Before kick-off Villas-Boas and Martinez embraced and chatted warmly. For a moment I wondered if they might turn away and find a quiet corner for tapas and a glass of white, leaving the vulgar hurly-burly of a tense top and bottom game behind them.

They have much in common. Serious, earnest students of the game, they must overcome not only their comparative youth but also the suspicion of the cerebral approach that is inbred into English football. It may be a meeting of minds yet on the evidence of Spurs’ two matches against Wigan this season, it is not a meeting of equals.

Twice Martinez has tactically out-thought and outmanoeuvred the Spurs manager resulting in just one point from six, not good enough as we push for the top four. At the Lane, his 3-4-3 stifled our midfield and constantly pressured the defence. We could not get going. Yesterday, they fell back after going a goal up. With a high line at the back and conceding space around the halfway line, they compressed the play into a twenty yard strip. Spurs barely had room to breathe let alone pass the ball or, perish the thought, mount some attacks.

We fell into the trap. Spurs had changed things around too. Huddlestone’s strong appearances as a substitute were rewarded with a start. He played well in the first half, finding his range straight away and willing runners into the channels. With more composed finishing and touch on the ball we could, should, have at least got more shots on target.

However, once Wigan went into the lead, there was no space for the ball to drop. As soon as he picked out a man, the ball was either intercepted in the air because our opponents had time to see it coming or the man on the ball was swiftly swallowed up by willing tacklers. Also, we did nothing to knock it around patiently to draw out the Wigan massed ranks. So the passes became aimless side to side rather than into the heart of the defence and our opponents could contentedly stay in formation. Hud’s long passing game became a liability.

Belated width from Bale and Lennon changed nothing. We did not give the ball to either of them. Their starting position was too far up the field, swallowed up like the rest of us.  We never escaped from that stranglehold. We have the skills but not the wit or intelligence.

None of which should have mattered. On top in the first half, Hud’s raking passes looked as if a breakthrough was sure to come. Defoe was bright save for wanting the extra touch. Bale went through the full repertoire – headers, passes, lay-offs, cushioned headers in the box – excepting a flat-out afterburners run. Something is not quite right. Parker should have shot when after a fine move Defoe’s touch rebounded to him off the keeper. Quite what he was thinking of in taking a touch only he will know.

Yet it was comedy not class that brought the goal. Ten thousand times we’ve seen forwards descend on the keeper only for the clearance to sail upfield. This one hit Bale and pinged into the goal. I have seen it once before, Mark Schwartzer at the Lane, Kanoute’s backside?

Most teams would have ruthlessly exploited such good fortune, but this is Spurs. Wigan equalised from a corner within two minutes, Vertonghen beaten from a standing jump for the second time in three games. Corners and set-pieces have become a liability again. Without making a detailed analysis, my impression is how empty our box seems. The tiresome argy-bargy that comes with most set-pieces is about blocking runs, shutting down space and ensuring that no opponent has the luxury of a clean jump. We don’t have men on the posts so where are they? We need to get low down and dirty like the rest of them.

I don’t recall Lloris making a save in the first half or even touching the ball although he must have. Yet soon in the second half we were 2-1 down, a fine shot from the edge of the box. We needed a lift to get back yet there was nothing.

Pass and move is our style yet everyone was befuddled. It would have drawn Wigan out and got our dangermen on the ball. Parker was committed but failed to exert his influence, too far forward again. I know he is capable of more.

Then we have the substitutions. Last week they won the match in a frenzied spectacular of goals. Yesterday they merely added to the gloom. Not for the first time we saw a full-back for a full-back, which is such a waste especially as on the left there isn’t a radical difference between Naughton and Benny although the Frenchman is undoubtedly the better player and should start. I have advocated for a while now that we should play the same defence for the run-in rather than chop and change all the time. Villas-Boas judges Naughton to be better defensively but we know BAE needs a run of games to bed in.

As it was, we could have done with another midfielder, Siggy to get into the box or Carroll to stimulate the passing game, releasing Dempsey to get alongside Defoe. The few crosses we managed put no pressure on the Wigan defence.

