Conversation on social media has been rampant with debate over the booing, hostility, and lack of patience towards Tottenham Hotspur from Spurs’ fans within the ground. Here, I dive into some of my beliefs about what’s happening at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
Growing up, I remember the old White Hart Lane atmosphere fluctuating with the significance of games, as it does across many stadiums in English football. Occasionally you could hear a pin drop. Sometimes the noise from Tottenham fans would leave your ears ringing for the night.
A common misconception around Tottenham is that the old stadium rocked almost always. Certainly, the last two seasons at the old Lane had a carnival atmosphere. However, that was largely due to the fact Mauricio Pochettino had Spurs flying. The final season at White Hart Lane saw Spurs go unbeaten at home. The fans were buoyant and already nostalgic over what was about to be demolished. The players ran through walls to the backbeat of a party atmosphere.
Going back in time, one thing I can’t remember at the old Stadium from when I was a kid was impatience and hostility towards Tottenham during slow or poor performances. Aside from some moments here and there, the culture at Tottenham was to get behind the players regardless of their ability.
This feeling is backed up by many Tottenham fans on Twitter discussing their emotions around the club during the 1990s and 2000s in light of recent times.
Of course, the fans have always urged Tottenham to compete. Still, the poor results and business in the mid to late ’90s meant that my experiences as a kid in the early 2000s were surrounded by fans who were happy when Tottenham won and wouldn’t become overly irritated when we lost.
The beginning of the shift in expectations, the return of belief amongst Tottenham fans and the initial board failings.
Expectations began to soar when Harry Redknapp got a tune out of Tottenham again after Juande Ramos had successfully won a League Cup and then started a Premier League campaign that was destined for relegation. A few seasons before, Martin Jol had first revitalised the club, creating a team that could play exciting and resilient football for the first time in over a decade. Tottenham Hotspurs’ owners, ENIC, weren’t too much of a topic for fans at this moment, largely due to the club having two trophies in 8 seasons (one under ENIC’s reign) and a team that seemed to be advancing again.
I’ve written in the past that the January 2012 transfer window was a major window where Spurs fans felt let down by the club in their handling of the squad again. It cost Tottenham Champions League football, even after being in a title race over the new year period.
When Dimitar Berbatov was sold and lazily replaced with Frazer Campbell in 2008, Tottenham fans were angered, but it turned into more of an ordeal a few seasons after, in 2012. Louis Saha and retiring Ryan Nelson were brought in instead of pursuing Carlos Tevez and Gary Cahill, two far more talented players who were reportedly keen on joining an exciting Tottenham side. It was the beginning of large groups of supporters realising a pattern around Tottenham.
It was starting to seem that the board and owners of Tottenham Hotspur weren’t focused on investing in the team and were only focused on the financial success of the club. Then, of course, came the Stratford Hotspur ordeal, which is still rumoured to have more legs than just a bluff to get the council to agree to Spurs rebuilding a stadium in Tottenham. The board was testing the fans whilst the playing squad was bouncing between looking extremely talented to looking overly reliant on a few good players.
Mauricio Pochettino took over at Tottenham after what felt like a crippling couple of seasons under Andreas Villas-Boas and then Tim Sherwood. Pochettino rebuilt Spurs with an academy and young player focus. The board did seem to want to back him, but whilst some signings were a hit, others were extremely off the mark for the system which Pochettino was establishing.
It’s hard to berate the ownership during the early Pochettino era because some of the clubs’ failed signings were Pochettino targets rather than players the club had sighted and pursued. And some signings, like Dele and Victor Wanyama, and players who came in before Pochettino, such as; Christian Eriksen and Erik Lamela, encapsulated Poch-ball if you’d like.
Continued…
All roads lead home, to Tottenham.
Pochettino had the incredibly unique and possibly terrifying nightmare of managing Tottenham Hotspur at the national stadium, Wembley. Looking back now, he did an amazing job in extremely rare circumstances. Clubs have had to move out or ground share before, but to use what’s considered the home of football for two seasons is almost unprecedented territory.
Tottenham fans were offered season tickets at reasonable prices. For £700, you could sit in the lower tier with a fairly decent view and a good atmosphere. The costs were, on the whole, more affordable due to the inconvenience of moving the club and its fans into north west London.
