A Europa League win won't mask Spurs' dismal season

No opportunity to stoke the fires of tribalism is ever missed in the world of who can shout the loudest football analysis.

- PETE HALL

It is easy for some to claim Tottenham's season will be a successful one, and more successful than Arsenal's, should Spurs win the Europa League and end their agonising 17-year trophy drought.

Arsenal’s wait for another Premier League triumph goes on, having become bridesmaids once more, this time to Liverpool.

However, taking brash wind-up claims out of it, to say that a team who have already lost 20 league games in one season and are on course to not even break the 40-point barrier – something Spurs have not done since they were relegated from the top flight in 1976-77 – has had a successful campaign is beyond wild. The team that finished fifth last season and spent £150m to build on that progress has dropped 12 places and is only assured of their Premier League survival because the three promoted clubs were so vastly inferior this term to every other team.

A Europa League victory over another club in astonishing decline, Manchester United, will only bring short-term joy. Arsenal may have finished second again, for the third season in a row, but to remain competing for title after title, even if they miss out every time, is no mean feat, north London banter aside. Trophy or no trophy, Spurs’ season has been an embarrassment that should have already cost Ange Postecoglou his job.