Have you ever had a thought and said to yourself "What a great idea that will be", you know the ones, the ones where you think everyone will love it and it'll be hugely popular but ends up upsetting everyone? The wife for example is a tough person to please, like getting her a new Dyson for your anniversary, and treating yourself to a new PlayStation at the same time? What could possibly be wrong with that? Don't ask, this idiot did that. Well the Favourite Ever Spurs Player has certainly caused some strong arguments from fans of all ages, but the one thing that its highlighted to me is the vast difference in the way that the generations of fans follow our club.
I started supporting Spurs in 1981, there was no Internet, games were random on the TV and if you wanted to know about the history of the club you had to either rely on a relatives memory or read a book. My father is a West Ham fan so getting any sort of history about Spurs from was going to be sketchy at best, as an avid reader as a kid I went to the library and started reading about Spurs and our history. The Double side, Jimmy Greaves, Cliff Jones, Dave MacKay, Pat Jennings, Bill Nicholson, the photos may have been in black and white but it felt like I knew them, I could feel the history and what they had achieved. I felt like I belonged.
The younger fans are different, there will always be fans like me who want to know all about the club and its history, but a lot of fans nowadays want instant gratification. If its not on Wikipedia, YouTube or they cant find it at the touch of a button they aren't interested and this has shown in the results that we have seen in the poll. Fans that have no idea who these players are cant be expected to vote for them. People will vote for what they know and what they are familiar with.
I am not devaluing them or their opinions, after all they are the future of the club and the way that people digest their information now has greatly changed. The other problem is time, and the passing of that time. When I started, the double side was 20 years ago, it still felt fresh as it were, a lot of those players were in their 50's, ancient to a kid of nine, but still reachable. If we take this into consideration then the fans who started supporting Spurs in the late 90's early 00's then to them the players they will mostly bond with are the Gazza's, the Teddy Sherringhams, the David Ginolas and unfortunately when they are paired against the great players of the 60's, the players we hold in such high regards, they don't know who they are and wont vote for them.
This doesn't make their choice wrong but it saddens me that they don't know who these players are. That's were we come in, its up to us to talk about these players and make sure they are not forgotten in anyway shape or form. They are part of our history and should be remembered for what they achieved. The younger fans of today need to embrace that history otherwise they are missing out on great swathes of the club.
An example of this was a few months ago, I have two sons, 11 and 10 and we went to Wembley for the EE charity cup, a mixture of Youtubers and ex-players. I'm sitting there getting excited at seeing David James, Steven Gerrad, Robbie Savage and Robbie Fowler and they couldn't care less. These legends of the game were being ignored because some YouTube bloke with a million followers walked past and waved at them and it struck me then the difference in the way that they use the Internet to interact with people and follow them is completely different than the way I do. So I used YouTube and showed them these players in their prime and they then got a greater appreciation of them. I, unfortunately had to then sit through a load of YouTube videos of blokes Ive never heard of opening boxes but fairs, fair I suppose.
Social media is brilliant for interacting and sharing thoughts and stories with people who want to listen and learn, but its also treated and used differently by both generation's. Have I found some of the voting upsetting? Yep you bet I have but I understand the reasons behind it. The younger ones amongst us are far more tech savvy and use social media far more than us golden oldies do and that's why the voting has gone the way its gone.
Its great for me to 'follow' some of the players I grew up watching and I've been lucky enough to have some fantastic experience's in the past few months where I've met and interviewed them for this very page. Something I never thought would happen, but its through social media that I was able to do this. They are far more approachable to us than ever before and the older players seem to really embrace it. However the down side is the newer generation of players wont be as accessible due to people trying to make a name for themselves as was seen recently with Harry Winks. We cant have it both ways, we either respect their privacy or they will continue to shut themselves away from us.
Getting any type of interaction with the current crop of players is neigh on impossible, we have tried numerous times to get interviews with them but its not going to happen, which makes the ones we have got even more special. We will continue to try but its getting harder and harder to get them.
I aim in the new year to do some blogs on the older players because they don't deserve to be forgotten by the newer fans and hopefully it will spark an interest in them from these young fans that perhaps they didn't have before. No fan voting system is ever going to be 100% fool proof, it will always upset someone, but we have to be respectful towards all the fans of the club whether we agree with them or not.
The younger fans should listen to the older fans and the older fans should share their stories of players they've seen in the past. I used to love listening to people talk about the players they saw when I was growing up and its a real shame that this knowledge, this passion, isn't being used to grow the knowledge and fan base of this great club of ours.
One day the younger fans will be talking about this team now, the Harry Kanes, the Dele's, the Diers as I do about the team of the 80's with Ossie Ardiles, Graham Roberts, Glenn Hoddle and the older generation talk about the Danny Blanchflowers, the Cliff Jones and Dave Mackays. We have such a rich history of exceptional players that to allow them to fade into the annuls of time and be forgotten would be, in my humble opinion, and utter waste. Lets share our stories before its too late. After all without us to talk about them who will?
