It was easy to dismiss Pep Guardiola’s post-match comments last weekend as mischief-making. Or, perhaps, consider them something a tad more calculated. An attempt, maybe, to stoke up a siege mentality among those with an affinity for the current Premier League leaders as Manchester City moved on from the intense disappointment of midweek elimination from Europe and, instead, targeted the remarkable achievement of a fourth domestic title in five seasons.
The title race appeared to have taken a decisive turn, with City’s swashbuckling five-goal dismissal of Newcastle on Sunday prising open a three-point gap from Liverpool. So, asked the reporter from beIN Sports, were Guardiola’s team indeed on the brink of maintaining their stranglehold on a division that prides itself on being the most competitive in the world?
“Well one week ago, nobody even… we were in front, everyone in this country supports Liverpool. The media and everyone. So…,” he answered with a shrug. “Of course, because Liverpool has an incredible history behind (them) in European competitions. Not in Premier Leagues. They’ve just won one in 30 years. But it’s not a problem at all.”
He went on to point out there was work still to be done, starting with Wednesday’s trip to Wolverhampton Wanderers — his team conjured a five-goal haul that night, too — and stressed the potential importance of goal difference in terms of the race. It was only once he had concluded his assessment that the interviewer revisited the notion that the country is actually behind City’s nearest adversaries.
Guardiola asked for her question to be repeated. There was a moment to consider his response. Another shrug.
“Liverpool alongside (Manchester) United are the most important teams with what they have done in history in terms of titles, legacies, history, dramas. For many, many things. But we are, in the last 11 to 12 years, always there. I know we are sometimes uncomfortable, but I don’t care. If the people want Liverpool more (to) win than us, it’s not the issue. That’s normal.
“Maybe more supporters around the world, and for sure here in England, support more Liverpool than us — but this is not the question. The question is today, before the start of the game, the people were cheering and supporting us more than ever in one home game because they know that, even being out of the Champions League, we can rely on these players. The support was amazing. Hopefully, we can arrive in the last game here with a chance to be champions.”
The notion that the watching world favour a Liverpool win inevitably elicited a dollop of derision from those on the outside looking in. Jurgen Klopp, a manager who knows a thing or two about emotionally charged post-match interviews, chuckled his way through his next press conference suggesting he had not sensed any favouritism of late. In his opinion, the opposite was actually true. The minutiae of the pair’s respective arguments have been picked apart in the days since.
This, though, is not supposed to be a piece scrutinising the ongoing tussle at the summit of the Premier League. Or, indeed, an examination of why managers fresh from the frenzy, brimming with adrenaline-fuelled delight or disappointment, deliver such provocative soundbites when confronted by a microphone immediately after the final whistle.
Rather, it is an attempt to consider a sentiment that supporters of clubs up and down the pyramid might comprehend. The feeling that it’s us against the world. That darker forces must be at work. The perception bordering on paranoia, if you will, that “everyone is out to get us”.
For many Manchester City fans, Guardiola’s comments last Sunday will have rung true. They do feel embattled — a club forever denied praise because of the lavish and transformative financial outlay of their Abu Dhabi ownership. They sense bias all around, not least from an array of pundits boasting clear and obvious connections from their playing days to Liverpool, the other great team of the moment. The fact their manager clearly does, too, can be cited as evidence that, well… the prejudice must be real.
But this is far from unique to City.
Supporters of all clubs constantly bristle at perceived injustice and cite agendas — whether pushed by the media or engrained in governing authorities or officialdom — that undermine their efforts on and off the pitch. We probably all do it. It is instinct. Sure, it might sometimes be possible to take a step back and consider the scenario slightly more rationally, reflecting perhaps that a particular referee guilty of a dubious decision probably does not have a deep-seated hatred of our club and might actually have been culpable, instead, of a split-second error of judgement. But a series of them? Come on, now.
No, when the juices are flowing, it is easier to latch on to the conspiracy theories. The English Football League (EFL) wants us relegated. Martin Tyler commentates more enthusiastically for Manchester United goals than those scored by anyone else. Every negative football story is accompanied by an image connected with Spurs. COVID-19 was hatched by an Evertonian as part of a plot to prevent Liverpool winning the league. That kind of thing.