Wigan were extremely good at what they did, pressing like maniacs and allowing us no time on the ball. They also kept their shape like Roman centurions. That said, it would have been harder with ten men. Gomez, who had already been booked, went in head-high on Holtby. Much as I despise players who make a fuss, if Lewis had gone down the referee would surely have reacted.

We needed more luck to equalise, a late free-kick diverted into his own net by Boyce. We are still in it, the pressure until the end of the season won’t diminish regardless of today’s results. However, we are not sparking as we should. Lennon, Bale and Dembele (who went off holding his leg yet again without making a significant contribution) are not fit and we really need that spark because we can’t keep a clean sheet. Four left, flat out now. Much focus on the attack this season but our destiny is in the hands of our defensive discipline. Must get sorted at the back.

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This year Tottenham On My Mind has often been in a reflective, philosophical mood. Underneath the delights and frustrations of this or any other season lies a search for something deeper, more profound. There’s something about being a Spurs fan, a culture and heritage that connects to generations of supporters past and future. Conversations with Julie Welch and Martin Cloake before christmas around their marvellous books fermented the process, provoking more consideration of what it is to be a Spur.

There’s a tension in these pages between this acknowledged weight of history and the evidence of the four seasons that I have been writing. Tactics, players and motivation dictate how we perform. Yet on Sunday, back comes the past, a little nudge in the ribs, a prickling sensation on the back of the neck. Don’t fool yourself, I’m still around, think you can put me to one side, eh? Won’t ever leave you.

And so this is Spurs. Dead, buried and worm-ridden compost in a match controlled by our opponents, three goals from nowhere turned despair to delight in a stunning frenzy of dazzling brilliance. It shouldn’t have to be hard, but it is. Like a relationship with a capricious and beautiful high-spirited lover, there are tough times when you feel that it’s just not worth it but in your heart you know you will stick around because when the times are good, they are like nothing else on earth. The way she touches me, and when she touches me, nothing else matters. Spurs will always be worth the wait if there are are ever another seven minutes like these. And that’s how it is.

For nearly seventy minutes, the big nowhere. Then Bale, the play passing him by, pretending to be fit but not sprinting hard at any point, not fooling anyone. Bale, out wide, suddenly has some space even though City have two fullbacks on that side. Walker finds him with an idle pass. Bale, outside of the foot, bisecting defenders and keeper. I don’t know what Kompany was supposed to do because that ball was perfection. Out of  nothing and nowhere, the perfect ball arcing across the box and Dempsey touches it in at the far post.

Relief and amazement in equal measure, but no time to think about getting away with it. Holtby’s perfect ball into Defoe’s stride, switches onto his right foot, a moment’s pause then the force of the shot rips apart the air and snatches the breath from our lungs. Amidst bedlam in the stands, Huddlestone picks out Bale, his pass curling between defenders and onto the Welshman’s toe, right on his toe. Confronted with Hart, Bale does not hesitate. In line with the shot, I see it beat the keeper but not hit the back of the net because I’m in mid-air already. A remarkable, unforeseen turnaround. Sometimes I long for the ordinary, the comfrotable victory, a stroll in the sun. Well hang that, give me the chance of seven minutes and three goals like that any time.

City were dull, and I mean that in a good way, in a way that Spurs can never be. By apparently doing very little, they sucked the energy from hearts and limbs. A goal down early on, Nasri criminally deserted in the box, Spurs shuttled the ball around but after a while it became clear this was not the purposeful calm of comeback preparation. This was it, as good as it would be. Nothing happened. Oh for the boredom of total superiority.

Long balls; has it come to this? Unable to move in midfield, we began to bypass the congested centre with varying results – sometimes Kompany won the ball but on other occasions Nastasic got there first. Still nothing. Adebayor worked to make himself available but could not hold onto the ball or find a team-mate. However, the service was low-quality, the link-up play worse.

But there are long balls and long balls. Tommy Huddlestone has received so much criticism for his lack of movement, we have forgotten that if he calibrates the range, he’s the best long passer in the league. Twice now Villas-Boas has brought him on to change the game when opponents have been retreating. This gives the Big Boned One that extra yard, that precious fraction of a second. He can look forward not around and behind him. Immediately on his well-timed introduction he began to pick out his man and the danger levels increased.

