One of the most memorable games has just taken place at White Hart Lane. I’ll still call it the Lane until it gets renamed the Colgate Stadium, or the Haringey Intersectionalism Hope and Renewal Soccer Stadium. We’ve just beaten the Premier League title holders Manchester City 2-0. It wasn’t straightforward.
This is the stuff Spurs do. Was your heart in your mouth for most of that game? How many games have you watched at the Lane, at home, in the pub, on your phone heading home from work on the train, and you just don’t know what Spurs will do next?
As that recurring heart in the mouth or pit of the stomach sensation reveals, Welch is right that, “being a Spurs fan is a lifelong form of helpless enslavement”; an inherited Stockholm syndrome, one we happily pass along to the next generation with no cure in sight but with careful management, usually in the form of a single malt or two in my case.
Welch notes that for those with the means, the love of Spurs has manifested itself in some bonkers behaviour. On Spurs winning the FA Cup in 1967, Peter Cook hired a Rolls-Royce to drive around the West End tooting away on the horn, and would fly in from the States to watch Spurs (lose) against Arsenal. And of course, the late Superfan Morris Keston, who spent a great deal of time and money, and very nearly became Chairman of the club in the Irving/Venables era, who only missed two home games between 1951 and 2010 but funded testimonials and provided generous hospitality over the decades.
Welch is, of course, a Spurs fan. The influence of “three cool Jewish girls”. Aged 11 at the City of London School for Girls, she met these three manic Spurs supporters and that was that. And Welch went on to become Fleet Street’s first female football reporter in 1973, which is quite something, especially in the early 70s.
Welch’s chronological biography of Spurs provides a satisfyingly coherent narrative that knits together the significant themes of the club’s history. Welch’s account reflects her experience and expertise in relating stories of people, places and events; this is not a surface re-telling, not an A-Z of Tottenham Hotspur. Her writing is suffused with her love of the club adding a warmth you don’t get from the detached despatches of some football journalists.
Her introduction provides an overview of some themes; of Spurs’ Jewish heritage, the philosophy of glory, and of pass and move, of push and run, of the Spurs Way, of achieving firsts, the ups and downs including in management and ownership, and of remaining true to its history and style (with the notable aberration of George Graham).
It starts at the Tottenham Marshes, with the brothers Hamilton and Lindsay Casey, studying late Medieval English history at school, who coin the name ‘Hotspur’ in 1882. The marshes were land once owned by the Percy family. Sir Henry Percy was Sir Harry Hotspur.
Yet the ‘Hotspur FC’ name was already in use in London. They were getting each other’s mail. No postcodes back then. Hence, the addition of ‘Tottenham’ in 1884. The other lot didn’t last. ‘Tottenham Hotspur FC’ was here to stay.
For all its Jewish heritage, it was a Methodist lay preacher who became Spurs’ founding president, a chap called Ripsher. Why Ripsher left the club by 1894, no-one knows. A local businessman called John Oliver took over. Ripsher died in a Dover workhouse in 1906. More recently, his grave was discovered and the Tottenham Tribute Trust provided a fitting headstone including the Spurs crest and motto. As Welch notes about Ripsher, “without him all the rest would never have happened”.
Welch traces the early history of Spurs through Ripsher to John Oliver, Charles Roberts and John Cameron, all vital to the club’s future and its firsts; Roberts developed the new ground behind the old White Hart pub in 1899, playing their first game on the pitch against Notts County and Hamilton Casey running the line. The new strip had no red on it. White shirts and navy shorts, a tribute to Preston’s Double-winning ‘Invincibles’ of 1888/89. Spurs won the Southern League title in 1900, and the Tottenham Herald penned the first (known) Spurs’ chant – spot the cute error;
I care not for things political,
Or which party’s out or in,
The only thing I care about,
Is will Tottenham Hotspurs win.
And in the season 1900-01, Spurs became the first, and to date the only, non-League club to win the FA Cup. The wife of Spurs’ director Morton Cadman tied blue-and-white ribbons to the handles of the cup and a new tradition was born. The same ribbons were used when Tottenham won the cup again in 1921.
In the 1909/10 season, the cockerel first took to the roof of the new West Stand (and for the nerds amongst you, it first faced south). Another bird was added to the team when Spurs brought back a ship’s parrot following their tour of Argentina and Uruguay in 1909. The cockerel saw a fair bit of football with a hiatus for World War One when playing ceased in 1915, and White Hart Lane became a factory for making gas masks. The parrot thrived for a good ten years. And it died in March 1919; the day Arsenal usurped Spurs’ rightful place in the First Division.
