Let Me Tell You Why Your Team Is Crap

Given the response to Kevin's preview of Tottenham Hotspur's upcoming Europa League fixture against Hearts of Midlothian I thought I would take the opportunity to be the "voice of reason" thereby depriving Kevin of the opportunity to write a well thought out and perfectly logical article about it at some point later on in the day.

This site has acquired a number of new readers in recent months and thanks to news aggregators like NewsNow and Google News we get a fair number of hits from people who aren't even Tottenham Hotspur fans. Even google searches direct different fans to this site. In fact, searching "Chelsea transfer news" brought more people to this site than "Tottenham transfer news".

What we all have to remember is that we, the editors and writers of Cartilage Free Captain, are all Spurs fans. We wouldn't do this for little to no money if we weren't. That's right, most of us are not compensated for what we do. We write these articles simply out of a love for Tottenham Hotspur. And because we love Tottenham Hotspur, whatever team you happen to like (if it isn't Spurs) is crap.

We're all partisans in one way or another. Here we're all partial to Spurs. This morning many Hearts fans came to the site and were offended by our characterizations of their club. The folks over at The Run of Play wrote an excellent post on this back in May and I think it should be a required read for fans of any sport, not just football. My favorite quote from the post is below:

If your love of [football] has brought you to a point where you're no longer really able to see the game as something wonderful and amazing except in narrow moment of unequivocal triumph, then you're doing it wrong, no matter how many kills you rack up on the internet. On that note, it's also not unimportant that the mind-warp of hyperpartisanship is eventually going to make you think and say things that are, let's be frank, really f***ing stupid, and that there's no need for you to be really f***ing stupid to support your club.

Obviously the above post goes for all of us, not just our new readers. That means you should all keep the trolling of We Ain't Got No History to a minimum, even if it is really fun. Look at the top of our site. We call ourselves "A Ridiculous Tottenham Hotspur Blog" and that is precisely what we are. Rarely do the writers and editors here say things that intentionally hyperpartisan or inflammatory. Ok, maybe there's some inflammatory stuff in the Hoddle of Coffee, but I'm pretty sure that's due to all the concussions Andy has sustained, not hyperpartisanship. We do attempt to say things that we think our funny, but humor is subjective, and it's well known that the Scots are a humorless people. See, I can attempt to make jokes too.

Additionally, as Tottenham Hotspur fans we're a cynical and world weary bunch. Hence the heavy doses of sarcasm and bad jokes you see in most of our writing. Obviously if you've never read the site before I don't expect you to be immediately able to determine the tone or tenor of the site, but, c'mon we're not real journalists (despite what my journalism degree says) or a real news site. Treat us like the Daily Mail...ok, maybe not quite like them. We say lots of things, but most of the time we're just having fun being Tottenham Hotspur fans and having a place to air our opinions.

All that said, I do want to thank everyone that commented on the Hearts post for doing so. While we may disagree with you, we welcome any criticism. Especially when we get things wrong, which happens from time-to-time. I don't think  we've ever given anyone the banhammer, though we've considered it a time or two. Please come back for the match thread tomorrow. It's always nice to hear opposing viewpoints. Even if your team is crap.