TWO SEASONS AGO, having seen Spurs get outclassed by Thomas Frank’s Brentford, we strolled towards Northumberland Park station.

“Could we move over here and buy a house on this street?” my young lad asked. This was a surprise. A 3-1 home loss to this opposition is not the stuff of dreams. And Park Lane is loved by many, but it wouldn’t top every ideal relocation list. 

Great to be a kid, I thought to myself: in the moment and upbeat. He couldn’t want to move here and put himself through 90 minutes of that every week. 

The next season, having been outclassed by Nuno’s Nottingham Forest, we were walking the same route. “Could we move over here and buy a house on this street . . . then we could go to all the games!” Ah here.  

That’s the way it is with Tottenham. No matter how bad things get – and they can get so, so bad – Spurs remain the biggest club in these islands. 

There are metrics usually applied to bold claims like this: trophies won, good players signed, not staring down the barrel of relegation on the final day of the season, having finished 17th the year before. 

All that stuff matters, for sure, but when it comes to the not-what-you-can-inflict-but-what-you-can-endure means of benchmarking, few causes inspire like Tottenham Hotspur FC. 

Mathys Tel rues a missed chance against Chelsea. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

We, and yes it’s going to be ‘we‘ for the duration of this, don’t win much. We find new and ever more spectacular ways to squander good situations, tend to sell our better players, and, at an institutional level, act for all the world like a small club. Still, Spurs inspire so much love and too much hate to be anything other than the biggest of deals. 

There’s something essential and untaintable at the heart of the club that keeps fans devoted, no matter how many times they are disappointed by the for-profit custodians. You don’t see swathes of empty seats at the ground, despite the results and ludicrously inappropriate ticket prices. There’s never a spare ticket for a Spurs away end. 

You could say this for a lot of clubs. But have they managed to keep everyone’s interest while being so desperate for such lengthy periods? I don’t think so. Maybe Everton, but other big clubs don’t stress test the loyalty of their supporters so much. Even during one of their historic lows, Manchester United have won two FA Cups, two League Cups and a Europa League since their last title in 2013. 

We’d love an FA Cup. 

Arsenal have had this big moment of catharsis, winning the league for the first time in . . .  22 years. 22 years! We could do that like a career criminal puts down an eight-month stretch. If someone offered me a Spurs title in the season of 2048 I’d take their hand, their entire limb, off. And, during their desperate wait, Arsenal have won five FA Cups. Spurs managed a Carling Cup in 2008 and a Europa League last season, before sacking the manager to “compete on multiple fronts”. 

Powerhouse 

And then there’s the hatred. Who are Arsenal’s biggest rivals? Tottenham, which makes sense because they are close to Tottenham since they moved to North London from Woolwich, in South London. 

West Ham hate Tottenham more than any other club, and maybe that is down to geography as well. When they are not in the same league as their dockers derby rivals, Millwall, which, you know, hopefully they will be soon, then they put their attention on Spurs. 

Then you have Chelsea, who have always hated Tottenham and always will. They won their cup final on Tuesday night, having lost a meaningless warm-up the Saturday before. 

Why do they all despise Spurs so much? Well, absurd fans such as myself are often deemed to be the problem. We at Tottenham think a lot of ourselves, despite all our on-pitch failings. But who ever really hates delusional people? Only the truly twisted and dark-hearted. I’m not prepared to write off my Arsenal, West Ham and Chelsea brothers and sisters as such. They know, just like we do, that Spurs are the team that matters, the biggest club in the biggest city in Europe, a powerhouse who could raze all rivals to dust . . . if only we weren’t so shit. 

Why are Spurs shit? Why are they so shit, so often, for so long? It’s an interesting question, and I’ve had quite some time to think about it, but Carl Jung describes it best. 

“The privilege of a lifetime,” he said, “is to become who you truly are.” 

That is Tottenham’s problem, right there. The club has been living a big lie for most of the past half-century. 

What really is Tottenham Hotspur? It’s a football club named after a knight. His name was Henry Percy, but his rivals in battle, the Scots, gave him the moniker of Harry Hotspur because he attacked with speed and bravery. Audere est facere. 

Do Spurs dare to do now? It has, as Ange Postecoglou said, become just a slogan daubed on the merch.

When Spurs do well, it is as a result of being faithful to who they are. The Arthur Rowe team that won the old Second Division in 1950 and then the First in ’51. Push and run. Win the ball, move it, and then move yourself to complete the triangle. Play with tempo and flair, and if anybody tries to bring you down to their level with roughhousing, then give it back to them twice as hard. 

Steel and style: the Spurs double winners of 1961. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

The Spurs double team of ’61 was lauded as the most aesthetically pleasing of its time, or many others. The intellect of Danny Blanchflower, the deft skill of John White and Cliff Jones’ breathtaking pace. All underpinned by the exquisite technical ability and raw toughness of Dave McKay in midfield, and Bobby Smith up front.  

Anybody who thought they could kick this team of superior footballers out of a game would learn the hard way that it was a foolish tactic. 

The Spurs team of the early 80s, with Glenn Hoddle, Mickey Hazard, Ossie Ardiles and Ricky Villa had Graham Roberts for balance, another fine footballer, but someone who could easily flick a switch and become the aggressor in any contest. 

Dave McKay confronts Billy Bremner of Leeds. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

At some point Spurs thought the velvet glove would be enough, and they didn’t need to concern themselves with the iron fist. No, of course, they have neither.