Bale had moved wide right from the beginning of the half, offering some width. Now he started to see some of the ball. Walker pushed on, working as hard as ever. But as Parker and the inconsequential Sigurdsson trudged off, the other substitution turned the game. This was Lewis Holtby’s breakthrough match. His energy lifted Spurs’ tempo and he sought the ball wherever it went in the centre of the pitch. For the first time in a Spurs shirt, he linked this to a real feel for the ball. His passing was excellent – that’s a fine left foot he has there. It’s the recipe for the perfect midfielder, plus he complements the sedentary, long-passing Huddlstone impeccably.

Slowly Spurs wrested control of tempo and territory if not the scoreline. City players could no longer settle and they failed to adjust to these changing  conditions. Then our Andre’s masterstroke. Defoe for Manu, speed and agitation for leggy despondency. He came away from the back four, hunting for space. Together, AVB’s subs won the match and did his manager proud. He tends to leave it too late sometimes for the subs to make any difference. This time, one set of tactics were not working so here’s plan B. Width and pace were rewarded. City will ask how they lost but when faced with astonishing football like that, they shouldn’t worry too much. They won’t see the like for some time. A truly memorable game or rather, seven minutes.

Although I usually take little notice of the electronic hoardings that surround the pitch at Spurs, it’s been impossible to avoid the recent spate of ads for Stubhub. However, it’s only recently that I discovered what it is. Rather than being the tagline for a new co-ordinated anti-smoking campaign, Stubhub is a secondary ticketing service about to embark on a partnership with Tottenham Hotspur to create a market for unwanted tickets for sold-out matches. Whether that market will work in the interests of fans is highly questionable.

For several years now the Ticket Exchange Scheme has enabled season-ticket holders unable to attend a sold-out match to resell their ticket through the club at full price for that fixture less 25%. Although the commission is steep, it seems a reasonable compromise, given that we invest so much so far in advance and kick-offs are changed at the whim of TV. Before Sky, I could safely guarantee in advance to keep Saturdays and Wednesdays free – Spurs midweek matches were always on a Wednesday – whereas now it’s impossible to plan ahead. Many seem wary of the exchange, judging by the number of tickets that appear on twitter in the days before a game, but at least the tickets were available via the club, as they say on the official site, “resulting in genuine fans having greater access to tickets.”

From the start of next season, this will change. The Ticket Exchange will be no more and reselling spares must be done through Stubhub. Listing is free and it still applies only to sold-out fixtures but there are two significant changes. Season-ticket holders can now set whatever price they want. The market is king – several hundred pounds for the north London derby is a conservative estimate.

Also, nowhere does it state on the site that this offer is open to members only, as was the case with the Exchange. It very carefully enthuses about the benefits to ‘Spurs supporters’ seeking tickets but avoids the word ‘member’. On the basis of the club’s own information, anyone could buy them.

This looks like touting in the 21st century, institutionalised scalping on a corporate scale. Tickets will be on sale at inflated prices and will be available only to those who can pay. Stan Flashman reincarnated in the boardrooms of multi-nationals. It may prove to be an inducement to season-ticket holders to sell their seats for the many games that will be sold out if we have any sort of success and an incentive for members to chuck away their cards, never to return.

Also, it appears impossible for the club to control who has those tickets once they appear on the site. There’s nothing at present to stop those seats, which will be printed on paper tickets, being resold by touts, who can truly put a value on the laws of supply and demand. They could easily go to away fans, although Stubhub clients Sunderland make an exception for the Tyne and Wear derby.

The membership scheme is essentially a premium for the privilege of having some priority over White Hart Lane tickets, an advantage that will disappear once the ticket goes to Stubhub. Never mind free Spurs TV, membership is worth less than it is is now.

