This was an incredible year for Spurs. Any way you look at it, that is the conclusion. If you don’t consider reaching the Champions League Final an incredible year, then you must not have suffered through enough seasons of mediocrity and frustration. Even ignoring that incredible cup run, Tottenham qualified for the Champions League for one more season. That alone makes this season a success, and all the glory and drama of the Champions League campaign is just added fun on top of that.

To be clear, there were negatives to this season. There were a lot more negatives than you’d expect, given the two positives just mentioned. On the balance though, the great moments made up for the poor moments.

Beating Arsenal in the EFL Cup with ease was great. Losing to Chelsea in the next round was a kick in the teeth.

Dropping 14 out of a possible 15 points as we entered the final stretch of the season was tough. It felt like getting turned down by your first crush, five weeks in a row. Ending the season in fourth place and qualifying for the Champions League again was more cathartic than your next crush saying yes to go on a date with you.

Not signing a single player in two consecutive transfer windows was a hangover that never away. Lucas Moura and Fernando Llorente rising to the occasion and scoring when the team needed them the most was better than the first beer of the weekend.

Sludging through 7 months of “home” games at Wembley was exhausting, but finally playing the first match at the new stadium was a historic moment.

Losing in the Champions League final was soul-crushing. Reaching the Champions League Final was nearly orgasmic.

If you can avoid getting lost in the individual moments of glory and sorrow, a few statistics from the season stand out. Tottenham played 58 matches across all competitions this season and lost 20 of those. That is an absurdly high number of losses. Last season, they played 55 matches, but only lost 10. The year before that, they played 53, but again only lost 10. Our goal difference has dropped over the past two seasons as well. +28 goal difference (with 67 goals scored) in the league this year, compared to +38 (and 74 scored) last year, and +60 (with 86 scored) the year before. Can you spot the trend?

Even though we achieved more this year than in the two seasons prior, this is a team whose form is in decline. Those numbers shouldn’t be a surprise to any Tottenham fan– Spurs have clearly been running on fumes since January, if not even before then. In the league, Tottenham earned 45 points in the first half of the season, but only 26 in the second half. After January, Spurs only played like a truly great team in 2 matches: Home & Away against Dortmund. They obviously had other big wins and great results in other matches (Home and Away against City in the Champions League, the thriller in Amsterdam, the home opener vs Crystal Palace to name a few), but a team can win despite not playing greatly.

This Tottenham squad has a core of incredibly talented players, but a modern team that plays more than 50 matches a season needs more than a core. It needs depth. This is especially true in post-world cup years, as it was inevitable that we were going to run into injury problems. Our midfield was precariously close to a disaster all season long. Moussa Dembele, our most important midfielder the past few seasons, is still yet to be replaced. Further, Winks, Dier, Wanyama, and Sissoko all missed time due to injury. For those not playing close attention, that’s our entire senior midfield roster. Even if you don't consider current health or chronic injury problems, that’s a very thin depth chart. We had injuries in defense and attack as well, but there were simply too many to enumerate here.

Hopefully next season the two Harry’s (Winks and Kane), Dele, Eric Dier, and everyone else who’s been struggling through injuries can come back healthy. And if that miracle happens, reinforcements are still needed. Moussa Sissoko played amazingly this year but shouldn’t be a 38-match starter in midfield if we want to challenge for the title. Christian Eriksen, Kieran Trippier, and Fernando Llorente could all need to be replaced, if rumors are to be believed. On top of that, Spurs require more options off the bench and for rotation in attack.

Given the lack of depth, given the injuries, given most of the squad having no summer off due to the world cup, it would have been easy to accept a disappointing season. If Spurs had finished fifth, it would have been characterized as another “typically spursy” underperformance, with the above facts listed as reasons why. If Spurs had been knocked out in the group stages of the Champions League, it would have been just another year in Europe, another disappointing but not unexpected failure. And both of those results were very close to happening.

If Barcelona had won 5-2 instead of 4-2. If Kane hadn’t scored twice in the last 15 minutes against PSV. If Eriksen hadn’t scored in the 80th against Inter. If Lucas hadn’t tied it in the 85th minute at Barcelona. If any one of those hadn’t gone our way, Spurs would have been sent to the Europa league.

In the league, there were multiple late winners as well. Most recently, Eriksen in the 88th minute against Brighton in April. But before that, there was Son in the 83rd to beat Newcastle in February, two goals past 80 minutes to come back against Watford in January, Winks in the 93rd against Fulham, and Eriksen in the 91st against Burnley in December. If any of those goals don’t happen, A win turns into a draw, we drop two points, and Arsenal finish 4th. Not Tottenham Hotspur.

Thursdays away in Europe. An unpleasant and all too familiar fate. But that’s not what happened, not in the league nor the Champions League. Some of the most remarkable moments that football can produce happened this year, and those moments fell in our favor. We couldn’t produce another one of those moments on the greatest stage, but that doesn’t discount all the moments that came before.

This season wasn’t about echoes of glory, like in years past. This year was Glory. Glory, Glory, Tottenham Hotspur.