The Unbalanced Fan

As a football fan, I confess to being an optimist, a believer that one day everything will eventually sort itself out. I’m not an eternal optimist mind you, I do recognise faults and flaws, but I believe my balance between pessimism and optimism is just about right.

Football is a game of opinions. You can use stats all you want, but opinions are what define football.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve noticed the varying emotions amongst football fans- ecstasy, misery, annoyance, fury, delight, the lot. Recently though, it seems all of these feelings are becoming overridden by bitterness.

On the surface, everyone seems like a pessimist; every player is a fraud, every player deserves to be sold, every match should be won 5-0. Each large fan base seems to have a negative cloud floating over their heads, and it makes you wonder if they’re being ungrateful or right on the money.

Tottenham Hotspur

I’ll start with my beloved Spurs.

In a season of expected transition, people still find an excuse to bemoan what could be a downward spiral. Back in August, we asked for a respectable league finish (no mention of the top four whatsoever), an improved brand of football, and a good performance in the cups. Mauricio Pochettino claimed in his first interview he wanted to create a team the fans could be proud of- isn’t that what we’ve got?

One week we’re celebrating the team we have, claiming we should fear no side, and the next it’s making us suicidal- I’ve never seen such a bipolar fan base. Satisfaction doesn’t last long at White Hart Lane, despite the expectance of a transitional season.

So what do we do? We scapegoat someone. Earlier in the season, Danny Rose was targeted with abuse and unnecessary cruelty whenever he put a foot wrong, despite proving to be a better left back this year than Ben Davies. Thankfully, half of the fan base has changed their tune and realised playing Rose is far more beneficial, but a lot of his work still goes unrecognised.

After Rose, we come to the biggest scapegoat I’ve ever seen in my time of supporting Spurs- Erik Lamela. Much like our season, we didn’t expect Lamela to break too many waves, but to have a season of transition- reminder, this is technically his first season in England, and it’s following a five month back and thigh injury. But let’s just forget that. Let’s lament every action that doesn’t warrant a price tag that was out of his hands. Let’s rip him to shreds despite the obvious poorer performances elsewhere on the pitch.

This slating of Lamela began back in September, and many people didn’t buy into the idea. However, the idea of criticising the Argentine’s every action has become a popular one, and unfortunately a bandwagon one. People are selling out their own beliefs in order to fit in, seem popular. Instead of doing the right thing and backing our player, they try and fake an opinion on him.

It doesn’t end there either. Against West Ham, Lamela was one of our best players, yet he still drew in more criticism than players such as Mousa Dembele and Ryan Mason (who, for the record, played shamefully). I even saw an instance where someone created a fictional on-field event and slated Lamela for it. Completely fictional. Didn’t exist. Never happened.

It has to stop; even fans of other clubs were recognising how unfair this treatment was. He will improve; Look at the others who have underperformed: Capoue, dropped; Kaboul, dropped; Adebayor, dropped. If Pochettino didn't believe in him, he would have dropped him long ago.

Chelsea

Somehow, somehow, Jose Mourinho has managed to convince an entire fan base that there is a campaign against Chelsea Football Club. It’s extraordinary.

No one will deny that Chelsea should have had more luck in terms of refereeing decisions, but what team doesn’t? We all have decisions go against us, we all have games that seem like nothing will go our way, but that’s football. Mark Noble should have been sent off against Tottenham, Southampton should have had two clear penalties in the opening five minutes vs Liverpool, but I don’t think Mauricio Pochettino or Ronald Koeman will be on Sky Sports tomorrow ranting for twenty minutes about how unfair that was.

Whilst the standard of refereeing in the Premier League is quite poor (and I’ll give credit to Mourinho for bringing this to the media’s attention), there is no campaign against Chelsea. They are simply going through a period that seems like nothing goes their way, but that’s not the case. Many times in the past (believe me, many), Chelsea have been fortunate with crucial decisions. However, you don’t see these being made public by Chelsea fan accounts, do you?

The West London club need to calm down; if they want to blame a possible derailing of a season on refereeing, then Mourinho truly does have every Chelsea fan in the palm of his hand.

Manchester United

Much like Tottenham, Manchester United were expecting a transitional season, but one that would see them qualify for the UEFA Champions League. At the moment, that scenario looks very likely, but it still isn’t pleasing United fans.

Gary Neville wrote this week about how if the owners at Manchester United wanted an attacking brand of football, they would have hired a manager with that philosophy. They didn’t, and United fans need to accept that. Many were expecting the man that had supposedly taught Pep Guardiola at Barcelona- this wasn't quite the reality. The Red Devils in danger of drifting away from the rest of the pack like last year, and the faithful at Old Trafford need to instil more trust into Louis van Gaal. 

The club should finish in the top four and are the favourites to win the FA Cup, and whilst whatever United achieve can't really be considered much of an achievement in this era, it's a huge step forward.

Arsenal

With Arsenal, their fans aren’t so much ungrateful, but rather deluded. This isn't fan bias, it's a clear truth. Whilst I know some sense-seeing Gooners, a lot of their fan base is an embarrassment. Adrian Durham wrote this week how Arsenal fans overrate their own players to compensate for lack of silverware and competing in the big competitions, and I fully agreed with him (despite what I may think of the Talksport presenter).

