Forgive, forget
How you feeling lads?
Thought I’d blog over here for once and give you a reset for the comments section so you can start afresh with the discussions. Think of it as Nuno replacing Mourinho. New beginnings.
Nice that some of you have joined me over at Patreon. Three different podcasts + video blogs and articles aplenty. But you know that already. The support so far has been pretty fantastic and thanks to a new social media role I’ve bagged, life/work balance is at peak glory right now. Which means daily content through out the season. Ooh.
I might even make appearances over here with regularity. You are all truly spoilt.
Self-promotion aside, what of the football?
What of THFC?
Well, our universe has pretty much been bossed by Harry Kane. Pretty humorous that the narrative has completely shifted from protesting against the club and Daniel Levy. The Kane Brothers have managed to flip it with spectacular own goal qualities. Imagine that, the club and fanbase galvanised by the one person we thought embodied us, but in the reverse way. He has brought us together by taking himself apart. Mental.
Football makes no sense most of the time. I don’t want to really repeat or go over stuff I’ve already produced over on Patreon. In fact, what I want is for you lot to work stuff out in the classical messy way you always do down below.
Here’s the question for this evening…
If Harry Kane stays, do you forgive and forget?
Forgive but never quite forget?
We’re a fickle bunch right? We call other fans hypocrites, take the piss and then pretty much do as they do when something plays out that we dislike. Kane is an icon. A club legend in the making. We can’t surely forgo all the memories? All the moments. The limbs and the scenes. The beauty of a young lad that spat on himself at Old Trafford and ascended to England captain. A kid that went on loan multiple times, was never gonna make it and yet thanks to Tottenham’s often diabolical transfer strategy, took his accidental opportunity and turned himself from clown prince to the King of Kings.
Harry f*cking Kane, ladies and gentlemen.
But it’s still tarnished things, just a little bit, right?
The way the narrative has been clumsily crayoned in the newspapers, from the article published by an entertainment editor (the Kane’s celebrating at Charlie’s wedding; a £160M move to City) to the silence from the Bahamas to the tumbleweed from Tottenham’s social media account and now the comical Telegraph PR piece. It’s a shambles.
Yes, Charlie is over his head. He’s allegedly been replaced with the PR stuff. Could yet be replaced with the agent stuff too. This new PR team are already struggling to influence what the fanbase are thinking with their transparent creative writing. The art of deflection but it’s barely Machiavellian. It’s more McDonalds. Sleazy cheese and plenty of salty chips.
The Telegraph piece is a woeful example of the usual tropes aimed at Levy. The whole rhetoric that Spurs are in a losing position is daft. We either keep the best striker in world football or we take the £160M as compensation. The money train is currently stuck at the station, its destination indefinitely postponed.
We have a weird situation where even Harry’s team mates have grouped under the club’s ‘togetherness’ banner and pretty much blanked Kane, aside from the cryptic memes and digs aimed at him. Although some have been recently supportive by simply being professional with their answers when questioned by the media.
Kane has time to post a pic of himself training alone but no time to congratulate Spurs for their excellent handling (and beating) of the club Harry wants to escape to. He’s protecting his brand but still seems distant from reconnecting with the fans. Properly. Sincerely. I get why. Because if he does and then joins City it will appear fraudulent. But haven’t we already crossed that line?
This is a mess.
Now personally, I would celebrate Kane’s goals if he stayed but I would do so with that caveat of mistrust. See the issue isn’t really Harry. It’s me. Us. We are always going to get hurt by footballers because we bundle so much love their way. Our loyalty is constant and ever present for THFC. But with players, we decide when to be disloyal to them. They are only, mostly, loyal to their career.
Kane - before the disaster he created played out - could have left this club and we (the royal variant) would have continued our disdain towards Levy and the detachment we feel towards the business entity that is the football club. Yet the manner in which Kane - a player often echoing the ‘one of our own sentiments’ - has botched it, leaves me with a bitter taste in my mouth.
I can’t pretend I don’t feel this. Taste it. I want to spit but will probably just end up spitting on myself. Life imitating art limiting life.
So what do you do?
Do you hope City pay up the money the club values Kane at? Why are City dragging their feet? Why is there a suggestion that Levy’s door is shut when we all know it probably isn’t? If City meet the price tag surely that’s the crux of all of this? The Mancs, let’s be honest, are pleading indirect poverty with their actions. No doubt, not trying to brag too hard about how they are battering the FFP (which is practically a mythological tale at this point).
City can afford Kane? Is there doubt? Crispy ankles? A 28 year old edging towards his late years? Younger targets with more longevity, the better targets from next season onwards?
If he stays, I will accept it and move on but still always question how easy it is for players to say something when they are young and hungry (I wanna win the league with my mates!!) compared to when their ego is telling them to activate the cheat mode and jump ship to win things at a canter.
The gentleman’s agreement part of this story is probably the most naïve excuse you could possibly wish to anchor yourself to.
Kane won’t care that the reality is that winning something at City is not comparable to winning something at Spurs. That’s obviously our reality and it’s deeply flawed but we live by our own tribal ethics. But then, we don’t win anything either. Kane - our player - is also responsible, along with all our players, for these failures. A shared responsibility.
I’m accepting of these failures as football isn’t binary. Not with the likes of City and Chelsea doing what they do. Although quite how we haven’t lucked out and won something is pretty much the definition of Tottenham.
Anyways.
What are your thoughts?
Be civil.