Almost half a century ago, Matthew Engel had a line in this newspaper about Sheffield United going top of the Fourth Division being like hearing a friend had been made head of the prison library: you wanted to congratulate them but really you were wondering what on earth they were doing there in the first place. It was a similar story at Spurs today: for all the understandable glee and relief, even to be in danger of relegation is evidence of things having gone badly wrong.<\/p>\n
It may be that the future has this as the first day in the new history of Tottenham. Roberto De Zerbi is clearly a manager of great promise<\/a> \u2013 11 points in seven games may not be earth-shattering, but it is a lot, lot better than what came before \u2013 and the injury crisis surely can\u2019t be this bad for a third straight season. Perhaps coming so close to the brink will startle them into decisive action in a way that last season\u2019s fourth-bottom finish, mitigated as it was by the Europa League success, did not. Perhaps there really will come a bracing clarity of vision and they will rise again. The world can change very quickly. It\u2019s only four years ago that Spurs were, for the sixth season in succession, finishing above Arsenal. A season out of Europe, while it will have a negative impact on revenues, can have a remarkable rejuvenating\u00a0effect.<\/p>\n As nervous as Tottenham fans became with news of West Ham\u2019s goals flashing up on phone screens, for a long time it simply didn\u2019t seem plausible that this Everton<\/a> might score at all, never mind twice. The chaos of injury time, the headers over the bar, Antonin Kinsky\u2019s fine save from Tyrique George, seemed out of keeping with the previous 90 minutes, more a manifestation of Spurs\u2019s anxiety than anything Everton were doing.<\/p>\n There was a mix of reactions to Tottenham\u2019s final-day survival, even from their own players. Photograph: Martin Dalton\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n It was very hard to square this tentative side with the team that had such an impact in the Premier League title race by drawing 3-3 with Manchester City<\/a>. Spurs, as in the defeat by Nottingham Forest and the draw<\/a> against Leeds, began well and got gradually scratchier but, on this occasion, it didn\u2019t matter: only belatedly did the sponge mallet\u00a0of Everton\u2019s attack transform into something that might do\u00a0damage.<\/p>\n Some Spurs fans had been doubtful about attending, or even following the game on television or the radio. There was a lot of talk of long walks or gardening, avoiding the anxiety until it was all done<\/a>, but football is about emotion whether positive or negative; about moments of crisis such as this. The duty of a fan is to bear witness, the beauty of fandom is the common experience of emotion. Imagine if you were a regular who had not been there and they had gone down; to be absent for the lowest low would be just as bad as missing the highest high. Collective memory is the lifeblood of community.<\/p>\n