Tottenham Fan View: White Hart Lane Finale

Farewell White Hart Lane

Damn you, Riyad Mahrez and your tiny stuttering feet. If the mercurial Algerian had just managed to steady his penalty run-up yesterday, during Leicester’s early rendezvous with Man City at the Etihad, then Spurs might have gone into this afternoon’s fixture knowing their work was done. Second place secured.

Then fans could focus on the important business of filling their pockets with clumps of souvenir turf and giving the Lane a good sendoff.

Instead, Mahrez’s bizarre double-footed penalty was disallowed and Manchester City held out for the win. Now José Mourinho and his Manchester United side have the chance to prolong the wait for Spurs; United themselves have an outside chance of snatching one of the two final Champions League places.

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How are supporters expected to toast the imminent bulldozing of their famous stadium, knowing the joy the Portuguese super coach would get from ruining the party?

The party he’s only attending through administrative chance.

Let’s hope this remarkable team can bottle up their disappointment from Chelsea’s victory at the Hawthorns on Friday and squeeze out the elusive point they need.

If recent history is any guide, the sooner the better.

We know how well these players reacted when Leicester’s title was made official last May; what’s to stop our form nose-diving again in these last three fixtures?

Memories of St James’ Park still provoke even the most optimistic of Spurs fan into wild fever dreams. From which they wake to find we’ve signed Moussa Sissoko for £30 million.

Still, let’s keep it light, shall we?

The perfect goodbye

Perhaps one of the most memorable games at White Hart Lane in the modern era, for all the wrong reasons, was the bewildering 3-0 up to 5-3 down fiasco against United in 2001. Perhaps the zenith of Spurs’ ongoing affair with tragi-comic self-destruction.

Manchester City hauling back a 3-0 deficit to win 4-3 with ten men runs pretty close, but this was our crowning moment of absurdity from the early naughties.

At the turn of the millennium, there were few teams who could surrender a lead in such puzzlingly dramatic fashion.

What a perfect sendoff it would be, then; what more poetic way to close the circle on Spurs’ life at White Hart Lane, than a good old fashioned thumping of the former untouchables, United. To end one era and begin another.

The title race might be over and this afternoon will be an emotional day in North London, but there’d be no greater farewell.

Let’s go out with a flourish.