Have you ever felt more disconnected?

[Albertbarich]

I understand your frustrations mate, but to me, your anti-enic sentiment is lost on me when you just so blatantly ignore any positive from the last 20 years. Be pissed off with them for now, or for the things they have done that wind you up, but all hyperbolising does is make your points seem a bit petty.

As a fan, the last 20 years have been much, much more enjoyable than the previous. We have seen some incredible players brought in, incredible teams, been entertained throughout the Jol, Redknapp and Poch era's, brought consistent European football without completely breaking the bank, something many others trying to compete with the financially elite teams have tried and failed at doing.

That doesn't excuse them from their shortcomings but I feel any assessment of them requires balance and honesty. I don't subscribe to any good thing that happens to spurs is in spite of them. Credit where credit is due and all that.

We have not just had 'countless humiliations on the pitch' - we have had some more the most memorable moments on the pitch in my lifetime - Taking the sword to Real Madrid, beating other teams in the top 5/6 regularly - smashing teams by 4/5 goals constantly. Have you grown that used to doing that those moments don't count anymore? Your line about the football might ring true the last couple of seasons and during the AVB times but really, the football under ENIC has been consistently much better than anything I can remember.

Since they took over we have been in many semi-finals and quite a few finals too. We even has a couple of seasons where we made a pretty fucking good go of challenging for the league title. There have been more than a few occasions where we have been let down on the pitch in situations that had very little to do with ENIC and maybe those 2/3/4 extra trophies would have changed things in a lot of peoples minds.

Before we hired a 'Mid-table' manager we hired, incorrectly, one of the single most decorated managers in the game which may have been a poor decision but it certainly wasn't cheap or scraping the barrel was it when you consider how else was available at the time. Most peoples favourite manager from the last 20 years was hired as just a mid-table manager too so if you think we have outgrown hiring someone that isn't considered an elite manager then fair enough - I'm personally not too bothered about what manager x or y has done before - it matters what they when they are here.

I'm also not sure who has stripped the wage bill? We let go of Bale this summer, the only significant reduction I believe? We have players on our books making £200,000's a week. In fact, a few seasons ago where people were lamenting that we don't pay our players enough and we will surely lose them all, we stepped up and increased our wage bill quite dramatically to keep 90% of our prime players at the club, to our detriment and now people just complain players are on too much and it's impossible to shift the deadwood. We have the 6th highest wage bill I'm pretty sure is on par with us having the 5th highest revenue - the discrepancy being that Arsenal have less revenue but spend like idiots on wages....

We are in a state of flux right now, trying to find our feet like most teams go through when they have a couple of rocky seasons trying to rebuild. Man U had to go through it, Chelsea, Arsenal has struggled, even Liverpool struggled for a bit during the rogers and the first season of Klopp when we consistently were finishing above them. We have purchased smartly this summer bar a couple of necessary additions which I believe we will continue to make over the next couple of seasons.

So I guess it just brings me back to the actual question of the thread - Have you ever felt more disconnected from the club? It seems as if the last period of ENIC has pushed you to the brink.

I really wish we could quote individual parts as its hard to have a conversation this way.

Your last paragraph is telling. I've long thought that enic don't care about the football. But it can ( and this is my balance here) be a marriage of compromise. They want to bulk up the investment to sell, we want a successful football team and these two things can go hand in hand. They're clever people who act far more thoughtfully than the arsenal and West ham owners. And you said this latest situation has taken me to the brink. Well yes and no.

I think Lewis and Levy are are purely for the money. I dont like them, dont want them and think levy as a FOOTBALL chairman is an idiot by and large but when it works there isn't much I can say it there? Under poch we were great for most of it. You could argue it was despite of Levy but we were so what's the point in moaning? I enjoyed having poch here and a great team. Since then though from not backing poch, to appointing the poison that was mourinho and then not backing him to the degree he wanted which of course just caused more issues and then the summer was genuinely indefensible. From the bullshit speech to the chase it was awful and now we have nuno. Someone nobody wanted, including the club and yes a mid table manager.