It is possible for members to retain some priority if Stubhub have access to the Spurs database. On the face of it, this flouts protection under the Data Protection Act but interestingly the current One Hotspur terms and conditions contain the following (the italics are mine):

“The Club will keep your name, address, email address, phone numbers and other personal details including credit/debit card information and use this information to fulfil your order(s) for Season Tickets plus Membership and for customer service purposes. We will disclose your information to our service providers and agents for these purposes.”

So by buying a season-ticket, it could mean you have already agreed to your details being shared. I should stress that the position of members and anything re the terms and conditions has not been confirmed by the club and the Tottenham Hotspur Supporters Trust is urgently seeking clarification regarding these and other matters to do with the Stubhub partnership. Joint chair of the Trust Darren Alexander said today:

“Requesting a meeting on this specific matter was one of the first things we did and we’ve chased it up on several occasions. We are aware it is a major concern to a lot of fans and we will not hold back from asking pertinent questions.”

The meeting takes place before the Southampton game and the Trust undertake to report back within 48 hours. Yet the club have not taken the chance to use the word ‘member’ instead of supporter and this contract has been planned for some time. It’s not used on the Sunderland website either. Therefore the speculation is fair and I would be happy to post clarification on the blog as and when it appears.

In the last year there has been considerable concern about the activities of the growing number of secondary markets for tickets, mainly in respect of concert tickets. A Channel 4 documentary showed that far from being an open ‘fan to fan’ marketplace, some agencies and promoters were indecently close, with promoters syphoning off substantial numbers of prime seats direct to the secondary ticket agencies who sold them on for a fat profit. Those seats were never available to the general public at the box office.

I don’t recall Stubhub being mentioned at the time. They are a large company successful in America owned by ebay who will use them for all ticket listings in the future. They have contracts with other Premier League teams so football is obviously a targeted growth market for them. It’s not clear on the Spurs site how much commission they take but on other sites it is 25%.

It’s also unclear how Spurs make their money on this. It may be a flat fee over the year or, as seems more likely, a percentage of the commission. Either way, they will receive substantial income which is presumably higher than either the cost of reselling or of simply leaving the seat empty because they would have otherwise not have changed the system  As I say, a percentage may not be the arrangement they have. However if it is, it means that the higher the price and the further away it is from the original seat price, the more they make.

My article earlier this week about the grumblings amongst fans in and out of the ground pointed to the alienation between fans and teams. This doesn’t create the poor atmosphere in the Lane directly but increasingly we feel distant and disgruntled, feelings that have to emerge in some way. The Stubhub scheme can only add to the problems. In football true loyalty is priceless. The club would do well to remember that.

On the good days, there’s nowhere like it. White Hart Lane is a proper football ground, steepling stands enclosing the pitch so the noise cannot escape. The old place shakes beneath our feet, inspiring the lilywhite shirts and evoking glories past. At night, it is our world. For ninety minutes nothing exists beyond the tight glare of the lights.

Things have changed. The good days are as good as ever, witness the bearpit that sent the gunners scuttling back to the antiseptic corporatism of the Emirates last month. For the average league game, however, it is often flat and lacking passion. In quiet passages of play, the passivity is palpable.

Recently this has provoked considerable debate in social media and elsewhere, wherever Spurs fans gather in fact. Last week an interview with Clint Dempsey implied that he thought the crowd’s edginess was having an adverse impact on the team. It has been linked to what is perceived as growing dissatisfaction and negativity. Fans are swift to roundly condemn players. Twitter may or may not be a representative cross-section of Spurs’ support but it is a nightmare of bile and downright hatred when we lose. Some players are blamed not just for defensive lapses but for causing global warming, world poverty and the arms trade, or so it seems sometimes. Certainly in the ground it appears as if the traditional relationship of the fans lifting the team has been reversed as we wait for a spark on the field to get us going. It’s not the same at away matches, where Tottenham have a deserved reputation as one of the best supported clubs in the country.

In common with supporters of other Premier League sides, Spurs fans are victim to some of the less welcome trends of modern football. Also, there are other factors peculiar to the club. However, there’s nothing new under the sun, least of all Tottenham fans being critical of their team.