Wembley was never really home. Yet, some incredible nights there and outstanding performances ignited Spurs fans’ faith that Pochettino’s Tottenham could remain a force even against the odds. We were more patient then because we understood the complications of playing in a stadium mostly used for cup finals. Opponents would turn up to Wembley motivated as if it was truly a cup final and not just game week 20 of the Premier League.
It’s hard to scream unwaveringly towards Serge Aurier because he can barely take a throw-in when Tottenham haven’t really played a home game all season and yet our season’s almost done. Your expectations shift again somewhat. Or, at the very least, we knew this couldn’t be comfortable for anyone.
We were disappointed to be at Wembley for so long. Of course, there were frustrations when we lost or played a dreadful football game. Fans became edgy, but at that time it was in a totally unique way. Wembley created unrest after we returned when we should’ve already been back in Tottenham. Fans became irritated and uneasy. We knew the club couldn’t progress again until our Wembley period was dead and buried.
Corporate Tottenham is born. The collapse in traditional spirit and new demands not met.
Fast forward to today, and there’s a lot of noise and focus on the fans’ attitude at Spurs within the new stadium now. Emerson Royal became an individual target of moans, booing, and jeering in the last home game before the World Cup against Leeds United. Whilst the rest of the team has had to face a chorus of boos at half-time on a few occasions this season.
The booing and voiced anger from the Spurs faithful aren’t that new. Tottenham ended their 2020/21 campaign to a covid restricted fanbase booing from the upper sections of the new stadium and protests about ENIC on the streets of Tottenham over that summer period.
During Nuno Santos’ final game in charge of Tottenham, against Manchester United, he caused an eruption of boos and anger from Spurs fans when he substituted an inspired-looking Lucas Moura off for no real reason as Tottenham fell to a 3-0 defeat at home. The hostility claimed the headlines and almost overshadowed everything else from the fixture besides Nuno’s sacking.
This ignites a complex argument amongst the fanbase. For many people who support Tottenham, the club is and has been in a jarring cycle for just 20 years. It’s now made entirely worse by the corporate feel around the whole club today when attending games. A corporate feeling that never really existed when Spurs played their football at an old-school stadium that was half the size and far less welcoming to opposing fans and even football tourists.
Is it Emerson Royal, Eric Dier, and Davinson Sanchez and their defensive vulnerabilities that we’re angry with, or are those names just the tip of the iceberg and almost a scapegoat in a club that pretends to have outgrown players of this quality in their starting 11?
Some Tottenham fans are aggrieved at other Tottenham fans for being discontent and voicing their anger during games. Whilst I get the sentiment, people are fed up due to everything around them as much as it’s the individual they’re heckling on the pitch.
Continued…
A piece of architecture that creates a subconscious irritation during floundering moments.
When I attend games now, I sit in a billion-pound super arena. Where absolutely everything is impressive, and its sound and aesthetic are almost unrivalled. It was sold to Spurs fans as the necessary factor in taking the club to the next level, something many of us agreed with, but we’re still waiting.
For balance, it partially has taken the club to another level…temporarily. In our opening months at the end of the 2018/2019 season, Spurs maintained their position in the top four and played crucial Champions League games that ended up seeing the club reach the Champions League final for the first time in its history. Even though Spurs only played two matches, winning one game and losing one, at the new stadium in that season’s competition.
A few years on, though, the money for a seat in the ground and the whole impressive essence of the arena kind of creates this short-tempered nature within many of the match-going fans. One that wasn’t there amongst the same fans at the old stadium due to the overall spirit and feel of the club.
10 years ago, if a player of Emerson Royal’s quality (or lack of) arrived and performed well under par, there’d be groans and jokes at the players’ extent, but they wouldn’t dominate the noise or headlines around the club and stadium. Now, it does. Why? Because season ticket holders are paying the most expensive prices in the league per season to watch players who feel like a downgrade on those of the past, to not help the club push forward, resulting in a more toxic feel. Creating the notion that Tottenham Hotspur, from the club ownership perspective, is no different other than the appearance to that of the club that first put in planning permission for this stadium around 14 years ago.
