MK Notsohotspur
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MK Dons, the potential short term home of Tottenham Hotspur whilst the stadium that has yet to materialise in the form of actual building work is...er...built. Two years is the rumour. Two years playing football 70 miles away in the stadium of a franchised club. Should we kick up a fuss about this? What with it being a possible necessary evil (as other options like Wembley appear to be too expensive). Or do we continue the fallacy of hatred towards the ills of business in football and live in the fantasy that standing against the suits can somehow retain our sense of identity and morals?
Whimsical soundbites aside, giving money to the Dons whilst we ground share there doesn't exactly fill me with a sense of dignity. This of course is a football club that stole the soul of another and moved for financial gains (even though some will argue this as another necessary evil).
Okay so this isn't exactly comparable to say Stratford as it will not be permanent and we'll be back home in N17 in a season or two, but is it the only available ground out there? Is it really? Or will those business ethics once more rule the roost over any of the lesser emotive reasons to turn our heads firmly away from playing there?
The crux here is; just how much of the business side of decision making sits solely with business, never taking into account what football fans think and want? I'd say all of it. In some ways, this is like Stratford because the club is willing to do absolutely anything to make the football club better but to the detriment of the actual football club. The football club being the supporters and the heritage of our history rather than the accountancy.
If Spurs were offered the money to pay for the stadium in one lump sum but we'd have to change our kit entirely to red, would a business man argue its case? Would you be accepting because it could secure the clubs future? What is a colour anyway? In fact, what is a couple of words making up a name if we looked to also change that for financial names? The history and memories remain the same so what does it matter if we have a touch of plastic surgery here and there? In fact, let's move the club to the USA to truly maximise profits and be eternally rich and always in the black. Just playing in red.
Hope you can see where I was going with that.
But of course, this is an argument that simply can not be won by myself or others. Why? Because football isn't geared towards appeasing romanticised notions. It's focused on progression and littered with cheap notions of what we all wish football is like. We'd never got as far as changing our colours but we endeavoured to move permanently to East London because of the transport links and geographical advantage of attracting tourist football supporters.
We're losing the war. We've been losing it for a long time.
The brutal conclusion is that when Spurs do move into the new stadium in 5/10/20 years time, even though it's in N17 and not in East London or somewhere else, we'll still suffer in the same way others have in bigger more modern stadia. So to twist it all back again, fighting against stuff like sharing with MK Dons is the only way we can remind the people in power that we still care for the type of things that nobody can profit off.
