Always On My Mind: The Members Club

December 10, 2010 / Alan / 2 Comments

I’m stewing in the velvet lobby so I call Adriana. Businesslike, she marches down the corridor. Out of my earshot, the doorman remains unconvinced, then she looks him in the eye and imperceptibly cocks her head to one side. A squeeze of his arm and I’m in.

From the corner of his eye he watches her sway down the hall. His grin fades only when she turns the corner into the bar.

‘This is nice’, I say as she folds into the deep sofa cushions.

‘Lola’s a member. We were going over the layout for the book. The salmon was superb and it was too cold to move. You don’t mind, do you?’

‘Guess I’ll have to get used to it’. She furrows her brow. ‘It’s great, really.’ I forget, Adriana doesn’t do irony.

She smiles uncertainly but, reassured, kicks off her shoes and pulls up her feet under her. ‘Sit down darling, it’s so cold.’

‘Chequers in Sutton,’ I go on. ‘Trainers.’ She looks unsure again. I push my Sainsbury’s carrier bag under the table and out of sight. ‘In the end, my mates went in ahead, then this girl brought out a pair of their shoes in her bag in return for us taking her friend in. Think she was only 16. I changed back into my trainers once I was inside. Don’t know what the fuss was about in the first place.’
She looks at me intently for a moment, her eyes wide in the gloom of the bar. ‘I never have any problem getting into clubs.’

It takes a while to be served at the bar, although it doesn’t seem very busy. A couple of advertising types are momentarily distracted from their tipsy creativity by the sound of Adriana’s laugh from across the room. When I finally bring the drinks she has company.

I beam with recognition and let out a choked gasp. Eventually, words. ‘I used to watch you every week. Fantastic!’ ‘I haven’t said ‘fantastic’ since I was 14. He smiles confidently, but not at me. ‘From the Shelf. Season ticket holder.’

‘At the Lane. 40 years.’

Finally he turns away and fixes me in the eye. For perhaps 10 seconds he looks, says nothing. Then he turns back to Adriana. ‘You’re so right,’ he says, ‘Morocco in October is perfect. Not too hot. Are you sure you’re not from that part of the world? It’s just your accent….’
I’m still standing, holding the drinks. I shift from one foot to the other. Eventually, I put them down and pretend to need something from my coat. The man smoothes out the sofa cushions and eases across.
‘Just off to the toilet’. ‘OK’, she says, without breaking the flow of the conversation.

When I return, the man has rejoined his friends on the other side of the room. Adriana plumps up the cushions. ‘Come, sit.’ She looks at me and laughs, suddenly hesitant. She says something and laughs again but I’m looking at the lock of hair that’s fallen over her eye.

‘Feel my hand, I’m cold.’ Her fingers edge out in that familiar way and touch mine. ‘You know him?’ she asks.

She purses her lips. ‘Don’t know why you like people that that. Thinks he’s got something, all talk. All he thinks about is himself.

‘You’re a good judge,’ I reply, ‘Overrated. Selfish’. A pause. ‘Cracking right foot, mind’

‘Sorry darling?’

‘I said I never really liked him.’

‘Neither did I. What is it about me, I always seem to attract these sort of men. Come closer, you’re all warm, warm me up.’

Bucketful of Joy

December 8, 2010December 8, 2010 / Alan / 9 Comments

A typical spurs performance in Europe. A mixture of judicious possession football, incisive attacking and reckless abandonment of defensive duties. Three times we went ahead only to let our opponents back into the match. A penalty needlessly conceded let slip the initiative presented by a lunatic own goal (and for fans of a certain vintage, it’s good to see the return of fat goalkeepers) but meh, this is Spurs, this is Europe, we’ll just run up the other end and get another one sometime soon.

Quite how we made as much space for Twente as we did, I’m not sure. Somehow we manage to enlarge the pitch when our opponents are in possession. Repainting the touchlines when the ref’s looking the other way. It was especially bad after JJ went off and we missed Modric’s influence terribly, but a pleasure to see JD so sharp again. As on Saturday we wasted good opportunities with a final ball that lacked precision. Sometimes the number of alternatives created fatal hesitation but Lennon curbed the instinct to shoot, only a little dink, so simple, so effective.

