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.

Spurs’ European campaign has produced tension and drama at times but frankly when messrs Cloake and Powley produce the 2040 edition of the Glory Glory Nights 2012-13 won’t merit more than a page. There have been too many inglorious nights, nothing dreadful but too many the definition of average.

The elongated format saps the energy of fans and players alike but Spurs have done their best to inject much-needed drama into the competition. Barely able to muster a consistent, coherent performance throughout, save for a silky smooth dissection of Inter Milan at the Lane, instead we opted for the tension born from brinkmanship with desperate surges for late goals in half of the ties. That we got them says much for the determination of the squad and the individual talents of men like Bale and Dembele who delivered their best football when under the greatest pressure, the mark of greatness. Their late goals home and away versus Lyon were remarkable.

Yet it all ended in a moment of tragic comedy. In the grip of a penalty shoot-out, one down after Hud’s poorly placed opener was too close to the keeper, our only striker, experienced in European and international football, chooses to approach his penalty with a silly walk last seen in my primary school playground when we finally got tired of 3 and in and began to muck about before the bell rang. My mate Trev was the best. He would have wanted to improve on Adebayor’s style but it would have got a few giggles. Into the sky and over, Spurs were out. I’m certain that somewhere on the net Spurs fans will be slating Manu’s smile as he walked away as a sign of his indifference but I’m with him: you have to laugh or else you’d cry.

Spurs fans are used to the side raising their game for cup matches but in Europe ours fell away. Apart from Inter at home when on the back of the north London derby win, anything suddenly, miraculously seemed possible, we’ve not put in a consistent effort. Lax defending and an inability to retain possession characterised several dull games.

The league format means that it doesn’t really matter – stagger through, there’s no incentive to reach the heights – but these faults became real problems against better teams in the knock-out phase.

Monday’s piece posed the question, ‘is it only us?’ in respect of Spurs’ faltering league form but it applies equally well to Europe and last night – is it only Spurs who do things the hard way? The match was classic Tottenham, that mixture of quality and frustration that entices and infuriates us all. It was also this European campaign in microcosm. Commitment aplenty, an inability to keep control of a match once it has been established, ‘WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?’ defending, wayward passing, high drama and telling late goals.

We weathered an early storm from the classy Basel attack and established if not dominance then a measure of possession and therefore control. We went a goal up, a calm finish from Dempsey after a defensive mistake. This was naturally an incentive to immediately forget about careful build up and give the ball away at will. Dembele made the fatal mistake, a basic error in midfield letting in the excellent Salah. One each just at the point when we should have exploited our lead and territorial superiority. Instead, we were determined not to keep the ball and the defence was wilting. Naughton got near his man only by fouling while Dawson appeared to believe he was on holiday at a water park, competing to see how far he could slide on the soggy turf.

We can’t defend corners – episode four or is it five? A cluster of defenders were sucked into the near post and taken out of the game when the ball was flicked on. Friedel had no cover when he parried and the Swiss touched it in.

But this is Tottenham in Europe. Pressing unconvincingly, Huddlestone placed a fine free-kick onto Dempsey’s chest and he did the rest. The commentary churlishly focused on defensive shortcomings but the American scored a fine goal that hopefully will give him confidence for the rest of the season.

It was our mess and we almost got ourselves out of it. Despite their shortcomings, I have to admire the attitude of the players in battling out extra time while running on empty, especially after Vertonghen’s tired mind forced a mistake that led to a justified red card. Mentions in dispatches for Daws, Walker and Hudd, the latter for sterling work as a makeshift centre half in Jan’s place.

Lewis Holtby had his best game for Tottenham in the centre of midfield where he belongs. He worked hard, kept his position and took responsibility when he had. Something similar may be said of the highly promising Tom Carroll, who understands what is required of him despite his lack of experience and never shirked his duties for a second. Finally, I must give Dempsey full credit for his two goals. He’s been rank lately and deserves to be praised.

Ten days off now, a much-needed chance to draw breath and rest weary limbs. I suggest Dembele is ferried around in the manner of an Egyptian pharaoh, not having to lift a finger. He needs a break more than anyone and will be crucial if we are to make the top four. Our Andre has shown he’s able to raise the team’s energy and spirits after a defeat. We still have so much to play for.

 

 

 

Is it only us? Only Spurs could go a goal up after a single minute in a crucial home match, then sit back and let the other team back into the game.

Before yesterday’s match I was listening to Jon Ronson, whose engaging fascination for the human condition makes for fine radio. It proved to be timely because his subject was confirmation bias, the phenomenon where people have a tendancy to look for information that confirms their own beliefs. We are selective in the way we interpret the mass of information that comes our way and/or we interpret it in a biased way.

Ronson’s curiosity was aroused by a throwaway conversation with his young son. He happened to remark that whenever he looked at the clock, it always said ‘11.11’. You might think Ronson is going barmy, after all he is an Arse**l fan, but turns out, many people attribute some significance to 11.11. Who else to interview but Uri Geller, who goes all the way, choosing a random series of important historical figures only to find their names have eleven letters, and so on. It’s not escaped your attention that football teams have eleven players and this is an article about a football match…

I tend to think that most football fans are pretty much the same. We squeeze our manboobs and paunches into different colour shirts but underneath that thin layer of high-tech polyester, we think the same way about the game and about our teams. We want our teams to succeed so desperately yet simultaneously fear the consequences to the point where we refuse to believe it will happen. Last month a caller to Danny Baker’s show recounted the time he visited East Stirling for a cup-tie. Playing vastly inferior opponents, the home side had gone 12-0 up when they nearly conceded. A gruff old Scot at pitchside muttered darkly, “Not again East Stirling, don’t throw it away now.’