One that by the way I'm pretty supportive of, he is clearly a good coach but levys actions from the speech to the chase to leaving him really short squad wise has given the poor guy such an uphill task as we have a fanbase ready to explode .

After a few years in the champions league, a final , competing for titles and now that the stadium is done you would think we would have moved on but the club haven't have they.

We don't compete for the best players, for some reason don't think we need more than one striker, have the lowest wage to turnover in the league and look a million miles off competing. That's not good enough is it?

20 years , always an excuse, never a trophy. People on twitter are arguing about the fight tomorrow but I see why folks are negative about it. They can boast about the events all they want, I've given up believing they will ever seriously invest in the reason that they should be here for - the team.

I enjoy the debate and I enjoy watching the team but I care less and less about it every year. Football should be about your tribe, your community if you will not defending greedy billionaire's using us to build entertainment complexes

 

[BringBack_leGin]

Dunno whats up with me...I'm not bothered by rants or vents in the match thread . Surely we've heard all this stuff in life loads of times.
I'm not convinced that the players read our match threads...there is negative venting yes , but its the same in the stadium (which may affect a player) and has been going since footie started I expect .
Anyone who plays for Spurs is by definition hugely successful . Its easy to feel sorry for poor old Winksy when reading SC posts , but I expect in real life he'd rather stay playing footie and accept these unseen knocks... than give it up for an ordinary job.

Mebbe i'm desensitised after a life around foul mouthed ne'er do wells..

Obviously what we say in here had no effect on the players confidence or mental well-being, but it does affect the atmosphere of this site. I’m not sure there’s one player at the club right now… maybe Gil, who doesn’t have a hoard of posters gleefully rubbing their hands as they await the next mistake they can lamest him for. It’s not the players I feel sorry for, it’s Spurscommunity, especially the vast majority of the site who have this place as their main vehicle to discuss Spurs.

 

[Trojan]

I couldn’t agree more regarding the match day threads, as I said in a previous post I’ve lurked this site for over a decade and use to use those threads as an insight into what was happening on the pitch if I couldn’t watch or listen on a radio, I don’t bother these days because I’m none the wiser.

I grew up watching Spurs in the early 60’s, it was their style, flair and desire to have a go that kept me entertained, even through the lean years of the mid seventies etc we still tried to play with passion even if we didn’t have a good team or any outstanding players, I can remember standing on the terraces of the old Baseball Ground, home of Derby County where we were burning match day programmes (they were in newspaper format) to keep warm, cheering the team on while Derby scored their third.

We don’t seem to have any of that anymore, I know that many will disagree but I don’t even think it was the same with Poch in charge when things weren’t going our way most of the time and it certainly hasn’t been since.

The only thing I blame Enic for with this is Levy’s managerial choice , if I want to rant about Enic I’ll take it to the appropriate thread.

I want my Tottenham back.

 

[Gilzeanking]

Obviously what we say in here had no effect on the players confidence or mental well-being, but it does affect the atmosphere of this site. I’m not sure there’s one player at the club right now… maybe Gil, who doesn’t have a hoard of posters gleefully rubbing their hands as they await the next mistake they can lamest him for. It’s not the players I feel sorry for, it’s Spurscommunity, especially the vast majority of the site who have this place as their main vehicle to discuss Spurs.

I don't think people are making up their negativity , they genuinely feel it . My main vehicle for discussing Spurs is this site and it may surprise me that people express negativity sometimes , but it doesn't upset me...I just scroll past posts I don't want to read .

Again I'm obviously missing something that upsets a set of SC ers . The one thing that does occasionally put my teeth on edge is attacks on other SC ers based on their opinions (usually too negative) To me this often shows a desire to censor opinions differing from their own .SC ers attacking other SC ers , now that is truly shit imo...I scroll past .

