While the doom merchants point out they have yet to win anything, most fans would like to see their own team built, and play, like Mauricio Pochettino’s

The last time a Premier League team produced a stirring two-goal comeback in Turin was in 1999 when the world was still young, when the current managers of Chelsea, Real Madrid and France were playing for Juventus, and when a Manchester United team with an armature of homegrown talent gave post-Heysel English football its first really compelling European story.

The comparison with Tottenham’s stirring 2-2 draw at the Allianz Stadium on Tuesday goes only so far. Which is, in reality, not very far at all. There was a tempting little mnemonic in the angle of Tottenham’s comeback goal, the way Harry Kane cut the ball across into the far corner from the left, drawing an echo of Roy Keane’s flicked near-post header with United also 2-0 down, a moment of footballing Madeleine cake washing about in a silver teaspoon of grainy old YouTube highlights’ films.

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Otherwise these were two entirely separate occasions. United were the best and wealthiest team in England, edging a bit closer to becoming European champions every season. The game itself was a semi-final second leg. Plus, of course, Alex Ferguson’s team actually went on and won the trophy that year.

The reason for mentioning it here is simply as a point of contrast in the aftermath. United’s victory in Turin came in the pre-social media age. At the time it was reported with an air of unqualified celebration, a comeback to be cherished without objection, and indeed with a certain shared domestic pride.

Which just goes to show how wrong you can be. No doubt things would have been very different had we been blessed in the spring of 1999 with the instant hive mind of Twitter and Facebook. Those watching would have been made aware that, in fact, United were extremely lucky, overrated and favoured by referees. That Paul Scholes was a thug and Keane a coward. That Juventus were missing [insert name of player here] so it didn’t count anyway.

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In terms of reaction and response this is the most notable aspect of writing about Tottenham right now, the constant anti-chorus of sceptics, doom-merchants and all-round nay-sayers. Spurs, we hear, are simply media darlings, beneficiaries of a conspiracy to project their successes as more valid and more life-affirming than other high-achieving English clubs. Spurs are the ewoks here. Look at them. Look at their floppy ears. Their bows and arrows. And who doesn’t like ewoks?

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Whereas in reality this is a team who have won nothing and receive relentlessly favourable reviews because of an obvious media conspiracy. Such insight is social media’s gift to all Spurs-watchers. Distrust the evidence of your eyes. This is all, in the words of the internet’s best and brightest, “a bias”.

In fairness it is easy to see why fans of rival teams might be irritated. The fact is they’re right. There probably is a little bias here, a shared fondness for Pochettino-era Spurs, a tendency to dwell on their achievements in more detail, to recount once again the backstory of prudent spending and young players brought on, to wonder how far this act of team-building can progress before money decides it must be decisively disrupted.

Understandably so. It is almost impossible not to feel interested by Tottenham’s success. Human beings are addicted to stories, to the narrative arc. This is why professional sport exists and thrives. And there is a coherent story to this Poch-era Spurs, a team brought together out of well-chosen human parts rather than yanked-in walk-on stars.

Not to mention a simple point of contrast. High-priced instant team-building is also fun to watch. But most fans would like to see their own team built this way, would prefer players who grow into stars rather than arriving ready-made. Pochettino himself is hugely likable, a lucid, courteous, agreeably bear-like head coach. His team play football that is innately attacking and confrontational, a game of sprints and collisions and constant ferreting pressure.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Harry Kane and Gianluigi Buffon embrace after the game in Turin. Photograph: Michael Regan/Getty Images

Journalists are hardly immune to this. These are people who love the stories around sport, who want (almost) every team to succeed, or at least to succeed in a way that makes for a yarn. Hence the similar “bias” in favour of that mid-Fergie United team, back in the blinkered old days of just thinking a two-goal comeback in Turin was a good thing. What fan of sport, all tribalism aside, wouldn’t want an attacking team packed with homegrown players to win the European Cup?

With this in mind, it’s not hard to see the fallacy of those boiler-plate social media objections. Yes, Spurs haven’t won a trophy. But building rather than buying success has always taken a little longer. It is a more precarious business, not least at a time when Big Football’s finances can skew success so violently one way.

Tottenham have spent less on players than Huddersfield, Burnley and Bournemouth over the last five years, but have so far been a match for Juventus, Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund this season. If you like sport at all this is something to be at least noted and pored over. And yet even as the team have improved there has been a degree of countdown to player-poaching Armageddon. The insurrection can still be crushed. Spurs could win nothing at all, could see Harry Kane, Christian Eriksen and Dele Alli scattered to the winds two years from now. But from a purely sporting point of view this doesn’t devalue the process; or lessen the fun – that thrillingly infectious sporting bias – of watching it unfold.