If this blog achieves anything, it’s because it is reasonable and reasonably balanced. Which means lots of folk detest it. But confirmation bias is a powerful force. Wikipedia says that, “The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs.” I think that’s supporting Spurs covered, so who am I to resist? Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Always on the threshold of success. Where there’s a will, there’s a way – to balls it up. It’s all too familiar.

So I’d like to think this fatalism is confirmation bias rather than inbred into the Spurs supporting genes. It’s about nurture not nature, after all. I’m convinced fans of other teams say the same. I’ve never met a fan yet who is totally happy about their team going one up in the first minute even though we all say an early goal will settle things down. Except Man U fans – do they complain if they go a goal down early? Really – I’d like to know. Can they actually be worried in the slightest? Do they fear this is the day it finally all crumbles after twenty or more years of unbroken achievement?

Evidence. The evidence yesterday was that not only did we score after a minute, it was divine in its simplicity. Prem player of the month Jan Vertonghen’s cross curled so perfectly round the highly organised Everton defence, so precisely in between the keeper and back four, so nicely onto Manu’s foot, even he could not miss. He was just the right man too – this would give him the confidence to play to the best of his considerable ability. We needed the edge in this most crucial of matches. With injuries, a win over an able Everton side would be our best performance of the season.

We set up well, or rather  what you now realise I mean is, we set up in the way I wanted us to. With Holtby central and Parker hanging back, we could be strong in the middle (Everton don’t have wingers) and release Dembele, our best player, to roam further forward. I would have started Carroll in place of Dempsey. Despite his inexperience, his pass and move works for us. However, we didn’t keep the tempo high or press up the pitch until later, by which time our opponents had established their rhythm and come back into the match. I can’t recall Howard having to make a save worthy of the name until well into the second half.

We can’t defend corners, but the goals we have conceded recently have been different. This one was loopy to the far post where Jagielka beat Vertonghen, Lloris was a fraction too far off his line and the dribbly header somehow rolled in. A waste but Everton were looking more dangerous in general. Belatedly we pressed higher up the field and looked better for it.

The second half – you decide. We rose to the challenge after conceding and scored a deserved late equiliser. Or, try as we might we weren’t good enough to break down a resolute Ever ton defence, our shooting from long range served only to as an indication of our desperation and we were lucky to get the break for the goal.

Dawson is rubbish – so say many on the boards this weekend. Pulled all over the place – where was he for the goals? Dawson had a decent game – made several immense tackles and interceptions and with Caulker not much of an influence, did so much to keep us in the game. Me, I go for the latter, but then again I want him to do well because he’s honest, inspiring and dedicated to my club.  I also think Mirelles deserves credit for a fine goal, although I suspect we gave the ball away to let him in, which was the truly frustrating problem yesterday and most players were guilty. Walker did a couple of crazy, mindless passes. Check for colour-blindness, I would.

The season’s turning point? Straight after the goal, Dembele’s low shot took a deflection and Howard saved well, pushing it up on the bar and away. It seemed to represent a portent for things to come – so near yet so far. Safe to say I wasn’t at my brightest at this juncture.

Wingers aren’t a necessity but goodness me how we missed Bale and Lennon. No pace, no wit. Siggy can’t beat anyone – not his fault, not his game but hugely frustrating as we lost the ball time and time again. Instead as Everton circled the wagons, we huffed and puffed around their defensive shield without ever breaking through into the box. Back and forth, ending in impatient and invariably inaccurate long shots. I haven’t checked but I bet our attack stats look excellent – anyone who watched the whole match knows the real story. The half was conveniently summed up by two impeccable passes from Huddlestone, 50 then 40 yards, both to Siggy, both were miscontrolled and the ball lost.

Dembele was taken off to general astonishment. He had been our best player by a street and that street was the M1. Our Andre had lost it, or so it seemed, but it emerged he had a had a knock/was knackered. Hud’s cameo was chock full of Hoddle-esque long passes. If only he could pick up the pace of the modern game, As it was, he had an extra yard because Everton did not press him, and he looked a world-beater.

Walker got a lot wrong but in the second half did the job of two players, a full-back and a winger, and he played himself into the ground. If Everton had won the game through the needless free-kick he gave away late on, I daresay I might have been less charitable, but he set up our second and Baines seldom got at us. On the other flank, Vertonghen should have attacked more. After early promise, Holtby has not been able to influence games to any great extent but we need patience, a quality in short supply when it comes to Dempsey’s performances. A while ago I thought he had turned the corner but lately he’s been appalling, unable to get anything right andplaying with little connection with his team-mates. When he played for Fulham, he didn’t used to panic and shoot aimlessly from long-range.

Manu had his best game for I don’t know how long, excellent in the second half. If there were to be a breakthrough, it had to come from him and so it proved. He pulled away from his markers and hit the post, the rebound falling to Siggy who tucked it in coolly.

Not sure how this came over to you at home but very frustrating at the ground. Still, while they should not have been in this situation, the players kept going for a deserved draw, and that could not have been said about many Spurs of the past. We know the truth about this side: if everyone is fit we are a match for anyone in this league. But they aren’t. The break after the Basle return is welcome. Perhaps we Spurs fans find some skewed, distorted comfort in the frustration of what might have beens but I for one am happy for the team to come up with some cold hard evidence to the contrary.