Seven. It’s a Horror.
Ah, the blessed relief of not watching Tottenham play football. Not a sentiment I ever thought I would write. The club has been integral and essential to my life, my identity, since the late sixties, but I have easily been able to do without it for the past couple of weeks.
I’ve not watched any football at all since the Forest defeat. Not intentional. I feel so disenchanted that it felt natural to ignore it. Listening to BBC 5Live while I got on with the household chores felt like muscle memory – I was doing the same things I usually do but unconsciously, without feeling anything. Then, I watched the Liverpool PSG game this past Wednesday. It was somehow otherworldly, certainly not football as I have come to know it at the Lane this season.
Apologies for the gap in TOMM posts. I was busy with life, then I found no motivation to write anything, anything coherent anyway, or anything significantly different from various pieces I’ve written over a decade or more as well as this season, warning about the dire consequences of the club’s negligent disorganisation. And here we are. The club’s hierarchy, then with Levy, now with Lange, Lewis and Venkatesham, have much to answer for and should be held to account however this season turns out, but let’s leave that for now.
All I feel like writing is – this is so awful. Awful. Painfully terrible. Over and over again, like writing lines at school. Punishment for being a Spurs fan. I’ve got nothing any more. I’ve passed through the stage of anger to reach resignation and bitter, lasting resentment that it should come to this.
People know I’m a Spurs supporter, so they ask me what’s going on. All I can do is shake my head and intone, ‘this is so awful’. Friends and acquaintances have mostly been kind. You won’t go down, they say. We’re doing our best, I reply. You don’t watch them every week like I do.
Fans often kvetch about the media’s poor treatment of Spurs. I’m never sure that’s entirely true. I strongly suspect all fans say the same about their teams. This season, the media have been relatively kind to us, not that we deserve it. People saying to me that we won’t go down reflects the coverage of the club, which is that we’re not good but can turn it around.
In the past few weeks, that has changed. There is a different narrative as the media gleefully latch on to what we fans have long perceived, that Spurs’ problems have long festered and now have come to a head. A fortune spent on transfers to produce an unbalanced squad with serious flaws in midfield and out wide. Two decades of under-investment in players and opportunities missed. Managers come and go, all they have in common is their unsuitability for the task they face. A club culture shaped from the top that encourages under-achievement and complacency, that has created a club amongst the ten most wealthy in the world only to waste it, over and over again.
Breaking news: we were shocking against Forest. Tottenham On My Mind as up to date as ever. I haven’t got over it. Big game, let’s get up for it. Thousands of fans outside the ground to welcome the team, and massive kudos to people from Tottenham Flags and Return of the Shelf, amongst others, who organised this. Waves of noise from the South Stand. But we are Tottenham, and we cave. Tudor’s ludicrous team selection. Let’s wang the ball up the pitch. That should do the trick.
Bad defeats are always at their worst not when the winning goal goes in but in the remaining period when all you have left is time to contemplate how hideous it feels, until the sweet mercy of the final whistle. In those last ten minutes or so, I can’t recall feeling worse, comparable with the final minutes in Madrid in 2019.
Previously, I ranked the Pleat caretaker season of 2003-4 as one where I felt similarly despondent, where we toiled with an aged midfield of Redknapp, Poyet and Anderton, or there’s always 97-98 where we felt safe only in May, beating Wimbledon away 6-2. Both seasons shared that same avoidable hopelessness, the outcome of bad planning and poorly directed investment. Curiously the season we were actually relegated, 76-77, did not feel as bad. Maybe it was because I was younger. Certainly, relegation did not seem as significant as it does now.
The shiny clean lines of our state of the art stadium can’t hide the stench of decay and hubris that pervades the club. Among the legion of avoidable errors Spurs have made this season, on and off the pitch, I will forever be incredulous at a board that looked at our league position and injury list in January and said, we’ll keep the manager who got us here, buy a box to box midfielder, sell our top goalscorer and not replace him. A reminder that in late February, the club spoke to the media about their plans to raise our self-imposed salary cap in order to attract better quality players.
So anyway a couple of things on my mind.
De Zerbi arrives with a reputation for motivating and organising players. The deficiencies of individuals have been obvious as the season has progressed and the pressure has mounted, to the point where passing the ball between two Spurs players is apparently a virtually insurmountable problem. In the short time he has available, he needs to start with the basics of playing players in their right positions and staying with four at the back. Without excusing them, players these days expect to be coached into using their skills within a defined pattern and shape. I’ve lost count of how many formations we’ve attempted this season, so settle on this. It’s all we’ve got.
