I love Spurs

At the moment, basically every living, breathing organism with an IQ of 70 or above is writing about Spurs. If they’re a journalist, they’re writing about how Spurs are actually quite good now but ‘oh if Harry Kane gets injured they’re fucked’ ignoring how if Vardy/Ozil/Aguero etc get injured their respective teams would be similarly screwed. The press don’t have a narrative for us yet, probably because Mauricio Pochettino doesn’t say a lot and keeps everything in house. Leicester are a great story, Arsenal and Man City are known commodities. This current Spurs side lacks a story. Articles about Marcelo Bielsa’s influence on Pochettino and condensed histories of the 1990 Newell’s Old Boys team fascinate me, but probably don’t interest the average Sun reader or Talksport listener.

If this hypothetical article composer is a Spurs fan writing about this season, it’s generic stuff about how good Spurs are and the usual self-deprecating nonsense about being ‘Spursy’ and ‘oh I mentioned us winning the title, I’ve jinxed it!’ because, of course, things happen not through circumstance and, well, shit just happening, but because some off the cuff comment from your mate down the pub casts a curse so definitive that some of the best footballers in England can’t overcome it.

This is along with the usual guff about Spurs being ‘stronger’ and ‘more resilient’ now, even though aside from six months under Tim Sherwood, we’ve been a solid, resilient side for nearly a decade now. We always had good away records under Harry Redknapp, didn’t give away many leads and didn’t concede too many goals either. The “Lads it’s Tottenham” trope is really fucking outdated and has been for years.

Personally, this perception we’ve been a weak, frail team with more proclivity for collapse than a sixth former after twelve pints bores me and annoys me. It’s just not true. I swear some of our fans would prefer to go back fifteen years, such is the nostalgia for when we were shit and signed shit players. Lol remember Paolo Tramezzani? Jose Dominguez? Andy Booth? oh fuck off and stop living in the past. Plus, many Spurs fans seem to care more about transfers than what’s actually on the pitch. Why?! What’s wrong with you lot?!

And you know what, by writing about Spurs now and adding to this saturation of Spurs articles, I’m probably the biggest bellend of them all. Why am I writing about Spurs in that case? I’m not 100% sure myself. A mixture probably of wanting to express my love for this team and irritation at the things I’ve read and heard about my beloved club.

I’m twenty three years old, and this is easily the happiest I’ve been as a Spurs fan. This is the best Spurs side of my lifetime and has my favourite manager and my favourite players.

I adore Pochettino. I love how little he gives away to the press, how he’s plainly stubborn and tough but also comes across as cuddly, affable, friendly. The players in the press laud him with accolades and as a fan, I’ve seen players who’ve looked the height of mediocrity when they started at the club blossom into fine players. Davies, Trippier, Carroll, Chadli, Lamela are the best examples of this. He improves our players, has imposed a style of play that’s great to watch and, more than anything, we’re really really good! He’s giving Spurs fans the ride of our lives.

Poch is plainly a man of contrasts. Brian Clough used to say that a new manager should try and get all the difficult tasks out of the way within three months of starting at a new club, then they could get down to reshaping teams how they wished. Poch took nine months, but that’s basically what he’s done. He gave everyone a chance last season, saw who was good, who was shit, who tried and who didn’t try and when he made a decision there was no going back on it.

Kaboul, Capoue, Lennon and Adebayor were all exiled halfway through last season and you barely heard from them again until the Spurs Twitter account announced those players departures. Poch is a ruthless bastard. And I like that — there is something masochistically charismatic about having a hard case for a manager. Graeme Souness made a managerial career out of that despite being a failure almost everywhere he went.

Our players, I love them all. I don’t hate one player in our squad. When Sherwood was manager, me and my dad would occasionally discuss which players we’d like Spurs to keep and we’d struggle to come up with six or seven players. I despised our squad. One massive expensive failure with a manager better suited for downing pints down Wetherspoons rather than coaching Premier League players. I didn’t even particularly care how we got on — we weren’t going to make the top four, weren’t going to be relegated, going nowhere, in a state of stasis. We were a football club in purgatory.

Now? I adore the lads. Harry Kane is a magnificent forward — great finisher, brilliant technically and he works his bollocks off every match. Hugo’s great in goal. Our centre halves are top. We have four good full backs. Dier is indestructible and so damn reliable. Mousa’s dynamite. Dele obviously is just the best. Nabil’s classy as fuck. Even Tommy’s a little gem.