It’s hard to trace these things back to a single act, but the line misattributed to Keith Burkinshaw – “there used to be a football club over there” – has always felt defining. 

Burkinshaw was removed in 1984, with Spurs leaders in the game’s commercial drive; no longer a simple FC, now a PLC. Others duly followed, but did any lose themselves so ruinously in the process? 

Spurs, at first, were still signing players coveted by other big clubs. Paul Gascoigne, Chris Waddle, Gary Lineker. That would continue into the early-to-mid 90s, but there was one who fitted the requirements and never pursued. 

Roy Keane was part of the Nottingham Forest team that lost to Spurs in the 1991 FA Cup final. His next move should have been to Tottenham. He is one half of a Spurs midfield in the original sense, a superb passer over short distances, a willing runner and a dominant tackler. And yeah, I know seven Premier League titles and all the rest with United might give the idea that things worked out for the best, but I’m not so sure. He is a Spurs fan, and nothing the professional game has to offer is a higher calling. 

Ours is not the easiest of ways. All of us Spurs parents have probably fielded the question of why we chose this for the next generation.

But we don’t spend too long on these conversations in our house. It goes no further than, ‘This is just who we are in this family’. It’s a bit like the line at the start of ‘The Town‘ with Ben Affleck. 

“I’m proud to be from Charlestown. It ruined my life, literally, but I’m proud.” 

To be fair, it’s tougher for young fans. When my dad steered me towards Spurs in the mid-80s, there was at least the reasonable expectation of success at a frequency similar to the previous 30 years of fandom he’d experienced, back to when his dad suggested Tottenham. 

And any young fan can leave now, but whatever glory they experience elsewhere won’t mean as much. Spurs will, we tell them, be back. 

What does back even look like for Tottenham? 

To me it’s straightforward enough. By tonight they will be relegated or still a Premier League club. The latter is preferable. for sure. But given a choice, I’d take a return to proper Spurs ethos if that were to happen in the Championship. If the club behaves like itself then any demotion will be temporary and, ultimately, restorative. 

There is so much wrong with the club now, so many people, from owners and board members to players, who really should not be there. I would rather think about who should be there. 

Give me an energetic team that want to attack with pace and daring. That means spending some of the hundreds of millions the club earns from fans buying in top-grade talent, not mid-level, overpriced gambles.  

Talented: Mikey Moore. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

And homegrown players must be given a fair shot, not sent off to Rangers or Hibs like Mikey Moore and Dane Scarlett when they have, to my eyes at least, looked better than the expensive alternatives who are being played to justify poorly judged investments. 

A player like Callum Olusesi comes on against Liverpool and looks poised and confident, and is barely seen again. There are any amount of youngsters like him at Spurs. They get a fleeting chance before being loaned and eventually sold to lower league clubs, where their inability to do good numbers is used to rationalise the decision to move them on. Yet this ignores the reality that momentum and confidence are so important for any young player, and we deny them this basic kickstart. 

Damola Ajayi is another who comes to mind, now on loan with Bromley. He was not given a worthwhile chance at Spurs to follow up on the impact he made against IF Elfsborg in the Europa League last season. 

Self respect

And how about Troy Parrott? Could Tottenham really say he was nurtured properly, given a real opportunity? Spurs do not trust their own, which is a sign of a lack of self-respect that has long been endemic among those who run the club.  

But the people that matter the most, those who have always been there and always will be, the fans – they know. They understand the Spurs way. It’s not “the best stadium and the best training ground” with a lacklustre team. It’s a feeling, an attitude that will always be best described by Danny Blanchflower: “The game is about glory, it is about doing things in style and with a flourish.” He had another line that the exploitative folk at the club should stick on their desk: “Ideas are very funny things. They never work unless you do.”

That’s what Spurs need to do today and whatever comes after it. Just get to work on being a bold, attacking team that runs fast and tackles hard. That’s the beautiful game as most Spurs fans would see it, and there have been glimpses, even spells of it, through the years, with some super stuff played under Martin Jol, Harry Redknapp, Mauricio Pochettino and Ange Postecoglou. 

But this club is about more than near misses. It’s about being the biggest, the best – and if you fail, it is in the exhausted pursuit of that.

“It is better to fail aiming high than to succeed aiming low,” said Bill Nicholson. “And we of Spurs have set our sights very high, so high in fact that even failure will have in it an echo of glory.” 

On the subject of failing, Harry Hotspur did not die of old age. He was an attack-minded knight, what did you expect? 

On the front foot: Harry Hotspur, in statue form. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

He met his end while fighting against Crown forces in the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403. Accounts of how he died differ, but a recurring one says after leading a charge he pulled up his visor for a better view – then got struck with an arrow in the face. 

In what were different times, Percy was posthumously executed following rumours he was still alive. His head was impaled on a spike at the gates of York, and his quarters displayed in London, Newcastle, Bristol and Chester. 

A gruesome and, some might say, Spursy decline. He’d done the hard part, broken the line and was deep in enemy territory when a lapse in concentration proved fatal. 

But I’m not sure. He lived courageously and died on the battlefield as a nobleman who led from the front. 

“Greatness,” said Shakespeare’s Hotspur character in Henry IV, “knows itself.” 

If ever a place could do with remembering who they are . . .  Tottenham Hotspur, and all the daring, dreaming, preening, pomp, bite and rumble-tumble madness that goes with that.  

“So close to my heart,” said Bill Nicholson.

“Still to me the greatest club.”