I Like A Happy Atmosphere

There has been much recent debate about the nature of the Spurs support at home with suggestions that it may be a contributory factor to the team’s poor home record over the last season and a bit.  Not all of that can be laid at the fans’ door, as circumstances dictated that the focus of attention for the team was directed on one particular aim which led to the winning of the Europa League in Bilbao.  Further focus on the matter has been raised by media reports that the writer of the song Barry Manilow made famous – “I Can’t Smile Without You” – is looking for payment from the club for the fans singing the song that he co-wrote.  Just make sure nobody hears you singing it in the shower !

So where does the issue lie ?  Is it purely a fan thing or are there other contributing factors ?

There is a lack of a repertoire of songs sung by the Spurs crowd which does nothing to add to the atmosphere when you just get “Come On You Spurs” churned out at sporadic points during a match.  We don’t have a tradition of having a club hymn like the clubs do in Spain, so the pre-match “Glory, Glory Hallelujah” is the closest we get, but as for a range of songs we can call upon, it is mainly a crowd-led thing that could be helped by a few more easy to sing (and remember) tunes.  Anti-Arsenal songs – which I get as everyone hates Arsenal don’t they ?  Well, yes, but there is no point singing about it when they are not there is there ?  Frankly, it would be preferable to hear songs that support our team rather than denigrate others, especially when they are not the team we are facing.  Songs about the religious identity the support has adopted abound, but don’t exactly cheer the team on.  There are enough musical artists who follow Spurs who could surely pen a chant with a few lines to get the atmosphere jumping.  When the FA Cup comes around we still fall back on Chas ‘n’ Dave’s excellent “Ossie’s Dream” and that is approaching its 45th anniversary, so, while it is a classic tune, something more up to date might be nice.

The idea of a singing section has been floated and tried a few times in the past.  This has inevitably failed because you get the fans who think it’s funny to sing “What’s it like to score a goal ?” before imagining we have scored a goal or it back-fired big time as it did in the Aston Villa FA Cup match, where the “atmosphere section” joined in with the Villa fans to sing “Sacked in the morning” at Thomas Frank.  Much like the much vaunted acoustic design aspect of the South Stand to flood the sound down across the pitch, Daniel Levy probably didn’t imagine that it would intensify the volume of the “Levy Out” chants.  When positive as it has been in certain matches since we moved into the THS, it can be a force for good, but it doesn’t happen often enough.

Flags.  Really ?  They are an embarrassment that has seen the club follow the trend at other stadia and while they might look effective as a wide-spread effect, just having half a dozen in the South Stand just looks a little pathetic.  When they have been issued to every seat, it can produce an inspiring look when there is a homologous look across the Spurs sections, but the seven or eight medium sized flags that are all different just look a bit weak with no real identity being transmitted, even if they do feature the club’s ident icons, which most people outside the fanbase will probably recognise as anything remotely related to THFC.  While that might fit some people’s idea of how the club is at the minute, we don’t really need that being reinforced with shoddy flag displays.

An interesting one is the flag surfing idea, but, apart from a couple of times, it has not been used at Tottenham on a regular basis.  It takes a lot of organising, with storage as well as delivery to the start point and collecting at the end, but it does look better than individual flags.  And it needs the people underneath to understand the theory behind it to keep it moving.  It might be something that has had its day, as I haven’t seen it widely used lately, although it does have a visual impact, if that is what you are looking for. 

Then there are tifos, which are all well and good, but compared to those you see at away stadia in European games, they are barely as impressive.  However, they are better than hanging a giant bedsheet with a cannon on it from the roof of the stand !  Again, it is something that takes a lot of organisation and the group that do it at Tottenham must spend ages dreaming them up and laying them out, but when the plastic bags they use end up being thrown at opposing players taking corners, it just makes the club look bad in the eyes of other people watching on (and The FA/UEFA).  I don’t know who designs and produces the massive ones that cover the whole end on the continent but they do look effective.  Sometimes the ones in Europe can be quite offensive, like the Crystal Palace one concerning the Nottingham Forest chairman, but the size and scale of them makes them a stunning spectacle. 