Lamela runs his arse off. Chadders nabs crucial goals. Sonny’s decent now and promises a lot more. Eriksen’s so bloody talented. Mason and Onomah went to my school and are plainly good #lads. I love this lot so much. I’m incredibly lucky to have a season ticket and watch these players I feel genuine fondness for do their thing every other week.

For me, personally, I feel like I owe so much to this team. It probably helps I’m now a similar age to most of the players and hence feel closer to them, on and off the pitch. Plus, I have a season ticket now and until last season, I only attended one, two, three matches a season, not the thirty or so I did last season and will do again this campaign.

The last time Spurs were really good was 2011–12. We went on an early season run of thirty one points from a possible thirty three and were in the title race till late January. That season though, I felt detached from Spurs — this is where I do my Fever Pitch style descriptions of my personal life and consequently my relationship with football.

The first half of that season, I was unhappy at university, a virtual recluse. With no one to talk to (plus no television for fear if I watched football on my laptop I’d have to pay a license fee) I just didn’t feel that connected to us. When I left university and returned to live home, we promptly collapsed and missed the Champions League. Plus, Harry Redknapp was our manager and Redknapp is a complete wanker. A proper piece of shit who I can’t stand.

This season, to be honest, personally things haven’t been the easiest. My nan, my last remaining grandparent, has been gravely ill since the summer, was in and out of hospital between August and October and is currently in a care home where all she does is lay in bed and sleep all day.

When we beat Man City 4–1 in September, half an hour after the match I was in North Middlesex Hospital, trying to spark conversation with my nan, my buoyancy at what I’d just seen juxtaposing rather morbidly with the fact I was in a hospital ward full of old people who would be dead soon. Around that time, I had the experience of visiting my nan with my dad and two of my sisters, nan attached to a machine that did all breathing for her because she was unable to breathe herself at this point. Doctors had told us she would likely die the next day when they would take away this breathing machine and see if she could breathe unaided by herself. I kissed her forehead, told her I loved her and thought I’d never see her again.

While at the time, I just shrugged this aside and got on with my life, it must have affected me and probably still does. Every Friday after work I see my nan in her care home, barely capable of conversation or of eating more than a sandwich and a yoghurt.

Elsewhere too, it’s been a difficult time for some of the people closest to me. Without going into detail, it’s been a pretty hard six months or so. Personally, to be honest, I’ve felt a fair amount of anxiety and stress.

That makes it all the more fortunate that this is the season where Spurs have made the step from a top five, top six club to challenging for the league title and playing, consistently, the best football I’ve ever seen from a Spurs team. They’ve brought me joy and happiness on an almost weekly basis and I’m oh so thankful for this ray of sunshine in my life. Not that my life was particularly bad, it wasn’t, but it’s still greatly improved when your football team is brilliant and does things you never thought you’d witness.

Last season, there were a handful of games — Arsenal at home, Chelsea at home, even Man City at home even though we lost — where we played really well, dominated play and physically outmuscled our opponents. The Arsenal game in particular was our best performance since beating Inter 3–1 in the Champions League four and a half years earlier.

Well, at the moment we’re at that level of performance almost every week. It’s incredible. In twenty five league games, we’ve not been outplayed once. We boss the midfield every game. We seemingly run forever with few signs of fatigue. Our movement is excellent. We’re sound defensively. We’re a team of nice lads who all seem to like each other, who the fans are fully behind. It’s lovely.

I’m writing this in early February. We may shit the bed for the rest of the season and end up out of the top four without a trophy. Pochettino may leave. Kane, Alli, Dier and others may be signed by bigger clubs. In life, my biggest anxieties tend to be ‘what if’ worries — I’ll imagine the worst scenario to something, worry it’ll happen then invariably it’s fine, I tell myself not to worry before duly repeating the cycle.

I don’t think any of those things will happen. I think we’ll finish top four, quite possibly top three with a decent shot of winning the FA Cup too.

The sentiment of this article though, is that right now, I love Spurs and I’m genuinely grateful to Pochettino, the players and the coaches for bringing joy to my heart on a regular basis. I dream, imagine, fantasise about winning the league every day. I’m going to Manchester on Sunday to see the lads play and I’m excited. Excited to see us play and to be in the away end for a big, big game we have a great chance of winning.

Life is often shit. Football is often shit. Right now, football isn’t shit and I’m determined to enjoy this while it lasts.

Love, light and peace everyone.