The Tottenham Hotspur Supporters’ Trust has organized a demonstration outside the Spurs stadium for the last game of the season. ‘Change is coming’ came the stark warning from the Trust in their statement. Darker yet, the Trust also called upon fans to “focus” upon the anger supposedly caused by the executive board of the football club.
Given that the Trust – an unelected band of bureaucrats – have taken ownership of this event, presumably one might imagine that they will also take responsibility for whatever transpires on the day. This would include supplementing the cost of policing the game, supplementing the cost of any other emergency services required, and being able to make an immediate settlement for any damage to property incurred by their call to action.
If we look at what occurred at Old Trafford, when fans were focusing on their “anger” then the list is pretty long and pretty nasty.
Criminal damage, assault, wounding, drug use, breaking and entering, threatening behaviour… This is all a far cry from halves of ale and light refreshments in the Antwerp Arms.
There’s a scene in Carlito’s Way, where Carlito tells his lawyer David Kleinfeld, You ain’t a lawyer no more, Dave. You a gangster now. On the other side. A whole new ball game. You can’t learn about it in school, and you can’t have a late start.
This is where the Trust is, on the brink of having its name as the promoter of civil disorder in a borough that has surely had its fill of police sirens and broken glass.
All images c/o The Sun
Please tell me that the Trust isn’t panning to control this event via statements on a blog. Please tell me that the Trust doesn’t think a megaphone will contain the actions of maybe thousands of fans.
The demonstration at Old Trafford was a siege endorsed by those seeking to make a power grab at the club. One which on that occasion didn’t have anyone to send the bill to.
I agree with peaceful protests especially if it gets the message across to ENIC and it’s owners. Hopefully this can be done when the fans get back to watching soccer again. The proble is we don’t really know what percentage of fans watching are Levyists and the percentage of fans that are not supportive of the way the club is been run?.
Rather like stockbrokers and asset managers to a certain extent. Mind you I always enjoyed watching Mad Men.
Having said that, shrewd directors of football like Monchi of Sevilla and Luis Campos of Lille, have made their clubs substantial profits by buying well and selling better. Southampton are an example of a club that have always produced or bought good young players and sold them on. Even Wenger, in the earlier part of his career at Arsenal, bought and sold the likes of Anelka, Henry, Vieraand Petit etc for substantial profits. Unfortunately, we have Levy in charge of our transfer strategy and his moronic sidekick Hitchen.
Success on the pitch always ensures income from CL qualification and ensuing success in that competition. In short, investing in the right players at the right prices and having success on the pitch would be an asset to Enic, not just bricks and mortar.
We did get bought by a rich guy who has since invested nothing into the club
Marbella a pretty good case for the prosecution. I worked in advertising back in the day and investors always felt distrust in the industry because as they saw it the assets went up and down in the lifts. Hence i see Enics interest in fixed property assets the ground and training ground which are assets that will appreciate over the years rather than players whose values are subject to variation
Perfectly put, the most galling thing about it is WE will pay all that debt as they continue to happily get 8th as long as the stadium is full and everyone gets a few beers before selling up in 10 years for a whopping 3 bil (by then) in profit.
Harry what amazed me (I was watching the match pre view on Sky Sports) and not once did Sky Sports showed any of the violent actions (As in the pictures above) as all I heard was that the match was delayed due to protest action and they were waiting confirmation from the Hotel as to when the game will start.
Now i might have missed some action (If they did show it earler) but,as I only tuned into the match pre view a few minutes before they game should have started, i must apologise if i missed something before then. If there was no live violent demonstration action shown by Sky Sports then once again we are been bamboozled by some media sites, who only want to show you the perfect picture. As if to say don’t go away the game will start shortly. The only action (if you can call it that) was when we saw a few spectators (fans) walking on the pitch and climbing up the seat covers and also when the police arrived on horse back and started pushing the demonstrators back as if they were making space so that the bus could arrive at the stadium without any hindrance. This is all that I could see taht Sky Sports showed on TV.
Once again I apologise if they did show some violent demostartion that i did not see. 🙂
Thanks Marbella Spur, all valid points & impossible to disagree with.
tbf the Glazer thing has been going on for years this was another excuse to escalate it
It doesn’t matter what the demonstrations are about these days they invariably become infiltrated by provocateurs hired to instigate damage and mayhem to blacken the nature of the cause of the people demonstrating.
I believe that is what happened at Old Trafford and can see it happening at our last home game.I would not be surprised to see something similar happen in N17.Considering there will be few if any fans in the stadium that day expect an enormous security presence.
You forgot to mention that they have other interests such as the dual functioning stadium, that spells out in no uncertain terms that they believe in creating a cash cow.
There is no other football club with outside interests where there money is being used supporting other projects, a football club should be a football club run solely to bring success on the pitch.
It’s a good question which deserves to be answered and I will do it from my own perspective.
