I survived the gross Francis Graham years and still didn't go. Love this team but Wembley is so dispiriting. We need to get back home ASAP and we need clear communication from the club on what is actually happening.
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Exceptional circumstances. People are just fed up.
And we regularly struggled to get 30k at WHL for Europa League matches.
I’m more interested to see how many we get for Dortmund. Big CL game. That should sell out.
I appreciate what you are trying to say, but it’s worth looking at some historical data to appraise if the attendance is worth being angry about. For example, 12/10/1984 we beat Liverpool @ home and less people were at WHL that night than attended Wembley against Watford.
Same season we had less than 18,000 at home to Coventry and less than 17,000 at home to Sheffield Wednesday. Both of those clubs - especially back then - were bigger than Watford are now and yet that era is considered amougst our finest periods.
Moving a bit further forward, you can in fairness only find rare league games were there are significant attendances under 30,000. For example August 99 v Newcastle was around 28,000. I have not checked the Hoddle era, but I seem to personally recall quite a lot of games with empty seats back then, that could well have been people walking out in utter disgust !
If we head over into the Cups the story is much more mixed. 23000 at home to Besiktas in 2014 is an example of a big game with poor attendance. I suspect the league cup presents some even more damming attendances, so what can be called “fair weather” fans has always been there....
The point behind the stats is that “success” is not the driving factor. Something else is usually behind the attendances. But make no mistake Spurs won’t be suffering, they would work out to the penny what = profit.
That’s why they are not following the Wet Ham model of cheap tickets to fill a stadium (generally) I’d bet that Spurs with 30,000 at Wembley earn as much as 60,000 at Waste Ham do.
Myself, I have been a season ticket holder ( including this year at NWHL ) for a long long time. This season I have decided to pick and choose what I do, partly down to the Wembley factor, partly due to the ENIC factor.
I went to the new stadium last Summer and it was being openly said then that the build could be 6 months behind.
And I feel ENIC should never ever have taken ticket money when the stadium was not going to be done on time. Ironically I suspect I’d have been fine to pay for another full season at Wembley, if that was what was sold to me. But the dishonest way it was all done brings shame on the club and I don’t really like dancing to their tunes.
It is them I see as pathetic not my fellow fans, many of whom, like me probably wonder how on earth we find the 1000’s of £ every year to go to games.
It’s a shame to feel anger towards the club when we are doing well and I suspect there is a lot of supporters who don’t agree with me. However, some will feel like me hence the drop off in some ( not all ) games.
Fantastically informative and knowledgeable post.
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Midweek, threat of snow, loads of matches in a row. (Nice rhyme!)
And against Watford. I’m sure if it was against any of our rivals or challengers then it’d have been a different story.
Honestly, I was thinking on Wednesday that going to watch Spurs in Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Serbia etc in the EL was a joy, and that those unattractive midweek fixtures at Wembley in the freezing cold require more dedication (I can't think of a less attractive fixture we've recently played than Barnsley at Wembley in the league cup last year). In the event I actually had a great time at the Watford game which was a nice surprise.
It is all to do with season ticket holders. I can recall a time when after a bad result we had a home league match against Blackpool and only 19000 turned up. Not sure what year or why I remember it. In those days most fans just turned up on the day and paid at the gate. However with reduced capacity and more season ticket holders for many years it was rare for league matches to have low attendances. With the refund system in place effectively season ticket holders can pick and choose whether they go or have a refund. Weather, poor atmosphere etc at Wembley adds to this. It will not happen once we are back at WHL other than matches that season ticket holders have to pay extra for. Looks like less availability for Newcastle as weekend but still lots of seats available.
Not sure if anyone else caught it the other day but there was an interview with Chris Ramsey, now at QPR talking about his time at Tottenham and that when he was there the club had a 12 year plan.
Anyone else catch that?
Anyone else catch that?
Leaked email shows Spurs chairman Levy ‘hated’ idea of £30 cap on away tickets
He may have been good for the club but as a man he's still a wanker IMO. Feel free to flood me with disagrees, this and Stratford show he's not proper Tottenham.
He may have been good for the club but as a man he's still a wanker IMO. Feel free to flood me with disagrees, this and Stratford show he's not proper Tottenham.