As a season ticket holder at this club, I feel more entitled than ever. Not because I deserve so much or because I’m so great. I’m not, and I don’t. It’s not because I’m 26 years old now and my attitude is different to when I was a 10-year-old in 2006 and bright-eyed, enjoying the likes of Michael Carrick, Jermain Defoe, Robbie Keane, Edgar Davids and Co. It’s none of that.
It’s because I now arrive in Tottenham to a club that wants to sell the big-time vibe, in its big-time stadium. A club that’s got some of the most business-savvy directors in football. One of the richest clubs in the world. With one of the best, most proven managers in the game right now. With some of the most world-class players. You get the gist, right?
Build it and they will come, but will they stay patient with obscene prices and erratic ownership?
Personally, my patience is burning out. Not because Tottenham is so deserving, and so are the fans. We’re fans of our clubs for far more than a win on the weekend and a trophy here and there. My patience has dwindled because we’re three, almost four years into a stadium project that hasn’t taken the club anywhere but completely backward and then, thankfully under Antonio Conte, back to where it was when the Stadium first opened, but with huge question marks over whether it can go above the level of 4th place solely due to lack of faith in the ownership to truly back the manager and his ideas, whoever that manager may even be.
I need to be fair and understanding of the fact that a global pandemic caused the stadium to shut to fans for half its lifespan and that these are now the years we should be judging its financial impact on the club because of the delayed nature of money coming in due to covid.
There have been some improvements in the first team, and there’s also been enough regression to keep us somewhat inconsistent. There have been many positives for the last year under Conte. The irritating cycle has also been watching Emerson and Ryan Sessegnon let us down without being benched.
To summarise my thoughts and opinions and to make ends meet here, the nature of the fan is changing because the club transformed its appearance right down to the training centre, made everything more expensive to the fans, but forgot to enhance the quality of football and therefore somewhat failed to justify the obscene prices. It made itself look like a Ferrari and decided that the engine should be from a Nissan Micra. It looks great, but how does it run?
So far, it runs as you’d expect. Slow off the mark and unreliable. Everything from within the club is still up for debate. And our ticket prices are still only going one way. We’re only getting so much back for the money, really? We’re getting the same relatively exciting yet unbalanced team with a lack of depth in quality, the same trophy out-put, and league finishes as we experienced throughout a fair few years of the 2010s, but for a lot more money per ticket.
Are the board just as tired of themselves as we are with them?
Before we head to social media to slate some bloke within the ground for shouting drunken nonsense in the direction of Emerson, take a second to look at what made him so angry. What created a total lack of patience and empathy towards a low-in-confidence, failing full-back?
Entitlement that was born from promises that may very well never be kept. Anger at the manager cycle. Frustrated at watching the players who were making mistakes six seasons ago, four managers ago, and still make the same mistakes now.
Not many Spurs fans want to boo or berate their own team, myself included. Annoyingly though, I get why it’s starting to happen so much.
And as I finished writing this long theorised article, I thought to myself, not only are we as fans becoming impatient, but the board has become impatient again too. Like it was at its very start. Under Daniel Levy, managers barely lasted a seasonal weather change when he first took over. He steadied the managerial ship, sort of, with Jol, Redknapp, and Pochettino. Whilst giving Villas-Boas and even Ramos a bit of a go.
Now, we’ve seen five whole managers (I’m counting Ryan Mason, yes) take charge in our stadium that’s not even been open in as many years. And Daniel Levy has shot for the top twice in Jose Mourinho and Conte. He’s restructured the scouting team and tried to take a step back. He helped provide the team with a whole range of summer signings which still weren’t and aren’t enough, but amazingly the board and chairman seem receptive to change.
I want to end this on a positive because we don’t have to suffer our wing-backs for a while, which is honestly great. No, that’s not the positive point I was attempting to make. The positive thing here is the board are showing a willingness to listen to Antonio Conte and to sign players he wants. It’s showcasing finally that it’s willing to not be left behind beyond a stadium and training centre. Whilst all of that’s important; the team needs to be top-notch as well.
If the board can provide those tools and resources to the team, then we can enjoy our club again and not feel so irritated, so easily. Factors like having a great stadium can just be appreciated without reminiscing over eras that were just as turbulent for the club, but the fans were more chilled out. I would like the tickets to become reasonably priced. There’s no need for the absurd prices match-going fans face. in absence of that, a great team would be nice.