Re: Cain Hoy takeover
When I die, I will leave behind (among other things of course) a wonderful set of Tottenham Hotspur memories. A sense that we always tried to do things the right way. And a pride in what our club is known for by people who know football; not the new crop of 'trophy hunters' but people who understand what this beautiful game is at it's best of hearts. I probably could've played the stock-market and got filthy rich too, but I elected to take another path there too, one which involved living life and placing time as the priority commodity in my life over money.
If we had been owned by Abramovich, I'm sure the chaffinch in me would accept the trophies which came. But it would be a lot emptier. One of the main reasons I got so angry at Redknapp was because he got so close to delivering 'the dream' for me. Trophies and entertainment.
It's coming. I know we're going to end up being bought by big money. I just hope it is someone like the Liverpool owner John Henry, whip have injected financial support yet managed to maintain the underlying club culture.
Abramovich? No thanks. Oligarch money? No thanks. Middle Eastern money? I don't think we need to worry about that. Far Eastern money? No thanks.
I don't know how old you are, steff, but as far as I'm concerned you're still far, far too young to talk about dying just yet.
In the end, I doubt Chelsea or City fans look at their trophies and get an 'empty' feeling, particularly in City's case where Mansour seems determined to make the club as fan-friendly as possible, even subsiding the cost of tickets if I remember correctly. I remember the joy on City forums and amongst City fans after they piped United to the title in 2011/2012. Real joy, real exhilaration, real bliss. From all of their fans, not just the new lads: from their entire fanbase, from young 'uns to the old crowd who'd been there and seen it all, from lower league football to beating us in that topsy-turvy FA cup game. And, looking back, I wonder: will we ever get a feeling like that? A feeling of real, tangible superiority to the c*nts down the road, or to Chelsea? A moment of triumph, of finally breaking the established footballing order, of finally being genuinely, tangibly capable of bringing sustained, absolute joy to our supporters, our players and the wider Tottenham Hotspur community?
City fans don't care where the money comes from: for them, the past few years have been the happiest of their City-supporting lives. I think Chelsea fans feel the same way. We can't take that feeling away from them, no matter how much we lecture them about doing things the right way or living within your goddamn means. And after thirteen long years of ENIC ownership, I just wonder if a lot of our fans are rationalising the hurt of seeing clubs like City and Chelsea zoom past us by assuring themselves that we're doing things 'the right way'. After all, unlike in your own personal life, where time and happiness took priority over money, in football every club seeks to give their fans happiness through winning trophies: it's the mechanism football has lived and breathed since its inception. For some clubs, that's impossible, and they're the ones focused on intangible things like tradition, community-building, supporter-satisfaction and the like. For us, stuck in a weird nether world as we usually are, caught between being a team able to win trophies and one forever paddling around in upper/lower mid-table being the epitome of under-achievement and flowing football without an end result....I wonder, is there an identity crisis at the club? We want to win trophies, but we want to do it 'the right way', i.e a triumphant Bill Nicholson-style sweep to the title, all flowing football and glory days, with the added bonus of sensible financial management on the way. The best of both worlds.
Unfortunately, I think that's an impossible ask. It isn't possible anymore, not in the Premier League. And I've been with this club for some fifteen or so years now, through the final days of the Sugar regime and the bold promises of change and hope that ENIC brought with them (knowingly or otherwise) when they took over. And, thirteen years after their take-over, here we are: one CL campaign, and one League Cup, with our stadium being held up by a one stubborn company and our manager under pressure with just five PL games gone. This has been one of the most barren periods in our history: that's fact. And a lot of it has to do with our chairman laughing at our managers' pleas for their first-choice players, his determination to balance the books at any cost and his aversion to taking any risks in pursuit of our dreams.
I repeat, a decade or two from now, City and Chelsea's titles will have become historical facts, with little to no argument about the manner in which those titles were won. And this period we're in now (The ENIC era) will correspondingly be marked as one of the most barren periods we've ever endured, with a drop down the rankings of the English clubs by trophies won and our consistent losses of our best players due to our lack of 'ambition' our only rewards for the owner putting none of his own money into the club and trying to do things 'the right way', which has apparently become a short-hand for 'on the cheap'. And if the owners that come persist in the same vein, I wonder if the old timers will still think it was worth it a decade down the line, by when we will almost certainly have sunk further in the football world's eyes with nought to show for it but perhaps another League Cup, if we're lucky and we don't sack the manager who wins it before he's able to due to underperformance brought on by our refusal to give him the players he wants.