Dunno, someone says 'Winksy is shit' , yes its a dumb remark but people are dumb sometimes . Why does this upset so many...Enic are shit Kanes a ****....whatever. Dumb stuff yes , but I scroll past it...it is someone's inarticulate but genuine opinion.
If people have an agenda against a player and always review him on that basis its dumb...but people are dumb..even me ! and this is going to show up on a public forum like this .

Mebbe there's a tad more negativity , but for 3 years we have been in steep decline , this always upsets people and is no surprise imo . Sad that we are so reduced as a team , but after 50 years am I suddenly 'disconnected ' from my club ?

No Chance .

 

[BringBack_leGin]

I don't think people are making up their negativity , they genuinely feel it . My main vehicle for discussing Spurs is this site and it may surprise me that people express negativity sometimes , but it doesn't upset me...I just scroll past posts I don't want to read .

Again I'm obviously missing something that upsets a set of SC ers . The one thing that does occasionally put my teeth on edge is attacks on other SC ers based on their opinions (usually too negative) To me this often shows a desire to censor opinions differing from their own .SC ers attacking other SC ers , now that is truly shit imo...I scroll past .

Dunno, someone says 'Winksy is shit' , yes its a dumb remark but people are dumb sometimes . Why does this upset so many...Enic are shit Kanes a ****....whatever. Dumb stuff yes , but I scroll past it...it is someone's inarticulate but genuine opinion.
If people have an agenda against a player and always review him on that basis its dumb...but people are dumb..even me ! and this is going to show up on a public forum like this .

Mebbe there's a tad more negativity , but for 3 years we have been in steep decline , this always upsets people and is no surprise imo . Sad that we are so reduced as a team , but after 50 years am I suddenly 'disconnected ' from my club ?

No Chance .

I do understand your point, and I agree that I doing feel disconnected with the club at all, but I think we’re perhaps different in quite what subject we’re discussing.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and I don’t overly disagree that ‘Winks is shit’ or ‘Enic are running the club badly’. It’s the level of attack though.

Maybe I’m just a bit soft, or maybe I need to disassociate this pace from the ground where it is actually shitty to get on players backs constantly (the old man in front of me does nothing but attack our players all game long… v Watford Skipp made an unadventurous pass on the second half and received one of the most expletive ridden tirades I’ve heard I’m any context).

I’m certainly not trying to censor any opinions, I just think this site would benefit from less reactivity and a bit more of a constructive criticism mindset.

 

[Gilzeanking]

Yes , I remember at a Spurs match where my mate was negging the team out loud and I had to shut him down as it was affecting others watching the match round us . Now this I can understand as a bad thing .

I'm not talking about at the match (just online) and no its not that you are too sensitive or that I'm not sensitive enough , both our sensitivities are valid , its just we differ .

Getting back OT about disconnecting from the club . I can't help wondering if our steep decline is not behind this . Would there be so much disconnection if we were winning and challenging ? Can't help the feeling that there is an element of fairweather fan in this . Win and I'm enthusiastic , lose and I 'disconnect' behaviour .

 

[BringBack_leGin]

Win and I'm enthusiastic , lose and I 'disconnect' behaviour .

I’d say more than an element of this.

 

[PLTuck]

I'm wondering if the feeling of disconnectedness comes from the rise in expectation.

We have played shit, boring, unimaginative, poor football plenty of times during my 40 years of supporting spurs but it feels like because we got to a CL final and competed for a while the expectation has created a greater sense of disappointment.

There is no longer joy in supporting spurs for some, through the bad times, giving some patience longer than 6 weeks into a season to write us off completely. Instant gratification is needed and even when we do win and play well doing so, this site becomes a relative ghost town.

The Nuno thread after Chelsea and the Nuno thread after Wolves confirms this. Some people aren't happy unless they are moaning about something. If we win playing good football they have nothing to moan about re the match or nuno so they go to the ENIC thread instead to declare that we won't be winning anything while Levy is in charge, for the 143,627th time.