Welch couldn’t be more right as she titles the seventh chapter of her book, Success is the Best Revenge. Spurs had experienced the ignominy and injustice of starting a new season in the Second Division, whilst Arsenal nicked their spot in the First. How best to respond? Get promoted to the First Division straight away under Peter Mc William, a man who Arthur Rowe later said, “pioneered The Spurs Way”. Arsenal finished 10thin the First Division.
The following season, Spurs won the FA Cup again. And finished three places above Arsenal in the league. In the following season, they were runners-up in the league to Liverpool. Arsenal came 17th. Out of 22.
What Welch details next is a tale that would be recognised by any Spurs fan of recent times. Instead of ploughing the profits of those successful years into the team, the board sunk it into… ground development. Mc William didn’t have the funds he needed. He left for Middlesbrough, and scouted for Arsenal before being talked into returning, and eventually retiring during the second world war. Spurs had spent mostly ten years in the Second Division. Beautiful new East Stand though.
The season before the war started, a chap called Nicholson debuted for Spurs. His progress then deferred by war. And the beautiful East Stand became a mortuary for Blitz victims. And Arsenal moved in. Footballing hatchets buried during war-time.
Still in the Second Division in 1949, Spurs needed some oomph. Welch notes that Spurs’ new manager, Arthur Rowe, “was Tottenham through and through”. But he had something else too, something else that I argue makes him Tottenham’s most important manager to date. I can hear you cry “What about Bill Nicholson?”, “What about Tim Sherwood?”
Rowe played for 210 appearances and finished his career at the age of 32, a defender with a dodgy knee. In May 1939, he made a move to Hungary as the Government’s official instructor to their soccer coaches. He had the freedom to develop and share a way of playing that may have first originated in a game he played at Valley Parade in 1932. This was push and run. I’m inclined to agree with Rowe’s son Graham that Rowe didn’t go on to follow the example of the Hungary team of 1953 and their fast, short-passing game, but that he inventedit.
Welch is more sceptical but concedes that Rowe is the only manager apart from Bill Nicholson to takes Spurs to a league title, (that’s back to back titles following promotion), he mentored Bill Nicholson and Alf Ramsey, andhe signed Danny Blanchflower. If Bill Nicholson’s time was the Glory years, he was standing on some massive shoulders.
The Nicholson and Blanchflower contributions to Tottenham Hotspur are well documented. What stands out in Welch’s writing is the enthusiasm and heart with which its imbued. Blanchflower was Welch’s childhood hero, and they eventually met in 1974 at the beginnings of her Fleet Street career. The chapters on the road to glory and conquering Europe read almost like a novel, with pace, detailing of the players’ characters, and of the games, the humour, the rugged determination, the cheerfulness, the wonder, magnificence and glory of winning. And another first. Spurs became the first British club to win in Europe. In Welch’s accounts of the games and others’ experiences, you can imagine yourself there, amongst the thousands of fans in the stadia, in the street celebrations, in singing ‘Glory, Glory Hallelujah’ as a Tottenham Hymn for the first time.
But nothing lasts forever. Blanchflower’s career winds down, Mackay’s leg is broken at Old Trafford, and as Greaves noted later, “the heart of Tottenham Hotspur went on the stretcher with Dave Mackay. It was as if the team died overnight”.
Then John White died. An awful, freak accident as he was struck by lightning on the golf course. A plaque was laid for him in 2012 at the ninth hole at Crews Hill.
Spurs were due some luck, and some more glory. Nicholson started a rebuild. Pat Jennings’ first day at Spurs may have been spent attending poor John White’s funeral, but he’d be involved in the team that went on to win the 1967 FA Cup against Chelsea with what Welch calls “a hybrid of two great sides”; those who’d won the European Cup Winners’ Cup, and those who would form the great side of the early 1970s, with Venables and Robertson alongside.
Four more years to wait before another cup. A League Cup. Though, the joy had to be tainted somehow by long-standing rivals. Arsenal won the Double. And they won the league at the Lane. Nicholson was the epitome of magnanimity; the man who did the Double first, went into the Arsenal dressing room and congratulated them on their league title win.