That said, I don’t think DeZerbi should have arrived at all. He is on record as excusing Mason Greenwood, who allegedly sexually and physically assaulted his former girlfriend, adding that Greenwood “paid a heavy price for what happened.” This is a shameful and shameless comment. Greenwood is a young, fit and rich young man who went unpunished and is able to continue his well-remunerated job. There is not a moment’s thought here for the victim.
By appointing De Zerbi, Tottenham are condoning his disgraceful attitude. He said he is sorry if he offended anyone. This is the worst kind of apology because it’s not an apology at all. He’s not addressing his comments, he’s instead putting this back to the reaction of others. He could have accepted his mistake, spoken about how he now understands he was wrong, that he has learned from this. He could enter into discussions with groups who work with victims. He chose to do none of these things, because he thinks he’s right.
The club are also sending a message that Spurs accept violence against women, that the experiences of women, girls and their safety are insignificant. Spurs have a sound record in working closely alongside organisations such as the Proud Lilywhites and Reach. These representative bodies plus Women of the Lane have all spoken out against the proposed appointment, yet they have been ignored.
I am a member of the Tottenham Hotspur Supporters Trust. Their report earlier this year noted that the club board agree with their Five Principles, which include ‘lead with integrity’ and ‘fans first’. They went on to praise the club’s commitment to ‘equality, disability and inclusion’. Not, it seems, when the expediency of appointing a manager takes precedence. There is a broader message here, that the club only work alongside supporter groups when it suits them and that their declarations of intent are worthless.
I am intensely proud of the club’s heritage and defend this vigorously. The club frequently make pronouncements about the club’s history and DNA. Yet I fail to see how the club’s actions contribute anything positive to our culture. Also, our CEO was in a similarly senior position at AFC when they decided to regularly play a player on bail after a sexual assault allegation, to the point where he was allegedly offered a new contract. Is this the image we wish to project to the world – Tottenham Hotspur, the club that condones sexual assault provided that it suits us? Because that’s how it looks.
Also on my mind is the increasing volume of noise in the media that the fans are to blame for our plight. This focuses on fan protests this season plus the booing of individuals and the team that is undeniably a feature of several home games this season. Now, I make it a rule that I don’t drawn into social media monetised concocted sensationalism or phone-in gobshites, but this has become part of the narrative surrounding Spurs. One example is an article in the Observer by political journalist and Spurs fan David Aronovitch where he attributes our problems to injuries, fair enough, and “the boo-boys”. Other writers have given fans’ assumed sense of entitlement as the reason behind the booing.
I don’t boo, opting instead for demented muttering that bothers only the very nice fans who I sit beside. I’ve berated some fans this season who have booed individuals, not that it did any good, because it doesn’t help them or the team. My own research revealed that many supporters complain bitterly that the club define them in a depersonalised manner as consumers, yet as Aronovitch insightfully points out, some appear to be adopting that role and complaining as disgruntled customers would to Trip Advisor.
The problem I have with this analysis of entitled fans as a cause of our demise is what it obfuscates. Fans didn’t appoint a series of managers ill-suited to the club. Fans don’t allocate the transfer budget. Fans don’t create a club culture which a recent report highlighted as a major problem that needs to change. Fans don’t buy players who are not up to it. Fans don’t decide the salary budget that fails to attract top class players. Fans don’t decide seat prices that are among the highest in Europe.
Booing does not help, but what else do supporters have if they wish to be heard? Levy’s regime was largely contemptuous of supporter representation if they wished to change anything of greater significance than the quality of the sausage rolls. Spurs fans are loyal to the core. Despite all the above and more, until recently the ground was always full. Away tickets are gold-dust, because we go all over the country and Europe in numbers. We do not bring a sense of entitlement because until last season, an entire generation of supporters had only a League Cup win to celebrate. There are no glory hunters at Spurs because there’s no glory.
Such loyalty deserves praise. Booing is an expression of frustration, the causes of which could be addressed by the club. Fans have pointed out all of the problems above, but have been ignored. Also, the club could reduce the disconnect between themselves and fans if, for example, they reduced ticket prices, had better, cheaper deals for European games and worked more closely alongside supporter representatives. Or treated us with respect.
My worst failing as a fan is that 5 minutes before kick-off, whatever I have said beforehand, whatever the club’s situation, I always feel hopeful. It’s irrational, given that I am nothing if not a cautious, rational man, but when was being a fan ever logical. I can’t help it. Seven games. I believed we were dead and buried. It’s up to the players to find something they have kept hidden from us for the whole season. I leave you with the wise words of one of the nation’s finest philosophers, Jackson Lamb in Slow Horses, who reminds us that it’s not the hope that kills you, it’s knowing it’s the hope that kills you, that kills you.