 

[Archibald&Crooks]

Getting back OT about disconnecting from the club . I can't help wondering if our steep decline is not behind this . Would there be so much disconnection if we were winning and challenging ? Can't help the feeling that there is an element of fairweather fan in this . Win and I'm enthusiastic , lose and I 'disconnect' behaviour .

I think there's always an element of this fairweather fan thing but then again you have to allow for people who genuinely can't see any structure, plan or even effort from our owners to progress on the pitch. People have all sorts of reasons for how they feel but yeah, there are some who give that impression.

 

[Rout-Ledge]

Harsh to level the ‘fairthweather’ accusation at fans who are still dutifully following the team every match and spending their time on here posting about them. Feeling disconnected and negative about the club is not the same as only caring when things are going well. I care now, I just feel negative.

 

[Gilzeanking]

Harsh to level the ‘fairthweather’ accusation at fans who are still dutifully following the team every match and spending their time on here posting about them. Feeling disconnected and negative about the club is not the same as only caring when things are going well. I care now, I just feel negative.

Ahh you feel disconnected , but didn't disconnect . Thats different..

 

[chavkev]

I would say that at present Spurs are not in a state of flux, we are in a state of as yet unarrested decline.

 

[yankspurs]

TBF the tone of the match thread has been like it is now for a long time, even when we weren't doing very well you had the same type of comments, usually massively over the top vitriolic abuse which actually quite often bears little or no relation to what's actually going on in the game. It gets written off a venting or 'passion' but I don't believe that for one minute, not really. Maybe on the odd occasion but it just takes a misplaced pass for a player to be called a **** or worse. Like I said, occasionally yeah, but it's not, it's the same people week in, week out and they know full well how it gets received, it isn't passion, it isn't venting, it's a lack of the will to curb it, not caring how it's received or the atmosphere it creates within the match thread. There's way of getting how you feel across without going too far. And you're right, we know how people feel about Winks, or Dele, every match thread someone moans about the commentators (so turn the sound off) it just becomes a weekly repetition of the same things, offered up at different stages of the game. It wouldn't surprise me if some people actually only watched to defend a previously taken position on a player.

To get rid of those who habitually go too far would take a "painful rebuild", it's just not happening although we do try to weed out the more obvious trolls, I guess it isn't enough I can see it on TFC now. "I was banned for calling Winks a ****"

I fully expect people to disagree about the venting thing, that's fine, I just genuinely feel that as mature adults, we should and can wind it in a bit. A lot actually, but i'll go with a bit as a starting point.

Being fair, Winks is a ****. Bad player & the way he comes across in the clubs media content is mind blowing. Just stunningly arrogant. Makes me question if he gets along with the squad

 

[yankspurs]

I don't think people are making up their negativity , they genuinely feel it . My main vehicle for discussing Spurs is this site and it may surprise me that people express negativity sometimes , but it doesn't upset me...I just scroll past posts I don't want to read .

Again I'm obviously missing something that upsets a set of SC ers . The one thing that does occasionally put my teeth on edge is attacks on other SC ers based on their opinions (usually too negative) To me this often shows a desire to censor opinions differing from their own .SC ers attacking other SC ers , now that is truly shit imo...I scroll past .

Dunno, someone says 'Winksy is shit' , yes its a dumb remark but people are dumb sometimes . Why does this upset so many...Enic are shit Kanes a ****....whatever. Dumb stuff yes , but I scroll past it...it is someone's inarticulate but genuine opinion.
If people have an agenda against a player and always review him on that basis its dumb...but people are dumb..even me ! and this is going to show up on a public forum like this .

Mebbe there's a tad more negativity , but for 3 years we have been in steep decline , this always upsets people and is no surprise imo . Sad that we are so reduced as a team , but after 50 years am I suddenly 'disconnected ' from my club ?

No Chance .

