leffe186

“Always” is a moveable feast though. My always goes from the late 70s, my Dad’s from the 50s etc etc. Clubs have ebbed and flowed. We’re dangerously close to that stupid tired old conversation about what makes one club “bigger” than another

I’m a Spurs fan. I didn’t want anyone to win the league except us (or Leyton Orient). In the rare occasions when we didn’t win the league, someone has to. I’d much rather it was a nothing club that I didn’t give a shit about. Ergo, come on Man City!

Dunno - think you can draw some direct parallels. Both parties were basically given huge amounts of money by their state (in different ways). Both parties looked to diversify their investments and I think it’s fair to say both (Abramovich and PIF) were looking for some international acceptance and acknowledgement.

Yup was about to post exactly this then did something else and forgot about it

Cheers . That’s partly my point though, it’s not so much about whether my team is good or not, more that I just don’t like what football is any more. I was biding my time for a few years and when the CL run came along my plan was to sign off after one of our greatest achievements. One soft as fuck handball later…

I mean, surely Wraith Rovers?

…So yeah, a combination of things but parity (or the loss of it) was at the root. Abramovich. The Champions League. Mansour. West Ham and the Olympic Stadium vs Leyton Orient. The utter balls-up they’re making of VAR. Man City, Man U and Liverpool shirts all over London playgrounds. Drip. Drip. Drip. I stuck with it for a while because my team seemed to be doing it the “right” way, but I’d had enough a long time ago. Found out this week that one of my Dad’s passwords is KaneSon61, which simultaneously make me feel happy and sad. He’d become disillusioned with modern football way before me but was never not going to be a Spurs fan and just fucking loves the game. I still want Spurs to win every game 5-0. It just truly does not feel like the same game any more, and the number of ways that was true reached critical mass. I’m just an old fogey, basically

I find myself thinking about it a lot and re-examining it constantly because football was so much to me for so long and it was a very hard decision. My first Spurs game was in the Second Division - Spurs v Mansfield. Grew up in North London, trained with Enfield borough’s team in the old ball court under the West Stand, used to walk to home games with my Dad. I’ve been through ups and downs, season ticket holder for years, member for years, all the things. I think it dates back to Abramovich tbh. Of course we’d already had Jack Walker, and Chelsea were already doing better thanks to Ken Bates spending money he didn’t have, but a guy coming in and spending the ludicrous money Chelsea were spending changed the game - for me at least. I’d grown up with some ebb and flow in the top flight - sure, Liverpool were super-dominant and the local glory-hunters affected scouse accents but you felt like a team like Villa, or Ipswich, or eventually Newcastle could get a good manager, some breaks, and come through. I don’t think I fully realized the change at the time because a couple of years later Spurs got Jol in, ditched some old-timers, got in a lot of young players and built from the bottom. It was fun, and felt “right”. Of course, Chelsea saw that and immediately threw money at Frank Arnesen, which was hard to take. Still, there have always been haves and have-nots in football and we kept building up, so although the difference in wage bills between the CL clubs and the rest seemed to be widening I could suck it up. The 2000s were completely dominated by the top four. Any idea of parity was out of the window. Like Keegan said, the Premier League was in danger of being one of the most boring leagues in the world, and unless you gave a shit about the top four, Barca or Real the CL was going the same way. Then along came Sheikh Mansour. (sorry going to eat dinner)

That works. So if it’s equally morally questionable (and if you factor in the NCAA then that’s another layer, but I digress) then the parity afforded by the salary cap and draft tips the balance towards the NFL

Will post in a bit, got to do a COVID test

Not a chance. She was living her life then a Nazi forced her at a crisis point to choose between her children. Me and other footy fans are living our footy fan lives and at any point we can decide to back away from football a bit, to whatever degree we like. If you can come up with an example where a choice to withdraw from football is even remotely similar to Sophie’s Choice I’d love to hear it

That’s definitely true, and definitely closer. There’s certainly a huge scope of what people get from football personally and from the connections and community it brings. I know a couple of Spurs fans with learning difficulties for whom Spurs is essentially their life. It’s not a realistic choice for everyone, and I would never suggest that. Just that when Thiago says we’re all hypocrites (a) he’s right but (b) insofar as some of us have made the choice to not be football fans in the same way, he’s not 100% right. Nearly everyone on this forum could decide to stop going to Newcastle matches/watching Sky if they chose to. It would be bloody hard, but they could. If they didn’t I wouldn’t berate them for “supporting” Saudi Arabia, but you yourself have pointed out the stark irony of “Support the team, not the regime.” Sophie’s Choice is still a terrible analogy though It fails at the first step. She was forced to choose.

Fingers crossed, and thanks! I think using Sophie’s Choice as an analogy rather makes the opposite point. She had to choose between saving her daughter and “killing” her son, or saving her son and “killing her daughter. An awful choice to make. I had to choose between watching Spurs games and football in general, arguing passionately about it and Spurs online and in bars (VAR etc), keeping up the membership and going to games when I get to the UK…and doing something else with that time and money. Very much not the same as Sophie’s . And so I say again, we all have a choice to walk away from football to a greater or lesser extent. It’s harder for some, sure, but still a choice. You cannot walk away from being a Newcastle United fan at heart, but you can walk away from some of the things that being a fan would entail.

