Have a laugh at a Spurs fan

  • by Alan Potts
  • Filed: Tuesday, 18th December 2018

Let me start this piece by saying that I'm a lifelong Spurs fan, and my father and uncles would have disowned me as a boy if I'd chosen any other team.

But I bear no malice towards West Ham at all, and as an 18-year-old when we won the World Cup, Bobby Moore, Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters were all heroes of mine. I reserve any hatred for Arsenal, the intruders from south of the river!

I also have a remote family link to West Ham player Steve Potts, as we share a surname. A relative has produced a massive family tree document which suggests that his great grandfather and my grandfather were first cousins, and that their fathers were brothers. Since my grandfather was old enough to have served in the First World War, that was all a long time ago of course, but the name is rare enough around London to have caught my interest when he was playing.

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I first found KUMB through HeadHammerShark, whose quite brilliant writing I've admired for the last two years. He has a way of cutting through to the crux of the matter, whilst employing a superb style and the more downbeat the subject matter, the better his output. I can think of few people that have moved me to laughing out loud simply by the written word, but HHS has managed that a dozen times.

Anyway, enough of the background, on to the laugh. For the last twenty six years, I've been a full time punter, and although that's been about 95 per cent linked to horse racing, I do like the odd football bet.

I'm reluctant to bet on individual matches, as refereeing decisions, particularly cards and penalties are simply impossible to predict in advance and therefore it's difficult to have confidence in the betting odds. The market I like to play is the Premier League relegation betting, either before the start of the season, or whenever I can see a team I feel is over priced during the season.

On the Saturday morning before you played Newcastle away, they were on offer at 11/2 and West Ham were available at 18/1, despite the fact that both teams had identical records at that point.

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Since the match betting indicated that you were less likely to come away with three points that Newcastle (as did most of the comments on here!), that price difference looked too big. I also took into account the ever increasing injury list, the probability that Arnautovic was playing with an injury that was likely to mean he'd go missing at some point, and to be honest, I didn't see your new manager as the man for a relegation scrap.

The bet was made - I'll keep the amount to myself, but it was high three figures - not necessarily in the expectation that the Hammers would go down, but that at some point in the weeks ahead, there would be an opportunity to trade for a profit regardless of the end of season positions. And you all know what happened next!

Anderson suddenly turned into Payet, the Little Pea became a sharpshooter, Noble steadied the ship in midfield and Fabianski continued to perform like a top class keeper should. Four wins on the trot and fortunately I have the ability to laugh at myself, as all successful punters must, because we back far more losers than winners.

One of the things that prompted me to write all this was the thread on KUMB titled 'How Good Are We Really'. I thought the fan that started that would get torn a new one, but I was amazed to read comments along the lines that you'd been lucky and not to count your chickens etc.

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Well in the eyes of this outsider, but obsessive follower of all things PL, you've bought a superb keeper, two very good centre backs, an outstanding wide attacking player and you've introduced a youngster that any PL club would like to have on their books. I was absolutely and totally wrong about the manager, just a pity he's not ten years younger.

And as I've already written off my bet, best of luck for the rest of the season and if you can take points off Arsenal and Chelsea, that would be most helpful.


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