The Culture Wars

I find in life, that nuance is where the beauty lies. The ever evolving texture that exists between a not so binary situation. After all, there are for more than fifty shades of grey between black and white.

Yet Tottenham is at war, at war with itself. A culture war which is dividing its loyal but ever weary fanbase. As someone who enjoys to debate the unknown space between polarising stances and opinion, exploring the rich no man’s in search of green shoots to tend to, it’s therefore alarming to me to find myself in a place where I have to think twice about sharing my opinion about the current Tottenham (sorry I mean Tottenham Hotspur, or is it just ‘Spurs’ now?) manager. It used to be that we all just supported the club, we could debate with one another down the pub about the managers starting eleven, substitution choices or even style of play but fundamentally we were all on the same team, pulling in one direction (I’ll begrudgingly avoid the Harry Styles pun). Perhaps in part due to the rise of Twitter and it’s character limit, the madding crowds now limit their own character by laying out opinions in a much more concise and abrupt manner, not open for debate or discussion and by the way ‘f**k you if you disagree’. At the risk of sounding like the youngest of the old people, I still believe that freedom of speech is one of the most important facets of modern society. To be clear that does not mean I condone hate speech, they are two very different things dear reader.

I’ve not been to many away games this season, Fulham today being only my third of this campaign I believe, so my reporting (if you can call it that) has been few and far between. I did however go to the first game of the season at Leicester and recall saying that for me ’the jury was still out on Ange-ball’. In my humble opinion we’ve broadly speaking not played well since that ill-fated game against Chelsea back in Nov 2023, yes there’s been the odd good performance here and there, City, Villa and Utd spring to mine but for the most part it’s been very poor and the league position reflects that. Yet unlike Poch, Jose, Conte or even Nuno (look at him now!) whom were all fallible despite performing far better in terms of points on the board, Ange seems to be untouchable in terms of debate amongst a large percentage of ‘loyalist’ fans. There is so much to like about the man, his football and life ideals, an immediate club ambassador who stands by his decisions and protects his players, in many ways a true football auteur. However his football isn’t good enough, the blind spots in his tactics leave the team far too exposed and it simply doesn’t work in the Premier League. Yet, I feel can’t or I’m not allowed to say this to even my closest of Spurs friends without enduring the inevitable, what I like to refer to as ‘what-about-ism’. Whether that be Levy/ENIC or indeed the never ending ‘injury crisis’. I’m sorry, I believe we need a manager who can comfortably beat Tamworth with his B-team, a manager who can get more spirit out of a starting eleven against the season defining Liverpool, Villa and AZ Alkmaar cups games. These issues have nothing to do with the ownership or the injury crisis in my book. That doesn’t mean I want him to fail and it doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to celebrate if we score a goal yet that seems to an opinion within the ranks. I support Tottenham and whoever finds themselves in the driving seat, let’s not forget that the only cups in living memory (for me at least) were won by George Graham and Juande Romas, hardly Spurs legends.

At half time during the Man City home game I decided enough was enough. I wasn’t enjoying this anymore. The football and atmosphere was so bad, the fanbase so polarised, perhaps the bleakness of February and the pricing of that particular ticket didn’t help, I decided not to go for a while, in fact I was not going to watch the games on telly either. Whilst I’d miss my match day boys, I needed a break. A few games past and I was enjoying a certain degree of separation, then I got offered a ticket for Fulham away, I can’t resist an away day, and like all football fans, I’m fickle, or as I like to think… open to nuance.

I don’t think Ange asked to have this cult following but I don’t think he minds it, it certainly helps buy him more time, the Ange fundamentalists don’t allow any criticism or questioning of his methods. We now see the same obtuse belligerence regarding the coaching of Spurs as we’ve seen around the world’s hottest topics during the past five years or so, whether it be Brexit, the Pandemic, human rights and indeed war. Polarised recreational outrage, truly the flavour of the 2020’s. Football is the most important of the less important things in the world. It’s worth remembering that. It is just a game. It’s not though is it… I wouldn’t be making the short trip to SW6 from Tottenham to watch an essentially meaningless match alone if it was.

It’s no surprise that my desire to watch the games has abated at a time of terrible football and results, but it is at times like this when I see football through a most cynical lenses. The rumours of a Qatari takeover, the sterile match day experience at our entertainment centre of a stadium and the fact that VAR has now completely removed the joy of celebrating a goal being scored, which after all is the main reason we all started going to watch Spurs in the first. These are the thoughts that surround me as I walk through Bishops Park getting glimpse of the River Thames whose banks appear ready to burst. Running into some old faces from my home town slows my spiralling but my mood does appear to be shared by most of the away day faithful whom it dawns on me perhaps aren’t part of this ruthless blind support of Ange. In fact the away supports are consistently more focused on Levy/ENIC, which I get, of course there is so much which could be better where the ownership is concerned but Daniel Levy isn’t the reason we play shit football each week and I for one think the grass may well appear a lot greener than it turns out to be should the club be sold. A petrostate owning Tottenham would be the end for me, and I do still hold some pride and assurance that my beloved club is owned by local people, who support the team, to some extent at least. I think I’m right in saying we’re the only remaining football club in the top two leagues which is owned by ‘local’ folk.

‘Are you not entertained!?’ Ange proudly bellowed after we just scraped past Man Utd in the cup, a decent performance despite ourselves. If Ange sees himself as Maximus, of course played by his fellow countryman Russel Crowe. Then we must be the Judean Peoples Front or was it the Peoples Front of Judea? Whilst we deliberate over ‘what the Roman’s (ENIC) have ever done for us?’. Levy (aka Caesar) sits there atop his colosseum (Tottenham Hotspur Stadium) shifting his Overton Window ever further away from whatever it was that brought us here in the first place. Like most sociocultural topics, ‘the culture wars’ can be traced back to Roman times, but Latin just isn’t relevant these days, per se. To Dare Is To Do or Audere eat Facere, surely all roads lead to Big-Ange being handed his P45 eventually. For, this season is a lot more Monty Python than it is Gladiator.

So did Ange happen to Spurs or Spurs happen to Ange? The truth is it’s most likely a bit of both. Despite this and everything above, they find themselves in the quarter finals of the Europa League. When asked which of the remaining teams concerns you most, I’d have to say ‘Tottenham’. The football we saw play out at Craven Cottage (which is always a real pleasure to visit) was woeful, no direction, no identity and I’m starting to think there may be no passion left in these players which is the real concern as up until now, I think you could argue they were still playing for the manager, but I didn’t see that today as they trudged off after the final whistle for their bath of least resistance. I’m not saying we should sack Ange right now, we need to be smart about the situation for there is nuance at play.

As for the Ange fundamentalists, with all the facts and none of the truth. Let’s be friends, but may I advise that having a permanent opinion for the temporary situation is futile. Ange’s shadow is growing as he approaches the ground. Knowing that one lacks talent is a talent within itself… Ange has been wrong before but it was interestingly wrong, now it’s just a bit shit and boring.

Freedom is the right to tell others what they do not want to hear.

COYS Daniel, sorry I mean erm… by James Drummond