Remember that bit about success being the best revenge? The next season, with help from Mullery’s winning goal, Spurs won the UEFA Cup; Nicholson’s seventh trophy. Then it was Coates’ turn to help Nicholson and the club to a League Cup trophy in the following season, and back into Europe.
Where it ended for Nicholson though, as Welch sensitively notes, is a sad indictment of the game in the 1970s. Spurs had made it into another UEFA Cup final. This time against Feyenoord of Rotterdam. During the first leg at the Lane, there was fighting outside the ground, and Feyenoord fans’ coaches were pelted with stones. The Dutch retaliated in the stadium by throwing urine-filled bottles onto Spurs fans in the lower tiers. Spurs should have won. They drew. The second leg in Rotterdam did not go well. Feyenoord scored. And Spurs fans rioted. Welch reports the words of Chivers that, “Suddenly smoke and flames started to engulf one part of the ground. I looked up and saw a person hanging off the stand and behind him seats being thrown into the air like missiles, and some of them on fire. It was scary stuff”.
Bless Nicholson. He honestly thought that taking a loudspeaker with him out onto the pitch to ‘talk’ with the fans would work. As Welch writes, “No one was listening”. On his return to the dressing room, his eyes were red and watery. Perryman thought, “That’s probably the end for him”. Spurs lost. Nicholson was falling out of love with a game increasingly mired in hooliganism and violence. But he didn’t leave because of this, or that Spurs’ start to the new season was awful, or the difficulties with Chivers, or lacking new players, but as Welch quotes Nicholson, “The simple truth was that I was burned out. I had no more to offer”. He didn’t get to appoint a new manager (he wanted Blanchflower) and left aggrieved. No testimonial either. Not yet, anyway.
Spurs had frazzled Bill Nicholson and disrespected him at the end. Arthur Rowe before him had left after what was probably stress-induced depression. Managing Spurs, and managing Spurs well, is clearly a tough gig.
How to follow Bill Nick? An Arsenal man. Terry Neill. He worked the team into the ground. By ’76, he was gone. Now was the turn of another Yorkshire-born manager, Keith Burkinshaw. But after 27 years in the top flight, he couldn’t prevent Spurs being relegated.
But Burkinshaw had a serious asset, a ‘take no sh*t’ captain, a leader, an excellent player who loved the club; Steve Perryman. He led from the front, and Spurs were straight back in the First Division.
Whilst Spurs had some excellent players, the team needed more. In a classy and smart move, Burkinshaw had brought back Nicholson as head scout. One of Nicholson’s many contacts was a chap called Haslam (Yorkshireman again). And Haslam put him onto a gifted midfielder, and a mate of his, another midfielder; Ossie Ardiles and Ricky Villa were on their way to Spurs from Argentina. Another ground-breaking first by Spurs. And with Ardiles’ line from Chas n’ Dave’s Ossie’s Dream, “In the cup for Tottingham” still ringing in their ears, they only went and won the 1981 FA Cup. And still Ricky Villa!
Welch relates the exciting story of the UEFA Cup run and win in ’84, but another era was ending, “Like a great film with a rubbish ending, [Burkinshaw] walked off the pitch after that triumphant UEFA Cup win and out of White Hart Lane for good”. Ardiles commented, “We won the UEFA Cup, but this team was finishing its life”.
And on his way out, Burkinshaw reportedly said, “There used to be a football club over there”.
This is a story Welch regales us with of the weird and wonderful world of Irving Scholar.
Burkinshaw was replaced by Peter Shreeve. Then 2 years later by David Pleat. Spurs nearly won silverware. But they didn’t. And Pleat resigned. Not for losing an FA Cup final and losing Hoddle to Arsène Wenger at Monaco, but something else entirely. Which he denies. Nonetheless, he left. When Welch writes about the revolving door of managers at Spurs under Irving Scholar, and Alan Sugar to come, it all sounds so awfully familiar.
And then came Venables. El Tel’. He took one look around and asked, “Where’s all the players gone?” Still sounding awfully familiar.
Spurs finished 13th.
In 1987, Nicholson had scouted a young man who “has two good feet”, “always wants the ball”, and is “very reckless in [the] tackle”. He nearly went to Manchester United. Spurs broke the transfer record. At £2 million pounds, Spurs had themselves one Paul Gascoigne.
Welch calls Gascoigne, Lineker and Waddle, “the Law, Best and Charlton of the era” with ‘flair, vision and skill’. Surely we could achieve a league title now? Irving sold Waddle to Olympique de Marseille for £2 million.
