5^th June 2007 - Legends and myths Plenty of comment has been passed on the season just gone, so I won’t drone on with my tuppenceworth, other than to say that achieving the fifth place that once looked out of reach confirms the progress this club has made and that, in the end, is the only judgement on players, management and board. Tottenham’s up and down form also successfully lured my boss, who’d bet me £50 that we wouldn’t finish in the top 6, into changing the terms - leaving me with £100 to make that fifth-place finish even sweeter. What has been pleasantly surprising is the number of fans I’ve spoken to who volunteer the opinion that breaking into the top four is going to be much harder than the journey from mid-table to People’s Champions. Can these be the unrealistically demanding Spurs fans of press legend? Surely not. There is both realism and optimism - neither of which seem to have tempered desire or ambition – and that is an unusually pleasant situation for us to find ourselves in. Even the usual grim expectation that we will take two steps back after one forward is not casting its shadow. and may the footballing Gods forgive me if I’ve jinxed us just by mentioning this. That Spur fanzine cover – where Lineker is telling Venables he can’t wait to link up with Waddle, and Venables is saying ‘Er, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you’ – is never too far from my memory. We’ve even started transfer dealing early, securing the promising Gareth Bale and reportedly getting the highly-rated Yannis Kaboul from Auxerre’s talent factory. Encouraging noises too about the possibility of Martin Petrov coming to the left flank - highly recommended by his international team-mate Berbatov. If we do have a couple of proper wingers to whip crosses in, this may also mean that Malbranque - who I think has been disappointing since he arrived - can be played through the middle in what is a more natural position. For all the signings being rumoured, we’ve yet to sign a proven winner - and I reckon this is key. It’s no insult to our current crop, but the fact is none of them have ever won anything at the highest level. It’s that experience and mental strength that is a vital part of the mix, as Edgar Davids demonstrated two seasons ago in what too many Spurs fans now seem to forget was an absolutely vital contribution. That’s why the rumours about either Ryan Giggs or Luis Figo were so interesting. True, there’s always the suspicion that such players may arrive at Spurs looking for an easy route to retirement, but I’ve enough confidence in BMJ and the team to ensure there are no passengers. But I’ve been thinking about another player. It’s a thought process that probably demonstrates why I should never be allowed near a position of responsibility at a football club, but bear with me on this one. What if we could attract a player who, having proven himself at the very top, could be persuaded to take on one last challenge, the reward for which would be the status of footballing God if he could prove to be the deciding factor in putting this club back on top? It would take some sweet, sweet talking, and some serious cash - but imagine if we successfully pulled off an audacious bid for Gennaro Gattuso.		. .
I can already hear the shouts of “It’s not Football Manager, you plum!”, but you get nowhere without ambition. A possibly more realistic target is goalkeeper Gregory Coupet, out of contract at Lyon and reportedly looking for a new challenge. I haven’t joined the anti-Robbo faction, I still think he’s a decent keeper, but the fact is that his performance was a bit iffy at times last season. Radek Cerny, who has looked okay in the limited time we’ve had to see him, doesn’t seem to be breathing down the neck of England’s number one quite as much as someone like Coupet would - and anyway, having two quality keepers is pretty useful if you aim to play 60+ games. All just opinion anyway - on the subject of which… Events around the Champions League final in Athens have prompted an interesting debate on the FTL message board - and doubtless elsewhere. Now, UEFA has gone public with an attack on Liverpool fans in response to criticism of the governing body’s own role. It’s a complex and sometimes difficult debate, because it involves dealing with what are literally potential life and death issues and because the debate is not black and white. What concerns me is that there are some babies being thrown out with the bathwater. There seems to be a sizeable body of opinion which is fed-up with the assumption that loveable Scousers are being turned over by the nasty authorities. That image, like the Sky trademarked ‘best fans in the world’ at Newcastle or even ‘fickle’ Tottenham fans, is just that - an image created by lazy journalism but also taken up in a wider context when people see advantage. So let’s not base our views on this. The reality, as always, is that in most groups of people you get all sorts - good and bad. Liverpool fans themselves have taken this theme up, recognising that a failure to take responsibility or admit wrongdoing when necessary is harming their case when they have genuine cause for complaint. So as far as the events in Athens go, some Liverpool fans were in the wrong by attempting to storm the gates. But so too were the police and the authorities – you just can’t imagine those scenes happening in Britain now. Here, lessons have been learnt, on all sides, especially after Hillsborough. On that day, 96 fans were killed because of a failure of policing and public safety measures. When fans tried to get police to free them from the crush, the police saw only a threatened pitch invasion. Entry to the ground was as it was at virtually every big game, and the Spurs fans who were at the same ground for the 1981 semi-final against Wolves will tell you that it could have been them. After the event, the authorities tried to avoid their responsibilities - and have largely managed to do so to this day. Football fans, on the other hand, did examine their own actions, with the result that going on the pitch became seen as a no-no and, for a while, there was a reduction in hooliganism. We faced our responsibilities - and the impetus for many of the fan organisations and the new wave of football writing and coverage came from a willingness to take greater responsibility for and control over the way we acted and the way we were perceived. We’re not perfect, but we’ve reformed immeasurably more than the authorities. We’ve just made less money. UEFA’s dossier, with its sensational headline claim that ‘Liverpool fans stole from children’ reminds me of the briefings that went out immediately after Hillsborough that sought to shift the blame entirely onto the shoulders of the fans. I know from personal experience that there is a deeply-ingrained dislike of English football fans running through the UEFA organisation, and it’s frankly shameful that this is being used to avoid some key questions about the game in Athens. Because how could ticketless fans get through four checkpoints? Why should fans with tickets not protest about being kept out, and then teargassed? And why should the fallacy of ‘tickets for the football family’ remain unchallenged when everyone knows much of the sizeable allocation given to this most dysfunctional of families ends up on the black market? English fans are by no means angels, and we do unfortunately have to carry the burden of our fellow countrymen’s past actions. But the determination to which English fans will go, legitimately, to follow their teams is something which threatens the sponsors’ junkets which have become such a depressing part of modern sport from football to the Olympics. As fans, we should remember that despite our differences, we have more in common with each other than with those who seek to blame us for their own shortcomings. By all means have the debate about taking responsibility and the right way to behave, but don’t let the authorities off the hook.
. .	Columnist Profile – Martin Cloake I've supported Spurs since I was a Haringey schoolboy the early 1970s. Being a TopSpurs columnist is probably a cheat as I am a journalist by trade, although I don't work in the sports field. I've also edited Spurs fanzine Off The Shelf, was a regular CADD contributor, and I've written two books on Spurs - along with fellow fan Adam Powley. After years on the Shelf, the Ledge and the Lower East, I now sit in the Park Lane Upper with mates I've known for 20 years.		. .