At the back, Bale and Lennon were too wide when Twente had the ball so…look – this doesn’t matter. Leave it. Today is not about analysis, it’s about celebration. I’ve only just about got used to associating Tottenham Hotspur FC with the Champions League. I still blink at the Sky ads, Champions League, JD’s on the poster, why… This morning I’m repeating over and over – Champions League. Knock out stages. Group winners. If you see me today, I’ll be at Waterloo in a minute, then the old County Hall, I might say hallo, buy a coffee, chat even. Bit overweight (I’ll shift a few pounds. promise. After Christmas. New Year), black woolly hat, that’s me but the eyes are blank. Champions League. Knockout stages. Group winners.

I was going to debate the list of possible opponents. Nah… we’re there. All that matters. Who cares. Bring them on. Bring them to the Lane. Europe has learned something about us this season, they don’t want to come here.

In a world full of hyperbole, where a loss of perspective is routine, this is a remarkable achievement. Genuinely outstanding. Take this, a bucket of superlatives. Astonishing, pulsating, glorious, unbelievable, transcendental, fab gear, brilliant, there are more, those are just the ones on the surface. Pick it up and empty it out, that’s us today, covered in glory.

In qualifying, we’ve scored more goals than any other team in the group stages and I believe are the only team ever to score at least two goals in every group match. (We’re allowed to leave the dodgy defending to one side today). Last night had been inked in my diary for months. Last game, if we were still in with a slender chance, maybe just maybe in the so-called group of death, have to sit down and watch that one on the red button. But we were through already. With a game to spare.

This has led to yet another bewildering phenomenon. In these days of tribal fandom, people like us. Spurs are popular. Fans love to watch us play. Many of the comments that I received on the blog this season from opposition fans have praised the team. Some criticise my conclusions but most end up by saying something like, ‘But good luck in Europe, I really enjoy watching your adventures.’

In the time I’ve been a Spurs fan, we used to be well liked by neutrals or least there was a fondness for the club that dated from the Double and our attacking teams in the late 60s and early 70s. I knew a good few Welsh and Irish people who followed us, rather like Manchester United are followed today. After the Villa Cup Final, I wore my Spurs scarf and badges in London and five people during the course of a single tube journey congratulated me on a thrilling game. You wouldn’t get that these days. Indeed, when we were down, other fans constantly accused us of having ideas above our station,living in the past, not a big club. We wanted success, they reveled in our failure.

Now people look for our matches. They’ve watched football from a bygone age, end to end, bags of goals, attack. They’ve seen heroes, especially a young full back come midfielder who is a character straight out of Roy of the Rovers, stampeding through packed defences in series of unstoppable runs with players bouncing off him from all sides.

Yet this is real. Gareth Bale personifies the talent, enthusiasm and spirit that Spurs have brought to the tournament, culminating in a pulsating encounter that saw the European Champions defeated and left an indelible imprint in the ancient rusting girders at the Lane. The old place has seen it all, but they’ve not not seen anything like this. The ground was rocking and is rocking still.

It’s unfair to single out one player, however outstanding his impact. Van der Vaart has taken centre stage and Modric has done increasingly well as the competition progressed. Huddlestone anchored the team, perfect in Europe where he has a fraction more time, while Crouch, maligned in these pages I confess, remains a mystery to foreign defenders.

Above all the team has played as a unit in the three key home ties, resilient and indefatigable. The first half Berne is a distant memory, a treatment room full of injuries overcome.

And Harry Redknapp has done us proud. He wants to attack, a strategy that has looked risky during frequent buttock-clenching incidents and which is perhaps dictated by the absence of a truly dominating defensive midfielder. But for now, who cares. He’s made it work to dramatic effect. Just enjoy. Savour every last succulent moment, because this is entertainment and pleasure of a rare quality. I love this club.

What A Waste

December 6, 2010December 6, 2010 / Alan / 12 Comments

Not That Frustration. Although the Popamatic Dice Shaker Brings Back Memories

Against Birmingham, a decent performance for the most part that ended in frustration, at least in my back room where I was hiding from the builders. Peace and quiet, you understand, total focus. They weren’t after me for money. Yet.

