The Athletic F.C.

Hello and welcome to The View from the Lane, the Tottenham Hotspur podcast from The Athletic.

I am your host, Danny Kelly.

No, sorry, there is in fact no Danny today.

I am your host, Jack Pittbrook because this is in fact a very, very special bonus edition of the podcast. Joining me today is James Moore. Hello, James. Hello. And a lifelong Spurs fan, famous comedian, dare I say, national treasure. No, it's not the case. Michael McIntyre. Hi, Michael. Well, it's so nice to be amongst fellow Spurs fans. I was going to say supporters, but it's more like a support group that we need.

Exactly right. It's nice to be with you. And to know that everyone listening has our shared love for, I used to say the Mighty Spurs, but it's getting harder and harder to involve the word mighty.

This is a safe space for you, Mike. Yeah, it is. Whatever is. Whatever you need to say, whatever you need to get off your chest. You can do that here. You know, it's a pleasure to be here. Big fan of the pod. And, you know, let's talk spurs. Yeah, I mean, it's difficult. Some things in life are important to talk about, difficult to talk about, painful to talk about, often upsetting to talk about. Yes. But you have to grasp the nettle and confront them. And I think talking about Tottenham Hotspur is one of those things. And I've become known as a fan now. I get a lot of people in the street wanting to, I suppose they're all your listeners. Do they come up to you and say, why don't they play about three?

Well, no. people in the street wanting to, I suppose they're all your listeners. Do they come up to you and say,

why don't they play about three? Well, no, I mean, they don't come for tactics. It's more like,

come on the spurs and aren't we awful. Sort of endless tactical discussions, it's quite hard to influence that. I mean, because I sometimes sit near

people who can make these decisions. I'm always trying to find out who we're going to sign.

This is my obsession, which I suppose you know more of here because you've got access to that

information more than, in theory. More than me. And I have, yeah, I've been around managers over the years.

And even though I know nothing, I've, you know, I've tried to get my opinions across.

I mean, when Ryan Mason was in caretaker charge, I just couldn't understand how we just couldn't get the ball forward.

There was something going very badly wrong in midfield.

And I said, should we put another player in there? And I thought that would be the solution. I thought maybe if we've got more people back there, it might help us get forward. That was the theory. But no, he shut me down very quickly. And I felt bad. I probably shouldn't have bought it up. He told me that you can't play 12 players, but that wasn't my point.

He said, we can't, what you want to play with 12?

I went, no, there's not an, anyway, I just left it.

I think, Ange, I met Ange at the cricket, before he'd taken over a tour. Oh, yeah.

And I made a beeline.

And for some reason, in my mind, just as a fan, I was like, I've got to just tell him everything I feel. So I went very big on Giovanni LaSeltso. I was like, we've got this player called the Selso. And I can't remember what had happened at that time, but he wasn't getting any, any game time. I think we would maybe put him out on loan. And I just couldn't understand it. I thought, and maybe that's been proved it correct, that we really needed a player of his ability and I thought, you know, he was decent. But ultimately, probably not. I was wrong. Well, I don't know. He was pretty good at the start under Jose. Yeah. He's flattered to the seat and he probably sums up that era of Spurs.

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