Time to move on says Club... | Page 2 | Vital Football

Time to move on says Club...

Here's the problem, the club (THFC) shouldn't be managing this survey and communicating this review. It holds no credibility as THFC doesn't represent the voice of the customer. It's an arrogant thing to do.

For me, the club should have gone to their Supporters Trust, funded the review and taken a step back from the execution. The club's Supporters Trust should have been communicating the findings back to the club and the fans.

Herein lies the problem of that fractured relationship with THST and a club who thinks they can operate without a supporters trust. Worse still, they think they are the supporters trust. I'm calling bullshit on that.

The only headline here is "THFC tells their own fans they can't use the Y word anymore"

Laughable when you think about it, especially as the Y word is in the dictionary with a definition of "Spurs fan".

By the way this is not my opinion on whether we should or shouldn't use the Y word. I'll get to that on my next post.
 
So here's what I did. I listed the permutations of how the Y word might be used.

1) Non Spurs fan calling a Non Jewish Spurs a Yid
2) Non Spurs fan calling a Jewish Spurs fan a Yid
3) A Non Jewish Spurs fan calling themselves a Yid
4) A Jewish Spurs fans calling themselves a Yid.
5) Non Jewish Spurs fan calling another non Jewish fan a Yid
6) Non Jewish Spurs fan calling a Jewish fan a Yid
7) Jewish Spurs fan calling a Non Jewish Spurs fan a Yid
8) Jewish Spurs fan call a Jewish Spurs fan a Yid.

I would ask everyone to think about what would be the reaction of the receiver in each of these 8 scenarios. Then think about the many different intonations in how it is actually delivered.

Unfortunately, I can't convince myself that offence isn't being taken in some of these permutations, even though I can clearly see no offence in others.

I'm nervous to leave that grey area out there where fellow Spurs fans might be offended, knowing it's not my right to tell them what they should or shouldn't be offended about.

Saying that, I still find myself saying "The Lane" and know that some things are hard to change after a lifetime of using them. It will take a lot of effort to drop the Y-word.
 
People, whether a minority or not, will always find a way to take offence in some way or another to whatever may rub them up the wrong way.

I cannot speak for the Jewish community or those associated, so I'll reserve my opinion on this subject. When Mrs Hod and I was blessed to be at the UTD game at Old Trafford on NYD 2014, the majority of the Spurs fans, about 9,000 of us, were proud to sing Yid Army, Yid Army. No idea of the % of Jews within us.

I can say that the Spam supporters are simply the absolute scum of Gods great earth. To be hissing towards Spurs fans is just horrible, cruel and so disrespectful to all those Jews that perished.

It should be up to the supporters whether or not they use the Y word, not the Club.
 
I'm not saying I have a strong opinion either way, really. We live in a weird anger Vs anger culture, no one is safe from being critised and no one is willing to accept criticism.

Context is everything in language and people are either looking for a one-size fits all approach to a fix, or just refuse to budge in their opinions by making it a hill they're willing to die upon.

My issue with this debate has always been with where the criticism comes from and how the club reacts. The club is your typical modern-day soulless sporting company - do the quick, basic action that ignores what the fans are saying but saves potential negative financial impacts.

The club can't put out a heavily bleached presser on the socials and expect that to be 'case closed'. They need to publically, and painfully, engage with fans by opening a debate and making context a part of the discussion.

Do I think the Y-word is racist and walks a very fine anti-Semitic line? Of course I do. Do I think Spurs fans' use of the Y-word is racist and walks a very fine anti-Semitic line? In most cases, no. BUT because it's not all cases, how can we defend its usage in its entirety?

Racism is very much a huge part of football. It never went away, but less of the racists had the public forum to voice their bigotry so loudly. Like it or lump it, football is political and it will never not be. It's why we need the club to not fucking bungle this like they normally do. We are in the spotlight now, so let's for once talk about it properly without letting a cult of personality take over and turn it into another thing people can only feel anger or offence over.
 
muttley said:
Here's the problem, the club (THFC) shouldn't be managing this survey and communicating this review. It holds no credibility as THFC doesn't represent the voice of the customer. It's an arrogant thing to do.

For me, the club should have gone to their Supporters Trust, funded the review and taken a step back from the execution. The club's Supporters Trust should have been communicating the findings back to the club and the fans.

Herein lies the problem of that fractured relationship with THST and a club who thinks they can operate without a supporters trust. Worse still, they think they are the supporters trust. I'm calling bullshit on that.

The only headline here is "THFC tells their own fans they can't use the Y word anymore"

Laughable when you think about it, especially as the Y word is in the dictionary with a definition of "Spurs fan".

By the way this is not my opinion on whether we should or shouldn't use the Y word. I'll get to that on my next post.
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It's a fair point about THFC managing the survey. It would be interesting to see the questionnaire/survey to see how the questions were framed. Were they loaded to produce a desired outcome?