Funnily enough, that money didn’t go into the squad. Failed commercial deals, and the refurbishment of the East Stand (doubled in cost, of course) and some dodgy dealing, including a secret loan from Robert Maxwell of all people to cover the transfer of Lineker meant that Scholar was “short of money and borrowing on the quiet”.
The secret loan was eventually revealed by The Sunday Times, the share price was suspended, debts were increasing, weekly debt interest was massive. Spurs were nearly going under. And looking to sell Gazza. Who enters stage left? Robert Maxwell again. If Maxwell could step in, Gascoigne could stay, and Irving looked to join forces. Venables was horrified and could only think of one solution; to take over Spurs himself. Welch writes of this era in Spurs’ modern history, and to me it reads like a TV drama, like a soap, a kind of football version of Dallas. Or Howard’s’ Way.
And in the middle of all of this was one of Spurs’ most gifted, and probably one of its most troubled players, Paul Gascoigne. 14 April 1991. Welch recounts that Gazza’s “lunatic gibbering” was even more intense than usual before the Wembley game, that he was barely fit after his operation, but that he entered the game like a torpedo. Five minutes on the clock and a 35-yard free kick “of such ferocity, power and swerving accuracy that David Seaman was left with an armful of nothing”, and Seaman later said it was, “one of the best free kicks I’ve never seen”.
Lineker followed up with a goal but then so did Alan Smith. It was Lineker who came back with a second goal to take Spurs to the final. Gazza was already off the pitch, substituted as his fitness levels dropped.
And Spurs agreed three weeks before the FA Cup final to sell Gascoigne to Lazio. For £7.9 million.
The boardroom shenanigans continued. Philip Green (yes, that Philip Green), telephoned Morris Keston and said he’d got a cheque for a million pounds that he was going to make payable to Irving Scholar for his shares so that Venables could buy him out and if Scholar accepts the deal, Keston would be chairman. Scholar would only accept if the deal could be closed that evening.
Well it couldn’t. It was a cheque. And a chat with the Midland Bank was needed first. Green announced the deal to be dead when Scholar wouldn’t budge. As the deal fell apart, Gazza was signing his contract for Lazio, knowing his sale was a lifeline for Spurs. As Venables wrote, “If Paul Gascoigne was hoping to make a big impact in his last game in a Tottenham shirt, he was not disappointed.”
Who doesn’t know what comes next? Again, in the telling of the game, Welch encapsulates the ‘wired-ness’ of Gazza, how his injury changed the game, its ups and downs. Mabbutt lifting the cup. Gazza’s snapped cruciate ligament in his right knee. Out for a year. Move to Lazio in jeopardy. What future for the club? It really does read like a novel at times.
Who could save Spurs? A man who sold vertical record players of course. Alan Sugar. A Tottenham fan, who didn’t know the Double had ever happened, so busy was he with Amstrad.
Sugar and Venables won out. No need for Maxwell. And Scholar was booted out. As Welch smartly notes, there was a certain symmetry to Scholar’s time at the club; “He took over Spurs as the result of the financial crisis – the West Stand – and left as the result of a financial crisis – the East Stand”. Stadium development. A tricky business.
And as owners come and go, so do managers. Welch notes that there is one player for Tottenham who pretty much measures his career in managers. A man she calls, “a living history of Tottenham Hotspur”. He signed under Burkinshaw in ’82, saw Shreeve come and go (twice), and Pleat, Venables, Clemence/Livermore, Ardiles, Francis, Gross… Whether you regard Sugar as saving the club from financial ruin, or whether the conveyer belt of managers had any merit, one man was there then, and is an ambassador now. Mabbutt. The man who left the pitch forever before the next manager arrived…
“I love winning 1-0”. A man whose tactics bored many a fan. A man with shares in Arsenal. “Soul-destroying Arsenal” as Welch calls them. From Gross to Graham.
In his defence, he did bring in Steffen Freund. Oh, and a League Cup. We’d waited just eight years.
Sugar’s reign was drawing to a close in a season Jimmy Greaves described Spurs as “Wimbledon with fans”. On 18 December 2000, he handed over control of Tottenham Hotspur to an investment company. ENIC.
Welch sees Sugar’s time at the club as a positive; “Tottenham owe Alan Sugar. He snatched the club from the abyss of extinction” she writes, “And from Robert Maxwell, which would, as events proved later, have probably amounted to the same thing.” I’m minded to agree.