Just @ me next time

 

[PLTuck]

When I see Dele and others on the touchline jumping up and down during our penalties I feel connected.
When I see training videos that include Dele, Kane, Gil, NDom all having fun while doing first touch drills I feel connected.
When PEH does a fist pump after he's just crunched into a dangerous attacker on the counter I feel connected.
When Son does pretty much anything while smiling I feel connected.
When Dier, Sanchez and Dele are playing well after a rough couple of seasons for them all I feel connected.

When I think about cashflow, revenue, balance sheets, ENIC in general I feel disconnected.
When I go to certain threads and see some of the OTT shit that you get from a vocal minority I feel disconncted. I'm sure many others feel the same. That's why Spurs Chat is a relative ghost town when we are doing well. And places like Chat and D&D get more traffic, from long timers anyway.

 

[rez9000]

I would venture to guess that a large part of the disconnect and the negativity has its roots in a lack of hope.

Our hope as Spurs fans has been dashed so often, many times as a direct result of the club's leadership's actions, that there is nothing to stave off the negativity.

I think of the club and I see no direction, no long-term aim that fits with the reasons for supporting a football club in the first place, coupled with the fact that those reasons are all irrational.

There is absolutely no rational reason for supporting a particular football club. We each support Spurs for our own very emotional reason. That's not to say they're bad reasons - only that they aren't rational ones. Nobody sits down and does a strict logical analysis before deciding on their club. It's always something like, 'the family supports Spurs' or 'I happened to tune in and see them play and fell in love', or, in my instance, because a member of my family liked the sound of the name of the club when they emigrated to the UK back in the 70s and I picked up my support from them.

It's unreasonable to expect rational behaviour when the premise under which people engage is itself, entirely irrational. Can people be less abusive? Yes. Should people be less abusive? Yes. Should people be expected to remain positive just to respect the specific sensibilities of those who don't like negativity? In an ideal world, yes, of course. But then that also has concomitant requirement that those who don't like negativity should also respect the sensibilities of those who are feeling negativity and not pass judgement, however tacitly that may be.

This idea that the matchday thread is some horror-filled gauntlet that will ruin your day because your eyeballs happened to brush across a post you didn't like is ridiculous. What do you want - a trigger warning? It's just words. Some of them will annoy you, some of them will warm you. But ultimately it falls on you to decide what it does to you, not the person who posted it. If you don't like it, you are free to move on - you don't have to react.

There are things that are going on with the club that are upsetting. Some of us will be feeling a lack of hope, and a feeling of hopes dashed yet again. For some, both inside this forum and in the non-virtual world, there seems no light at the end of the tunnel. That's what angers me, that's what exercises me. Maybe instead of criticising those who are feeling hopeless about the club, a measure of fucking sympathy wouldn't go amiss...

But hey, what do I know?

 

[JUSTINSIGNAL]

Yes is the short answer.

I still have hope. And hope is all you can hang on to as a supported. How connected I am is not reliant on Levy signing my favourite player, net spend, the ESL, how many trophies we may or not win under the current ownership etc... I am realistic about where we are in the food chain and accept that we are a self-sustaining business so will never be battling it out to spend big money with lottery winners Chelsea and Man City.

Right now the things that give me hope and make me feel connected to the club are:

• Seeing how a number of new signings and young players develop over the season. Skipp, Emerson, Romero, Scarlettt, Gil all excite me in different ways and watching how they develop and what impact they might have give me cause for optimism.
• Watching how our established and talented players settle under a new coach - Kane, Son, Ndombele, Dier, Moura, Bergwijn, Alli have all been given slightly different roles this season and it's exciting to see how they perform.
• Seeing how Nuno develops as a coach and evolves the team to play a more attacking and progressive style of football - this already seems to be happening on the evidence of the last couple of performances.
• And long term, seeing if the money generated by our shiny new stadium gives us an advantage over our current rivals - Leicester, Arsenal, West Ham, Everton, Aston Villa

There really are only a few clubs that should feel entitled to success due to their obscene spending power - and we're clearly not one of them. I'm happy to just strap in for the ride and hope everything just clicks and we head in the right direction.