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25^th April 2007 – It’s a kind of magic

Three things got me hooked on football. Properly hooked, so I have to go to the games, rather than sit in my armchair and consume them.

The first was that, when we got relegated in 1977, there was a rallying round of Spurs fans to help the team push for promotion at the first attempt. I’d followed the team since my earliest memories of listening to the 1972 UEFA Cup run on the radio, and to a 12-year-old at a north London school relegation was a painful experience. I got it big time from the Gooners, and the assorted glory-hunting Leeds and Liverpool fans dotted about the place, but it only made my commitment stronger.

I’d not been allowed to go to games because of the regular reports of violence at White Hart Lane, but my mum - who would no more consider setting foot inside a football ground than she would have walked into a pub on her own – knew I would soon be able to suit myself and eventually I took myself off to a game. It was nearing the climax of that promotion season and I was one of 52,000 to see us and close rivals Bolton clash. We won 1-0, a Don McAllister diving header, and I loved every minute. I was 13, standing on my own in the schoolboys enclosure at the front of the old West Stand, and mesmerised by the whole experience. I didn’t have to book in advance, take out membership, or drain my piggy-bank to get in.

So my first trip to Spurs came because of the strong feeling, apparent even to a boy from a family with no football tradition, that Spurs were special and we had to pull together. That loyalty, that strength of feeling is the thing that attracts many boys to many youth cults - so I wasn’t so different. I just chose Spurs - or, so it seemed, they chose me.