Managers voicing their own wild complaints and theories along the way merely fan the flames. If they are not confirming their supporters’ suspicions then they are sparking them. Take events at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Thursday night, where the defeated Mikel Arteta, rather than pinpointing his own team’s shortcomings, blamed referee Paul Tierney for jeopardising Arsenal’s Champions League aspirations and presumably fuelled the paranoia among the club’s support in the process. That Antonio Conte rattled off his own list of complaints in riposte — about COVID-19 postponements and kick-off times — having just berated his opposite number for complaining too much, will have had a similar effect on the Spurs faithful.
KEEEEEOOOOOWWWWN pic.twitter.com/PzpPOkNZzu— gunnerblog (@gunnerblog) May 13, 2022
KEEEEEOOOOOWWWWN pic.twitter.com/PzpPOkNZzu
Some of the theories may be wild, but there is a logic to the persecution complexes. We, as supporters of our club, are a family. We are members of a community. As the social psychology professor Karen Douglas, who specialises in conspiracy theories at the University of Kent, has pointed out, “belonging to a group means we have an identity and our self-esteem somewhat depends on the fate of that group”.
That self-esteem can hinge upon the outcome of a match, the action of an official or the perception of the team’s image from afar. We afford ourselves the right to criticise our own, but we will not countenance those on the outside lambasting our team. If we identify strongly with our “group” and feel we are under attack, it is only natural we circle the wagons. Just as it is perfectly normal we might be more inclined to believe conspiracy theories that paint others as the bad guys. Or to seek further proof, or to explain or rationalise, before accepting any allegations made against our club. Even, at times, to forgive the behaviour of some other members of our group.
We need that option. The blame game adds to the drama. It helps us cope, principally with the numerous lows associated with supporting a team. But also unites us more when things are going well.
“It’s the, ‘They’re out to get me’ syndrome,” says professor Sir Cary Cooper, 50th Anniversary Professor of Organisational Psychology and Health at Manchester Business School, the University of Manchester. “Successful clubs’ fans are like that, no matter which division they are in. They sense that fans of other clubs, or the majority in the country at the highest level, are turning on them and want them to fail. And, to a certain extent, that paranoia is actually justified. There is some reality to it.
“Other clubs are trying to find a justification for why their own teams are not winning. Why they are not successful. So they blame the most successful team of the day. That mentality is actually a reflection of British society. It’s very deep-rooted psychologically over here and stems originally, I suspect, from the class system.”
Cooper was born in Los Angeles but has lived in the UK for 50 years, taking dual nationality in 1993. He is a long-standing supporter of Manchester City, following them from the third tier to the pinnacle. “In the United States, the attitude to success is completely different,” he tells The Athletic. “Americans do the opposite to the British. The best clubs out there are put on a pedestal. People there reward and value those teams who are successful.
“If the New York Yankees are sweeping everyone before them, their success is considered a benchmark. People don’t use it to justify why, for example, the LA Dodgers or the Pittsburgh Pirates are not doing well. Instead, Dodgers and Pirates fans instinctively ask themselves, ‘How are they doing it? Because, clearly, we’re doing something wrong. We should be doing what they are doing’. They don’t attack them. They almost admire them.
“Here, we deadhead. That’s the British way. People try to rationalise and explain away their own team’s lack of success by picking holes in how others are achieving theirs. People felt sorry for Manchester City when they were in the third tier, but now it is more, ‘City have loads of money, and we don’t. That’s why they are successful and we’re not’ — despite the fact that a club like Manchester United might also have spent ridiculously huge sums but, at the moment, are not enjoying the same level of success. We do that with people and clubs who are too successful. We find a reason to dislike them, not least because we are not as successful as they are.
“Leicester City’s Premier League title in 2016 was a fairy tale. We loved them because they were the underdogs, the outsiders giving the big boys an unexpected bloody nose. But had they gone on winning the Premier League for the next five years, the public perception of them would have changed pretty quickly.
“And those fans of successful clubs sense that. They feel everyone coming for them and, as with any sub-group in culture which is attacked, it makes them coalesce. It makes them more coherent. It makes them a team, stronger, united. ‘They’re saying that? We’ll show them’.
