AVB vs. the home support

Parklane Block 34 said:

Don't get me wrong i think we are very boring at the moment and to be honest I don't like it at all.

However AVB has a point. I've seen the atmosphere go down hill in the last 3/4 years. This includes under Harry.

The problem?

The average age of the croud has probably doubled in the last 10 years.

When I go to WHL these days I hardly see any teenagers any more. All I see is grown men of my generation. Mid 30's upwards.

I remember standing with my mates in the Paxton in the early 90's in my early teens singing my heart out along with other teenagers and men in their early 20's. Coming up with new original songs almost every game depending on who we were playing.

This was where the atmosphere was coming from back then even when we were shit and losing. So many time a rendition of of oh tottenham we love you would start if we were losing. This wouldn't happen now.

The croud these days come to the lane and expect to be entertained. And to be fair the amount people spend on ticket him not sure this is wrong.

Football has changed and to be honest I don't think for the best. I really miss the old days.

The answer?

We need to get youngsters back to the Lane

How?

I really don't know

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Thats a good point about the average age. The deeply flawed problem of life time season tickets

i assume season ticket holders are ensured a lifetime if they pay up every year? Im on the queue but always assumed that would be the case.

I liken it to England being better away than at home. The negativity of the crowd every home game will eventually cause more pressure and fear into the players with every passing week. Away from home our fans are fantastic. Out sing most home crowds. That atmosphere transfers to the players (see Cardiff away, West Ham away, Old Trafford away).

It is also to do with teams coming to our ground and setting up defensively. What I hate seeing/hearing is people moaning when we pass it backwards. Some times you have to pass it back to open up more space to use or see a new option come into play. If we just go gun ho, we could get hit on the counter attack and concede. It's how we've conceded so few goals overall.

Gbspurs said:

I remember being excited when I opened my Panini sticker pack and got Dean Austin.

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I grew up in Southend and remember at school telling everyone he would play for England....he then broke his leg and Ossie tried to make him understand how to pass a boy....terrible consequences

Its just a shame our rivals dont come up against teams that try and defend. Why always us?

Whenever i've been to the lane and we've had a bad game you can feel the frustration and anger in the air. There is some psychological thing to it, and whilst not the primary cause of it, the fact that tickets are so expensive, 'food' is dire and expensive it makes the whole thing worse. It feels like the club is fleecing the fans, and it kind of gives and us and them mentality. Not only that, it attracts a different kind of fan, as many traditional passionate fans have been priced out.

I wonder how it would be if they used the Bundesliga as a reference and had cheap entry and cheap/decent catering. If the fans are the 12th man, why not treat them like that instead of just milking them as a captive audience.

It would be less revenue for sure, but i'd be interested to find out much money the gate receipts contribute vs the TV money. Who knows if it would work, but if you make your fans happy and feeling part of it, they might be more supportive when things aren't looking good. That or play some more exciting football

Francis Gibbs said:

Yawn - not going down the better better fan route, but I firmly believe to have the right to criticise you need to have some skin invested in the issue and those of who pay thousands each year, and in my case for 25 years, perhaps have a little more weighty opinion than those who chose to spend their cash elsewhere and chose to watch games on TV especially if they are close to geographically close to WHL

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Good for you...and being a season ticket holder I can do so too....

Those criticisng AVB for repeating the truth are fucking part of the problem with this club, with fucking short memories. Trying to hide behind some fucking faux argument about needing to be entertained is just a load of crap. There was a shit atmosphere when Harry was here and there was a shit atmosphere before Harry (I remember Dean Richards being booed of the park)...and there has been years of shit atmospheres at WHL. It's a fact.

We all know it's been shit, there's been countless threads on here referring to it and the majority agree yet when AVB says it, people get all funny about. It needed to be said.

Blaming it on the bullshit argument that they pay their money and need to be entertained first is just whiney bollox. I saw Palace fans giving 90 mins of die hard support at home the other day against the scum and it made me embarrassed to be a Spurs fan. We haven't even had it good and yet we still demand to be entertained. I hear it all game long from clueless fuckwits who think they know what they're talking about. Young, old, male, female, ST holders, day trippers. The sooner people start looking at themselves as part of the problem the sooner we can get back to the days of being decent supporters. And yeah I put myself in that bracket.