Pretty sure I used the other one. I totally bollocksed the last couple of weeks up by not taking it seriously Ended up bench boosting this week for the hell of it and gained about 4pts or something.

Yeah that’s fair to a point, but it depends upon what you mean by those “strong ties”. I will be a Spurs fan forever and just yesterday I wore a Spurs shirt to my Dad’s ICU bed to see if it would cheer him up/jolt him out of his confusion (it did!) I have a deep, irreversible emotional connection to Spurs and the community around it. I just try not to engage with football as much any more. The big, big advantage I have is that I moved to the US. I’ve got some of that feeling of sports community and belonging because we’re near Cleveland and I married into a Browns/Cavs etc family - maybe that’s filled the void. It is absolutely exponentially harder to choose not to actively support a team when you are living in that community, family/friends are going to the games etc. I already had two randoms commiserate with me yesterday because I was wearing the Spurs shirt out and about. You’re definitely right in that circumstances made it easier for me to kind of edge away from football. All kinds of personal things - moving to the US, snapping my Achilles and so retiring from playing, having kids etc. I just dispute the idea that it’s not a choice. It’s a very complicated and nuanced one, but I can choose to subscribe to the Premier League on telly, or take the piss out of my Man City friend, or go on Spurscommunity to rant about the games, or whatever. Football just feels broken to me, so I’m going to try to disengage from it somewhat. Sophie’s Choice is a terrible analogy btw

That’s why God made the NFL

Bravo. Although I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, we’re not all hypocrites. I’ve been done with this whole thing for a while now, and it sounds like Triggs is too. You really do have a choice. Of course I’ll always be a Spurs fan at heart and when I look at the scores I’ll be happy when we win and sad when we lose, but I’m out for the most part. Barely even watch football any more. My heart’s broken. Not trying to be holier-than-thou, honestly, just it seems like sometimes people act like they don’t have a choice. You don’t have a choice whether to support Newcastle in your heart or not, but you do have a choice in what you do about it.

Still got my free hit left but not sure when to use it. Any double weeks left?

That’s absolutely true, but the Leavers selling the NHS lie were essentially the people who’d been working to sell it off - bankers, grifters etc. Pilger is talking about millions refusing to be bullied by Remainers. I stand to be corrected as I wasn’t in the Uk at the time but didn’t a large amount of the media (Sun, Mail, etc) support Brexit? Those millions who were standing against the Remainer bullies and frustrated by austerity etc were essentially turkeys voting for Xmas.

It just sounded peculiarly misguided in that he conflated the “apologists for the Remain campaign” with those who dismembered the “socially just civil life in Britain”. It’s the first time I’m seeing these quotes, but that struck me as at best extremely disingenuous. It’s hard because, y’know, it’s John Pilger. I read a fair bit of his stuff as a kid because I’m English/Australian with hippy liberal parents who were very politically engaged. I don’t know the full context of his Brexit quotes but the juxtaposition of all that stuff on his Wiki reads painfully like a contrarian apologist for Russia and Russian interests. I don’t think that’s his angle (his angle is usually anti-UK/US/Aussie foreign policy, and rightly so) but you could understandably infer that.

Yeah, I’m really not sure why someone would think that Mearsheimer is pro-Trump after that interview I didn’t realize Pilger had said that stuff about the Skripal poisonings though. And to applaud Brexit voters for refusing to be bullied by their “presumed betters” in the media (among others). Oof.

Oh Talkshite? Yeah, if you’re extrapolating from them no wonder you think the “southern media” are cunts . Just say Talkshite. I’ll do you a deal, I won’t equate Lee Ryder with Toon media if you don’t equate Talkshite with the South. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3036838.stm https://amp.theguardian.com/football/2003/jul/02/newsstory.sport5 This was the stuff I remembered. We were talking about Abramovich bailing out Bates. An unknown bastard replacing a known bastard. Interesting quote in the BBC article suggesting this might be the start of foreign sugar daddies buying in. I was reading a different facet of southern media at the time - WSC. This was an article written when Mansour bought Citeh five years later: https://www.wsc.co.uk/the-archive/30-Clubs/4685-club-class Some echoes of my feelings there, but from David Conn, a Man City supporter.

Oh God, whenever I hear about the “southern media” my hackles go up. My main memory of Sky presenters at the time was wall-to-wall Liverpool. It made us all feel like it didn’t matter against wealth like that. Sure Sky loved it and played it up - they were about to coin it in. Along with the advent of the transfer window the year before. I think Chelsea and Abramovich ultimately broke football for me. Man City was probably the final nail. It’s far too late now for me to truly give a shit about who’s the latest lottery winner. https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/chelsea-roman-abramovich-sale-legacy-b2027658.html?amp

Whatever happens, looks like an almighty punch up to get into the playoffs.

Thank goodness for Captain Kane.