“But, at the same time, there’s also a bit of anger that people are not acknowledging why the team is actually successful. In City’s case there might be a frustration the great football they play isn’t appreciated by those on the outside. They will point to their success actually being down to Pep Guardiola who, like Klopp, is one of the great managers. But outsiders won’t see beyond the money.”
“Chelsea had the same thing over the years, with people pointing at the money that’s been spent,” says David Mooney, presenter of the Manchester City podcasts Blue Moon and, with The Athletic, Why Always Us? “It’s almost as if we have two camps now: Guardiola is either a genius, or he’s a chequebook manager fraud. There’s absolutely no middle ground.
“But surely, if you’ve got the best manager in the world, why would you not give him the resources that you have to do even better? They have spent money, but he’s also coached them to become a great team. (Manuel) Pellegrini and (Roberto) Mancini had access to all this money, so why didn’t their teams play this kind of football? Clearly Guardiola has some sort of impact. But, yes, they have spent a lot of money and that rubs people up the wrong way.”
For many it is a sense of powerlessness, watching on helplessly from the stands, that prompts them to cry foul. Or, according to Professor Cooper, “to seek a plausible explanation for their club’s trend of failure”.
Perhaps that defeat owed less to the team’s slack performance and more to a referee’s entrenched bias.
How else to justify the sight of an official apparently celebrating a goal scored by Louis Saha for Tottenham Hotspur in plain view during a north London derby in 2012? Or another when Mousa Dembele held off Ciaran Clark and converted for Spurs against Aston Villa three years later? Never mind that, on reflection, Mike Dean’s first celebration constituted little more than a few hops on the spot as he tracked the arc of a deflected shot. Or that the second, as he has since stressed, was actually a self-congratulatory skip of delight at having decided to play advantage. Unwise, perhaps. Awful optics, definitely. But, still, essentially innocent.
The suggestions the referee was a closet Spurs fan did the rounds regardless, and would resurface whenever he made what was deemed a controversial decision against one of Tottenham’s rivals. Dean, for the record, is from the Wirral and supports Tranmere Rovers. A cursory glance through social media would suggest his mannerisms wind supporters of most clubs up — although, as tends to happen, he may actually be missed when he retires at the end of the month.
Mike Dean is even better with dramatic music pic.twitter.com/25enZMaV5w— damo 🇺🇦 (@thedamongray) February 5, 2018
Mike Dean is even better with dramatic music pic.twitter.com/25enZMaV5w
Stuart James wrote on the subject of perceived referee bias earlier this year and his arguments do not need to be repeated here, though it is worth lingering briefly on a few high-profile examples that will probably never be forgiven.
Many Chelsea fans are still convinced Tom Henning Ovrebo’s mystifying performance in the second leg of their Champions League semi-final against Barcelona in 2009 must have been part of a wider conspiracy, principally to prevent a second successive all-England final against Manchester United. The Norwegian actually sent off Barca’s Eric Abidal midway through the second half that night, but his refusal to deny the hosts four penalty appeals had Michael Ballack barging the official in disbelief, Didier Drogba screaming “It’s a fucking disgrace” into a television camera at the end, and even the normally mild-mannered Guus Hiddink, Chelsea’s interim manager, admitting it was the only time he has wondered whether a game was fixed.
Ovrebo recently admitted to the Daily Mail that, having since seen the incidents on screen, at least one of the penalties should have been awarded. Some of his calls would have been different had VAR been in operation at the fixture. But he insists they were genuine mistakes, the result of being wary of players seeking cheap fouls and, most likely, frazzled by a frenetic occasion.
Everton fans have similar concerns over Pierluigi Collina’s performance in the second leg of their Champions League qualifying tie with Villarreal in the summer of 2005. David Moyes’ side, tipped by many to struggle against relegation, had instead achieved a remarkable fourth-place finish the previous year, only for Liverpool to win the trophy and hand their neighbours a daunting tie against the Spaniards — Juan Roman Riquelme, Marcos Senna and Diego Forlan et al — to reach the competition proper. “The draw we got was a stinker,” offered Moyes to Sky Sports in 2012. “I always think it was the ‘hot balls’ in the bag that day.”
