Hot Poker Football

Everton 2 – 2 Tottenham

Saturday 3rd February 2024

It’s 10 months to the day since your humble correspondent was indeed corresponding from Goodison Park. It was the first post-Conte game, and you may recall I found myself reflecting on whether we were witnessing Spurs at their most ‘Spursy’.

Allow me to jog your memory. We’d had a manager who’d just manifested his own sacking after a post match self combustion down on the South Coast, a director of football who appeared to be on the run from the law, a caretaker manager may also have been involved in some nefarious activities and his glamorous assistant who was younger than most the of starting 11 yet had more Premier League managerial experience than the caretaker.

And breathe.

All this in a season in which our head of fitness had died. Lasagne-gate was impressive, I wrote but surely this takes the biscotti. I recall being particularly happy with the biscotti line.

Having opened the article with a Lord Acton (or MF DOOM, for those that way inclined) quote. I then ended the article reflecting that Lord Acton wasn’t talking about Daniel Levy when he pronounced ‘Absolute power corrupts absolutely’ but he was observing how one man’s sense of morality can lessen when his power increases. However Thomas Fuller famously penned ‘the darkest hour of the night comes just before the dawn’. Perhaps both are true for Levy’s Spurs.

Whilst the world doesn’t need another overly mellifluent article about how Big Ange has transformed Spurs, it is worth noting that this aforementioned trip to Everton was only a short 10 months ago. It did indeed turned out to be the darkest hour before the dawn (or was that Newcastle?) and the lessening of power and responsibilities during these 10 months, has perhaps increased the football morality of a certain General Levy…incredible.

Of course, the trains are a mess, when aren’t they? ‘Solidarity with striking workers’ and all that, but it’s just really annoying when I want to get to the game and maybe enjoy a few tins. Instead my travelling companion Mark meets me at 7am and we depart South Tottenham by car, cutting through North London before the sun is barely up, it’s a lunch time kick off after all. We head up the M1, treat ourselves to the M6 Toll and plough on towards Liverpool. We pass the time attempting to name the starting 11s from that ill-fated FA cup semi final back in 1995. I manage an impressive 10 (of 11) Spurs players and a mere 2 for Everton. My sincere apologies to Gary Ablett. Damn you Daniel Amokachi.

We arrive in Liverpool. Ditch the car in Stanley Park. Walk past Anfield stadium and the oppressive murals of Liverpool heroes past and present. In the week that Klopp announced his departure I ponder whom might be in charge next season (they should give it to Rafa, he does ‘know the city’ after all). We make our way to the Blue side of the field, sink a couple of £3 Guinness in the Thomas Frost watering hole before shuffling into one of the last dwindling bastions of top flight English football stadia and its beautiful away end which will host the travelling Spurs faithful in the league for the penultimate time. If these walls could talk (they’d probably still ignore me).

So here’s to Goodison and those tortured Evertonians. Deducted 10 points, they’re currently staring down the barrel of further deductions and possible relegation from the Premier League. They hold their yellow ‘You don’t you know what you’re doing’ cards aloft in protest whilst booing the Premier League theme music and once again on the 10th minute. I couldn’t give a shit. I’m here to watch Spurs win. Spurs don’t win, they draw. And just like my 10 month old visit to Goodison it was concluded by a last minute Everton equaliser that was, all told, probably deserved.

As a man who occasionally suffers from the hot poker, I was recently relieved to find it was a problem halved, once shared. Indeed I owe thanks to the recent developments broadcast by the anal research team at The Fighting Cock. I was equally relieved to find not so much hot poker on display during the game. Not through the lack of trying but Everton just seemed to have our number throughout this gripping tie. Of course the in-form Richarlison scored a beautiful brace in front of his old employers and indeed his girlfriend who sat in the seat next to me, along with fellow Brazilian friends and family but it wasn’t quite enough. The vibe in the away end was strong throughout and despite the late goal I think most real Spurs fans can accept this result, digest it and move on. It is after all, oh so different to the joyless draw that was played out just 10 short months ago.