At around the same time, the second thing that got me hooked was happening. In consecutive seasons Nottingham Forest were promoted from the second division, won the league, then won the European Cup when it was a proper competition for champions. Even at the time it was pretty amazing, and few people begrudged Forest their success. They played attractive football the proper way, on the ground, going forward. Their manager Brian Clough was a popular, if controversial figure, a genuine popular rebel - and one who puts the shallow histrionics of the posturing Mourinho firmly in perspective.

If you weren’t a Derby fan, and possibly not a Liverpool fan, and you loved football then you loved Forest. For me, the best thing about Forest’s achievement was that it could happen. A team could come from nowhere to the very top. Skill and guile, ability and heart could help a team achieve more than anyone thought possible. There was hope for us all, and this little bit of magic proved what a fantastic game football was.

The final thing that got me hooked was winning the FA Cup in 1981. It was the first season I really went regularly, having put the groundwork in during the astonishing first season back in the top flight when the signing of two Argentinean World Cup stars sprinkled even more magic dust on the Spurs experience. For a 16-year-old to see that Cup run, with the excitement of the Ossie’s Dream fairytale underpinning it, was a truly formative experience. For it to reach its climax through a mad adrenalin rush of an evening at Highbury in the semi-final replay, and then the two games which comprised the 100th, and greatest ever, Cup Final meant that I was well and truly hooked on Spurs.

I often find myself mulling over the reasons why I got hooked on Spurs as I see the game and the club today, and as I follow the debates in the Spurs community. A 16-year-old today wouldn’t have the chance I did to just turn up - and they probably wouldn’t want to. I wouldn’t if I’d had to pay up and plan ahead to the extent you have to now. There’s a reason the age profile of football fans is much higher than it was when I started going – and that’s because fortysomething blokes like me were the last generation to be pulled in in great numbers. We’ve just never stopped going.

I’m told I’m a hopeless romantic sometimes because I still value the things that brought me to the game. But that’s the way I am. I like the sport, the playing of the game. What I don’t like is the assumption that all we need is more money, that a rich businessman will be our sugar daddy, that the teams that succeed now are the only teams that can succeed. At some stage, a team has to play above itself, it has to beat a side better than it was in order to become better than the other lot. In sport, there has to be more than one winner every time to make it viable as a sport.

Look at the top division 50 years ago and the top division now and younger fans will be amazed that such names were ever ‘big’. But this is part of the magic. Anyone can achieve if they play well enough. My love of football comes largely through Spurs and all that goes with it, but it also comes because in my lifetime Swansea, Stoke City and Bristol City have been in the top division; Manchester United, Chelsea and Tottenham in the second. It comes because Nottingham Forest can go from second flight to champions of Europe in two years, and because a newly-promoted club with an inexperienced manager can sign two of the brightest stars of the World Cup.

There’s a depressing edge to the talk of money and benefactors and business plans and economic realities and hard-headedness that tarnishes the magic. And with all this emphasis on money and value it’s little wonder that frustrations at lack of achievement reach hysterical levels.

We pay therefore we want guaranteed success - but not everyone can be a winner. It’s why “To dare is to do” will always have more allure than “you get what you pay for”. That’s the nature of sport. That’s the magic.

9^th April 2007 – On the coverage of the events in Seville

I wasn’t in Seville for our quarter-final first leg, but I spent much of the day after the game finding out if my mates that went were OK, and reading with growing horror and anger about the police riot and its effects on our support inside the stadium. What’s made me even angrier since then is some of the rubbish written about it.

Quite rightly, the days when particular groups were automatically assumed to have brought ill-treatment by the police on themselves seem to have gone in Britain. Not so in Spain and Italy, it would seem, and not so in some quarters that really should know better. In fact, if I read the phrase “English football supporters’ reputation precedes them” once more I might have to go out and smash up a bar. (For any national newspaper journalists or UEFA officials reading, that last comment is intended as biting sarcasm).

