During my lifetime, Tottenham Hotspur have not been a successful club. Sure, as a 25-year-old fan we hear older generations talk of a long-gone golden age that brought numerous FA Cups, two league championship titles and even European silverware but my alluding to that sort of "success" would only be to play into the moniker of "living in the past".
This said, there have been triumphs and tribulations spattered among the dark days and close shaves; Lineker's first Spurs hat-trick, against QPR, Gascoigne's free-kick, Iversen's lob in the second leg at Selhurst Park and a few 5-1 scorelines that will live long in the memory.
And, placed alongside relegation dogfights and cold 0-0 draws against rubbish opposition, these are just as memorable as any other football fan's highs and lows.
Yesterday, however, I found my long-term football memory let me down, which was a shock to the system. My short-term memory, i am aware, is struggling - i lose my keys within seconds of entering my flat, I can even lose my train of thought mid-word but I though long-term memory was exactly that - long-term.
My dad can recite the Spurs side to beat Leicester City at Wembley in 1961 - fair enough, it was a big day but last night I watched "The Premiership Years 97/98" and forgot a large chunk of the season .
I gleefully boasted to my uninterested girlfriend at the start about how a returning Teddy Sheringham missed a penalty for Manchester United in front of the White Hart Lane faithful. Explaining how it didn't matter a jot that United went on to win 2-0, seeing as the striker was made to look silly after his bitter summer transfer.
I happily pointed out who was who, which grounds had been knocked down or turned into flats and how long certain managers were to last after thumping the turf in anger.
But my downfall came after seeing Spurs spanked 4-0 up at Liverpool. I knew that Gerry Francis' resignation was soon to follow but I could not for the life of me remember who replaced him. At which stage I was at a loss to remember the rest of the season. Who stepped in? How did we do?
Don't get me wrong, I knew we were crap.. I went to almost every home game but the problem was I had my years mixed up.
Anyway, the problem was momentary and everything came flooding back to be ironed out with the arrival of Jurgen Klinsmann... I even have the t-shirt for crying out loud and I maintain to this day that we would have been relegated would not have been for the German's second spell of service but at that time I was convinced it was the following season.
20 hours later, and the shock is subsiding. In fact, i'm starting to think that if my long-term memory is giving up, and the past in my mind isn't quite the past in the history books, then there is an outside chance I will wake up in the near future believing with all my heart that Tottenham have won the double in my lifetime - as long as I stay away from watching "The Premiership Years"!
No comments:
Post a Comment