The fans who dislike Levy which includes myself feel that Enic have always put their business activities, ie developing their property empire, ahead of the football side of activities. Whether or not White Hart Lane could have been extended to a sufficient capacity to house the number of fans necessary to compete with the other big clubs is a moot point but he did not need to go 100% over budget and it is quite clear that the new stadium was built with the NFL in mind. Do not forget that THFC are anchor tenants. He did not need to go 100% over budget, for which he paid himself a £2 mill bonus, to have built a great new stadium and to have had money for new players as well. Perhaps he should have waited to get the naming rights first. Spurs had approximately £350 mill on their balance sheet before the new project started and now we are £650 mill in debt. It is not just that we have to listen the constant drivel about the need for world class facilities to enable us to compete. Why do Levy supporters think that even if our cash flow was to accelerate substantially post Covid, that he would make the right decisions for on field success?
Twenty two years of hiring and firing managers, DoFs, coaching and scouting staff reveal his ineptitude in football matters. The same applies to his constant meddling in the transfer market instead of listening to people who know far more about it than him.
His failure to back Poch and then sit on his hands for two transfer windows has now meant that the inevitable rebuild of the squad will be much more expensive.
I can give you other reasons for disliking Levy which include the way he treated Martin Jol, the furloughing of the staff, followed by the inevitable back tracking, the offer to let some of the furloughed ground staff mow his lawn, conning season ticket holders to pay for the first season at the new stadium in the full knowledge that it wasn’t ready, the list is never endless.
Why do you think it is proving to be so difficult to hire the right manager after sacking Poch and Mourinho? Put yourself in the place of an objective observer, Spurs come across as a toxic club run by Levy.
In the inimitable words of Jamie Redknapp, whom I never dreamt I would quote from, “They’re all fu**ing clowns down there”. Sad to say but I have to agree with him. Football is more than just a business.
I have no problem with peaceful protest, I wouldn’t want to see that United stuff happen at Spurs though.
Maybe the Covid thing has hyped people up and with fans returning to games they’ll be able to show their displeasure to the owners there and the anger will diminish.
Ok, let’s break it down a bit. Why do people dislike Levy? Genuine question. The way I see it, is he’s given the club/fans the best stadium in the world but the payoff is he spent money on the stadium when he should have invested in the team. This argument could only work if we had been regularly successful before he arrived & it then fell apart, which isnt the case. We were relatively successful under Poch but the money wasn’t there to progress. I should imagine a lot of fans want a rich Arab/Russian to buy us & spent shed loads on players, which is something we’ve all criticised Citeh & Cheatski for doing.
The whole Utd break and enter stinks of ochestrated psy op. The protest was, like Chelsea , outside, but somehow some ‘broke in’, or paid agitators were let in is more likely.(similar to the white house scene in the states ) Alot looked like Antifa, black hoody’s etc. Prem stadium security is tight and especially on a match day, you can’t just break in and wander about.
Hard to disagree, at least Utd fans have sone big in the Premiership era for many years. One FA Cup and two League Cups in over 30 odd years and only recently finished regularly in the top 6-7.
its just business as usual for us and ENIC are in no mood to change that whatsoever…
Well hopefully the bald midget will be there and they can vandalize him.
I lost my emotional connection years ago tbh. I don’t like being conned.
Good luck to them I say. Anyone who stands up to these parasites has my support. My advice to Spurs fans out there is follow a second club, it makes the pain a lot more bearable. Lets face it things aren’t going to change in the foreseeable future are they? More jam tomorrow is enic’s mantra. Keep the mugs dangling on the end of the line for as long as possible. Once we get a new stadium, once stadium debt is repaid, once the effects of covid have gone, blah blah. Truth is that they are all tight bar stewards praying on our meagre incomes to make themselves rich.
It won’t be Spurs fans that turn up though, just rent-a-mob looking for something to vandalize.
Totally agree with everything said here. We all know which way this will go. No such thing as a peaceful protest nowadays- just an excuse to vandalize property & attack the Police. How predictable. Of course, it’ll make so much difference ……
Can’t can see a big protest. My reading of the feeling among a lot of Spurs fans is of resignation.
There is also something more worrying a feeling of being disconnected from the club and not just the people that run the club but from the team itself.
With the exception of Harry Kane, Sonny and one or two others some fans have no emotional connection to this particular group of players and actively dislike a lot of them. A sad state of affairs.
I love Carlito’s Way. One of Pacino’s best films and Sean Penn was also very good in it.
It strikes me that the THST over the years has been completely compliant with the Enic and their machinations, and it is only now that they appear to have woken up to the Vampire Squid’s real intentions for the club which does not include on field football success. Having said that, there is nothing wrong with a large protest against the way the club is run as long as it is peaceful and it will highlight the fans ongoing disaffection with many of the owners. I suspect that the inherent problem with all current protests is that they are infiltrated by subversives who are there to cause trouble and have no real interest in the reasons for that particular protest. Better to know that they are finally against Enic than for them.