I should be used to it by now. In 1962 I was 6 years old and have my first memories from then of football scores and results. Its blurry, but its there. I’d missed, by just one year, our ‘glory season’, winning the league and cup ‘double’. I was alive for it, just not aware. My footballingness had not yet been awakened. So for the last 56 years I’ve just been treading water really, waiting for the good times to return. Which is a bit unfair, a bit ‘stark’, and is not really how it works.

Because ‘good times’ can be good matches. Can be great results. Can be just one spectacular 42 second spell in a game of nothing in a season of shit. You take the good bits where you can. Its what keeps you going. I think. Football is not, generally, a high scoring affair. Its not like basketball. You work hard for a goal and then wait (sometimes foreverrrr) for another. And great goals are memorable. Particularly when scored by your team. Or, as is the case at the moment, against your team. You try to forget them, you want to forget them but your internal Match of the Day facility keeps re-playing them. And we seem to be shipping ’em in wholesale at the moment.

We beat Liverpool 4-1 at Wembley 5 weeks ago. And thought, ahhhh, the Wembley curse has lifted. We can play here, we can win here, against good opposition, and the world is rosy and shiny once more. Since then we’ve managed to amass 4 points from the following 6 matches. A 1-0 win against bottom-placed Crystal Palace was our only win. A point from Saturday’s West Brom game, the rest all lost. Ok, we managed to thrash Real fucking Madrid in between all that and get a remarkable away win at Dortmund, but domestic form? Oyyyyy.

We seem to start every game 2-0 down. That is; by the time I’ve checked the score we’re losing by 2. Other than the West Ham game in which we were winning by 2 and still managed to lose. That was worse.

And I know that there are people out there, real people, who support Brentford Town and Hartlepool and Luton and Arsenal, people who never see glory, wouldn’t know it if it bit them, who just go, just follow, just passionately support their no-hope teams. And they’d laugh at the arrogance of ‘bit team fans’ for having expectations to which their own teams will never aspire.

But it is what it is. I’m a Spurs fan. I do have expectations. I have, stupidly, hopes. And when it all goes to shit, it hurts.

Happy (phah!) Wednesday

A xxxx