 

[shelfboy68]

Yes is the short answer.

I still have hope. And hope is all you can hang on to as a supported. How connected I am is not reliant on Levy signing my favourite player, net spend, the ESL, how many trophies we may or not win under the current ownership etc... I am realistic about where we are in the food chain and accept that we are a self-sustaining business so will never be battling it out to spend big money with lottery winners Chelsea and Man City.

Right now the things that give me hope and make me feel connected to the club are:

• Seeing how a number of new signings and young players develop over the season. Skipp, Emerson, Romero, Scarlettt, Gil all excite me in different ways and watching how they develop and what impact they might have give me cause for optimism.
• Watching how our established and talented players settle under a new coach - Kane, Son, Ndombele, Dier, Moura, Bergwijn, Alli have all been given slightly different roles this season and it's exciting to see how they perform.
• Seeing how Nuno develops as a coach and evolves the team to play a more attacking and progressive style of football - this already seems to be happening on the evidence of the last couple of performances.
• And long term, seeing if the money generated by our shiny new stadium gives us an advantage over our current rivals - Leicester, Arsenal, West Ham, Everton, Aston Villa

There really are only a few clubs that should feel entitled to success due to their obscene spending power - and we're clearly not one of them. I'm happy to just strap in for the ride and hope everything just clicks and we head in the right direction.

Wow what a wishy-washy post hope being the only assertive word used no competitive bone in your body very strange, I would suggest that you take up an interest in a sports day at a local convent where nobody loses.

 

[Albertbarich]

No matter what side of the debate you're on surely today were all connected?

Lets smash the scum!

 

[dudu]

I would venture to guess that a large part of the disconnect and the negativity has its roots in a lack of hope.

Our hope as Spurs fans has been dashed so often, many times as a direct result of the club's leadership's actions, that there is nothing to stave off the negativity.

I think of the club and I see no direction, no long-term aim that fits with the reasons for supporting a football club in the first place, coupled with the fact that those reasons are all irrational.

There is absolutely no rational reason for supporting a particular football club. We each support Spurs for our own very emotional reason. That's not to say they're bad reasons - only that they aren't rational ones. Nobody sits down and does a strict logical analysis before deciding on their club. It's always something like, 'the family supports Spurs' or 'I happened to tune in and see them play and fell in love', or, in my instance, because a member of my family liked the sound of the name of the club when they emigrated to the UK back in the 70s and I picked up my support from them.

It's unreasonable to expect rational behaviour when the premise under which people engage is itself, entirely irrational. Can people be less abusive? Yes. Should people be less abusive? Yes. Should people be expected to remain positive just to respect the specific sensibilities of those who don't like negativity? In an ideal world, yes, of course. But then that also has concomitant requirement that those who don't like negativity should also respect the sensibilities of those who are feeling negativity and not pass judgement, however tacitly that may be.

This idea that the matchday thread is some horror-filled gauntlet that will ruin your day because your eyeballs happened to brush across a post you didn't like is ridiculous. What do you want - a trigger warning? It's just words. Some of them will annoy you, some of them will warm you. But ultimately it falls on you to decide what it does to you, not the person who posted it. If you don't like it, you are free to move on - you don't have to react.

There are things that are going on with the club that are upsetting. Some of us will be feeling a lack of hope, and a feeling of hopes dashed yet again. For some, both inside this forum and in the non-virtual world, there seems no light at the end of the tunnel. That's what angers me, that's what exercises me. Maybe instead of criticising those who are feeling hopeless about the club, a measure of fucking sympathy wouldn't go amiss...

But hey, what do I know?

I do not agree that you cannot expect people to be rational just because they support a team for any number of random reasons. I know plenty of people that are rational football supporters.

What other 'irrational' choice people have made in life is it fine to just act irrationally about?