Cain Hoy is gone, but rift betwen fans remains

It's been a long couple weeks, but it would seem that Cain Hoy, a firm of US investors, will not be purchasing Tottenham Hotspur.

According to the Guardian, Cain Hoy said it has

"terminated its assessment and accordingly is no longer considering making an offer for Tottenham Hotspur".

The entire Cain Hoy drama proved an interesting insight into the mechanics of purchasing a club, but more than that it provided a fascinating insight into our club's fans.

The warring dynamics of modern fandom were on full display throughout the process. On the one hand, there is a powerful segment of antiestablishmentarianism feeling amongst our fans, best characterized by the "Against Modern Football" movement. Essentially these fans have grown sick of the way that commercialism and money have come to dominate the modern game. Many Spurs fans seem particularly reluctant to "Do a Chelsea" and become the plaything of a multibillionaire that has little, if any, connection to the local community.

On the other hand, there is an exhaustion and a frustration that we haven't been able to assert ourselves as a regular participant in the Champions League after so many close calls. If our owners spent just a little more money and a little less cheap then maybe we would have a roster capable of regularly finishing in the top four. And maybe new, more spendthrift owners would finally get us over the top.

Throughout the entire Cain Hoy drama, the tension between these two schools of thought became incredibly pronounced. We want new owners who will probably be incredibly distant but will spend more money but we hate our owner now because he's greedy and doesn't engage with the fans enough. We're so sick of our current ownership we fail to consider that the grass may not be not greener on the other side. We are so afraid of the specter of rich, foreign ownership we fail to consider that new ownership might both spend money and be more responsive to fan concerns. We want to achieve something incredibly difficult in modern football and we also want to do it in a way that frankly may not be possible.

There are dueling impulses at war among Spurs fans: a longing for a simpler past while desiring modern day success, and often an unwillingness to pay what that success might cost. And Cain Hoy brought them all to the surface. Regardless of who owns Tottenham moving forward, we are all going to have to figure out want we want and exactly what we're willing to do to get it.