As a young supporter growing up with Spurs in the mid sixties, I devoured all the information I possibly could, not just about my heroes like Mackay, Greaves and England but also about the precious history of the club. From the very beginning I knew that I was part of something special and I desperately wanted to fit in, to understand what it meant to be a Spurs fan.

I learned that we played the Spurs way, good football, pass and move, on the ground. We had star players to match. I also understood very early on that Spurs fans were characterised as a critical bunch who were quick to get on the backs of the players if things weren’t going well. This often came up in the media and you still hear it occasionally from pundits who were around then.

David Jenkins has had a profound influence on my life as a Spurs fan yet the vast majority of you reading this will never have heard of him. Jenkins was a young winger who came into the Arsenal side and quickly made an impact, so much so that he impressed Bill Nicholson enough to not decide to buy him but to include the excellent Jimmy Robertson, goalscorer in the 1967 Cup Final, in the deal.

Aged 11 or 12, I was not impressed with what I’d seen in black and white highlights on Match of the Day and the Big Match. Flashes of promise but no real talent. he ran qucik and straight but that was it. For the first time, I learned to have my own opinion about a Spurs player and dared to question the judgement of the venerable Billy Nick. Turns out I was right. Jenkins quickly faded and remains one of the worst players seen at the Lane in my time. The point is, before he left the scene he was given severe stick by the crowd, which could not have helped his development as a young man finding his way in the game. Things were made worse for him because of the adverse comparison with Robertson, a fans’ favourite.

The Spurs crowd always had a scapegoat. One of my first games, sitting in the wooden seats in the Park Lane, one player was given dog’s abuse. Useless, waste of money, a donkey. Go back where you came from. As an impressionable kid, I loved it. That player was Martin Chivers, on his way back from injury but sections of the crowd were unforgiving, all long forgotten when he became one of our finest centre forwards of the modern era.

It was expected – there was always one. Part of going to Spurs. Off the top of my head, Paul Stewart, a limited centre forward, young again, who went on to be a top class midfielder under Terry  Venables’ shrewd guidance. John Pratt, remembered fondly now as a hard-working midfielder dedicated to the cause but that was in spite of coordinated, consistent moaning at the time. Chris Armstrong, Vinny Samways – there are more. At its worst it was systematic barracking that began as soon as the first couple of errors were made. Whinging openly about, say, Jenas and Dempsey in recent times are mild in comparison.

I never bought into the idea of the Spurs crowd as fickle. We know good football and raise objections when we don’t get it. Nevertheless I can recall loud and sustained slow-handclapping of the team and gates below 20,000.

Put in this perspective and this season sounds like a golden age. However, there was no doubting the intensity of the support when we got behind the side and singing from our ‘end’. Unquestionably there was more singing and chanting. Songs were louder and more varied and each player had their own tune that was sung in the build-up to each game. As kick-off approached, so the volume was turned up.

One reason why it’s nearer mute these days is that over time, the Spurs’ fans’ heritage of a place to sing has been destroyed. When I started going, the Park Lane was our home with the Shelf well-populated but a back-up when things were going well. Gradually the balance shifted. Then, one season we turned up and the Park Lane was away fans only because of security concerns. Most away fans came by tube, the Park Lane was closer to Seven Sisters and in those more troubled times the police wanted to get them into the ground as quickly as possible. But they took our end away.

After a period of confusion, the Shelf came into its own in the seventies and beyond. In fact, the noise was greater because of better acoustics under the East Stand. Then they took that away too, in favour of executive boxes. Other clubs have disrupted their fans through a move to a new ground, Arsenal’s loss of the North Bank being the prime example, but surely no other club has so heartlessly moved their core support not once but twice. The insult still rankles and it’s caused the problem we have today.

Sharing the end with away support is better than nothing  – at least it’s our historic place – but no other Premier League team has the same arrangement and for European games our core support is unceremoniously shifted out entirely. It’s an absurd state of affairs that harms the support and therefore harms the team. An all-seater stadium with a high proportion of season tickets means we can’t move around even if we want to.

