The Crow - Sssh! They secretly want Arsenal to beat Barcelona
Published: 24 February, 2011
RICHARD OSLEY
WHAT a sight: London’s second and third teams scrambling about for the leftovers, like pigeons scooping breadcrumbs, threatening to peck their own heads just for the chance to finish fourth in the league.
The abyss – ie Europa League football – is an only a few tiptoes away for them both now.
Surely, ohmigod ohmigod, surely Chelsea aren’t going to suffer the embarrassment of having their match on ITV 4 on Thursday nights?
Yet there’s a bit of me that is rooting for Spurs in that battle of the other London teams, the bit of me that thinks spending £2 gajilion-spudzillion more than everybody else on players is a bit of a spoiler. At least, you know where you are with Spurs. Beat Milan one week, lose to Blackpool the next – glorious inconsistency that you can set your watch to. That’s pretty entertaining. Good value.
I’ve no guilt – because it’s not as if Spurs and Chelsea aren’t rooting for Arsenal right now.
They won’t admit it down the pub, but when they go home and check the fixtures, fans of those two sides have a desperate worry that Barcelona can at any time wreck their hopes of winning the one last prize they are genuinely competing for. The Champions League would be easier without Barca there, yet the option for eliminating them is to cheer on Arsenal in the Nou Camp next month. All together now: Come on Ar-se-nal.
RICHARD OSLEY
TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR
TODAY there can be no excuses about Champions League hangovers – no – the 3-1 loss to Blackpool was just typical Spurs and, in my humble opinion, the reason we’re not ready for Premier League dominance yet!
While watching the highlights of an FA Cup weekend that Tottenham weren’t involved in, it struck me that the level of support shown by lower league fans is phenomenal.
Leyton Orient fans roaring their boys on to a 1-1 draw against Arsenal, while the Notts County supporters could still be heard above the throng of the “aren’t we ever so lucky to have a sheik as our chairman,” Manchester City supporters despite losing 5-0.
The Championship and below, for me, is proper “grass roots” football, and those noisy, hearts-on-your-sleeve supporters are a credit to their teams.
I’m not going to knock City because I believe any fan whose team has an endless financial vortex, in the short term wouldn’t complain. But what of the future? Imagine having to pay £250 for a seat, because soon we will. Eventually prices for most of us will become unsustainable, so we’ll head to our more reasonably priced, more accommodating local team and that’s when we realise that throughout this time of footballing plenty we’ve lost the smaller clubs.
Then spectacles like the FA Cup will be reduced to terrestrial archives and that’s definitely something we can’t afford.
TONY DALLAS