Chelsea: Tottenham again comes close before wilting under light pressure

Even in an unprecedented situation, Tottenham are still finding ways to come ever so close before wilting away. What position does that leave Chelsea in?

I don’t know if I should commend Tottenham for exercising independent judgment, mock them for retreating so quickly, respect them for their persistence, laugh at their clumsiness, commend their brazenness or shake my head in dismay at their inability to learn and their commitment to eternal Spursiness. These are trying times for Chelsea fans, indeed.

Matt Law of The Telegraph reported on Tuesday that Serge Aurier and Moussa Sissoko were -clutch your rosary, light a votive candle, protect thine spirit with incense – caught training together outside. Tottenham are now lockdown-breaking recidivists. Repeat offenders! (Not a pretty name, is it, H.I?).

Probably because this was Tottenham’s second infraction (does the Met Police – NHS joint task force issue yellow cards?), Tottenham quickly issued a statement that they had issued a reminder to their players about compliance with the government-imposed lockdown. The players just as quickly bought an indulgence by pledging a donation to the National Health Service, and then completed their penance with the usual statement of contrition, obedience and gratitude.

Only Jose Mourinho gets to do what he did, it seems.

As we said when Mourinho led a clandestine training session, the real offence is exposing the absurdity. Aurier and Sissoko are not infected with COVID-19. They know they’re not. We know they’re not. Tottenham Hotspur FC knows they’re not. The Football Association and National Health Service know they’re not. But they all have to act like they might be, and that by “running shuttles and sitting next to [each other]” they are endangering themselves, society, perhaps even the entire rump of the British empire.

Many football players, like many young men, take dumb risks or commit dumb certainties all the time (see, e.g., Drinkwater, Daniel N.). This wasn’t one of them. Well, not the training. Aurier’s decision to put it on Instagram? We’ll class that as a dumb certainty. Did he not think people would notice and set in motion the mechanical response?

Unless, and here comes the part where our hope allows us to give credit where it may not belong, there was some act of, if not rebellion, at least impatience.

In our fleeting moments of hope, we tell ourselves that by meeting up for a workout and then putting it on social media, Aurier and Sissoko were fueled by a bit of “Come on, really? Are we really still all going along with this? Let’s get real,” if not a full-out single digit message to the various authorities.

Whatever intent there was by the players, if any, Tottenham Hotspur FC did what they always do and snatched timidity from the jaws of pride. They could have learned from Jose Mourinho’s response to his naughty-gram earlier in the month.

But as we’ve seen on the pitch this season, even Mourinho can’t un-Spurs the Spurs. To dare is to do, but to fold and apologize is to Spur.