The day after the game, a number of national papers asked ‘Is hooliganism returning’ and ‘Is the English disease back?’ The Guardian was predictably quick to fall back on its liberal middle class prejudices, running a piece which showed it is apparently incapable of believing English fans abroad could be blameless. One of its ‘experts’, Gordon Strachan, blamed ‘yob culture’ which occurs because ‘people pay £20 and are allowed to say anything they want’. Tedious dinner-party rubbish, as ill-informed as Gordon’s knowledge of the cost of watching football. £20? When was the last time he paid to get into a game? Elsewhere in the same edition, columnist Martin Kettle pronounced football a game for ‘foul-mouthed’ punters who need to ‘get a life’. The people’s game now, he said – and I kid you not – was golf. I’m sure, like me, many readers can remember regularly scraping together a few hundred quid for a set of golf clubs and nipping off to the local clubhouse for a round with their mates. Particularly the black ones.

The football writers at least appeared to have some understanding of what really happened, but the news sections all covered the events in Seville, and Rome the night before when police attacked Manchester United fans while taking no action against Roma’s Ultras, with an underlying assumption was that this must have been the fault of the English fans. The Spanish authorities pronounced themselves satisfied with the policing, referring to some ‘clashes before the game’ that seem strangely to have remained unverified. They also described the incidents inside the stadium as ‘nothing’. Maybe something was lost in translation, but it’s hard to see how ‘nothing’ can belong in the same passage as descriptions of a girl being clubbed in the face, her father brutally clubbed to the ground for intervening, fans chased into corners and beaten, and a wheelchair-bound fan knocked to the ground. [Presumably some Spanish police PR person is even now searching for evidence of the previous activities of the notorious English wheelchair firm.]

In Italy, they even used pictures of Spanish police attacking Spurs fans to ‘prove’ the point that their own treatment of the people they were supposed to be protecting was justified. And to cap it all, a UEFA spokesperson described English criticism of facilities and crowd control techniques at some European grounds as ‘xenophobic’.

Here’s what’s xenophobic in my book ¬– automatically assuming that football fans are going to cause trouble because they come from England. Surely we have reached the stage now where instead of being expected to pay for the sins of the past all the time, we deserve to be judged on the positives of the present. Most English police forces – there are still some exceptions – know how to identify and isolate violent and unruly fans while ensuring a decent experience for the majority. It may have taken the deaths of 96 Liverpool fans to change the attitude that saw football fans first and foremost as potential hooligans, but things here have improved. In Holland during Euro 2000, a more public-service oriented police operation ensured far less trouble than occurred under the Belgians’ heavy-handed approach. Similarly in Japan 2002, treating football fans like human beings was one contributory factor to a trouble-free tournament.

A number of people who travelled to Seville have spoken of the kindness and bravery of Spanish supporters who rescued them from the uniformed thugs, and have said that Spanish fans seem resigned to this kind of behaviour from the police. What a state to be in.

But there does seem to be some hope. As well as praise for the Seville fans, there has been universal praise for the actions of Tottenham Hotspur’s stewards, who acted bravely to protect fans and helped prevent worse scenes. In fact the club have done us proud, raising the legitimate questions that need to be raised and demanding answers. The actions of Paul Robinson and Paul Kemsley in rescuing a fan attacked for photographing the team coach have also not gone unnoticed. As is often the case, adverse circumstances bring us all closer together.

And at last, even the government has raised questions about the treatment of English fans abroad. The days when we could be routinely condemned by our clubs and our government just for being football fans seem long gone.

It’s to be hoped the process is taken to its conclusion. Last week’s attempts to smear English fans are not only designed to draw attention away from a culture of complacency about domestic problems, they are an appalling dereliction of responsibility to ensure the well-being and safety of travelling supporters.

Seville officials and fans have, apparently, conveyed support for us and it will be good to give them a warm welcome on Thursday and then turn our attention to the football again.

Without underestimating our opponents, Spurs did enough to show we are capable of winning the tie, and if the referee remembers his glasses this time, all the better

28^th March 2007 – Public Image. Limited

So much for the ticket manifesto. Reaction to the season ticket price rises has been well-covered, so I won’t bore people with yet another dissection of the decision.