This factor is unique to Spurs but supporters are also victim to other harmful elements of the modern fandom. We’re not the only ones. I hear many teams say that it’s not like the old days, even giants like Liverpool and Manchester United. Supporters across the Premier league are becoming increasingly alienated from their teams because of the way the clubs behave towards us. High ticket prices despite vastly inflated TV revenue is the biggest bugbear, closely followed by ever-changing kickoff times at the behest of Sky and the deafening, offensive clamour of their incessant hype.

At Spurs we complain about yet another above inflation price increase or over-priced European games, the board shrug and point to the season ticket waiting list, variously given as between 23,000 and 30,000. The loyalty of fans who have devoted a lifetime to the club means little in the face of the irresistable forces of supply and demand. The club do not care who sits in those seats as long as someone does. Meanwhile, the chairman has an alleged salary increase of £400,000.

Then there’s TV. There is less need to invest in the time and expense of going when every match is on television. More significantly, TV has distorted the entire nature of the sport. Performance is minutely analysed not at the breathtaking real speed of Premier League football but after 37 replays and endless camera angles. It creates unrealistically high expectations of what is humanly possible of footballers. The defintion of good play and a good player has changed in the process.

It also encourages criticism. There’s an emphasis on failure – what defenders could and should have done, not the creativity of players who in any given situation were better in the battle between attack and defence that has been played out since football began. Recall the Arsenal home game again. The following Friday 5Live were still devoting endless airtime to what the Gunners’ back four should have done. Little mention of the stunning, deadly combination of skill, pace, timing and precision that created for Bale and Lennon two of the best goals I’ve seen for donkey’s years.

Add to this culture of criticism the other curse of the modern game, an unrealistic sense of entitlement. Success is justified, nothing matters if we are not in the top four and we deserve to be there because we are a big club. Sack the board, the manager, everyone because in a season we’ve not done it. Spurs’ are not alone in this, in fact our fans are by and large infinitely more grounded than the average New Chelsea fans where time began in 1993 and finishing second is a catastrophe. However, the odious culture of entitlement is insidiously insinuating itself into the debate and in my view this has become over the past few seasons, paradoxically since we have actually started doing well. I know a few souls who in private say they preferred the whole experience fo being a Spurs fan when we weren’t expected to win very much. I also think this is worse in social media compared with in the ground itself.

This alienation doesn’t automatically cause any major changes to the nature of being a supporter. However, it’s a backdrop, an undercurrent of discontent simmering away underneath our experience of watching Spurs that every so often bursts to the surface in a torrent of frustration and anger. I believe this explains a lot about the tensions and lack of passion at Spurs at the moment. It creates a situation where there is less tolerance and space. We are quicker to pounce on failings because we are putting up with more than we deserve. I’m not saying this is right, but it is undeniable.

Finally there are demographic factors, again common to the Premier League as a whole. The age of spectators at Premier League games has been rising steadily for some time. The cost is prohibitive, all seaters mean that you can’t just turn up and sit with your mates and trips have to be planned months in advance with almost military precisions. You can’t decide any longer to ring your pals, tip up on the day, plonk down 7s 6d and sing your heart out for the lads. Fact is, most of the end in the old days were young.

It’s not all bad. Spurs fans are remarkably loyal. Also, the 1882 movement and their Fighting Cock site are a group of mostly younger fans who not only understand their heritage, they want to continue it by, in their words, singing “as loud and as long as our lungs will let us. We want to hark back to the days before the Premier League where how loud you sing and how passionate you became wasn’t dependent on how well Tottenham were playing.” As I’ve said, that may be a rose-tinted view of the past but no matter and all power to them. They have had discussions with the club about block ‘singing sections’ for certain games, mostly outside the first team but it has included one European tie, I think. The Tottenham Trust also hope to raise the issue.

It’s a welcome development, even though the whinging is not a new phenomenon. It is hard to see what changes could be made with the ground as it is. I would be in favour of shifting the away fans but I assume safety considerations plus disruption to our season ticket holders in all parts of the ground would make it impossible. Designated singing blocks are a fine idea, perhaps including the southern corner of the Shelf near the old cage. The new stadium has an ‘end’ built in and has been designed to keep the stands as close to the pitch as possible. All the more reason to press ahead as soon as we can.