At Crystal Palace, Olivier Giroud scored his 50^th goal for Arsenal, and giving how much criticism he receives at the Emirates, it’s a great achievement for the Frenchman. But of course, there would be some fans that would ruin such a good record.

It was later revealed that Giroud reached 50 goals for Arsenal quicker than Didier Drogba did at Chelsea, and manager Arsene Wenger compared Giroud’s 50 goals at Arsenal to Robin van Persie’s 48 at Manchester United.

With Drogba’s record, yes, I’ll grant Arsenal fans an excuse to be excited. I will not, however, let them believe Chelsea fans compare Drogba to Henry. Not once have I seen a Chelsea fan compare the two, but Arsenal fans love to claim they have.

With van Persie, I think he’ll take his Premier League title at Old Trafford over his loss in the race to 50 goals, don’t you?

Arsenal’s fan base stinks of an inferiority complex, and the Gooners who don’t talk such nonsense need to make themselves heard.

Do fans need to find the right balance between positivity and negativity, or is that what makes football so interesting?

The Power of Determination

For a number of years, Tottenham Hotspur wasn’t exactly the hotbed of exciting youth prospects. In fact, the only player of great significance to have been produced from our academy in recent times has been Ledley King, and his career was littered with persistent knee problems. In spite of this, King would continually prove to be the much needed rock in our defence when called upon.

In the past few months, one Spurs player has been at the centre of worldwide media attention- Harry Kane. The rise of the academy graduate has been outstanding, and he certainly deserves the praise.

A year ago, Kane was a novelty, a gag in a season full of failures- Many assumed his kicking of the ball into the stands at Old Trafford before subsequently spitting on himself would be the highpoint in Kane’s career. Oh how wrong we were…

At the conclusion of the 13/14 season, Kane had bagged three league goals in lilywhite, and was turning a few heads. It looked as if we would enter the Pochettino era with Kane as a solid third choice striker. Again, how wrong we were.

With 23 goals in 35 games this season, Kane is the subject of global football news. He has scored more goals than any other Premier League player in all competitions, and is the second-highest scoring Englishman in the top flight. An unprecedented, and unexpected windfall.

So how did Kane embark on this rise?

After last season, it was clear Kane was a good poacher and a decent target man, but no one could have foreseen this rise. In addition to building on those attributes, he is now capable of hitting them from distance, with precision, with subtlety. His dribbling, passing, link up play and work rate have all visibly excelled. One particular quality has allowed this growth- his determination.

There’s no way this kind of ability sprung up overnight, and so there’s only one explanation for such a breakthrough. It’s obvious Kane wants to succeed; his desire to fight for every ball and chase down the opposition at every opportunity is just one exhibit of this fact. On the ball, he looks comfortable and confident, and teams are scared of his power.

Kane isn’t just blasting them home against part timers in the Europa League either. He has five goals against Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool so far, and we are still to face Manchester United, Manchester City and Southampton this season.

With Kane’s outrageous rise to the top, it raises the following question: Is a footballer’s greatest trait their determination?

If Kane was the only example of such a rise, then this argument would be flawed, but look at some of the world’s greatest footballers:

Cristiano Ronaldo put in extra hours after training at both Sporting Lisbon and Manchester United to reach the legendary status he’s now achieved; Gareth Bale had to rise from an abyss of averageness to the greatest player in English football in order to earn his dream move to Real Madrid; Luka Modric spent four years under the radar at Tottenham, one year as a scapegoat at Los Blancos, before playing a key part in winning ‘La Decima’; Paul Pogba was overlooked by the greatest manager of all time at Manchester United, but is quickly becoming an elite footballer at the age of 21.

Of course, every good player has a backstory that required them to overcome adversity to reach the soaring heights of the footballing world. Some are still being developed today:

Our own Nabil Bentaleb was released from French third division side USL Dunkerque and rejected by Birmingham City before being snapped up by ourselves. Bentaleb made his professional debut in December 2013, and was part of Algeria’s 2014 World Cup squad.

Following that milestone, Bentaleb has become a pivotal part of Mauricio Pochettino’s system.

Despite still being just 20, Bentaleb has become a leader in the middle of the Park. When he plays, he controls the game with maturity and passion, something that we’ve lacked in the middle of the park for a while.

Again, another outstanding rise. Some of our players, however, could be on the way down that spiral.

Despite a personal good run of form, Mousa Dembele is detrimental to our system. The Belgian slows down our play and is forcing Christian Eriksen to play out wide where he is nowhere near as effectual when playing in the centre. This is essentially a metaphor of Dembele’s career. Whilst he is clearly a talented footballer in some sense, he’s been pushed further away from the opposition goal throughout his career- he was a striker when playing in Belgium and the Netherlands, and arrived at Tottenham as a deep lying midfielder.

Maybe Dembele was never meant to be played so high up the pitch, but his recent performances suggest he is better played in the hole behind the striker. His negative thinking on the field has prevented him from becoming a top bracket player.

Determination is a problem for other players in our side too. During Erik Lamela’s injury in January, we saw the Andros Townsend who hit the footballing scene back in August 2013. However, like his former self, Townsend quickly fell back into his bad habits of keeping his head down, running into nowhere and thinking shooting will solve everything. It’s a shame really, because when Townsend got going he really looked exciting. Hopefully, he’ll keep his head down in another sense and come back an even stronger player.

I leave you with that question once more then: Is a footballer’s greatest trait their determination?