If not THFC though, who is representative of the fanbase? You mention the Supporters Trust but I remember a while back on here their name came up on a different matter and they were ridiculed by a couple of posters. How representative are they?

And then there is the question of who is the fanbase? Who should be included in any such review? Is it just fans who attend matches? Or more broadly fans who have a connection with the club through its various membership schemes? Or simply any fan who has an connection with club, emotional or otherwise?

If it was open to all people who claim to be Spurs fans how would you manage the process though? How would you exclude malicious contributors i.e. people who are not Spurs fans looking to distort what's perceived to be the general feeling of Spurs fans? And is there even any definition of who or what a Spurs fan is?

There seem to be so many questions and areas of complexity here and I certainly don't have the answers.

What's also interesting is the contrast here to the use of the 'N' word. Black rappers started using the word to take ownership of it in the same way that Spurs' fans adopted the 'Y' word. Thankfully the 'N' word has become so culturally offensive that it's very rarely used in the public domain now. But there's been no call (to my knowledge) to black rappers/musicians/ people to stop using the word.
 
All my non spurs football mates call me yid or yido. Doesn't bother me but I'm not Jewish or religious.

All I am seeing here is a clueless club trying to control it's own fans for it's own PR tick box exercise.

All they have done is pissed off thousands of Spurs fans.

The chavs and Spammers will always continue to hiss or talk about the nazi's when we play them. How does the club expect our fans to react? With a nice smiling face?
 
Gary Onedaysoon said:
It's a fair point about THFC managing the survey. It would be interesting to see the questionnaire/survey to see how the questions were framed. Were they loaded to produce a desired outcome?

If not THFC though, who is representative of the fanbase? You mention the Supporters Trust but I remember a while back on here their name came up on a different matter and they were ridiculed by a couple of posters. How representative are they?

And then there is the question of who is the fanbase? Who should be included in any such review? Is it just fans who attend matches? Or more broadly fans who have a connection with the club through its various membership schemes? Or simply any fan who has an connection with club, emotional or otherwise?

If it was open to all people who claim to be Spurs fans how would you manage the process though? How would you exclude malicious contributors i.e. people who are not Spurs fans looking to distort what's perceived to be the general feeling of Spurs fans? And is there even any definition of who or what a Spurs fan is?

There seem to be so many questions and areas of complexity here and I certainly don't have the answers.

What's also interesting is the contrast here to the use of the 'N' word. Black rappers started using the word to take ownership of it in the same way that Spurs' fans adopted the 'Y' word. Thankfully the 'N' word has become so culturally offensive that it's very rarely used in the public domain now. But there's been no call (to my knowledge) to black rappers/musicians/ people to stop using the word.
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Yet, nobody is allowed to say the word "gay" to represent light hearted and carefree anymore. A change to the dictionary in the 1960's obsoleted a word that had been used in its original definition for a long time before. Anyone that had used that definition in a song lyric had their message changed. Is that right? Perhaps the dictionary should remove the former definition of Yid. Then nobody can even claim they are being anti-semitic.

Back to the trust issue. If I'm with Levy, I'm not asking him, I'm telling him that one of his 2022 objectives is to get to the right relationship with his Spurs Supporters. He needs to peel it right back to its core and figure out what is the joint charter of a club and its supporters trust. He needs to look at best practices from other clubs and figure out what are the role and responsibilities of both parties. Then both parties need to be honest with themselves and stick to the their roles and responsibilities. It is absolutely OK to have a healthy tension between club and trust because they should both care about the same thing.

By the way, I'm not saying that it needs to be THST. Spurs could setup a not for profit company and fund some of it and use volunteers for the rest. It should be representative of the supporters that go to the game and the worldwide fanbase, not just those in the Haringey Borough. They should try to partner better with the current one first though and try to solve it there. Help them be setup for success.

I hate the "THST don't represent me" narrative. If the club were doing the right things, then that wouldn't even be the narrative. Blaming THST and not helping them to be an effective voice of the supporter is very weak from THFC.
 
This is driven by those of us who aren't Jews; those of us that aren't really are not qualified to comment in my view, which is why I've always stood back from this 'debate'.

Most of all it's driven by a desire to move on, look forward and leave the dark days of 'acceptable' anti-semitism behind.

We all know why we used it as a badge of honour, but time and the laws of the land have moved on.

Many Jewish people still find it highly offensive, I have spoken to many and I'd say my personal experience is that it is a deep personal and cultural scar for many and so this is why I say I'm not qualified and nor are most of us to judge what is right and what is wrong here.

The club wants to look forward and move on, for me I much prefer to look forward; for me, life is too short to live in the past.
 
What does David Baddeil say about it all ?


