Bleeding Tottenham!
When you bleed Tottenham, it’s hard to see your side lose to anyone, but to see them lose to “Arsenal’s Kids” it hurts even more. It also hurts to see how the press love our near rivals, and how all and sundry seem to fawn over the entire machine that is Arsenal.
When you bleed Tottenham, it’s hard to live with the pain of your neighbours’ long-term superiority; their ability to build a 60,000 seater stadium; and the ability of their second string to end your hopes of a Carling Cup Final at Cardiff.
When you bleed Tottenham, it’s hard to accept that the better side won, especially when it’s Arsenal. It’s a side with better coaching, whose team plays at great pace over the length of the game, be it 90 or 120 minutes. It’s a side that always has options, wherever they are on the pitch. It’s a side that smothers the opposition attacks; that prevents their creative streaks in the middle of the park; that attacks in numbers, with the ball predominantly on the ground.
When you bleed Tottenham, and follow your club up and down the country, and across Europe, it makes you feel ashamed to keep the company of some so-called Spurs fans, who once the game was lost, started leaving, gesticulating to the Arsenal fans to “come outside”. Some of these “fans” were not far off my age either. One of them gave a “slit your throat” gesticulation towards the opposition faction too. These are not people I want to watch games with.
Unfortunately, the police were not present to pick out potential trouble makers, as they were too busy organising the queues for the inadequate toilets in the “Polonium Dome”. How this place got its “Fit for Purpose” certificate I do not know. In December, the Police were inside the toilet, to try and ensure no damage was caused. This time, presumably because of the extra away allocation (still 4000 below what it should have been), the allocated toilets had a low “urinal per thousand” percentage, and because there was not room to swing a cat, “old bill” was busy (ten of them) organising the queues in and out of the toilet. What a career!
When you bleed Tottenham, it hurts that you haven’t got your best players on the pitch to start the most important game of the season so far. In particular the mystery surrounding Aaron Lennon took a long time to be resolved. I pay a considerable fee to Spurs (((mobile))) text service) to be kept informed of team news and important snippets. Lennon was named on the bench, but at half-time, I was informed (by someone in the ground) that he had not been involved in the warm-up, was not on the bench, but that Y.P. Lee was. However, then I got a text from a friend watching the TV coverage, who advised me that Lennon was ill, and Spurs had failed to put Lee on the team sheet, and therefore had to manage with 4 substitutes. I have also heard that Arsenal refused to allow Tottenham to make a late change to their team sheet. It’s the rules of course, but when you bleed Tottenham, stories like that make you hate Arsenal so much!
When you bleed Tottenham, it hurts to say that the best team won last night, and that it wasn’t bleeding Tottenham!
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