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Camden New Journal - CROW by RICHARD OSLEY and PIP WROE
Published: 2 October 2008

Spurs fans know it’s their team who are text-rated viewing!

IT was the worst result Arsenal have had in a decade and yet the mobile phone did not buzz once.
Normally when something as Nayimishly bad as losing to a rugby-loving nowhere like Hull happens, it will only take seconds for somebody to text me with a muggy message reminding me that Arsenal have a lost a match they should have won.
Rarely imaginative, this kind of text message is essentially about causing irritation, the ten pence telecommunications equivalent of rubbing salt into an open wound. Sometimes these simpletons will type something as astute as “Ha ha” or just “Oops” and leave it at that, only occasionally graduating to some minor wordplay like, “What the Hull have you done there?”
But this time: Silence.
There are only two possible reasons.
Firstly, there are occasions where a result is so, so bad the sender feels guilty about pressing send, feeling a sudden sense of worry that he/she is intruding in some genuine grief and that a text would amount to cruelty.
It happens – but unlikely in this case.
The far better explanation for the silent phone is that deep down the winless Spurs fans know their team is just as capable of such a blunder.
It’s Bottom One Tottenham versus Hull on Sunday and the fans haven’t the confidence right now to predict a home win.

DESPITE Arsenal’s best attempts to provide some cheer for Spurs fans at the weekend, it now seems an impossible task to raise our spirits which, like our league position, are rock bottom.
Arsenal’s complacent and dismal display left Wenger feeling “physically sick”. Perhaps now he can sympathise with the Tottenham team mysteriously poisoned on the last day of the season in 2006.
It appears in hindsight that winning the Carling Cup may have been a mixed blessing, masking the fact that we have won only three of our last 18 league games and are now doing worse than the record-breakingly bad Derby County were at this stage last season. Our fixtures in the Uefa Cup also seem to have this masking quality, but is anyone really fooled by scrappy wins against teams we’ve never even heard of? Perhaps only Daniel Levy.
Having witnessed Arsenal take apart FC Porto on Tuesday night in response to their abject performance against Hull, something troubling was apparent. Arsenal were showing character, something not seen in a Spurs shirt since our cup win.
It’s not productive to blame individuals for Spurs’ plight; it has been a team effort, operating at all levels within the club.
Hull are up next. Surely such formidable opponents deserve some decent opposition?

* Spurs fan Pip Wroe will be going head-to-head with Richard Osley all season

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