It doesn’t affect me either way .
I’m not Jewish , not religious , I couldn’t care less is the fans carry on singing it or not .
If they do sing it , I don’t associate it with a racist tone , if they don’t sing it , it doesn’t make me feel any better .
I did , and still do , object to the chants and hissing from the other ignorant and uneducated so called fans from other clubs who obviously think that imitating sounds of what they think gas sounds like is clever , or funny , or has a purpose in life . It was obviously not directed at any one person in particular . Just totally wrong on so many levels , but I don’t see anybody in authority trying to stamp that out .

by the way , I do object to the Black Power raised fist being used during the “Taking of the knee “
 
Walthamstow wanderer said:
What does David Baddeil say about it all ?


It doesn’t affect me either way .
I’m not Jewish , not religious , I couldn’t care less is the fans carry on singing it or not .
If they do sing it , I don’t associate it with a racist tone , if they don’t sing it , it doesn’t make me feel any better .
I did , and still do , object to the chants and hissing from the other ignorant and uneducated so called fans from other clubs who obviously think that imitating sounds of what they think gas sounds like is clever , or funny , or has a purpose in life . It was obviously not directed at any one person in particular . Just totally wrong on so many levels , but I don’t see anybody in authority trying to stamp that out .

by the way , I do object to the Black Power raised fist being used during the “Taking of the knee “
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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/f...chanting-Yid-Army-sustains-anti-Semitism.html

https://news.sky.com/story/david-ba...yid-definition-to-include-spurs-fans-11932367

https://www.itv.com/news/2013-09-18/baddiel-insists-yid-is-racist-word-as-controversy-continues

As I said, I'm sick of the 'debate' to be honest; we are an all-inclusive club and see no good reason to perpetuate it, when clearly it deeply offends some Jews.
 
10Hoddle said:
People, whether a minority or not, will always find a way to take offence in some way or another to whatever may rub them up the wrong way.

I cannot speak for the Jewish community or those associated, so I'll reserve my opinion on this subject. When Mrs Hod and I was blessed to be at the UTD game at Old Trafford on NYD 2014, the majority of the Spurs fans, about 9,000 of us, were proud to sing Yid Army, Yid Army. No idea of the % of Jews within us.

I can say that the Spam supporters are simply the absolute scum of Gods great earth. To be hissing towards Spurs fans is just horrible, cruel and so disrespectful to all those Jews that perished.

It should be up to the supporters whether or not they use the Y word, not the Club.
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Spot on there Hod, regards them twats that call themselves Spam fans, if you point out the racism regards "hissing", and we all know what that is regards to, they say its only "banter" for fcuks sake I could punch their lights out, would have done many years ago lol!
 
“We welcome Tottenham Hotspur’s Y-word Review and its findings that Tottenham fans are aware of the racist use of the Y-word. We share the club’s feeling of discomfort about its use by Spurs supporters, regardless of their motivation.”


Board of Deputies Vice-President Amanda Bowman has welcomed Tottenham Hotspur’s review of the Y-word survey it sent out to supporters in 2020.

Amanda said: “2021 saw a 139% increase in reported antisemitic incidents in professional football according to the CST Antisemitic Incidents Report out today. And so we welcome Tottenham Hotspur’s Y-word Review and its findings that Tottenham fans are aware of the racist use of the Y-word. We share the club’s feeling of discomfort about its use by Spurs supporters, regardless of their motivation. We hope that their WhY Word hub will encourage fans to learn more about how it can cause offence so that in future the term will be consigned to the history books.”

So that seems pretty clear:

The term causes offense to the very people who we purport to be supporting;

That being the case, I now more than ever believe we need to move on.
 
Gary Onedaysoon said:
It's a fair point about THFC managing the survey. It would be interesting to see the questionnaire/survey to see how the questions were framed. Were they loaded to produce a desired outcome?

If not THFC though, who is representative of the fanbase? You mention the Supporters Trust but I remember a while back on here their name came up on a different matter and they were ridiculed by a couple of posters. How representative are they?

And then there is the question of who is the fanbase? Who should be included in any such review? Is it just fans who attend matches? Or more broadly fans who have a connection with the club through its various membership schemes? Or simply any fan who has an connection with club, emotional or otherwise?

If it was open to all people who claim to be Spurs fans how would you manage the process though? How would you exclude malicious contributors i.e. people who are not Spurs fans looking to distort what's perceived to be the general feeling of Spurs fans? And is there even any definition of who or what a Spurs fan is?

There seem to be so many questions and areas of complexity here and I certainly don't have the answers.