Fireworks are other pyrotechnics are not allowed in England, although pyrotechnic dogs seem to be, although I have never seen one go off yet !  So, the one-off experiment with those fireboxes was just an embarrassment.  What is the point of them ?  I enjoyed the heat they gave off on a cold day, but they don’t make people go “Ooooh !” and it rarely heats up the atmosphere in the ground, just add to the club’s contribution to climate change, which is odd for our green credentials.  We should be leaving these gimmicks for the likes of Fulham, Wolves and Chelsea, who appear to go big on them.

Pre-match light shows don’t really do it for me, as they don’t seem to generate much noise for when the team comes out onto the pitch.  Yes, they are very nice in a big stadium, but what do they add to the atmosphere ?  You need something to rouse the crowd to a crescendo at kick off … and then it’s up to the team to keep that going with a stirring performance.

Unfortunately, the design of the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium will never be a cauldron of noise (hopefully in support of the team), because of the allocation of corporate seating that breaks up the stadium so there is no continuous, wrap-around areas of singing fans.  It also limits the call and response from the Shelf side to the call-and-response “We’re The Park Lane”.  The halfway sections and the West Stand (with apologies to the few fans who do sing in the main stand) along with the away section in the North-East corner mean that the ground will always be disjointed in terms of singing, as well as there always being a song slightly out of sync because of the acoustics inside the stadium.

It doesn’t matter how you dress it up, the noise generated at the THS that would worry the visitors is limited to only a few games a season.  When I remember the atmosphere for that Champions League home match against Mancashter City, the Bodo/Glimt Europa league semi-final and the occasional home matches against Woolwich or Chelsea, I wonder why it isn’t possible to replicate it more often.  Is it the expectation that we are going to roll over teams that some fans consider beneath us ?  Is it the tourist support, although they are often the members of the crowd who are most behind the team, valuing their opportunity to see Spurs play and not taking it for granted as many season ticket holders might do.  

At Brentford, there was a lack of direct support from a section of the crowd, who sang about Dele and other players of the Poch era, but like the endless songs about Sol Campbell, this is all ancient history now and does nothing to inspire the team, although you might say that they don’t inspire the fans.  Fair enough, but do we want success or just a constant turnover of players/managers as we go through endless transitional seasons.

And surely, the job of trying to put our team off should lie with the opposition’s fans.  It hardly makes it a daunting proposition for away teams to come to the THS knowing that the majority of the crowd will be getting on Tottenham’s back.  We need to make it an atmosphere that visiting teams don’t look forward to facing, with the Liverpool supporting journalist Tony Evans once wrote in the London Evening Standard, 

“The Shelf was Tottenham’s glory, even when the glory, glory days were gone. It was a vast, two tiered standing area that ran the length
of the touchline of what is now the East Stand. A third level contained seats but it was the double layer of terracing that made it special.
Nearly 20,000 people could cram into this area. When the Shelf roared, it sent waves of fear through opposing fans and players.
When it bounced, the stadium shivered and quaked. “

OK, The Shelf has gone and there are no longer 20,000 on the East Stand side, but there are over 17,500 in the South Stand who could replicate that noise to intimidate away sides, making them shiver and quake.  If a fan of another side felt that way about our iconic terracing, why can’t that happen again with our iconic stadium ?  Harry Winks commented that

“The South Stand is on another scale.  When you’re out on the pitch you can’t just hear it, you can feel it” 

The toxicity surrounding the home support was improved for the match against Dortmund, with the backing seemingly welcomed by the team.  Even to the extent that Pedro Porro went to the South Stand to hold his hands up for losing the opportunity for a third goal when he was through and he wasn’t pilloried for it, with the 2-0 win probably meaning the fans were a bit more willing to forgive.  Ironically, the Borussia fans chanted loud and long (although I wouldn’t advocate throwing things onto the pitch), but the choreographed nature of the European clubs who have a conductor doesn’t sit easily with me, as it all becomes a bit orchestrated and not organic as football crowds should behave.  Drums are a different matter, but again, the strains of “Can’t Smile Without You” have developed without the need of a beat being provided and that song means a lot more to Spurs fans who have been singing it for decades than it means to a lot of other music lovers.  When it comes to Tottenham and at risk of being prosecuted “I can’t smile without you, I can’t laugh and I can’t sing, I’m finding it hard to do anything.”

Be more positive about the team.  Be realistic in expectation.  And as Paul Coyte always says, “Get behind the team,

COME ON YOU SPURS !”

Shaun Fisher