That was said flippantly. But, having seen his team beaten 2-1 at home in the first leg, Collina’s intervention at the Estadio de la Ceramica left Moyes properly infuriated. The game was level 1-1 when, late on, Mikel Arteta’s corner was converted by a leaping Duncan Ferguson, only for the Italian referee to penalise Marcus Bent for what he deemed to be a foul on Gonzalo Rodriguez. If there was an offence, it was remarkably soft. Arteta suggested post-match that what turned into another 2-1 defeat, after Forlan’s stoppage-time winner, was “not an honest result”.
“Everyone knows the previous season Liverpool had won the European Cup so, deep down, I didn’t think they (UEFA) wanted five British teams in the group stages,” added Moyes. “I am sure they were all delighted when we were knocked out.” Risk typing “Everton” and “Collina” into Twitter even now, 17 years on, at your own peril.
A significant number of Leeds fans would argue every European Cup final in the last 47 years has been devalued because Franz Beckenbauer’s perceived influence over the French referee, Michel Kitabdjian, denied them success over Bayern Munich in the 1975 showpiece and, therefore, the opportunity to defend their trophy. Beckenbauer went unpunished for a handball in the box and a foul on Allan Clarke at Parc des Princes. When Peter Lorimer put Jimmy Armfield’s side ahead after the interval, the official disallowed the goal for offside against Billy Bremner, despite the linesman having kept his flag down.
“He pointed clearly to the centre circle,” said Lorimer in 2015. “There was no reaction from the linesman, or nothing. Then Beckenbauer started having words with Kitabdjian and, to our total disbelief, the goal was ruled out. Cheating is the only way to describe what went on at Parc des Princes. I’m still convinced Beckenbauer was responsible for persuading the officials to disallow my goal in the second half.” The crowd trouble that erupted after the game saw Leeds banned from the competition for four years, reduced to two on appeal. UEFA have been considered with a certain scepticism ever since.
The conspiracy theories around those incidents would suggest the officials were complying with the governing body’s tacit instructions. Indeed, fan mistrust is regularly aimed at the authorities overseeing the game.
Rules may have been broken, but plenty of followers of Derby County are convinced the Football League are punishing them particularly harshly, spurred on by the perception that the fanbase had originally been crowing that the club’s owner, Mel Morris, had “the EFL on strings”. The fear is this is the League’s revenge being played out. Newcastle United supporters had #ThePremierLeagueIsCorrupt trending on social media, and whipped up chants at games echoing as much, when the club’s takeover by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia initially collapsed.
There is still a banner reading “Luton Town, est 1885. Betrayed by the FA, 2008” which hangs over the rows of wooden seats where Kenilworth Road’s main stand meets the away end on Oak Road, reflecting an enduring antipathy — a legacy of Luton’s tumble from the Championship into non-League. That descent was propelled by various eye-watering point deductions imposed by the EFL after the club fell into administration as well as the manner in which they exited that process. Further sanctions were enforced by the Football Association over transfer irregularities dating back several years. Luton are now resurgent, but still embittered.
Manchester City fans still boo UEFA’s Champions League anthem before games. “How much of that is down to it having become a tradition rather than genuine ill-feeling to the governing body, I don’t know,” says Mooney. “The theory used to be that UEFA weren’t big fans of what City were doing and were doing everything they could to try and stop them. That essentially boiled down to Financial Fair Play which, in its original guise, might have been an attempt to stop the likes of City.
“For a while, it always felt as if the Champions League draws were always against City. We’d win the Premier League and find ourselves ranked in the third pot and flung into an impossibly difficult group because they didn’t have the seeding. Now they go into the first pot and the groups are deathly dull. I don’t know what I want anymore: an exciting group where we might get knocked out, or something ridiculously boring.”
Some of the club’s fans interpreted the then Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore’s pre-season assertion that he wanted the forthcoming 2018-19 campaign “to go to the last” with “someone getting a little bit closer to Manchester City” as the precursor to the division doing everything they could to ensure City would not romp home with another three-figure points tally. Scudamore, who left his role in November 2018, is a Bristol City fan. He once privately admitted that he would have been unable to fulfil his role at the Premier League if he had hailed from the north-west or London as too many member clubs would simply have assumed he supported one of their rivals, which probably says it all.
