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The Goon Thread - Officially Second In A One Horse Race

mephitis said:
Let me re-phrase that.....

Would you rather be a scum fan or a Spurs fan?

Personally I'd rather cut my right ball out and eat it with pickles than be a scum fan......... but then, I am pregnant :-D
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OK, I'll rephrase too then....would you prefer being a Spurs fan with 2nd in the Prem or a Spurs fan with FA Cup but 5th in Prem?
 
Aldo said:
Choose...5th place & FA cup winners or 2nd with no trophy?
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I choose not to say I'd rather have ANYTHING to do with them lot. At all. And as someone who has seen us lift THREE trophies (two FA Cups and the UEFA) I'd rather us get CL and the money and potential players that come with it. I have adjusted my line of satisfaction to what can help us improve as a club. And sadly in this day and age it's CL all day long. FA Cup is a brilliant day out but only gives us the hell of Europa League.
 
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Choose...5th place & FA cup winners or 2nd with no trophy?

Is actually a very good question. I guess I have now become a pragmatist because I would choose 2nd. We need the CL revenues and the players which that affords us.....then we will win things....but would it work in reverse - win a cup and then go on to challenge? For Spurs 2nd place represents a real achievement this season. Second next season would be just fine!!!
 
Cup. Always and every time. I suspect (although I'm not a 100% sure) that I'd take a cup and a 17th place finish if it came down to it.
 
DubaiSpur said:
Cup. Always and every time. I suspect (although I'm not a 100% sure) that I'd take a cup and a 17th place finish if it came down to it.
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It's nice picking up silverware but it doesn't help the club continue to move forward. For the moment, pragmatism must win out, we need Champions League football.
 
FA Cup has sadly become a tarnished trophy these days. Too many clubs fielding weakened sides for it to be anything other than a sideshow.

May not have lost it's magic for the Cardiffs and Wigans that rarely if ever win a trophy but it's not even a stepping stone for greater glories nowadays.

Just ask a Gooner.
 
K.D.D.D.D.Soc said:
I use to think that way, but looking back over the last 10 years I've seen Portsmouth and Wigan win the cup and disappear and reaching the final has not done much for Cardiff, Villa, Hull and Palace.
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Thinking back ten years I've seen us win one trophy -the Carling Cup in 2008. The memories of that day are unbelievably precious to me, and I won't ever forget them.

We were the cup kings once. It distinguished us from the pack, gave us our own unique trait, and epitomized our footballing nature - wild, capricious, capable of turning it on in moments of glory but too inconsistent to grind out league titles like some other, more prosaic clubs. In the league, our commitment to beautiful football turned out to be a liability more often than not. In the cups, on the other hand, it proved our salvation, and defined us to football fans in England and around the world more broadly as surely as our ethos, commitment to good football and (yes) inconsistency did.

Now, our defining traits have been stolen. Other teams have won cups with regularity, while Arsenal have won the most FA Cups. They have also taken the mantle of footballing purity that we once fiercely defended - we never gave up our ethos, but they adopted it too when their canny Frenchman came in and it stuck because they transitioned at the right time. Right when they hit a peak of success and the league's popularity exploded worldwide - thus, they solidified their unearned place as the entertainers of London, while we paddled along looking like the poor relation. We've lost our way somewhat in terms of our place in the mosaic that tells the story of English football - Arsenal took our place as the great entertainers, Chelsea, City and other upstarts overtook us in terms of prominence and success, and United left us in the dust as Sir Alex built an insurmountable dynasty.

All we had left for the longest time in terms of an identifier to football fans around the world was our inconsistency, our tendency to Spurs it up. That was what we kept with us. Now that we've finally got a good side, I want us to go back to winning trophies - to reclaim that identifier, and to rise again to the dominance of the cups that once defined us. As time passes and our grit and determination makes a mockery of the idea that we Spurs it up anymore, our status as an entertaining, free flowing side will return - all the more so if Arsenal enter a period of decline/revert to their hereditary DNA and become 1-0, long-ball merchants like they have been for 90% of their miserable existence. But what will banish that idea of Spurs-i-ness completely will be winning something - a cup, then more cups, then (if luck favours us) the league, because a winning mentality will by then have been acquired and we can aim for the biggest things.

Tbh, one of my fears about this idea that we need to constantly finish 4th for however many years to 'progress' to the point where we can skip the cups and focus on the title/CL is that we end up doing that and still finishing with nothing to show for it - we 'progress' but never win the league or CL (because those are endgames that we've rarely, if ever reached), and we end up trophyless for the period where we could have built some memories, our own history and a winning mentality by gunning for silverware with as much effort as we possibly can. You might say that's impossible, but Arsenal came damn close to doing that - they spent eight-odd years trophyless and have now finally won a couple of FA Cups, while the competitive advantage offered by the Emirates has largely dissipated in the face of a changing football world and the rise of their own rivals. It could happen to us, but worse.

Anyway, that's the practical argument for focusing on the cups. The sentimental argument is that this is what football is about - memories, moments, occasions, great triumphs and great disasters...great experiences in this strange, shimmering mosaic we call living. When we're older still, none of us will remember 'putting the pressure on', 'securing CL football ten years in a row', 'moving forward' or whatever. We'll remember great days, great games, great players..and great trophies.

