Drunk on train
A guest blog from Chris King. Find him on Twitter @NorthernWrites.
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Privilege. It tends to be a white thing.
A lillywhite thing?
Today I made a rare visit to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. For most of that time I sat in awe and wonderment. How has my club built this Mecca? This glorious home to adulthood.
For the rest of the time, I sat down wind of a noise bag. A mouth piece. A Tottenham fan of yore.
Look, there's no disputing that we were crap today. Bossed on our own pitch, by a team chasing around a lower league less than six months ago.
But that doesn't give us an excuse to sit there - in our much heralded stadium - and call in to question every wayward shot, pass and effort of the players that were heroes in Amsterdam and Manchester last season. Something isn't right, but it isn't all wrong.
Get frustrated yes, but find a way out of that frustration before it becomes poisonous. Terminal!
As the ball hit the back of the net for Son's opener, where grown men were hugging near strangers - the mouthpiece found reason to vent. To moan. To call out the team for not scoring more than one goal at a time.
Does anyone know what the dictionary definition of what a supporter is?
So I called him out. The lad who was throwing more C words around than pornhub. Is that it? Is that all he does? Moan?
His response, and that of another lad behind him, was simple. "I pay for my season ticket and it gives me the right to moan!"
No. Absolutely not. It does not. Your season ticket gives you a seat. To believe, to cheer, to support - to dream that Poch and the lads return to the pinnacle of European football once more. It doesn't give you a misguided privilege to sit there and slag your team off.
Some of us may be new faces to you, but life and circumstances dictate we don't have the opportunities you have. Distance, family and life force a wedge between us. But we have been there. Holding season tickets in the Shelf or the Park Lane Upper.
So forgive us when we question your tiresome diatribe aimed at our under-performing players.
They're not out there misplacing passes intentionally, and to be honest - given the state of them and the innuendo/accusations of the club - they need all of the support they can get. Not 90 minutes of tiresome dross.
Which, let's really call it out - wasn't 90 minutes. Mouthpiece. Windbag. Personification of every WhatsApp group or Twitter thread of what has gone wrong with Spurs - didn't even bother to stay to the end. If you can dish it out, suffer it like the rest of us.
Having a season ticket means things are going well for you. That life is pretty good. So why don't you sit in that privileged seat of yours and give it a rest - and channel that negative energy into something a bit more positive.
This is the very best a lot of our fanbase have had. Let's remember that before you call out another misplaced pass as if it is keeping you from being somewhere far more important - like an empty train carriage as you head home early.