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1 hour ago
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In my 35 years as a Tottenham fan, 15 of them as a season‑ticket holder, I’ve seen the home atmosphere turn ugly more than a few times. Chants of “We want our Tottenham back” have resurfaced during times of struggle, while mounting fury at Daniel Levy finally grew too loud to ignore for the Lewis family over the summer.
I remember well the chorus of boos that ultimately sounded the death knell for Nuno Espírito Santo, when he subbed off a lively Lucas Moura against Manchester United. And if you want a deeper cut, I was there in May 2007 to witness the visceral anger and disgust when Hossam Ghaly threw his shirt on the ground after being substituted by Martin Jol, half an hour after coming on.
The game on Saturday night bore comparison with some of those moments. Guglielmo Vicario was subjected to boos seconds after his monumental error had handed Fulham a second, ultimately match-winning goal, six minutes into the match. The jeers came from a minority of fans, but the acoustics of booing mean the chorus does not have to be large to be audible. As the players and the manager have made clear, in social media posts, post-match interviews and, if reports are to be believed, to one another in the dressing room, they heard the boos loud and clear and did not appreciate it.
I found the booing of Vicario utterly reprehensible for many reasons, not least given some of the saves he has made this season to keep us in games. Even if he didn’t have such displays under his belt – and Vicario is by no means the perfect keeper – I can think of very few circumstances that justify booing your own players for making a mistake. Not only is it likely to shatter their confidence, even affect their mental health, but it displays a total failure to understand what football support is about.
You can groan, you can even boo a team performance – although I’m generally against that, too – but you are supposed to get behind the players, to be the 12th man, to have their backs when there is still hope of salvaging something.
When the boos rained down, I found myself shouting, to nobody in particular, to shut up. Others reacted even more vocally, bitter arguments breaking out in the South Stand between complete strangers. At one point, I thought punches might be thrown.
That is the crux of it really, the creeping toxicity of the atmosphere at Spurs and the danger of a vicious cycle taking hold, where it is no longer clear whether the atmosphere is holding the team back or vice versa.
Even before the game, something was off. There was a chunk of empty seats in front of me and the crowd felt subdued. The 8pm Saturday kick-off time is not necessarily convenient for everyone, but an afternoon on the beers ought to make for a rowdy reception for the visitors. You only need look at the recent home record to see why that did not materialise. In 2025, Spurs have won only three league games at home, a record that could charitably be called laughable.
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Nor was Vicario’s blunder the only thing separating the teams, at least not in that first half. Fulham were in on goal again moments later and could easily have scored a third. For all that talk of newfound defensive solidity under Thomas Frank’s pragmatic leadership, the feeling we had under Ange Postecoglou, that the opposition were only ever one smart ball away from being in on goal, has returned.
Put more simply: it is cold, it is raining and you’ve deserted your friends or family to embark on a three-hour round trip that’s been ruined inside six minutes. That’s a recipe for frothing anger, even if it was wrong to make Vicario the whipping boy.
There are fanbases who suffer worse, there always are. But they don’t do it with a squad full of top-level talent who, for some unfathomable reason, can barely muster a shot in anger in 180 minutes against their two biggest rivals. They don’t do it in a £1bn stadium, where tickets are more expensive than almost any in world football.
The flipside of fans understanding that footballers are only human is that the players and coaching staff must be careful not to lose sight of what that fan experience is like. As the final whistle sounded on Saturday, the stadium DJ – who does this a lot – played the Editors song Munich, with its poignant lyric: “People are fragile things, you should know by now. Be careful what you put them through.”
When the manager and fans question the fans’ loyalty, they should bear that refrain in mind.