Trophies build memories. They define years, even decades for clubs like ours. They punctuate our lives as supporters with moments of ecstasy and leave us with shared memories that we can all build bonds of understanding over. They epitomize this club, and our long, illustrious history. And they lighten up our lives in brief moments of pure brilliance. That's as good a reason as any to want us to win them wherever and whenever possible, and to acclaim those who win them with a fierce, unreasoning passion.

milo said:
It's nice picking up silverware but it doesn't help the club continue to move forward. For the moment, pragmatism must win out, we need Champions League football.
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See above.
 
It is a tough one, I almost cried when we won the league cup, I don't know what I would be like if we won a proper cup/league.

However, currently we need the CL to pay for the stadium without affecting our playing squad - so for the next few years I would take that over a cup - The Arsenal model for paying the stadium off is the one to aim for, however annoying that maybe

I am not sure about the argument about the CL allowing us to attract better players, we have qualified twice and the players we have brought in has not really risen, if anything it decreased.
 
Legohamster said:
It is a tough one, I almost cried when we won the league cup, I don't know what I would be like if we won a proper cup/league.

However, currently we need the CL to pay for the stadium without affecting our playing squad - so for the next few years I would take that over a cup - The Arsenal model for paying the stadium off is the one to aim for, however annoying that maybe

I am not sure about the argument about the CL allowing us to attract better players, we have qualified twice and the players we have brought in has not really risen, if anything it decreased.
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I did. I had tears of joy on my face. And then I ran barefooted down my street in Dubai on a warm, starry night, singing 'Oh When The Spurs' as the people sipping coffee and eating South Indian food at the cafes next to my apartment building looked on in sheer bemusement. Some gangly teen running and singing throatily about a club thousands of miles away winning something that wasn't even that big of a deal - I can well imagine how strange that must have looked to the (likely) few people there who actually cared about PL footie, or even footie more broadly. :p

I'll always remember that.

That's what winning a cup is like, in my eyes. That is what it will always be like. You remember those moments, even in your most wretched years, and it brings a smile back to your face that, for one fleeting moment, cannot be erased by any human circumstance.
 
Aldo said:
OK, I'll rephrase too then....would you prefer being a Spurs fan with 2nd in the Prem or a Spurs fan with FA Cup but 5th in Prem?
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tbh I'm just happy being a Spurs fan. As a recent example, I loved it when Martin Jol was at the helm, and we didn't win anything then. I'm loving it now and mainly because I'm feeling that connection again between fans, management and players. The fact that we've been the best team in the league over the passed 2 seasons by some distance, and therefore we get to see a lot of on field success as well, is an added bonus. Will the journalists write about one of the best Spurs teams ever in 20/30 years time? Probably yes tbf. Will the record books reflect that the team were playing at that level? We'll have to see. Meh! I'll remember and it'll give me a warm glow*. I'm happy with that.

*Truth be told, in 20/30 years time (if I'm still about) I probably won't remember the day of the week, my own name or what planet I'm on and any warm glow will be me tinkling myself :D
 
K.D.D.D.D.Soc said:
I use to think that way, but looking back over the last 10 years I've seen Portsmouth and Wigan win the cup and disappear and reaching the final has not done much for Cardiff, Villa, Hull and Palace.
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Of course you are right about the teams you mention, however they were not teams who were likely to push on and achieve better. We are though, if we managed to win a cup then the GOOD chances are it will push us to achieve more and maybe better things, what it will do is also give us a better chance to keep the top players we have here because at the end of the day ( despite what some fans believe) players want to win things and we have had several of our players saying just that.
 
parklane1 said:
Of course you are right about the teams you mention, however they were not teams who were likely to push on and achieve better. We are though, if we managed to win a cup then the GOOD chances are it will push us to achieve more and maybe better things, what it will do is also give us a better chance to keep the top players we have here because at the end of the day ( despite what some fans believe) players want to win things and we have had several of our players saying just that.
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I think we all want Trophies .. no question and I agree with @DubaiSpur I grew up with us being cup kings.

That said, there is no question that regular CL participation would be more beneficial to Spurs return to the elite level than a one off FA Cup win (look at the Scum, as they have slipped in the league, they have grabbed at the domestic cups as a consolation prize, yet it hasn't slowed their slip from challengers to making up the numbers, nor has it helped them keep players).
 
Raziel said:
I think we all want Trophies .. no question and I agree with @DubaiSpur I grew up with us being cup kings.

That said, there is no question that regular CL participation would be more beneficial to Spurs return to the elite level than a one off FA Cup win (look at the Scum, as they have slipped in the league, they have grabbed at the domestic cups as a consolation prize, yet it hasn't slowed their slip from challengers to making up the numbers, nor has it helped them keep players).
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I do not disagree with most of that, but we are good enough to do both ( imo). I have posted elsewhere that i believe we have to start winning things if we are to keep this team together. I am not sure if Walker will go but IF we fail to win something next season i fear there may be one or two others who may get itchy feet.
 
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