Who did ENIC look to, to replace Graham? They looked to the heavens and found God. Hoddle. His skills as a player were undeniable but as a manager, there was a problem. Welch reports King as commenting, “I honestly don’t think we were mentally strong enough under him. We never truly believed we could force our way into the top six”. There were two seasons of disappointing results, but Welch is right, “Hoddle’s majestic talent ensured he would always remain a treasured icon”. And still Spurs were a work in progress.
Pleat popped back in for a bit, then Santini just sort of waved from the dug out and left again.
Martin Jol attended Bill Nicholson’s memorial service, and soon after told shareholders at the Spurs AGM, “I want to be part of history”. I’m not sure he expected it to involve being in the bottom three during the club’s 125thanniversary celebrations, lasagne-gate, or being sacked at half-time during a UEFA cup game.
And whilst Ramos took away the ketchup, he managed a Spurs team that actually won a trophy. It had taken nine years, and Woodgate’s face.
Keane went to Liverpool. Berbatov to Manchester United.
2 points from 8 games. The worst start in 53 years.
Welch writes that Levy wanted “a fighter… someone who has inspiration”.
Redknapp put the ketchup back.
Of all Welch’s chapters, “Taxi for Maicon” stands out. Perhaps because it also meant so much to me at the time. I’d never seen Spurs play at the top level in Europe before. I wasn’t even a glint in my Dad’s eye in 1961. As Welch notes, this was a season in which we beat Arsenal, hammered Wigan 9-1, and ensured a top four spot. Crouch had done it for us. Against Manchester City. With his head. It was rarely the size 12s.
And if that wasn’t enough, the game at the San Siro on 20 October 2010 was a night to remember. Welch quotes Dawson, “I think that night made him, worldwide. It put his name on the big stage”.
Bale.
Goals in minutes 52, 90 and 90+1. Against the greatest right-back in the world. Bale then helped van der Vaart, Crouch and Pavlyuchenko to goals back at the Lane ending Inter’s run.
Welch points out that Crouch rather bookended the Champions League story for Spurs. He headed us in. But in April 2011 at the Bernabeu, he double-yellowed, and Spurs couldn’t hold on. And in what Welch calls “an ironic postscript”, under a month later, Spurs missed out on fourth place as Crouch scored an own goal at the Etihad. Who took that spot? Manchester City.
Spurs nearly managed an FA Cup final but were on the end of a 5-1 semi-final drubbing. By Chelsea. Spurs nearly made the Champions League again. Their fourth spot was usurped. Bayern Munich were beaten on penalties. By Chelsea.
Ledley King left with his knee. Redknapp left with his ‘not guilty’.
AVB arrived. Looked gorgeous. Bale left. 7 players were bought with the Bale money. Only one and a half of them were any good (you work it out). AVB left. Still looked gorgeous.
Some bloke in a gilet stepped in. Apparently, he’s responsible for giving Kane his chance.
On his successor, Welch comments, “[he] really flicked the switch”… Poch had arrived.
And in the final chapter of the biography, Welch sums up;
“Fans who only see a club in terms of titles won and trophies lifted are missing out on something important. People support Spurs and not any other club because the football played is a more life-affirming and intoxicating experience.”
Welch has provided one of The Biography of Tottenham Hotspur by Julie Welch
Tottenham has just beaten Southampton to make into the 5thround of the FA Cup. I enjoyed the last twenty minutes.
Tottenham ‘till I die.
Good point Paul. The reason Levy and Co have had an easy ride is because of the MSM , Gagging Orders , and Clowns like Cowlin on Youtube . Can you Imagine the Monetary Potential of THFC if we actually Won Stuff ? Levy obviously can’t .
Easty, this is a magnificent justification for all that you have been trying to explain to the non-believers. Wonderful stuff for us Romantics, wasted on the New Age Moneymen without soul.
But, it seems that your namesake, the old East End Stand refurbishment was the root cause of the lack of resources for the squad, with costs doubling. From Scholar to Sugar to Enic. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
A beautiful article that makes you fall in love with the club all over again. And then you remember the parasitic owners and our current state of affairs. It isn’t fair.
Same
Fascinating stuff.. Thank you 👌
The other famous Spurs book is “The Glory Game”, by Hunter Davies who followed Spurs for a season in the early seventies, being given almost complete access to a team and management that had never been given before and rarely since.
I want this book