Wembley - A Case for The Defence

[78Spur]

Look, this is not to say I'm not delighted we're moving back to the Lane or to deny that Wembley is somewhat soulless enormodome where atmosphere goes to die. There have also been a couple of times where you find yourself stuck outside waiting to get in to Wembley Park post match which has been frankly horrible too. However, all that said I think it is only fair to accentuate a few positives from our season there.

I live on the northern end of the Metropolitan Line, I will never be able to boast about taking 45 minutes to get to the stadium from my own front door, in terms of logistics Wembley is much like pornhub, cheap and easily accessible. For most fans it's a lot more inconvenient but I'm alright and that's all that matters, I never claimed to be a team player.

It's a first season for me as a season ticket holder, so after years of being on a waiting list it's given me the full on experience of watching Spurs, so I'm going to give it some props for that but beyond my own selfish reasons, more Spurs fans have been able to get general admission than ever before and you can bet the new Lane will not have any £10 ticket games any time soon. It's not a massive plus but the level of ticket availability next season is maybe something that we'll miss, even if the venue will be a major improvement.

On that 'big ground' argument, I think while there have been some quiet games (let's be fair, there were quiet ones at the Lane too) the atmosphere in the big games was electric, the Manchester United league game, the Real Madrid game and Juventus had moments where the place felt like it was rocking. Also, how many North London derbies will you get to see with 80,000 other Spurs fans, while we beat them? That might have been a once in a lifetime moment (not the winning, that's normal nowadays, the numbers is my point).

To match the last season at the Lane we'd have to go unbeaten and perhaps that might be hard for us to match again, we lost just 2 games and had the 5th best home record in the league, which considering hoodoos and the size of the pitch shows we did nearly make ourselves reasonably at home (a little off topic but our away record this season was second only to Man City).

Whilst it's fair to argue that Wembley has the charisma of a McDonalds Happy Meal with a disappointing plastic wind up Hamburgler, my memories of Wembley will not be all hatred and despair. We came there, did a good job and produced moments that I will remember fondly, it also gives me faith that we can transition to our new home and if we do that as well as we have with Wembley I'd be pretty content with that.

So Wembley, in closing, au revoir but not fuck off...

 

[palmers_green_yid]

Definitely some positive experiences there. I don't need to go through them as they were probably the same ones for us all.

I found it a bit weird not bumping into so many people I recognised or knew when walking to and from the game. I found it strange that we have so many new fans who presumably didn't watch us before. There were only about 7,000 tickets going to members at the Lane and a lot of them would have been the same people week in week out, so I can only presume some people have gone from being someone who watched Spurs on TV (or maybe just went to the odd cup game) to suddenly being a ST holder. But that said I feel I need to give them all a chance, hopefully many of them will stick around in the leaner years which will inevitably come at some point. Pretty much all of the new ST holders I met were good and proper Spurs fans.

Aside from that though there were also a lot of people who weren't particularly interested in Spurs and/or tourists. True at the Lane too but a lot more so at Wembley. I personally know people who are not Spurs fans who went along to one of our games just for "a day out".

In many ways this is all not so much about Wembley but our transition into being a much bigger club than the one I was brought up with. It's just that the sudden move to a ground which is almost 3x the size has made that change seem stark whereas in reality it was a slower process. Feels less like we are a tight knit community (the away crowd still feels like that) more like a big club with all manner of different kinds of supporters, perhaps with less binding them together.

I don't think it helped that we had some quite boring games at Wembley. Even though our record was strong, it felt like there were a lot of dull 1-0's and 1-1's. Not a lot of great games aside from the games against top opposition, which produced some outstanding displays. Despite the shambolic defending from both sides, it was a breath of fresh air to see some attacking football and goals yesterday.

One of my abiding memories, unfortunately, will be the constant discussion from people somewhere behind me about when they were going to leave, would it be the 76th minute or perhaps the 80th, the different arguments about each possibility, and so on. It seemed as though some people were more interested in getting away than the very reason they were there in the first place. That I cannot understand.

But I'd prefer to think of the Real, Dortmund, Man Utd, Liverpool and Woolwich games!!

 

[spursmalc]

Old WHL became a near impossibility to get tickets for a big match due to the high number of season tickets and low capacity. Therefore Wembley was an opportunity to see a league match rather than a cup match against lower league opposition and with a much changed team. There were lots of women and children there and I am not sure how many were hardcore Spurs fans like Mrs P and it may be them that disappear at NEW WHL. However I do hope that it will be easier with the higher capacity to get tickets for league matches for those like me that want to go just a few times a year.
Glad I had the experience but also glad it is over.

 

[Guido 🇺🇦]

I'll let the lads do the talking.........