What is worth asking is - is it worth it? Not just from our point of view, but from the club’s. It’s been estimated the rise equates to around £645,000 a year. This isn’t going to buy a new player, make much of an impression on a new stadium or pay for more failed planning applications. What it has done is provoke more bad feeling among Spurs fans, and feed the general view that, as one senior national newspaper journalist said to me last week, that “Spurs are one of the greediest clubs”.

Tottenham’s spin doctor Paul Barber has been mounting a valiant effort to defend the indefensible, and to give him credit, at least he bothers to communicate with the fans - unlike the chairman. Who I am sure has better things to do for his above-inflation pay rises. But the position the club has chosen to put itself in is so bad that even Mr Barber’s sure touch is deserting him. “You get what you pay for” he told one disgruntled fan. Clearly, this is not true. At Old Trafford you pay less and get more success and a better stadium. The same could be said for a number of English clubs, and a greater number of European ones. It’s not a matter of interpretation, it’s plain factually incorrect.

Everyone makes mistakes, and Paul Barber would probably regret this comment in hindsight. But some of the other attitudes coming from the club betray a worrying picture of how the club views the fans. Several people have suggested they may stop spending money at WHL over and above a match ticket. Mr Barber not only “failed to see how this would help” but pronounced the idea “deeply offensive”. I suspect I’m not alone in failing to see why, if I adopt the stance, I should feel guilty that I don’t provide one of the 20 richest clubs in the world, owned by one of the richest individuals in the world, with more money than I already do. I’m not a charity, and if I was I could reasonably argue that there are more deserving causes to prioritise. But being deeply offended by the notion that a fan wouldn’t plough more money into the merchandising operation seems a bit much.

It just reinforces the view that they only want us for our money, a view further boosted by the club’s childish and unprofessional reaction to some mild criticism from the Supporters’ Trust. The Trust understood it was to be continuing discussion of ticket prices at a scheduled meeting, so when the club announced prices before the meeting, it was critical. And who wouldn’t be in the circumstances? As I write, the scheduled meeting has yet to be rearranged after the club pulled out. Paul Barber has accused the Trust of misleading the fans, but hasn’t - to my knowledge - provided evidence that it did. This evidence is probably buried under the huge number of emails he refers to which have come in from fans welcoming the price rise. I imagine they’ve been swamped.

So as well as damaging the club’s image in many people’s eyes, the board have also revealed that they only want conversation with fans when we agree with them. What other interpretation can be put on their refusal to meet with the THST since the announcement of ticket prices? In the real world, different sides meet to resolve their differences in negotiations. In football, once again proving it is not “a business like any other”, senior members of one side can throw their toys out of the pram when things don’t go their way. The board’s position also threatens to damage the standing of the Trust. If people see this case as evidence that the club is not serious about its relationship with the Trust, we risk a return to the damaging days of the one man and his fax outfits who are accountable to no one.

All this for £645k. Even the most basic understanding of public relations could see there was a golden opportunity to score a PR goal over next season’s pricing. Even adopting just one of the number of suggestions fans put forward would have sufficed - contrary to popular opinion fans are quite easily pleased. All we wanted was a sign that we’re not just seen as cash cows. Instead, the club has scored a spectacular own goal, and the process which started with Burkinshaw’s famous comment and continued through Hunter Davies’s famous essay about losing his love of the club is brought to its depressingly logical conclusion.

Like every fan, I will be making my own decisions. For now I can only say, Come On You Spurs, and “mooooooooooo!”

17^th March 2007 – Ticket Manifesto

We’re fast approaching the tipping point in the debate over the price of watching football in England. Here’s a random selection of facts to bring you up to speed.

• Since the Premier League began 15 years ago, ticket prices have gone up 700%. Season ticket prices to see the top teams in England are FOUR TIMES more expensive than in Italy, Germany or Holland.

• In the first 6 months of the 2006/7 season, 11 of the 17 Premier League clubs which remained in the division from the season before have experienced a decrease in average attendances. Of the other six, two have increased capacity, thereby boosting attendances. Since the 2002/3 season, 7 of the 14 clubs that have been in the Premier League through the whole period have experienced declines in average attendance.

