When I started supporting Spurs the only way you could get any information about your club was the papers or from Match of the Day. There wasn't the wall to wall coverage that there is today. Rumours would start on the terraces about who was being signed, no deadline transfer day back then you could sign anyone you wanted whenever you wanted, and were usually met with a resounding 'Bollocks' or 'That blokes in the know he must be right'.
Your terrace reputation could be enhanced or destroyed within minutes, depending on how good your information was. To us, the fans the reporters of the day were like gods to us. They knew what was going on at our club long before any of us did. We hung on there every word. That all started to change though towards the end of the 80's and the beginning of the 90's due to two major events.
Hillsborough killed the circulation of the Sun newspaper stone dead. This was a huge paper back then selling 2/3 million copies a day and with some very respected journalists. I remember Hillsborough, I remember the pictures and the news footage, but the lies they told on the front of their paper on the Monday after the event, for which they didn't apologise for, for years later, damaged journalism and people started to question what they were reading. No longer trusted, people became sceptical of what was printed. No longer was every word believed and this changed the way people got their news. The second was the creation of the Premier League.
No matter what we think of it now and the distribution of its money, there wasn't a fan in the country that didn't grasp it with open hands when it started. Live football every Sunday and Monday? It was unheard of. You used to get the Big Match on ITV but that wasn't every week. This was. Sky changed the way that people watched football. You had hours of analysis, not stuck with the time constraints of Match of the Day. It made us was want more information than we had ever had, a way to interact with our teams beyond what we were used to. Ex-players talking about the game at length and feeding us inside knowledge, we felt like we were there.
This type of media though needs feeding, constantly. The birth of the Internet and social media now means the bloke that was on the terrace years ago who only had a few followers, now has Twitter and thousands. He can say whatever he likes and people will re tweet it and off it goes. It becomes 'knowledge' within seconds. Because of this fans want instant knowledge and so the press feed of this. They have to constantly have stories to feed the need. 24hr rolling news stories need something to talk about and what's the best of way of doing it? Well they make news where there isn't any.
The press love Jose, Pep, Klopp, Conte and Wenger. The reason for this? Because they give them things to talk about. Jose will constantly moan at the press about the way his teams are being treated, the press will then dissect it for days. Ex-players will talk about it on shows, Wenger will have a melt down and its all over the papers for days. As fans we lap this up because its what we are used to. We point and laugh and re tweet and use it for banter with our mates. After all its been on the TV and its come from the managers mouths. Then there is the exception to the rule and that's us.
Poch doesn't lose his rag with his players in public. He doesn't throw players under the bus. We don't sign players for £90/100 million pound because at the moment we aren't in a position to do so, but also because we don't need to. We don't pay wages of £350,000 a week for the same reasons. So because of this we go against the majority of the Premier League teams and are therefore seen as a target for speculation.
Where we should be getting credit for the way we do our business, we are seen as a feeder club for the 'big boys; because unfortunately in the past this what we have been, From Carrick, to Modric to Bale. Whenever the cash was splashed we sold. It hurt of course it did, but we couldn't compete. Until now. Until we had a manager who goes against the grain and has given us our most sustained period of success in decades. Granted we have yet to win a trophy, but in these modern times to be competing and beating, with the Arab and Russian oil money is an achievement in itself.
The problem is its not 'sexy' it doesn't make headlines, it doesn't feed the media in the way that Sky need it to. Jamie Redknapp slates us constantly, perhaps bitter at the way Harry was treated, who to be honest was courting the England job through the press when he should have been securing us Champions League football, but for me I don't care what he has to say. He comes across as jealous in my opinion and whenever pressed on his opinion changes it!
There are far more ex-players that talk highly of us rather than slate us. We are in a time of unprecedented financial power in football. Its changed from when I was kid, some of it for the better, some of it for the worst. What doesn't change though is that we are seeing the building of a dynasty. Like Shanks with Liverpool, Busby with Man Utd and then Ferguson in the mid 80's Poch is using youth to progress our team to where he wants it to be.
One day we may £300,000 a week wages but its not sustainable because the way that people consume media is changing. The youth of today stream more than ever, but they wont be held to ransom over subscriptions. The TV companies are aware of this and are trying to sell more rights abroad as the UK market is stagnating and will eventually reverse. No one of my dads generation saw the death of newspapers but it happened. TV subscriptions will be the same, not today, perhaps not tomorrow, but one day they will. Then what? Who pays the wages then?
The money guys will leave and go and do something else. The people who have bankrolled clubs will walk away. They always do. So what happens to clubs like ours? We thrive that's what! We become stronger, because we competed at this level by doing it the right way now, we will become stronger and stronger. We will have foundations built that will last a generation. I genuinely believe we are one trophy away from greatness. We need to win that one trophy for it all to kick on to another level.
The Premier League is 26 years old, Sky changed the game forever by throwing money at it and made players richer than they could ever have dreamed of being. They sold a dream to billions around the world. Yet when its gone, and it will one be gone, the money, the way its being sold, then the clubs that built a foundation will be the ones that will strive forward and say this is our time, and we will be at the front of that que. You just have to have faith in a Chairman who has spent 17 years developing us, and a manger no one had heard of or thought was any good because he wasn't a big name.
Spurs isn't built to be a rich mans plaything. Spurs is built on the trust and loyalty of the players that play for the badge but more importantly its built by us fans. Of a dream that we believe in, that one day we will sit atop the pile and look down on the others. Then the media will come crawling out of the woodwork saying we are the example to follow, when they've spent years undermining our players and trying to belittle us. They wont bat an eyelid because it will be the story that sells even thought hey have spent years undermining it.
My favourite ever quote about being a fan is as follows:
"What is a club in any case? Not the buildings or the directors or the people who are paid to represent it. Its not the television contracts, get out clauses, marketing contracts or executive boxes. Its the noise, the passion, the feeling of belonging, the pride in your city. Its a small boy clambering up the stadium steps for the very first time, gripping his fathers hand, gawping at that hallowed stretch of turf beneath him and, without being able tom do a thing about it, falling in love" Sir Bobby Robson
I wish I had written that because no matter what the media say about us, no matter what ex-players say about us, no matter who plays for us. Its not about them, its about us. Don't ever forget that the next time you read a headline or see a Sky News Breaking Story. We are bigger and better than all of them. Why? Because without us they don't have football. Never forget that. Anthony
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