The THST are meeting with THFC this evening.
The THST is a curious little bureaucratic enclave. They’ve just published their balance sheet as of the end of August last year. They’ve £10,000 sitting in their account. Just sitting there.
They spent £206 on a trophy – what was that for and who won it? And a further £216 on “match day banners” which given the political climate at The Lane on banners, is another one I’m fascinated to have explained. If the banners made it into the ground, were those waving them about required to ‘drag up’?
A full list of the Trust’s agenda is here. Here are a few of the questions I want answered.
Where is the money for the new stadium coming from? Don’t fend us off with the old ‘commercially sensitive’ line, we don’t need to know the name of the sponsor, or indeed the specifics of the monies involved. But we would like to know that one exists.
A £350M facility from HSBC was revealed in the CPO hearing. This was greeted by some really mindless fans as if it was a major achievement. Given that THFC appears very comfortable basking in the afterglow of declaring negligible debts, what was the premise for applying for the facility and under what circumstances would it be used, and at what cost to the business?
I’m told that MK Dons will be our temporary home for an unspecified period of time while White Hart Lane is being redeveloped. Why haven’t you made any effort to consult with our support over what will be a seismic decision?
How long do you anticipate us being of no fixed abode?
You were never going to please everyone, no matter what arrangements were made during an interim period, but what were the alternatives? How preposterously expensive was Wembley, who else did you speak to and what were you quoted?
The atmosphere at Premier League grounds generally is frequently close to abysmal. The micro management of supporters within White Hart Lane has featured THFC encouraging the arrest of fans, issuing (and subsequent rescinding of) banning orders, overzealous stewarding, a surfing hanky (that was too humiliating to use), then the threat of a surfing tea towel (which never actually happened), not to mention using the public address system to blast out music in a vain attempt to mask the booing of fans.
Even if one were to gloss over some of the abysmal public relations own goals scored by THFC and opt to instead to focus on damage limitation in the future, what positive initiatives are there in the pipeline?
But the Trust in its current guise won’t ask anything close to the questions above. Instead it will waste its time chasing cars such as ticket pricing and how Spurs player recruitment works. This is of course, when the likes of THST Secretary Suraj Sharma, isn’t being aggressive and threatening (including the sending of unsolicited direct messages) on social media.
I would call for them to be disbanded, but nobody would even notice.