Harry seemed to share my exasperation. Post match, he waxed philosophical about being on top for so long, moving the ball well, holding possession and making chances, only for the game to turn on the introduction of Zigic.

Two points dropped for me, this one. Birmingham are a hard nut to crack. They have an enviable home record with one loss in over 30 games, I think. Much of this is built upon their famed powers of organisation and resistance, which can be of a ferocious intensity as they demonstrated in the derby against Villa in midweek. I thought they missed a trick in starting 4-5-1: these days we can deal better with this than when teams are able to put pressure on our defence. That’s what holds us back, the need to think about the possible repercussions of coming too far forward too often.

As it was, we passed the ball smoothly with the excellent Modric once more on top in midfield, energetically supported by Palacios and with Lennon and Bale as willing accomplices out wide. Loads of room despite the 5 midfielders. Anyway two of them were treading on Bale’s laces for most of the time in order to protect Steve Carr. Bale can play his part these days just by standing still.

Carr was a terrific player, flying down the wing and alert in the tackle, better coming forward than at the back, a mop of wavy black hair. He was never the same once injury blunted his pace. Although he became a better player technically on his return, making up in some part for the deficiencies imposed on him, he was encouraged to bulk up but athleticism not muscle was his game. Carefree expression gave way to surly shaven-headed dissatisfaction. I’m glad he’s still in the game after his career was threatened. I just hope it’s not a portent of things to come for another, much better, carefree flying wide man. One of the many tackles Bale rides each week finds its mark and the head clippers come out.

I admire the way Birmingham defend. Pinned back in their box, as they were for long periods on Saturday, they respond like wild cats backed into a corner. Bodies pile into the box to form a barrier packed tighter than bricks in the wall of a Mayan temple. Despite this, and here’s the source of that frustration, we were able to stretch them out of shape and out of their comfort zone.

Usually we had an extra man, not something that has always been the case this season. Defoe’s movement around Crouch, centrally stationed, was effective, Lennon and Bale were available as I’ve already mentioned and Crouch himself pulled wide to the far post usefully. He had a good first half, coming a little deeper so he could link up better with his team mates and encouragingly he had a couple of runners coming past him as targets for a lay-off or flick, another quality often absent in our play.

This Frustration

Chances fell to Defoe and Crouch and were missed but the advantage of 60% first half possession was not converted into scoring opportunities because of a problem with the final ball. JD, Crouch, Lennon, even Modric made poor choices when the moment came. Too often the wide option was taken: it’s safer but easier to defend if it ends up with a slow high cross and could have been balanced with incisive central thrusts into the channels. The goal when it came was from a loose ball after a set-piece, rather like Liverpool’s last weekend.

We began the second half well enough but soon the Spurs fans’ songs, loud and clear on my stream, sounded gradually more anxious, a sure sign that our opponents were creeping back into the match. I thought we had worked through a troublesome 20 minutes or so as we regained both our composure and possession.

However, Zigic meant a 4-4-2 with a focal point that hitherto Birmingham had lacked. The signs were there: Crouch becoming increasingly isolated and our midfield dropping deeper. Lennon and Bale out wide had worked back admirably well thus far but they stood off now. It’s not as if we don’t know what was happening – we get Crouch wide onto the full back often enough – but it’s hard to defend. Our back four missed Dawson and Kaboul all of a sudden. We should take our opponent’s example and have big men hammering through the middle to pick up the headers across the box. Gomes and Gallas scrambled one way from Ridgewell but Gardner did enough.

By the end, Lennon seemed reluctant to take on his man when given the chance in the last 5 minutes. I’m sure he was tired after a hard afternoon’s work but I hope they weren’t settling for the point.

Wilson worked so hard, again tiring towards the end – perhaps he felt safer away from the crazy booing last week. Gallas had another solid match and Bassong is back to good form but they weren’t quite strong enough in the end. Hutton’s passing was off and he was lucky not to be dismissed. The problem with these incidents Is not what happens on the day, it’s the mental note made by the rest of the League as they watch MOTD that Hutton can be wound up.

Harry was on about taking a point at Birmingham before the match but as I’ve said before, the problem with this ‘settling’ business is that it denies the potential, what might be. On the day, we should have converted our first half superiority into goals, so two points dropped for me, although to be fair, a year or two we may well have lost 2-1.

