demands so much force to try to catch Chelsea,’ said Lloris. ‘It’s been a while now that they’ve been first and at one moment they were 10, 11, 12, 13 points over us. So we tried to push as much as possible.
‘We must not forget everything we’ve done before tonight, especially in the way we’ve played football. Against West Ham we slipped collectively. We were not able to increase the level and it was not enough. Our collective performance was not enough to expect a better result.’
Tottenham ran out of steam. The physical and mental demands proved too much.
But for most there is discernible improvement, even from last season.
Sky Sports presenter Rachel Riley caricatured Friday night’s performance as a ‘proper bottle job’ and was perhaps cheered by partisans who revel in a rival’s failure.
But more sanguine Arsenal and Chelsea fans can see the threat Spurs pose and the strides which are being made.
For one, Tottenham are seven points better off than the end of last season, with three games to play.
They are likely to get past the 81-point total which secured the title for Leicester last year and for Chelsea in 2015.
It may not have felt like it at the London Stadium on Friday night, but this is progress.