35 Pre-season should be miserable at Tottenham. It should be barbaric and old-fashioned and nasty, and it needs to sear the fat from this team’s flabby soul. Because these players need it. Last season showed them at a physical deficit. It also exposed how far they’ve descended from the honest and hard-working virtues that once allowed the club to punch above its weight. But what even is it to be a Tottenham player currently? Nobody really has an answer and the many contradictions of this shambolic summer have done little to cure a growing existential crisis. So, yes, these players need to run and run, but they also need their identity redrawn and that’s a different challenge entirely.