No sackcloth and ashes, mind. Progress can be judged over sequences of matches, beat Chelsea on Sunday and that’s 10 from 12 including victories over 3 of last season’s top four. I remain a little disappointed, however. I don’t obsess over the table but the fact is, this is the most open league for years. We’re opening a gap between us and 7^th, thinking of Europe next season, but we should be looking up not down. A win would have left us only 4 off the top, 1 off the top four. We’ve let slip a few too many points already and can’t afford to waste many more.

Culture, Spurs and the Community. And Manboobs. An Interview With Mark Perryman

December 2, 2010December 2, 2010 / Alan / 4 Comments

I grew up in an era when the t-shirt was a powerful means of individual cultural expression. The iconic image of Brando or Dean in a plain white tee gave way to the sixties counter-culture and revolution, at least at weekends, and the message shirts of the late seventies and eighties.

These days they are mostly mobile advertising for companies who convince punters to actually pay for the privilege of parading the latest brand name down your local high street. Recently two symbols of my glory days, Che and the Ramones, appear on mass-produced shirts available in Peacocks and Madhouse and thence to the chests of young people who may dimly who they are but certainly have no sense of what they stand for. The perfect sign of the times, perhaps, a post-modern appropriation of counter culture symbolic of our politically neutered society. Or mindless cheap tat.

However, some time ago I slipped back into t-shirts after finding one that expressed exactly how I feel. On the front, ‘The game is about glory, doing things in style’, on the back, ‘Blanchflower 4’. It’s torn and faded now but I can’t bear to part with it. Blanchflower’s quote has become a classic to the point of being over-used but I make no apologies: this is the absolute essence of being a Spurs fan and the first time I ever saw it was on this shirt, made by Philosophy Football. Not surprisingly the co-founder, Mark Perryman, is a Spurs fan.

“Blanchflower was the second or third shirt we ever did,” he told me. “He had sadly passed away and that great fanzine the Spur ran a feature that included

Philosophy Football's strictly unofficial T-shirt from http://www.philosophyfootball.com

that extraordinary quote.”

These days Philosophy Football has over 40 designs but the company came from humble origins. Like many of us, Mark and couple of friends came up with a fanciful idea after a match. The difference is, he did something about it.

“In October ’94 after a particularly dull home nil nil draw with QPR, we invited a Rangers friend of ours to White Hart Lane and took him out for something to eat afterwards. After the game we had 10 or 20 minutes to kill. I’d videoed a programme about the philosophy of goalkeeping – Eric Thorsvedt was on it and quoted Camus: ‘All that I know most surely about morality and obligations I owe to football.”

He continues, “Somewhere over Stamford Hill a blinding flash of inspiration found its way into our back bedroom. Someone said to turn it into a t-shirt, my instant response was, it’s got to be a goalkeepers jersey.”

A few shirts for friends became 150 that sold out by Christmas by word of mouth only. Other designs gradually followed but it remained a hobby. I imagined I was dealing with a professional concern, then I spotted the address was a residential street that I cut through on my route to the Lane. Mark chuckled at the memory: ‘It paid for my season ticket and away trips. Friends were coming round and packing them in the back garden on a Saturday morning. We stored them in the bath! At Christmas we would nick a Tescos trolley and make 20 trips a day to Stamford Hill post office. We gave the staff a shirt each by way of thanks.”

These days their annual sales run to 5 figures but Mark stays close to his roots. “It earns us a living but we do it because we love it. If Philosophy Football wasn’t selling me shirts, I’d have to go and find a company where I could buy shirts like this. Go into the Spurs Shop, they have hundreds of products and nothing I would ever want to buy. It’s commercialised and tacky, I’m not walking around advertising a company I’ve never heard of where the logo takes up more space than the club badge.”

Remaining playful rather than po-faced, many of the shirts show the significance of football in society, and do so with a concise wit and intelligence.

Class consciousness (“Emancipation of their class appears to them a foolish dream. It is football which moves them and to which their material means are devoted.”) sits alongside a diverse group of philosophers, footballers, Monty Python and Bob Marley: “Football is a part of I. When I play the world wakes up around me.” Cricket has recently taken its place alongside a number of contemporary political causes, plus shirts that just look tasteful.