If AVB and the players truly feel its becoming a real problem, how else are they suppose to communicate it?

I accept he's taken a risk in saying it, but I think he's right and it needed to be said it. He'll be hoping it creates a degree of change.

He's spot on.

The atmosphere at the Lane was atrocious today. Hardly any chanting or singing until we'd scored, it seemed like people were on the team's backs from the off. Some of the stuff I heard being spouted, you would've thought we were 4 down.

Teams who aren't confident of beating us will come to the Lane and stop us from playing. Particularly the newly promoted sides,gone are the days of the new boys getting spanked every week. Games like this require patience and persistence, from both the players and the fans.

The quicker our moronic fan base catch on to that the better. Either that or I'm sure we can get Gross, Berti, Tramezanni and the like back?

talkshowhost86 said:

Tell you what...you continue to think that the only reason we're doing well is because of the refs.

I'll continue to see the positives in our best start to a premiership season ever.

And we'll see who enjoys it more.

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Of course it's not just about refs, we've massive squad with loads of talent. Shame we also have coach who seems unable to get much out of that squad, but those few lucky calls and odd pieces of individual brilliance have kept us on decent position so far. Won't last long unless something changes.

BTW have we scored joint least goals from open play at PL? Or is there team with less goals from open play?

Mr Pink said:

If AVB and the players truly feel its becoming a real problem, how else are they suppose to communicate it?

I accept he's taken a risk in saying it, but I think he's right and it needed to be said it. He'll be hoping it creates a degree of change.

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I agree. Get it off his chest now, before we get to the end of the season and our home form costs us 4th.

30 years of season ticket experience....go because you love Spurs, go because it's what you love doing....even at times when your values are being questioned I.e why did we sign Michael Brown?

AVB is completely right. We have truly hit new lows recently with our support (or lack thereof). The way I see it, it boils down to one thing: We are a dominant possession team now. We played a counter attacking style that everyone thought was thrilling, but it meant getting burned a bit at our end of the pitch a fair amount too. Nowadays, we get 60% or more possession and most teams play every man behind the ball and defend. They aren't going to let us go on 70 yd runs and score on the counter. I'm sorry. If that is your idea of exciting football, then just stop watching, because it isn't going to happen.

This is just like all of the people who bang on about Barcelona being so boring. They grind people down. Sometimes it is tough to break through the deep defenses, but the fact that we have conceded 5 (FIVE!) goals in 9 games is not a coincidence. Teams aren't getting chances. That is a sign of a good football team. If you would have rather us drawn 2-2 to see some excitement, then that is your right to do so, but AVB and the players are in the business of winning football games and hopefully trophies soon enough.

To be honest, as the whole StubHub debacle has shown us, a lot of season ticket holders have become spoilt entitled brats.

Funny thing supporters of today are.
We are fickle and we like to moan.

Thats evident on this forum, for starters. But equally evident on any other football teams forum as well.

However, we've not won anything for bloody years, yet the fans expect the team to put in Manchester United of recent seasons, performances in every week.

THen you get to the point of what should a suppoerter do, and what is the benefit of actually playing at home.

Thats the crux of it right there. Regardless of money spent going to a game, we should be there to support the team.

Get behind them. Lift them, create an atmosphere.

If anyone has ever played a sport in front of a large crowd, then they will tell you how much adrenaline they get from the crows, and that can lift a person to perform a good 10% more than what they would do on a normal day.

It's absolutely makes a difference, when I played basketball and there was a big crowd, I swear I used to jump higher and run quicker, just from the adrenaline the crowd helped give me.

Then if you take that, and turn it around - the boo's, the negative comments from the side - that only ever has one result - more pressure on each individual, thus creating a lesser performance.

I don't buy into this I spent £100 to watch, I expect more - simply answer I have for that, is move over and let someone else go then, because you spend that much money to support the team, not to get on their backs and heap even more pressure when the going is getting tough.

The irony of this, is that the fans aren't doing themselves any favours, in the slightest.