It even happens at international level. Barcelona fans reference a “black hand” in Madrid contriving to undermine them at every turn. A theory did the rounds in Italy during Euro 2020 last summer that England were benefiting from favourable refereeing and scheduling because Aleksander Ceferin, the UEFA president, was thankful to the UK government for acting relatively swiftly to block English teams from joining the breakaway Super League. The theory was taken up by Gazzetta dello Sport, who claimed the soft penalty awarded to the hosts in the semi-final win over Denmark confirmed “suspicions about the exchange of favours with Boris Johnson”. Not that the preferential treatment did Gareth Southgate’s side much good in the final.
It is probably worth noting that Serie A is conspiracy central. Italians have even coined a word, “dietrologia” (literally “behindology”), which suggests there is always some dark force behind every action or event. Prominent figures in the game have gladly bought into the concept. Only last week, Jose Mourinho was pointing out that the VAR who gave a penalty in Fiorentina’s favour against his Roma side hailed from nearby Livorno, another Tuscan town. So how could he possibly be impartial?
That said, clearly elements of some of the grievances aired by supporters against authority are justifiable. Their clubs may have been poorly run, but they might have expected a more competent and hands-on level of governance. The fans are the ones who suffer, after all, as the teams plummet down the divisions or see their aspirations for a better future constantly dashed.
But a level of paranoia has been allowed to fester, all born of lingering mistrust. It is regularly revisited by managers, players, administrators and owners so it is hardly a surprise when their complaints are lapped up by disgruntled fans.
There is no healing some wounds.
And so to the flagrant hypocrisy of this correspondent. Indeed, of any article on this subject. After all, the press clearly have a major role to play in this. The agendas cited by fanbases are invariably gleaned from articles, commentary or punditry. The media are perceived to be part of the wider conspiracy.
Tyler’s apparently downbeat reaction to Raheem Sterling’s opening goal against Newcastle, one theory went, betrayed his true allegiance. Or at least that he was doing his master’s bidding given his employer is desperate for there to be a dramatic title race. For the record, Sky’s chief commentator, a veteran of almost 48 years behind the microphone, has actually supported non-League Woking since attending his first match in 1953.
STERLING!! Raheem Sterling heads in the opener for Manchester City! 💥 pic.twitter.com/NFy5U9zzXi— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) May 8, 2022
STERLING!! Raheem Sterling heads in the opener for Manchester City! 💥 pic.twitter.com/NFy5U9zzXi
A common criticism is that a correspondent’s overenthusiastic celebration of a goal on social media exposes bias and renders any subsequent article completely lacking in objectivity, leading to constant and oft-heard snipes that those reporting “are mere cheerleaders”. The Athletic’s model allows us to provide content aimed at specific fanbases, and relate to the supporters of the club, but it does not prevent us from tackling awkward topics or asking difficult questions to scrutinise what is happening at those teams. If anything, it should encourage such coverage.
The same applies to local newspaper or radio correspondents. Indeed, when a level of scrutiny is applied, it can appear to ruffle feathers.
Tried to ask Chesterfield manager Paul Cook some questions today on the reasons behind their current form and the Torquay game (he didn’t give a post match interview). Cook ended the interview 👇 #Spireites pic.twitter.com/MpU9DZwEfL— Rob Staton (@robstaton) May 13, 2022
Tried to ask Chesterfield manager Paul Cook some questions today on the reasons behind their current form and the Torquay game (he didn’t give a post match interview). Cook ended the interview 👇 #Spireites pic.twitter.com/MpU9DZwEfL
A similar and well-established suggestion of bias, frequently aired by managers of rival clubs to give it an air of authenticity, centres on the apparent plethora of pundits with Liverpool connections operating in the media. Sir Alex Ferguson, fighting Manchester United’s corner, regularly revisited that theme over his tenure. Back in January 1994, he had voiced concern in an attack on the BBC’s coverage of an FA Cup tie against Norwich City having been told that Jimmy Hill, back in the studio, had been critical of Eric Cantona.