Yet, he's done more for this club than you or I will ever do.
Weird what proper Tottenham is.
I also read somewhere that one of the issues the club highlighted was the away loyalty points people could stack up by getting tickets so cheap only to flog them at a higher price on social media etc. Apparently the club have reason to believe a fair few buy away tickets and flog them at a profit and have been well aware of this and believe that low ticket prices will just encourage them to continue buying at less financial risk should they not get sold, getting the loyalty points and even make a profit out of the gesture etc. Not sure if this is accurate or not
palmers_green_yid
but it made for interesting readingEdit, it's probably just an excuse but from a clubs standpoint why should a supporter be making £60-£90 a pop when the club makes only £30 etc. As I said it could be bull, it's probably something a little in between both the club wanting bigger set prices and to prevent extortionate fleecing from so called supporters
Makes sense.I also read somewhere that one of the issues the club highlighted was the away loyalty points people could stack up by getting tickets so cheap only to flog them at a higher price on social media etc. Apparently the club have reason to believe a fair few buy away tickets and flog them at a profit and have been well aware of this and believe that low tickets will just encourage them to continue buying, getting the loyalty points and even make a profit out of the gesture etc. Not sure if this is accurate or not
I know for certain a number of our away support do just that.
Whether that's in our thinking is another thing all together.
If think the main thing I found interesting when reading that is how two sides of a story can form such drastic feelings about the powers that be.
One things for sure though, £30 away tickets will definitely get sold at a higher price and that coiciding with the price those actually attending pay means the club miss out on two fronts. I can definitely see why the club would think it's a bad idea if that email leak is in fact a real one
I'd be more inclined to follow that mob up the road's lead.
All domestic cup games a tenner until the Semi.
I don't want him out or anything, I know other chairmen are mostly cut from the same cloth and don't care about the fans either, it just angers me how someone who pays himself a ludicrous salary is quibbling over what is, relatively speaking, a tiny amount of revenue, which to the fans is hugely significant. It wouldn't have hurt him or the club to make a small gesture- the chairmen of the non elite clubs, were happy to- but he shows that he doesn't give a fuck about us. As someone who has followed Spurs as intensely as I have that hurts. That's all. Levy is more than happy to replace my money with that of a tourist, as long as it would help the balance sheet.
In Tromso I noticed one lunchtime that he was on the next table from me (I'm not trying to show off that I'm rich, I'm not, the restaurant was meant to be the best in the city and it had a very good value set lunch!). Other Spurs fans were asking him for selfies. I said to my then-girlfriend-now-wife I'm not going to even look at him after Stratford. He could have destroyed this club, but in the end the profit margins didn't work out that way. Incidentally, what was interesting was that AVB called him on his mobile to tell him the team that would play (this was around 7 hours before kick off) which I think shows his desire to be involved in the football side of the club.
I accept that his model has been successful for us, and in that way, he's done a lot for the club. I think he does want the club to be successful on the pitch, I think he would love it if we won the league under his chairmanship and I also think that his hands are tied somewhat by Joe Lewis in terms of transfers etc. (I actually don't moan about his day to day running of the club, or the fact we haven't spent more, that kind of thing). At the same time, I think there's an argument that we have done more for the club than him, as without Levy we would have another chairman, without us the club would be dead.
Another way of looking it is to say that Levy has contributed more than I have in terms of Premier League points, but I have contributed more in terms of the club being something of community, of value, of meaning, a focal point in the lives of like-minded people, something tribal, an expression of identity, an expression of locality (both present and past, i.e. Lost London), that kind of thing, the kind of thing that is hard to describe but that makes football something meaningful rather than just some men on a piece of grass kicking a ball around.
Very nicely put.
But everyone needs to get over Stratford. In the end, it played into our favour and we got the best possible outcome.
It's in the past now and it all worked out well, but for me and others who see the club in a similar way to me, it was such a big thing we will never forget it. I know it's been done to death so no need to go over it further, and of course each to their own.
If people can forgive Danny Rose so easily, I don't see why we cannot do the same for Levy.
Is where we are now not enough recompense?