After today, the first round of the Carty Free article bracket will be halfway done. I hope you’ve been enjoying it as much as we have putting it together. It’s been really fun searching through the archives bringing back all this old content, and I hope it’s been a nice walk down memory lane for you as well, getting to see some articles from Tottenham Hotspur and Cartilage Free Captain history.

We move today to the bottom half of the Redknapp Regional, and there are some good ones in here. Let’s begin!

Redknapp Regional

FIRST ROUND

#6 — On Rumi, Letting Go, and Tottenham (Or “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Spurs”) (Dustin)

This isn’t even a proper article — it’s a fanpost from 2012, before I even joined the masthead. I had been struggling with my reactions to Tottenham losing matches and the feelings of anger and resentment it caused within me, something that spilled over into my yelling at my (very young) children. It was an emotional Rubicon for me, the results of which carry over into my fandom to this day. Maybe it’ll help some of you, too.

#11 — All 20 2018-19 Premier League clubs represented as Dril tweets (Dustin, The Sleeper’s Sleep)

I love this article so damn much and I don’t care who knows it. This is the content we need.

#3 — Tottenham Hotspur’s new kit reveals the rot at the heart of the club (Skipjack & Earl of Shoop)

The words are great, but it’s the graphics (by Earl of Shoop) that make this one of the best 64 articles ever posted on this website. STAY WOKE.

#14 — Believing in Tottenham is never wrong: a not-retraction (Avery Farmer)

Avery got some crap for one of his opinion articles where he declared Spursy dead, but instead of backing off, he doubled-down in this very well-written article.

#7 — The argument against Joao Moutinho in Chinese (Ben Daniels)

Another fanpost from the early years of the blog, this one made us all laugh so hard at the time. It’s a great example of translation-telephone, or for those who remember your News Radio episodes, “Jimmy James: Macho Business Donkey Wrestler.” Ben currently calls it “the best article I’ve ever written, and I didn’t write it.”

#10 — The Spartacus Question (The Sleeper’s Sleep)

Sleeper’s Sleep knows how to write about complicated subjects really well which is why he’s well-represented in this bracket. This is just an excellent dive into the issues surrounding the use of the Y-word by Tottenham supporters. This article is from 2011, and we’re still grappling with the same issues nearly a decade later.

#2 — Computer Generated Player Ratings (Dustin)

Another example of my computer generated text bulls—t, this is what happens when I train a predictive text generator on a huge number Tottenham Hotspur articles written by Barney Ronay. The end result was impressively funny, and still reminiscent of Barney’s writing. Sharp Ends, Friendly Eliminators.

#15 — Chris Hughton to reunite with long lost Livermore? (Ben Daniels)

I mean, Livermore really does look a lot like Hughton...