Hill had suggested the Frenchman aimed a boot at Jeremy Goss’ head in the first half and made contact with John Polston’s scalp 17 minutes from the end. He described Cantona’s actions as “despicable”.
“Jimmy Hill is verbal whenever it suits him,” said the United manager. “If there is a prat going about in this world, he is the prat. I’m not interested in Jimmy Hill. Neither are my players. He writes us off in the warm-up — that’s how much he knows about the game. The BBC are dying for us to lose. Everyone is from Liverpool with a supporter’s badge. They will be at our games every week until we lose, that mob… Bob, Barry, Hansen, the lot of them.”
“I do get frustrated with how Liverpool are talked about more than anybody else, and I do think there is preferential treatment in various places,” says Mooney. “But I don’t think it’s an inherently harmful thing to Manchester City, or to other clubs, either. If there’s so much positive Liverpool press and Liverpool’s fans are positive about it all, it just doesn’t really affect me. I don’t really care. On the flip-side, if things seem hypercritical of City — and I don’t think they are — then they’re big boys, they have a lot of money and they can defend themselves. They don’t need me batting for them all the time.
“I guess it depends on the bubble you’re in as well. If you’re friends with a lot of City fans or follow a lot of City supporters on Twitter, you tend to see a lot more of the critical stuff because that’s what shared. ‘Have you seen what this **** has been writing about us this week?’. Why waste your energy worrying? People can have perfectly valid opinions or mount perfectly valid discussions. Let the club deal with it if they think it’s unfair.”
There is, of course, a logical business decision in hiring prominent figures instantly recognisable from their time at one of the biggest clubs in the world to tap that market, particularly if they are also eloquent and work well on camera. Andre Villas-Boas, in his first stint as Chelsea’s head coach, had similar complaints about the former Manchester United defender Gary Neville’s involvement as a pundit. Yet the feeling that some big clubs are under-represented in the studio still appears to unnerve.
It was a regular complaint of Mourinho’s during his time at Chelsea, where he once suggested Sky hire a figure like Dennis Wise to provide some balance to the punditry. His own view was coloured by outrage at comments from Jamie Carragher and Graeme Souness in March 2015 when the pair were critical of nine home players crowding the Dutch referee, Bjorn Kuipers, after a foul by Paris Saint-Germain’s Zlatan Ibrahimovic during a Champions League tie at Stamford Bridge.
Carragher said the scenes were “disgraceful”. Souness described the conduct of the Chelsea players as “pathetic”.
“You know the world is a bit strange,” said Mourinho at the time. “Maybe because of diet and maybe the quality of the products we are eating, but memories are getting shorter. Because, you know, when Jamie Carragher and Graeme Souness speak about it, it’s because they are having a problem for sure.
“Jamie stopped playing a couple of years ago and, in two years, he has forgotten everything he did on the pitch. Mr Souness also, but he stopped playing a long time ago. I coached Benfica after he left there, so I know a lot about him. So much about him. But I have had a certain kind of education, not just in football but in life, and I prefer to laugh. Envy is the biggest tribute that the shadows do to the man.”
The Portuguese had his own gripes about press coverage and, in that second spell in charge in south-west London, regularly pointed to what he perceived as a media-driven “campaign” against his striker, Diego Costa. The fact that the Brazilian-born Spain international revelled in the sly and underhand out on the pitch — he was a master at winding up opponents, whether verbally or physically — was apparently neither here nor there. It was the constant references to Costa’s ill discipline that was earning him notoriety at the FA.
There was a similar deep-rooted and calculated strategy, Mourinho suggested, that saw Chelsea treated differently to all-comers when it came to the award of penalties in particular. In the midst of their 2014-15 title-winning season, the team went through a period where the likes of Costa, Willian, Gary Cahill and Branislav Ivanovic were all involved in apparent instances of simulation. “That’s a campaign, that’s a clear campaign,” he said in the wake of Cesc Fabregas then being booked for diving, despite an apparent foul by Matt Targett, in a fixture at Southampton. “People, pundits, commentators, coaches from other teams — they react with Chelsea in a way they don’t react to other teams.
