Gerry Francis - The Team That Dared To Do: Tottenham Hotspur 1994/5

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2017
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ

www.pitchpublishing.co.uk

Gerry Francis and Chris Slegg, 2017

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A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library

Print ISBN 978-1-78531-309-7
eBook ISBN 978-1-78531-356-1

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W HAT I remember most about the 1994/95 season with Tottenham is the amazing energy that surrounded the club. It wasnt just a team spirit. It was a club spirit. It was a spirit that was created by Alan Sugar and his fight against the FA, and which filtered out to everyone, no matter what position they were working in, whether front office, back office, on the training ground, or in the stands.

White Hart Lane is a stadium which harnesses that energy too. I still feel it when I drive up to the stadium today, on the occasions when I am able to come and visit. The Tottenham fans are a really knowledgeable and sophisticated crowd. They know when the team needs them, they can sense the momentum of a game. I couldnt stop running during that season, because the crowd was always there right behind me. If the game had stopped and the crowd had still been there after the final whistle, I would have still been running.

The memories I have of that season will stay with me forever. I was privileged to win the World Cup, Euro 96, the Bundesliga with Bayern Munich and the UEFA Cup with both Bayern and Inter. I was fortunate to play for some great managers and with some great players. I include the Tottenham players and both Ossie Ardiles and Gerry Francis among that number. I learnt things at Tottenham that served me well in the rest of my career as a player and then also as a manager too.

The Liverpool goal in the FA Cup quarter-final is the goal I remember the most. It was a great team goal, because it was a lovely flick by Teddy that set me up. At the end of the game, when we were walking towards the Tottenham fans at Anfield to say thank you, and the Liverpool players had already left the pitch, we realised the home fans had stayed on to clap us too. That was an incredible experience. It summed up the English spirit, that the Liverpool supporters were prepared to honour us as winners of a great game. That was a really special moment in a season which was full of them. I hope you enjoy reliving many of those moments in this book.

I TS close to 6.30pm on Sunday 14 May 2017. The White Hart Lane pitch looks like it has never looked before. Barely a patch of green is visible. Its white and its blue, and its a heaving mass of movement, a heaving mess of emotion. Around 15,000 Tottenham fans have reclaimed it in a fond farewell to the place thats been home for almost 118 years. Some are on their knees kissing the turf, some are taking selfies, some are walking round trance-like, struggling to take it all in. Moments ago referee Jonathan Moss blew the final, final whistle ever to be sounded at White Hart Lane, sparking a joyous pitch invasion. Tottenham have beaten Manchester United 2-1, but to some the result barely mattered. This day was all about the occasion. From tomorrow morning, when the demolition wrecking balls move in, this stadium will be no more.

The PA pleads with the fans to return to their seats so that the formal farewell ceremony can get under way, and many respectfully begin to do so. As the pitch thins out of bodies a gap opens up in the corner between the Paxton Road end and the West Stand. It gives three or four fans who are still on the pitch enough room to undertake an action theyve clearly been desperate to carry out. In almost exactly the same spot where their hero did so after scoring on his home debut against Everton almost 23 years ago, they each re-enact Jrgen Klinsmanns dive celebration, hurling themselves to the turf.

Tottenham arent just saying goodbye to White Hart Lane today, theyre doing so as North Londons top club, for the first time since that Klinsmann season of 1994/95. Theyve been sure of that for a fortnight now. A 2-0 win here against Arsenal on 30 April ensured their rivals could no longer catch them and put an end to St Totteringhams Day, the day on which Gunners fans had celebrated finishing above Spurs for each of the last 21 seasons.

When the formal farewell ceremony is eventually able to get under way, seven members of that 1994/95 squad are among the 48 Tottenham playing legends from the 1960s onwards invited on to the pitch to take the acclaim of the fans. Klinsmann himself has been unable to make it, but Darren Anderton, Justin Edinburgh, Micky Hazard, David Howells, Gary Mabbutt, Teddy Sheringham, and Erik Thorstvedt are here. Admittedly they arent being honoured for 1994/95 per se, but the fact that squad contained so many players held in high enough esteem to warrant an invite today helps explain why it was such a special year. They were players who gave their all, players who generated not just a special team spirit in the dressing room but a bond with the fans which perhaps hasnt been felt so strongly at White Hart Lane again until now, in 2016/17.

After the legends have taken their places on the pitch, current manager Mauricio Pochettino and his players do likewise. Make no mistake, as a team, Pochettinos is unquestionably better than Tottenhams 1994/95 incarnation, but the last Tottenham side to finish above Arsenal certainly shares many qualities with the modern-day heroes of White Hart Lane: a gift for the spectacular; playing the game for the love of it; and an acceptance that the club motto To Dare Is To Do is an apt mantra by which to approach every match.

For supporters of the vast majority of football clubs, the vast majority of seasons end without a trophy. Thats true even for a club as big as Tottenham Hotspur. That was true in 1994/95, and in 2016/17, just as it has been in all but two of the last 26 seasons. A fans love of his or her club though remains undimmed. The love doesnt come from silverware, it comes from the sharing of memories, the sharing of unforgettable moments, the sharing of heightened emotions, be they good or bad. To be a Tottenham fan in 1994/95 was to experience every single one of those heightened emotions football is capable of stirring in the space of ten short months.

It seems that wasnt just true from a fans perspective, but from the managers too. Gerry Francis has had a long and distinguished career spanning 50 years. Most recently, while working as assistant manager to Tony Pulis at the Hawthorns, he has helped steer West Bromwich Albion to respectable mid-table finishes in 2015/16 and 2016/17. Even at the time that he took over as Tottenham manager in November 1994, aged 42, he had already achieved so much. As a player he captained England at the age of 23 and was skipper of the QPR team that so narrowly missed out on the league title to Liverpool in 1976. As a manager he guided Bristol Rovers to the Third Division title and to Wembley for the first time in their history, then he returned to Loftus Road to lead Rangers to fifth place in the inaugural Premier League season of 1992/93, seeing them finish as Londons top club.