I don't know the answer to it, I really don't... and I really understand the frustrations a fan can go through, the desire of success (that we haven't really had for a long, long time), but ultimately this year and with the players we have, we need to paitent.

Personally speaking, I thought we played some really good football actually, yes we were very fortunate to get that kind of penalty, but we took our chance and got 3 points, after a very long flight into Europe on Thursday - I'd have taken that all day long.

wizgell said:

He's spot on.

The atmosphere at the Lane was atrocious today. Hardly any chanting or singing until we'd scored, it seemed like people were on the team's backs from the off. Some of the stuff I heard being spouted, you would've thought we were 4 down.

Teams who aren't confident of beating us will come to the Lane and stop us from playing. Particularly the newly promoted sides,gone are the days of the new boys getting spanked every week. Games like this require patience and persistence, from both the players and the fans.

The quicker our moronic fan base catch on to that the better. Either that or I'm sure we can get Gross, Berti, Tramezanni and the like back?

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They didn't only stop us from playing, they dominated large periods of the first half and created more chances than we did, so don't portray the game to have been a backs to the wall job for Hull where we just couldn't find the breakthrough. We won a game we didn't deserve to win with a penalty which had we been on the other end of, we'd be moaning our arses off.

As for the atmosphere today, I genuinely don't think it was THAT bad. It wasn't good, but wasn't way below the norm at WHL these days. It's been much worse than that. We were hardly going to come out singing our arses off given our last home game was a 3-0 thrashing by those spamming ****s. If anything the burden of response was on the team, not us.

Season ticket holders would be happier with a return of the Final Pleat era Balti Pies...they were dam good.

felmani26 said:

No good can come from criticising the fans - even if he feels justified.

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We fucking criticize him all we want though. If the fans are holding the team back (which they are in my opinion) then he is well within his rights to point out how the supports are doing fuck all to help the cause.

jonathanhotspur said:

I think he's talking out of his arse. This isn't the way to get the fans onside. We're a big club now and he has to shoulder the weight of expectation.

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Bollocks.
Edit - your opinion vs mine, no offence meant, but I would rather the 33,000 lucky so and so's out of our huge fan base that can actually affect the team SUPPORT them when it is needed, for example when we are struggling against a team like Hull.

FinnYid said:

Of course it's not just about refs, we've massive squad with loads of talent. Shame we also have coach who seems unable to get much out of that squad, but those few lucky calls and odd pieces of individual brilliance have kept us on decent position so far. Won't last long unless something changes.

BTW have we scored joint least goals from open play at PL? Or is there team with less goals from open play?

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Alternatively have only one team conceded less than us? There are so may positives too, but too many fans with some strange sense of entitlement, just because we qualified for the Champions league once does not give us the right to be able to roll over teams with Barcelona style football.

FinnYid said:

Of course it's not just about refs, we've massive squad with loads of talent. Shame we also have coach who seems unable to get much out of that squad, but those few lucky calls and odd pieces of individual brilliance have kept us on decent position so far. Won't last long unless something changes.

BTW have we scored joint least goals from open play at PL? Or is there team with less goals from open play?

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Won't last for long?

Didn't AVB take us to 4th last season? With our highest points total in the Prem ever?

And we're 4th now? With our best start to a Prem season ever?

And you still want to say that's all about luck?

Really?

No I mean it...

Really?

Francis Gibbs said:

Yawn - not going down the better better fan route, but I firmly believe to have the right to criticise you need to have some skin invested in the issue and those of who pay thousands each year, and in my case for 25 years, perhaps have a little more weighty opinion than those who chose to spend their cash elsewhere and chose to watch games on TV especially if they are close to geographically close to WHL

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Your opinion is no more valid than anyone else and just because you go to games doesn't change that.

Just because you have invested more in a financial sense to supporting the club doesn't mean you have invested more emotionally than a fan that watches from a distance.

All fans have a right to be critical of the club/players/manager but doing so at the ground during a match whilst the team are attempting to win football matches seem to be the most asinine form of support I have ever heard of.

The only thing a toxic atmosphere at WHL will do is promote the type of performances we have seen at home sporadically over the last 4 or 5 years.