What's also interesting is the contrast here to the use of the 'N' word. Black rappers started using the word to take ownership of it in the same way that Spurs' fans adopted the 'Y' word. Thankfully the 'N' word has become so culturally offensive that it's very rarely used in the public domain now. But there's been no call (to my knowledge) to black rappers/musicians/ people to stop using the word.
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Gary you used "malicious contributors" there, spot on!
I believe/know its the same regards all these "racist tweets" on Social media, how may of them are actually shit stirring nobodies/non-whites, answer we/they do not know, but the blame is purely put on white people.

A while ago 3 young England team "Black lads", got racially abused on Social media for missing 3 pens, it turned out 75% of the tweets came from across the world, think about that, was anything mentioned on Sky, you got it, Nout/nothing/nadda.

I have a number of oppo's of all denominations, who in lay mans terms are "pissed off" with the whole bloody scenario, they go as far as to say " the whole bloody thing is an attempt to turn each of us against each other"
 
Spursex said:
Two wrongs never make a right.
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In my world it does lol! they never hissed again as far as I know, well not to my face anyway.

As for the word Yid being offensive, I have never come across that, having Jewish Spurs fan oppo's and having served with Israeli Troops, I think this offence! is a modern day millenial thing, taking offence at the least bloody thing.

How long before we cannot even give an opinion? oh sorry its already here!
 
Pompey Yid said:
In my world it does lol! they never hissed again as far as I know, well not to my face anyway.

As for the word Yid being offensive, I have never come across that, having Jewish Spurs fan oppo's and having served with Israeli Troops, I think this offence! is a modern day millenial thing, taking offence at the least bloody thing.

How long before we cannot even give an opinion? oh sorry its already here!
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I spent some time in Isreal and for my part, I'm certain most Israeli's do find it offensive, as I asked, even back then. (I'm not jewish).

So this morning I did ask a fellow (Jewish) Spurs fan and it was he that sent me the board of deputies statement, he hates it, he hates it even more when Spurs fans sing it as he finds the use of it so uncomfortable, he couldn't tell me in the last few years how many times he's literally had it spat in his face as an insult.

He is literally begging that Spurs fans stop, listen and understand how our use of it isn't relevant anymore and how the term is now being used to him, his family including his young children at school as a term of racist insult.

His youngest son (just 8) had it chanted at him at school in a very nasty, hurtful way, he fought back physically and was almost kicked out of school for doing so, the other kids parents (5 of them) were all pulled into this and used the 'Spurs defence' as a reference for acceptable use - the school pretty much couldn't then do anything.

His son is now mentally scarred by it as he says now more than ever it's used by a certain section of our community as an out and out insult, as they now know they can use it with relative impunity.

This is the pain he and his family has to endure everyday now, because of what we do.

I for one, won't use the term again, I don't want to be part of the excuse for behaviour like this.
 
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Pompey Yid said:
In my world it does lol! they never hissed again as far as I know, well not to my face anyway.

As for the word Yid being offensive, I have never come across that, having Jewish Spurs fan oppo's and having served with Israeli Troops, I think this offence! is a modern day millenial thing, taking offence at the least bloody thing.

How long before we cannot even give an opinion? oh sorry its already here!
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I think what you talk about is the 3rd paragraph on the comm.

We are living in times of heightened awareness of cultural appropriation and sensitivities. It is therefore crucial to the values of our Club and our fans that we are even more mindful of the controversial nature of this term.

What should have been written.

We are living in times of heightened awareness of cultural appropriation and sensitivities. It is therefore crucial to the values of our Club and our fans that we are mindful of this in everything we do.

It is complete amateurish communications from THFC (as always) to mix the 2 themes. The words controversial nature of this term have absolutely no place. in that paragraph. It basically says "We are using the woke brigade as an excuse to express an opinion"

It's the condescending tone that continues to precipitate through every major comm that THFC send to their fans. Then they wonder why we don't have the right "club to fan" relationship.

It's just clumsy.
 
So one last input from me; I asked one other Spurs fan who happens to be Jewish and he sent this text to me: (I've copied and pasted them in full)


Text 1:

Ok so irrespective of the traditional reason for that chant is actually very dangerous in the context of today's polarised political discourse. once again there is a more than a disturbingly serious increase in antisemitic rhetoric and indeed physical attacks against Jews. The Yiddo chant plays into this increase in anti-Semitism in that it normalises and tends to make anti-Semitism attitudes acceptable especially to those anti-Semites who previously kept it to themselves -but are now much more blatant in expressing their 'point of view'.
Interesting how physical attacks against orthodox Jews in Stamford hill are on a steep increase in the Spurs 'backyard,,' there can be no Nuance here -Chanting Yiddo is encouraging the increase in anti-Semitism. Today's youth especially couldn't care less about 'the reclaiming history' of the chant .they most probably are not even aware of it.

Text 2:
It's a black and white issue now and needs to be stopped dead with publicity to all football fans as to why it is absolutely beyond the pale and prosecutable under law.

As I said, I won't use the term again.
 
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