So having lost the rugby on Saturday, all our hopes were on Sunday’s football. Yours, mine, everyone’s. In particular on the massive match-up between Spurs and Burnley. The game everyone was talking about. In my house. And Lila’s. Even little Joey now will respond to ‘COME ON YOU…’ with a little ‘Spu-urs’. He knows not what it means, nor does he care. But, as in all forms of operant conditioning, he knows that if  he says it correctly he gets a Mars bar and an ice lolly, and if he doesn’t, he gets a slap and goes to bed with no supper. What is known as ‘tough love’. We all have to learn right from wrong. 

And the Burnley game wasn’t ‘big’ in the normal sense of being important for the league, or solidifying a position or anything like that. It was just BIG. Because all Spurs games are BIG. Especially as the only team we’ve beaten of late have been the hapless Austrians of Wolfsberger. And beaten them big. Twice. But you know about flattery and deception, right? So the ‘Gareth Bale and Dele Alli  show’ needed to be proven workable against… better opposition. Against… English people. Well, foreign people but English teams. Just different foreign people. Better ones. Bacially we needed to win something, against someone, and do it properly. 

I’m not sure Burnley could actually be  described as ‘properly’, no more than the banged up Leicester side who had lost to Arsenal just minutes before the ‘big game’ kicked off. And let’s face it, Arsenal winning is never going to put any real football fan in the best of spirits, is it? But it was Burnley who came, so that’s who we played. Its the rules. And we played brilliantly. Not perfectly, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that Gareth Bale played like he used to. Like we wanted him to. Like he can. With a smile on his face, an absent crowd who adore him and in the bosom of his only true ‘family’.  And tagging Gareth Bale alongside Harry Kane and smiling Sonny, with Lucas Moura flitting round and Tanguay Ndombele opening up the spaces was just awesome. Ok, we couldn’t put that team against Manchester City, but thank fuck that’s not who we played. 

3 points, big win, Gareth Bale, vaccinations. Life is looking up. 

Happy Monday

A xxxx