“They put lots of pressure on the referee and the referee makes a mistake like this. We lose two points, Fabregas earns a yellow card. In other countries where I worked before, tomorrow in the sports papers it would be a front-page scandal because it is a scandal. I think it is a scandal because it is not a small penalty — it is a penalty like Big Ben. In this country — and I am happy with that, more than happy with that — we will just say that it was a big mistake with a big influence in the result.”
Contesting an opinion is one thing. Alleging it is all part of a wider conspiracy to choke a team’s success or even damage the brand, is something else. Albeit, sometimes, the best way of dealing with any suspicions is to poke some fun. Take, for example, a Twitter thread published towards the end of last year by Tottenham fans who theorised that photographs of their players, or images of things connected with the club, were being used to illustrate negative news stories that had little or nothing to do with Spurs.
The list is supposed to be tongue in cheek. The chatter it provokes rarely is.
A quite mad phenomenon of news outlets using Spurs-related images for negative football stories. A to-be-regularly-updated thread:— The Tottenham Way (@TheTottenhamWay) December 29, 2021
A quite mad phenomenon of news outlets using Spurs-related images for negative football stories. A to-be-regularly-updated thread:
Spurs, a club yearning for success like so many others, like a conspiracy theory. Towards the end of the first national lockdown two years ago, The Tottenham Way podcast invited Adam Nathan — a season ticket holder since the 1990s — on to a show they had headlined “The Crisis Tapes”. They billed Nathan, who runs his own catering firm in Hertfordshire, as “an historian of Tottenham Hotspur injustices 1999-present” and proceeded to trawl through everything from mystifying refereeing decisions in major games, untimely goalkeeper errors, disallowed goals, dubious fixture scheduling and, of course, dodgy lasagne in an attempt to determine whether some outside force was attempting to undermine their club’s progress. Usually whenever glory felt tantalisingly within reach.
Nathan’s conclusion was that, rather than assuming their ills were down to constant dismal luck, it was actually easier to accept the club is simply cursed. Happiness is not an option. “You’d probably have to go quite some way to try and quantify there is actually a curse on a stadium or a club,” he tells The Athletic. “But, without sounding like a complete crank, there’s probably an element of very perverse comfort to take from it.
“If you turn up to every game thinking you have a decent team, it’s an evenly matched contest, so it’s on the toss of a coin, then how many times can you go for heads and tails come up without thinking that there’s a bit of a weight on the wrong side of the coin? The derby was a focal point of this week, but even in the build-up there was so much discussion around Spurs saying, ‘Well, we’ll win the derby and then we’ll lose to Burnley’. Sometimes, having this sense that it’s all predetermined anyway makes the near-misses easier to take.
“I have to stress I’m saying all this through a smile and with a solitary tear running down my cheek. But when Kane scored that amazing goal to put us 2-1 up against Arsenal in 2016 and take us to the top of the table… if you watch that game back there was actually a thunderous storm that rolled in just after he scored. It was almost as if someone from above was saying, ‘Look guys, you absolutely cannot be top of the league in March. We’re going to have to intervene’. The Arsenal equaliser kind of skidded through Hugo Lloris’ hands because of the rain and the Leicester fairy tale continued at pace.
“Obviously this is all ridiculous. The ball runs the way it runs. That’s kind of why we love it. But part of me thinks that, if I acknowledge it’s not going to roll my way, that might help lessen the blow a bit.
“I liken Spurs with Everton and Sunderland, for whom the ball just never seems to drop the right way. Of course, every team has bad decisions against them. Chelsea had the Barcelona semi-final in 2009… but it’s actually quite funny when you see teams like that suffer a bad rub of the green. The outrage is so extreme. There’s that GIF with James Franco being hanged (in the Ballad of Buster Scruggs) and he looks across and asks, ‘Is this your first time?’. It kind of feels a bit like that at times, watching people going bananas at clubs like that.
“Ah, it’s sweet. It’s nice they get to experience it just this once. But, next week, you’ll obviously get something rotten going in your favour. Because that’s the way it works.”
(Top image: Sam Richardson for The Athletic)