So on to North and East London. Your teams for this section are Stevenage Borough Arsenal Tottenham Hotspur Watford Luton West Ham Leyton Orient Who would you follow and why ?
Spurs-Gascoigne, Lineker, Greaves , Jennings to name a few. First big team I saw back in 1971, when we played them in the semi final of the League cup. Jennings was in goal. Great night especially when we went 1-0 up.
West Ham, seem a proper club, won the world cup don't you know! plus I have met many of their fans around the world at tournaments etc.. good guys.
I would have said West Ham in the Ron Greenwood and John Lyle eras, but Big Sam is a big dogs cock and they were lucky to escape an upset when they played us. I was also at the '71 LC Semi 1st Leg against Spurs. I would have said we were 1-0 down, but perhaps I'm thinking of when we played Leeds in the FA Cup in 1974
Arsenal, my brother follows them so would be them but I don't mind Spurs. The Mrs would be West Ham as her family are all hammers fans and forever blowing bubbles was played at her grandads funeral.
Alan Skirton put us in front. There was 30,002 that night, me and you in amongst an attendance that you just wouldn't get today- Alan Gilzean equalised for them. The 74 game we were behind, Billy Bremner if I remember rightly before Keith Fear got us level.
Would be either West Ham Tottenham or Watford Arsenal is way too expensive and the other teams seem a bit lacklustre. West Ham would be cheap to watch premiership football with a reasonable atmosphere so probably them
Back in the 70's when we were in the top tier I bought my first house in Yate, I couldn't afford any where else, my local pub was called the 002, the landlord was a little fella called Les Silverman, he was a Spurs fanatic, we used to go alternate weeks to see Bristol City and Spurs, the Saturday games clicked nicely, for the Spurs game, I paid for the petrol and drove and he paid for the tickets, car parking and a flask of coffee for half time, I was pissed by the 2nd half kick off, strong flavoured coffee Great days, great times, I'll go for Tottenham Hotspur..
I know Gilzean scored for Spurs and that we lost the 2nd leg 2-0 in Extra Time. I think Martin Chivers got both Spurs goals then, Remember Bremners and Fears goals as I was in the Open End which is where they were both scored. I was also lucky enough to see the famous victory at Elland Road in the 5th round replay before Liverpool spoiled our party by beating is 1-0 down here. I'm still convinced we'd have won the cup that year had we got past Liverpool.
Unthinkable today- but being 11 years old at the time of the Spurs replay, I had no access to results that evening- There was no Teletext etc. I waited patiently the next day until my dad came home from work with the evening post to discover that we had drawn 0-0. It was only when I saw the stop press after that It dorned on me that we had lost in extra time. Can you imagine now, waiting nearly 24 hours to get the result! I am sure that you are right regarding Chivers, I would be pretty certain too
I was 11 in 1971 too. I think I listened to the result on the radio from the Spurs 2nd leg and went to bed unhappy.....!
