Finally, the moment the half-and-half scarf sellers have been waiting for has arrived.
Tens of thousands of Spurs fans will be wrestling with internal conflict on Tuesday night during their pilgrimage from Seven Sisters station to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium for their team’s final home game of the season against Manchester City. They will be filled with pre-match hope as usual, only this time it will be different: most will be wanting their team to lose.
There will be parties on the streets of north London if Tottenham beat City, but the people dancing will be wearing red shirts, not white ones. That outcome won’t guarantee Arsenal a first Premier League title in 20 years but it would put them in control of their own destiny heading into the final day. If City do falter, an Arsenal win over Everton on Sunday would crown Mikel Arteta’s squad as champions.
There is zero chance that Ange Postecoglou or his players will take their feet off the gas against City to make Arsenal’s life harder. They are professionals who take pride in their work. Cristian Romero hates losing so much he famously two-footed his infant son just to win a 50-50 in his back garden.
Spurs still have a wafer-thin chance of securing Champions League football for next season too if they take maximum points from their final two fixtures and Aston Villa fail to win either of theirs.
“It’s really important to us that we just win both of these games and [then] we can see what is going to happen,” said Micky van de Ven on Saturday after scoring the winner against Burnley.
Beloved as the Dutchman is among Tottenham’s fanbase, there are plenty who disagree with him. Beat Sheffield United next Sunday by all means, just not City in midweek.
“I’d be physically annoyed if we actually won because I can’t think of much worse than Arsenal winning the league. That is my literal worst nightmare,” Billie T, a contributor to the Hometown Glory podcast, tells i.
“I live near way too many Arsenal fans I would consider fleeing the country I think, it would be that bad.
“The Drake and Kendrick [Lamar] thing that’s in the media at the moment has made me realise that it’s hating season and I hate absolutely everything about Arsenal.”
“What’s the number one priority for a football fan? Your own team doing well. What’s the second priority? Your rival doing badly,” says Jonny Blain, a football statistician and host of the An Echo Of Glory podcast.
“Look, I’m not going to be actively cheering any City goal in the stadium but I won’t be fussed if they score, and score and score again!”
Put simply, it is a matter of tribalism. Spurs fans have been pre-conditioned to wish ill on their fiercest rivals and vice versa.
That undercurrent of resentment has contributed towards making the north London derby one of the Premier League’s best and most compelling fixtures.
“I feel like a lot of people think that it’s small time to be wishing any kind of ill on your own club at the expense of your rivals but to me, that’s the whole point of rivalry,” Billie says.
“Arsenal’s failure and Tottenham’s success and Tottenham’s failure and Arsenal’s success are intrinsically linked and always will be. And Arsenal’s failure to win the league would be something that we can latch on to.”
“Football is tribal. I don’t understand any other fan at the moment saying this is a small club mentality,” Blain adds. “Everyone’s got Arsenal fans in their WhatsApp groups. Social media is not ready for Arsenal winning the league.”
It is safe to assume that Spurs supporters are in the minority over their title preferences.
Arsenal are the neutral’s favourites and as captivating as Pep Guardiola’s sky blue winning machine is to watch, they would be unpopular champions given the 115 charges for alleged financial rule-breaking continue to hang over them like a dark cloud.
Legitimate questions over the Premier League’s competitive balance would also be raised if City were to win a record-breaking fourth title and claim a sixth in the last seven seasons.
While some Tottenham fans may feel uncomfortable cheering City on, others have embraced them as their second team for the next week.
Chants of “City till July, I’m City till July, I know I am, I’m sure I am, I’m City till July,” could be heard around the concourses at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Saturday, before Arsenal had even beat Manchester United to go top of the table the following day.
Not all fans are prepared to back against their team, though, regardless of the potentially awkward ramifications that a win over City could have.
“Spurs to win, regardless of the cost elsewhere. It’s all about us, not them,” one fan tweeted in response to a post from i on X (formerly Twitter) asking for input from Spurs fans not supporting City on Tuesday.
“I want us to win every match we play. Otherwise, what’s the point?” said another.
Christian Huseby, a Spurs fan based in Norway, told i that he wants Tottenham to win partly because “the fan rivalry is less intense for those of us not living in the UK”.
“I will be supporting Spurs like normal,” he said. “I don’t see the point of cheering on Man City, of all teams, to win. I view the Arsenal rivalry as a sporting one, not as a malicious hate derby.”
City should win Tuesday’s meeting relatively comfortably based on recent form. Guardiola’s side are currently on a 21-game unbeaten run in the Premier League and have won seven in a row. Spurs, meanwhile, endured four straight losses prior to beating Burnley.
However, City’s record at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium is mystifyingly bad. They have played six matches there, losing five and winning just once, in the FA Cup in January. On the other five occasions, four of which have been in the league, they have failed to score a single goal.
“Have you seen us defend?” Blain asks. “Those wins were under defensive managers when we sat in, countered and won 1-0 or 2-0 in one of them.
“City are going to create so many chances against us and a City team knowing that they are two wins away from winning the title, I think that’s a different beast.”
“There’s some kind of juju that happens over Man City and in the back of my mind, I can so imagine it happening again,” Billie counters. “We beat them with Nuno!
“I don’t know what it is about this game but for some reason, we have a jinx over them and that in itself is a very Tottenham thing that we have a jinx over arguably the best team in the world.
“That scenario is the most Tottenham thing that could possibly happen which is why quite a large part of me thinks that’s the outcome that’s going to happen. That’s why I’m investing so much energy into praying that it doesn’t.”
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/iuUyMV8
Post a Comment