It’s not really about the result. Of course, breaking Liverpool’s 24-match unbeaten streak and condemning Arne Slot to a first away loss since December 2023, a run spanning two countries and seven competitions, will always mean something. We’ll always have that Carabao Cup semi-final first leg.
But Tottenham have been here before. Both Manchester City victories. Thumping Aston Vila 4-1 last November. Thrashing them 4-0 last March. 3-0 over Manchester United and 4-1 over Newcastle. Half of their last six wins have come against City or Liverpool. The highs have always been high.
No-one doubts their ability to win big games, especially when the other team is willing to dominate the ball. The issue is one of consistency and stability, of winning regularly and repeatedly, downing Wolves and Ipswich and Rangers. Ange Postecoglou does false dawns, and the second leg could rapidly make this the falsest of the lot.
And yet there were elements of this deserved victory which should be cause for both short- and long-term optimism. For one, despite Postecoglou’s post-match protestations to the contrary, Tottenham adapted. Djed Spence and Pedro Porro largely held high and wide. Yves Bissouma dropped into the defensive line at points. This was attacking, but not gratuitously so.
Perhaps most interestingly, Spurs won with two 18-year-olds – one out of position – and a 21-year-old goalkeeper who only joined the club on Sunday. Technical director Johan Lange’s recruitment has been reasonably criticised for not creating a deep enough squad, but he is signing players who can gradually construct a brilliant future.
Looking like the menacingly blonde lacrosse player in an American high school movie, Lucas Bergvall was smooth yet gritty, front-footed but not reckless.
His harrying twice robbed Alisson in five second-half seconds. He should have been sent off for a second yellow, even if his first was harsh, but the confident calm to become Spurs’ youngest League Cup goalscorer since Gareth Bale in 2007 was a revelation. At £8.5m, this is the sort of business Daniel Levy has built the modern Tottenham on, for better or worse.
Antonin Kinsky was slightly more expensive at £12.5m, but appeared equally assured and valuable despite this being his debut, making him the third Spurs keeper in three games. Having kept clean sheets in 12 of his 19 league matches for Slavia Prague, this was a continuation of the norm for him in a way it certainly was not for Tottenham.
Six saves, six accurate long balls and a mind-blowing display of maturity in the circumstances, dropped in a wind tunnel and told to fly. He can be another foundational piece of a serious squad, a second-choice goalkeeper who can challenge and comfortably replace the starter.
Then there’s Archie Gray, excelling in defence by the virtue of a talent so pure you sense it could survive anywhere. He will never be an elite centre-back, but the fact he can fashion himself into a functional one is impressive enough.
Don’t forget 17-year-old Luka Vuskovic – the highest-scoring teenager in Europe’s top 10 leagues – is coming in the summer. Wilson Odobert is 20. Radu Dragusin, Pape Matar Sarr and Destiny Udogie are still 22, Brennan Johnson and Micky van de Ven 23.
This is a genuine feat of recruitment and scouting, with Lange personally responsible for many of the signings. Far more of Spurs’ problems can be attributed to their senior players and head coach than to their relative youth or wider recruitment philosophy.
The billion-dollar question is how Tottenham bridge the gap between these starlets becoming megastars. Is it just a matter of watching and waiting, of accepting that life might not be perfect for a while?
For all the excitement of paying £55m for Dominic Solanke, Postecoglou has emphasised that Spurs are not in the market to pay big money for big players. Development time is inevitable.
“I’m so happy they’re at our football club,” Postecoglou said of Gray and Bergvall. “In two or three years’ time, I just pray to God I’m the beneficiary of their talent, mate, because if somebody else is getting it, I won’t be happy.”
After 10 Premier League losses already in 2024-25, that might not be his choice. There is increasingly the sense he will be remembered as the wrong man at the wrong time, that at some point this year results are going to pass the threshold of unforgivable, that he is developing someone else’s winning team. Even Son Heung-min hoisting aloft the Carabao Cup might not be enough.
Juande Ramos won the Carling Cup but didn’t see out the year. Jose Mourinho didn’t even get to see the final he reached in 2021. This is probably Tottenham’s least important competition of this season, even if only because a European win would come with Champions League football.
But the prospect of a Tottenham vs Newcastle final is hugely entertaining and increasingly real, a drought-induced desperation derby which risks shattering the foundations of their identities.
These are two clubs fundamentally built on not winning silverware, on the journey being greater than the destination, on making suffering an art and a purpose in itself. Where do you go once you’ve achieved your dream?
For now, the kids have relieved the pressure on Postecoglou, but they are simply not old or wise enough to do this every week, to seriously contribute to saving his job. He has to do more to achieve that himself.
There will be plenty of dark times yet to come, the product of Levy and Postecoglou’s shared aversity to change. But however rough it might get between now and then, and whoever is in charge, by 2027 the depth and breadth of talent at Tottenham should simply be too big to fail.
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