• Six Premiership clubs, Blackburn, Wigan, Bolton, Sheffield United Chelsea and Everton have announced they will be reducing or freezing some or all prices next season. And Birmingham City, sitting in one of the promotion spots as I write, have also made noises about ticket prices being too high.

• Next season, every Premiership club will receive an increase of 65% in TV money.

• You can buy a ticket to see Real Madrid for £14, Roma for £9.50, PSG for £19 and Hertha Berlin for £8.

• And a final opinion, one that I’d argue is so irrefutable as to be worthy of classification as a fact. Between £40 and £50 is far too much money to pay for an ordinary seat at a football match.

The Football Supporters Federation is backing the call for prices to come down, and pushing the demand for a £15 maximum on away tickets. Less predictably, that most vociferous standard bearer for free-market capitalism, Rupert Murdoch’s Sun newspaper, is campaigning for a reduction in prices. Even the Government has backed the call for lower prices - although it won’t legislate, because this Government’s line is that governments can’t do anything about the economy. Sports Minister Richard Caborn is quick to wheel out platitudes about how fans “are the beating heart of the clubs”, but he doesn’t explain why it is that his Government can tell mobile phone operators what to charge customers for overseas calls, but can’t tell football clubs to stop milking their fans. Until he, or someone from the former People’s Party, does, this government’s line on the great grandstands rip-off is to merely grandstand.

In the midst of all this, only silence from our club. There is a suspicion among some supporters that the expansion of White Hart Lane is not as much of a priority as ENIC would like us to think, because as long as supply lags behind demand, ticket prices can be kept high. Yet even here, the trend is for attendances to be down - only slightly, but down nonetheless. Could this be anything to do with the high prices charged? Already this season there has been a row over the pricing for games - most famously the dead rubber against Dinamo Bucharest which led the club to dole out tickets to local schoolkids (for which read Chigwell! - that bastion of urban deprivation) in order to avoid the embarrassment of empty seats. And at the last 16 game against Braga, blocks of empty seats in the West Stand indicated that £71 a ticket was far too high a price for many. Spurs not selling out a European knockout night? It takes a special kind of pricing policy to achieve that.

The financial strain on the most loyal fans has been heavy, and high prices can be nothing but a disincentive to newer and - in particular - younger fans. The club protests that it is operating no differently to anyone else, and it’s true that sometimes we have been quick to criticise the club. But the spat over tickets for the League Cup semi - when Arsenal’s press officers tried to shift the debate to one about our attitude to pricing - rumours of Spurs wanting to push up prices for the FA Cup game at Stamford Bridge and initial suspicions about Spurs’ hand in the pricing of the Braga away game show that the club needs to do more to reassure fans it is not milking them for every last penny.

There are small signs that the club is aware of all this. It did reduce the classification of the Chelsea FA Cup replay from Cat A to Cat B, which is a step in the right direction at least. Trouble was, that meant tickets were still more expensive than Chelsea charged at Stamford Bridge. So the ‘favour’ wasn’t as big as the club would have us believe.

All of which leads us to one position - that the club should announce a progressive pricing policy as soon as possible. The following points are merely suggestions, and I’ve tried to make them reasonable. I’ve deliberately not specified prices, because to do so would be to give away a negotiating position before we get to the table. Our demand should be for reduction and greater value - and when the offer comes back it’s for us to decide if it’s good enough.

This isn’t an ego-exercise, so I’m not concerned if these points aren’t embraced wholeheartedly. What I want to do is start a debate in which fans make their own suggestions, and start a process which ends with the club telling us where it stands. What’s not included is a scheme to attract younger fans in. Buying tickets is a chore, and an expensive one, that I certainly couldn’t have been bothered with when I was a teenaged fan. If anyone can think of a way to solve the problem of attracting younger fans, particularly those who don’t go to school in chi-chi suburbs, feel free to add your suggestion.

This is a great opportunity for the club to demonstrate that it is interested in more than just making as much money as possible, and that instead it acknowledges that providing good value will lead to a long-term growth in support, and therefore revenue.

Spurs fans ticket manifesto

• Use a significant portion, that’s at least more than 60%,