The latest offering, from Bobby Smith, is timely not only because it ties in with the 50th anniversary of the Double but also as it addresses the concerns many of us have about the modern game. Under the Double team line up runs the quote: ““Today they play for the money. We played for the glory.”

There’s no doubt these shirts do make connections. People have a story that goes with them. Mine is when I was in London about 15 years ago, when football apparel was not the huge industry it is now. A woman asked why I was wearing a Brazil-style shirt with Pele on the back and the slogan on the front: ‘Football – it’s the beautiful game’. I replied that in Britain we loved Pele and Brazilian football. The woman was close to tears, ‘I am from Brazil I travel all this way, you know my country and my country’s football.’

Mark added that a recent shirt celebrating the role of Polish airmen in the Battle of Britain brought similarly tearful contact from a young Polish woman, amazed and grateful that her countrymen were remembered. Their most high profile affiliation is with the Hope Not Hate campaign against the BNP. “If we lose a few racist customers for our football shirts, then I’m not particularly bothered to be honest,” Mark firmly concludes.

Like many of the sources of his quotes,Mark is himself a deep thinker about the game and its place in contemporary society. He’s a West Stand season ticket holder and also represents England supporters abroad. I wondered if the Philosophy Football approach led to charges of over-intellectualising the game. The image comes to mind of the Fast Show character, sitting delightfully in Highbury, where else, with his hamper and wine. Mark shrugs this off and quotes Cryuff that ‘football is a game you play with your brain’ (available on a t-shirt, naturally), citing Van der Vaart, Klinsmann, Modric and Ardilles as examples of the benefits of a cosmopolitan approach to your football.

He warms to his theme. “I resolutely reject the whole idea of the bourgeoisification of football. If you go to any away game, Spurs or England, it’s resolutely a working class culture. That’s not to say tickets aren’t more expensive than they deserve to be. Much more serious is the corporatisation of football. I sit in the West Stand listening to the accents, the people spending 1k plus on their season ticket are from an upper working or lower middle class background. It’s obvious people are making sacrifices.”

He’s right. As prices rise, I cut back on other things because the club is so much a part of my life. Football accounts for over 90% of my expenditure on leisure – I just don’t do other things in order to get to Spurs. Exorbitant prices contribute to the rise in the average age of fans. Young fans attend a few games a season, watching the rest on Sky. Mark does not fully agree. “The problem of who does and does not go to football is not so much the price, although that is an issue, it’s access to tickets. New fans can’t get one for the big games that everyone wants to go to.”

The increased capacity of the new stadium would help in this respect but, speaking before the Stratford bid, Mark presciently identified the worrying issue of how the club is drifting away from its roots and its locality.

“I’ve lived in Tottenham since 86. I cycle to the ground and I’m home in 15 minutes but the club doesn’t address the fact that it’s no longer a north London

If you are feeling militant...

club. There’s no real obvious presence there from people from the locality. In fact when I hear people chatting about Tottenham where I sit it’s pretty obvious most people don’t particularly like the area. They’ve moved away to Herts or Essex or Kent or Sussex, moved away and moved up in the world, in life.”

This phenomenon isn’t unique to Spurs, rather, it’s the case throughout London. “West Ham as an east end family club, bollocks, it’s a club of south Essex”.

I mention Spurs interest in the community – they do a lot of work in my field, social care- but Mark remains unconvinced: “I like to see Spurs take more seriously work in the community but most is selling half term coaching courses to middle class children in Essex. They don’t actually do anything in the borough of any significance. I fear that if they get the new ground that connection with the locality will become even more distant.” He cites our Islington neighbours as an example, where more people than ever before come from outside the locality and which he describes as ‘becoming a destination rather than a team.”

From a tasteful way to cover up your manboobs to the sharpest critique of a club’s place in its community that I have heard this year, the last word firmly takes us back to our roots. Mark needs the help of TOMM readers. “We would love to do a Dave Mackay shirt to tie in with the Double. Years ago I read a quote, maybe about the football being a diamond, but I can’t find it anywhere.” Over to you.

For more about Philosophy Football click here